As she rounded the corner, Sabrina’s heart sank.
There were the neighbours, and there was going to be no way to avoid them.
The moon-faced man, sunglasses blanking his expression. A strawberry mark his sea of tranquility. The hatchet-faced woman, a pale pink cousin of the wicked witch of the west. And the mop-haired half-girl, half-boy that was never out of their sight. Always skulking. Always silent.
The tree of them were filling the laneway, barring her path. She would have to say something, but what was there to say?
‘Good morning’ was all that came to mind, and that was what she said.
‘Good morning’.
Her words hung there in the still air, then became a swarm of little black dots
that spiraled down into the blackness of the child’s black hair.
The moon remained silent as the moon always does. The witch look like she had been saving up everything she had to say and that she had plenty to say and that she was about to say it.
Sabrina’s day had just begun, but she felt like it was already ending.