Maggie Needs Friends Or Does She?

Eunoia Blume
Jul 10, 2017 · 4 min read
Unsplash : Veronika Balasyuk

Nine-year old Maggie O’Sullivan sat herself on the grass. Behind her, other children could be heard laughing and playing tag on the playground. She pulled on the weeds with her small nimble hands, piling on dandelions. She hummed under her breath. Maggie gave a loud sneeze. AAACHHOOOOO!

A boy approached her from behind, tapping her on her shoulder.

“Hey you! Do you want to play with us?”, he said.

She looked up, squinting and saw a pair of dark brown eyes and two missing front teeth speaking to her.She glanced at her pile of dandelions and looked up at the boy.
“Okay!”, she cried. She patted down her dress, remnants of a crown falling to the ground.The boy beckoned her to follow him and she saw the group of children she heard earlier. There were four of them in total.

One dark-haired girl with glasses attached on a string.
One black boy wearing a striped tee-shirt.
And one Asian looking boy picking up ants with hands and crushing them between his fingers.

The leader of the group as far as Maggie could tell, was the boy with the missing teeth. He was louder and the other kids circled around him like bees to honey.
“I’m going to be It, everyone who I catch loses the game”, he said.
“But Tim, you’re always the one who gets to be It. Give someone else a chance!”, the girl with glasses whined.
Maggie started fidgeting with her hands, and looked straight at Tim.
“How about I be It this time and if I can’t catch you, you can be It forever,” she said.
Everyone looked at her like she was crazy.
No one defied Tim.
Ever.
It was against the rules; rules unspoken but practiced since the gestation of their group.
Tim smiled his wide toothless grin and laughed. Puffing his scrawny chest, he said, “Okie dokie Ravioli”. He signified the boundaries of the game with his hand, motioning to the soccer net at the end of the field and the playground enclosure.

Maggie had some tricks up her sleeve, of course. No one crossed an O’ Sullivan’s path without getting bit. She knew exactly what to do and how to do it. She would win the game.
“All right, minions! You have to step on this line, see that stick there and this big rock? When I count to three, you can run.”
Everyone looked at her with bored expressions on their faces. The Asian boy proceeded to eat the crushed ants he had in his hands, flinging them into his mouth.
“One, two, three!”, she bellowed.
All the kids ran and she stood as rigid as a rock and started muttering incomprehensible jargon. They looked at her from their places closest to the edges of the boundaries. She picked up a dandelion crown from her pocket and placed it on her head. “Freeze everybody! I’m the gatekeeper of Dandelions!”
All the children froze, unable to move their limbs, they gaped at her. Their feet were cemented to the grass. The Asian boy called David started coughing, dirt spilling from his mouth.
“David, you are a bad boy! Eating other people’s friends is wrong. You are going to throw up all the ants and bugs you have eaten since you were born. ALL OF THEM.”
In that instant, David began to pour his stomach out on the grass. In one big hurl of projectile vomit, the ants and various bugs he had eaten were alive and crawling on his skin covered in bile and intestinal juices. He wanted to scream, but the torrent of live bugs that were traveling through his esophagus, out his nostrils and mouth.
“Who’s next?”, she yelled.
Tim screamed in horror, as he yelled, “Call the police, there’s a crazy witch! She’ll kill us!”, all the while trying to get his feet unstuck from the ground, waving his arms like an octopus. The girl with the glasses began to cry, her mouth trembling in fear. The black kid looked around the area for any surveying adults. Not a single one. Maggie ran to Tim and touched his forehead lightly with her index finger.“Tag, you’re it.” Timmy’s screams could be heard from the neighboring houses, people opening their curtains to see what the commotion was about.

The others half fearful and half amused grimaced at the sight.

Maggie smiled and snapped her fingers. They were unfrozen, but they ran as fast they could to their homes. She spotted David running as fast as he could, all the while burping out a fly or two on his way.

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