Unbelief

A Short Story

It was a heady day when Amber realized she could unbelieve anything from existence.

Mosquitoes were the first to go.

One moment they were there, sucking great welts onto her skin. Next second they were gone. All of them.

That night Amber danced around the house, happy as a seven-year-old could be, and quietly unbelieved a few of her brother’s toys into non-existence.

In the morning, Amber did what she always did and took Deeohgee into the yard for his morning poop. But when he bounded away, the grass crunched underfoot. And when Amber looked real hard, it seemed to her the grass glistened with broken glass — just like the day her brother broke the window pane hunting aliens.

Amber bent down and scooped up a dragonfly, wings beautiful as spun sugar … and just as lifeless.

Amber ran into the house. “Mom! The yard is covered in dead dragonflies.”

“That’s too bad.” Amber’s mother poured milk into the cereal bowl. “They must not have enough mosquitoes to eat.”

Amber ate her cereal. Each crunch of Crunchy-Ohs echoing the brittle sound of dragonflies under Deeohgee’s paws. I’ll have to be more careful, she thought as she crunched. Unbelieving is a tricky business.

At school, Amber was careful to not unbelieve any of her classmates, even though Elijah pushed her off the wobbly bridge at recess and made her skin her knee. That’s just the kind of thing Elijah did. And Amber remembered the dead dragonflies.

“Don’t cry Ham-ber.” Elijah marched up and down the bridge, pivoting at each end like a soldier. “Kings of the castle make the rules.”

Amber didn’t cry, but went with her friend Lucy to wash her knee.

Lunchtime, though, was a whole other matter. Nothing bad would happen if I unbelieve broccoli. Amber narrowed her eyes, examining the dreaded, grainy trees. My lunch would be finished and I could get my after-school treat.

Amber thought and thought, remembering everything she knew about broccoli. There wasn’t much. But surely, Amber reasoned, no animals eat only broccoli. If broccoli was gone, they would just eat other things. And I could, too.