For Children

Ela Kini

Kimmy Bell

2022 7th & 8th Grade Prose Honorable Mention

     You’re perfect, aren’t you, Kimmy Bell? Every feature sculpted with the gentle hand of Donatello - hair so long and blonde, earrings dangling proudly with all your grace, and eyes perfect sapphires matching the necklace around your neck that your daddy got you for your birthday. It was last Thursday… I don’t think I could forget.
     You don’t have bags around your eyes, or big chunky glasses like mine, too thick and dirty to be some sort of trend.
     Your life must be really easy. Isn’t that true, Kimmy Bell? With daddy’s money, I bet you don’t have to use the same backpack from middle school, gum patches and all, or work at the diner every afternoon.
     I know you don’t have to because I work those shifts, see you and Marissa and Jenny (that’s your squad) go sit at your corner booth like the corner office you’ll someday inhabit in daddy’s company. Nice new backpack, by the way.
     It seems you get your allowance in Gucci nowadays.
     You don’t see that you’re lucky, though, do you Kimmy Bell? A girl born with Bell Corporations as her birthright, a girl made on a trip to Venice instead of in a run-down Honda just before it finally gave in the next month.
     My ma talks about you, Kimmy Bell, wishes I was you. She doesn’t say that part, but I can sense it’s what she means, that she wants me to be the one who gets the new iPhone for Christmas instead of a surprise of no electricity because we couldn’t pay the bill last month.
     I want to be you sometimes, too.
     You get the best of every world, Kimmy Bell. In school, you’re the closest thing to a queen with great fashion and A+ grades. But your true talents lay in the arts programs which our school canceled last year. You haven’t functioned quite right without them.
     I felt bad for you when they made that announcement, wanted to come up and hug you but there were too many people, and everyone would just laugh. Marissa and Jenny were there to comfort you. You got many hugs that day, many apologies. Because everyone knew you, knew what art was to you. You went home smiling that day because you knew the people around you cared.
     I can’t count all the times I felt the same way. Like when I realized I can’t join the robotics club because I don’t have enough money to buy all the supplies and for ma to pay rent.
     I never got any hugs for that.
     But I don’t want your pity, so don’t give me the same look you gave Marissa’s puppy when it got stranded in the rain last fall.
     I’m no pup, Kimmy Bell. I can deal with the looks I get when I go into the lunchroom, the whispers of the poor girl wearing all the off-brand versions. I tell those hecklers off usually.
     I can deal with watching you come in five minutes after, a happy, smiling girl, with dimples so perfect you’d never realize they’re considered a genetic imperfection. People whisper about the friendship bracelets you wear on your right wrist, your Supreme tee, noting these new trends you’ve unknowingly made.
     They care more about the exact shade of your new, knitted bracelet (an ombre from teal to peacock blue) than even knowing my name, a classmate of six years.
     I can deal with it, though.
     I glance down at the watch on my hand, fit for a child with cartoon bunnies painted across the strap. Four dollars and twenty-nine cents from the thrift store and stuck exactly four hours and twenty-two minutes behind.
     The face of it reads 11:08 PM which means it’s really 3:30 PM and the end of your weekly Arts Club meeting. You’ll exit the building through the front double doors with Marissa and Jenny in tow. I’ve chosen my seat methodically so that I’ll see you perfectly from where I sit at the third bench down.
     But when I glance towards the door where you’ve just exited there is no Marissa and Jenny, only you, quietly smiling, gliding down the slew of steps, my miraculous princess, Kimmy Bell. We both look around at the same time and no one is there. Everyone has left just a few moments earlier today.
     This is my chance because, for someone who tucks her hair behind her ears so shyly, Kimmy Bell, you’re almost never alone.
     I begin to walk towards you, and my steps are nothing like yours; they’re clumsy and short and unconfident. You meet my eyes right then.
     I reach you five seconds after that. You look at me for a moment, but that’s the most you can stand to hesitate. You wrap your arms around my neck and tuck my charcoal hair behind my ear with your gentle touch, that blue bracelet running against my cheek, the one you made for me, a design of earthy green dotting, feeling just right on my wrist. I press a kiss to your chin (I’ve always been the shorter one) and smile.
     Kimmy Bell, from your long, blonde hair to those sapphire eyes…
     I love you. And you love me too.