Kited
I am a kite. Packaged in clear plastic, I wait and have been waiting for some time, folded into myself upon the dusty shelf of the uninteresting dollar store. Day in and day out, the patrons bustle and hustle by but pay me no heed, preferring to stock up on the cheap candles or sandpapery toilet paper from aisle two. No one wants a kite these days, much less one that isn’t spattered with glitter or cartoon characters. I am but a simple blue hue, washed out by the fluorescent lights of the store. For one meager dollar you get my bones of two sticks, my heartstring upon a spool, and my folded self, yearning to soar.
The store’s automatic doors whir open, sending a warm current rippling through. When a woman in sunglasses and cherry high heels walks in, clip-clopping her way over the scuffed linoleum floor, she doesn’t strike me as any different. Just another customer sidling on by to browse the cheap perfumes, which try to make the wearer smell less like booze and sweat, and more like a summer breeze. But she smells like a spring thunderstorm, of rolling clouds and high winds and sweet ozone: a daring kite’s dream.
She stops just before me, flicking through the packages of sparkly kites hung neatly on hooks above me, before her head tilts down. Round cheeks. Red lips. Loose cardigan. Tight jeans. At first, I think she’s inspecting the row of rainbow sidewalk chalk on the shelf below mine, but no¾a smile lights up her face, and I find myself snatched up between her long, manicured fingers in one fell swoop. My package crinkles painfully like a dry leaf crushed underfoot, turning this way and that, but I’m intrigued! My heartstring-spool rolls to the side, my stick-bones knock together, and I fold upon my blue self in new ways. I can see myself in the dark reflection of her glasses, but not her eyes which behold me.
“Used to have one of you when I was a kid. How cute,” she says fondly under her breath, smiling at me, before roughly tossing me back down roughly on the metal shelf and striding out of my view, into aisle two.
False hope floods through me as I fall, jars me, and then settles my package flat. What a tease! What a shame! Oh, how those manicured fingers would have laid me flat and aligned my bones and sail¾would have tugged on my heartstring as I soared!
Click, click, click, click¾
All at once, my thoughts dissipate as I lift into the air again before being shoved into one of the store’s dingy, green hand baskets. Her hand quickly withdraws, causing my world to sway wildly for a few moments, the fluorescent lights above flashing down through the slots of the basket. Her heels begin to click-clack against the tiles once again, and, in less than a second, we’re moving across the store.
Is she really . . .?
The woman carelessly tosses other items in while she hums an idle tune from a sun-kissed throat. A box of low-fat cookies fall atop me. Toothbrushes jab into my wrapper. Tampons stare at me from across the basket. Leopard print sunglasses mirror my astonishment in a darker tint. And beside all of that, I am the only toy!
She’s¾? Taking me out of here! I’m finally getting out! We can run and soar and play in sunny parks and¾
I’m dumped over onto the small conveyor belt leading to the cashier, the other items piled atop me like a crushing mountain. I feel my stick-bones protest from the unexpected jostle. She doesn’t seem to care, her expression all but unreadable from behind those shades perched on her pointed nose. I notice the freckles spattered across her cheeks for the first time, paired with the tan lines peeking out from the hem of her blouse sleeves. Beautiful, yet unafraid to let the sun kiss her skin; I hope she likes the winds as much as the sun. She smiles coolly down at me, as if she can read my mind, and pops a piece of brightly-colored gum into her mouth from an unseen pocket of her jeans.
The exchange is quick as the items ring up on the register in succession. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. The flash of a bent-up credit card reveals that the woman’s¾my woman’s¾name is Caroline. Once again, I am jammed upright into a loudly protesting plastic bag sporting THANK YOU! COME AGAIN! in cash-green font. The other items cascade into the bag, further colliding with my now-wrinkled wrapper and clinging tightly onto me¾a minor inconvenience for the flights that were to come.
After expertly navigating the earthy terrain in those cherry heels, my Caroline kneels on the park lawn, paying no heed to the green stains now blossoming on her jeans. She slips off her heels, bare toes kissing the ground beneath her. The damp wind combs its airy fingers through her dark curls, creating mischievous tangles, and I hope that it will treat me with such playfulness once I’m in its boundless skies. Caroline fishes me out of the bag and carelessly tosses the other purchases aside, granting me a brief moment of satisfaction before a burst of pain rattles every part of me.
