Short Story - THE LOVEABLE KLUTZ
This one’s super sweet. I know I get hella dark on you sometimes, but this one is adorable IMO. The writing group’s 500 word prompt was: “Tell the Story of a Scar”
Now tell me I couldn’t have gone hardcore dark with that one!! TELL ME! But I am capable of fluff. And here it is.
THE LOVEABLE KLUTZ
“And spwoosh! It happened!” Little Julie blows her hands apart to indicate a big splash. She seems unbothered, but the scar on her forehead shows white against her tanned skin. “Mama said I went uncwoncious!”
I cock one eyebrow. “Do you even know what that means?”
She nods so quickly, the tiny ponytail atop her head flip flops. “It means I fewl asweep on accident.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” I say, running a finger over the little slash of a mark that stands out like a neon sign. Taking my stethoscope from around my neck, I put it on Julie’s chest to listen to her thumping heart, straining over the sound of her grabbing the examination table paper and crumpling it with deafening scrunches.
Miss Gina Lewis sits with her arms crossed, watching me move from front to back, heart to lungs. The look on her face is one of fondness as she watches over her klutz of a child.
“Tell me about this one,” I say, nudging Julie’s right knee. This one is fresher and may not scar at all. Pink, and a tell-tale sign of road rash.
She wiggles away from me as I try to look in her ears, but it doesn’t stop her from talking. “I was wunning suuuuper fast, you know? And I just,” she dives her hand forward and slams it on her upturned palm, shoving her fingers past one another to show how she skated across the ground. Lifting her arm in a jerk, she nearly elbows me in the face. “And here! Lookit!”
The back of her elbow sports the same pink mottling and I tsk in sympathy.
In true Julie style, she grabs me by the collar, yanking me down until we’re nose-to-nose, her voice a stage whisper. “And guess what?”
“What?”
“I’m gonna get a bicycle.”
I manage to turn towards Gina despite Julie’s clutching fingers. “Seriously? Are you preparing for broken bones?”
Gina laughs. Very pretty. Too pretty to be a single mother. “Don’t worry, Doc. We’re talking elbow pads, knee pads, helmets, and therapy.”
“Therapy?”
“Yeah, that’s for me and the paranoia choking me every time I put her down.”
Julie gleams at me, a front tooth missing. “If I bweak a bone, will I cat?”
“A cast,” her mother corrects.
Big, round, angel blue eyes blink at me, expectantly.
I groan. “Yes, you can have a cast, but only if you break an arm or a leg. Not a rib or hip or a nose.”
I tickle her on each spot, sending her squealing, and her mother giggles again. A perfect sound. When I grin at her, she seems almost shy, but when she bites her bottom lip, my brain is screaming to ask for a date. I don’t. Not yet. But the way that Julie crashes and burns, I’ll see her again soon. Maybe I’ll finally manage to cough up the courage by then.
I’ve loved Gina since high school, and it’s about time I told her.
