through the window

Annika saw the other kids playing some game involving a lot of running around and yelling. Bonnie was in the middle of things, her clothes muddy and her braids undoing as Annika watched. She willed Bonnie to look up to the window, to remember her best friend, trapped and ill and bored while other kids played, but Bonnie was It, and running too fast.

Annika coughed. Her body shook with it and her throat ached with rawness, and she shivered down deeper into the blanket she’d brought with her from her bed. If only spring would come—and with it warmth enough for Mama to let her outside. The willows were bathed with the first hints of green, there by the river near where her friends were playing. Three cows were heavy with calves at the fence by Jenkins’ farm, munching new grass—but in the shadows, the snow lingered. Annika had been ill for weeks, now, pneumonia lingering in her chest and making her hot and shivering at the same time. If spring came, she knew she’d be better.

Bonnie shouted something—Annika could only hear the tone, not the words—and the children marched behind her, following the leader. They hopped on one foot, waved their left hands, clapped over their heads, tiptoed, giant stepped. Bonnie led them to the cows and then in a wandering snake through a break in the hedge, around the willows, and across a tree bridge. On the other side, they all stopped short as three of the big kids cut across their path in a bicycle race, and then crossed the road, getting further and further from Annika’s window.

Annika sighed and leaned her head on the cool glass feeling alone. They probably didn’t even think about her any more. Bonnie probably even had a new best friend, one who could play out with her and who wasn’t sick all the time.

There was the sound of whistles and drums coming from across the road. Annika sat up. All the kids were coming back with Bonnie at their head, like a parade. They had brown paper crowns and Bonnie was carrying a glitter baton and high stepping across the road and back over the tree bridge, around the willows, and then stopping right in front of Annika’s window. They all looked up, and unrolled a giant brown paper sign with block letters that said: GET WELL SOON! and all the Os were glittery hearts.

Annika smiled and waved to the kids and especially to Bonnie, laughing so hard that she started coughing again, so that when Bonnie came upstairs to visit, Annika’s eyes were wet.

word count: 443