With no grace, my package is agonizingly torn open, ripped away by those manicured fingers, and tossed aside for the wind to catch and tumble across the waving grass beside us. My shield, gone. I scream, but I have no mouth, no words to let her know what she’s done. But this has to happen. How else is she going to piece me together? I can’t fly if I’m hiding behind a sheet of plastic, right? My Caroline wouldn’t hurt me, if she knew, but I’m still more embarrassed than I would admit.
My blue sail is laid out in the prickly grass while her fingers impatiently graze my wooden bones, fitting them into the plastic notches in my sail, crossed on my chest. The wood bows in a way I didn’t think was possible without breaking before Caroline knots and double knots the end of my heartstring taut to my center. Rigid. She separates two long pieces of fabric from my sail that I didn’t even know were stuck to me, tying the odd pieces to my lowest point. They feel limp and awkward in the grass with me. I really hope she did this right.
She’s smiling up at me, holding me up to inspect with one hand, the dimming sunlight glinting off her sunglasses in playful winks that leave flecks in my vision. Dazzling. The warm winds eagerly tug, tug, tug at my edges, urging her to let me go. She heeds, not bothering to check if I’m ready for this leap, and throws caution, along with me, into the wind’s grip. I lift into the breeze.
The sky isn’t gentle with my first flight. Its graying clouds and winds were made for buffeting and the rolling turbulences. I am just a passenger, the borrowed wind in my sail coming and going on a whim with the only constant being the tug on my heartstring. I lift higher.
Even from where I fly above the treetops, Caroline’s smile still beams, creating my full sail, lending me confidence. I jerk a few times, up and down, before being pulled forward into the wind. As small as an ant, she’s skipping like a child across the park, her dark hair whipping back in a wild mess across her face and shoulders. And, also like a child, she doesn’t care one bit.
A flash of lightning tears through the sky. The wind buffets me up, sending me tumbling in wide cartwheels before dropping me in a nosedive toward the solid earth.
The thrill of the plunge is ecstacy. I can smell her thunderstorm scent all around me in this downward rush, her ant-like size growing larger by the second. In my mind, I’m soaring right to her waiting hands and her happy smile, a future of flights ahead of us. I’m thanking her for the flight, the elements in their raw power. And at the last possible moment, the wind snatches me into the air again as a roll of distant thunder, like a drum, reverberates through me. My heartstring is taut at my core as I sail up to full height, full view of the park below and my Caroline. Her firm grip is the only barrier keeping me from the complete clutches of the elements. I feel a shift, a few sharp tugs, but I trust it’s nothing. The feeling is slight at first, but then¾SNAP.
Blown back and at the wind’s mercy, I shriek as I watch my thin heartstring fall back to the earth below, limp. I spin wildly as the currents turn against me, no longer playful; they are devilish tempests with clawing hands. They grab my blue sail and pass me to each other like they’re playing volleyball, until I can’t tell which way is up or down, sky or earth. It’s all a blur of gray and dull green swirls.
They spike me down from the sky finally, and I think I’ll be relieved from this torment, but I’m dashed upon the branches of the tallest park tree with the deafening scrape of leaves, a cymbal crash at the end of my song of flight. I fall still within the stiff embrace of the tree, dazed, although the winds have now moved to rattle the branches and make them groan. My vision is spotted with a green kaleidoscope of leaves, dulled in color with the coming storm. I can’t see the ground in anything more than flashes between the swaying limbs. My spine is snapped in half and bent at odd angles, bones splintered. My once-pristine sail is punctured by sticks and littered with fragments of bark and dirt. Thunder rolls again after yet another streak of lightning lights up the sky.
Oh, Caroline, where is she? Surely, she’s planning on getting me down from here? Can she see me in this darkening light? I wait for what seems like eternity in that moment of disoriented panic before her sweet voice drifts up to me from the base of the tree like a siren’s song.
“Well, shit!” Caroline curses with clear annoyance, the profanity falling off her lips easily.
I’m here, I’m here! Help me, my Caroline! Get me down!
“Sorry, little guy, you were only a buck. I can get another,” her voice calls again, more distant. Fear grips me as I realize that she’s leaving¾she’s dooming me up here!
Her footfall, the crunch of fallen leaves on the grass, fades with her voice until I can’t hear her at all anymore. There’s no one around to help me, no one around to care.
The heavens open up, and it begins to pour.