Rosie Coloured Glasses by Brianna Wolfson

Author:Brianna Wolfson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2018-02-20T05:00:00+00:00

26

Rosie stood right there at the forefront of Willow’s mind every day she was away. Every minute of every day for the last four days. She stood there in a floral-printed dress, waving her hips and arms and blowing kisses at her daughter. And then she dissolved away.

As Willow and Asher played Marshmallow City, Willow wondered if her brother was thinking about the same thing. But when she looked up from her sticky hands to read Asher’s mind, she had no idea what her brother was thinking.

The scene in Dad’s kitchen was so familiar. The two of them on Dad’s tiled kitchen floor sticking toothpicks into marshmallows. Then sticking those marshmallows onto other toothpicks. Then those toothpicks into other marshmallows. Doing this until large toothpick-and-marshmallow towers were erected. Arranging the towers across the kitchen floor until a marshmallow metropolis formed. Lining the black-and-white-speckled kitchen tiles with mini marshmallow roads and mini marshmallow walkways with toothpick streetlamps.

It was a game they used to play upstairs in Asher’s room until Dad found out that Asher had been hiding marshmallows under his pillow and sneaking them before bed.

It was a game they used to play loudly and energetically. They would debate over the appropriate orientation and height of a tower. They would ruminate over which color toothpick to use for which building. They would dispense Asher’s action figures throughout their city to inhabit their towers and their streets. And Batman would wave to the Hulk as he walked down a marshmallow pathway. And Superman would share a toothpick-lined room with Rambo.

But today when they played with their toothpicks and marshmallows, everything was quiet. In Marshmallow City and in Dad’s kitchen.

Willow broke the silence when she looked up from her marshmallow-and-toothpick cube and asked her brother, “Where do you think Mom is?”

Asher snapped his eyes to meet his sister’s. His big, blue, wholesome eyes. And now also his swollen marshmallow-stuffed cheeks.

“I don’t weally know,” he said. The marshmallows were pressing their way out the corners of his mouth as he spoke.

While Asher tried to swallow the marshmallows in his cheeks, Willow tried to swallow Asher’s nonresponse and return to erecting her towers. But Willow wasn’t ready to end the conversation. She wanted, needed, wanted to talk more.

“But what if you just had to guess or something?”

Asher stretched his neck up, and then dipped his head and scrunched his eyes as he swallowed the white marshmallow bolus in his mouth. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and stretched his spine to answer his sister.

“What if she, like, took a twip into space?”

Asher lit up at the sound of the fantasy he created.

“Yeah. Maybe she went in a wocket ship.”

Asher’s whole body started to levitate at the idea. His eyes floated upward and his earlobes rose. He smiled a gummy smile and stuck another marshmallow into his cheeks. Willow could tell that Asher had considered this recently created story of where Mom was a genuine possibility. And that he was beginning

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