Katy’s day out
Katy woke up bright an early Saturday morning. She was excited because today Nia promised to spend the entire day with her. She had spent the week deciding what she wanted to do today and now today was here! The sun was up and the sky was blue and it was already warm outside. It was the perfect day to out.
Nia was still sleeping. Katy and Nia shared a bedroom together. The house they were allotted only had two bedrooms so they had to make do with that. Katy tried to let Nia sleep but she just couldn’t stand it. She went over to Nia’s bed and started shaking her.
“Nia! Nia! It’s Saturday. Get up!” She kept saying. It took Nia around fifteen minutes to wake up.
“Katy! Why do you have to be so annoying?” Nia said. She said it in a low voice but it still sounded like she was shouting.
“Nia, you promised you’d spend the day with me!” Katy responded.
“What time is it? We have the whole day!” Nia countered.
“But I don’t want to waste any of it.” Katy said in a voice that let Nia know she hurt her feelings. Nia sat up in bed and opened up her arms. Katy came close and Nia gave her a hug.
“I’m sorry. I know you’ll been looking forward to this all week. Can I just sleep for a few more minutes? Please?” Nia begged.
“Okay” Katy relented.
“Thank you. You’re the best.” And Nia gave her a big smile. Nia was still exhausted and needed a little bit more time to recover. Soon she was sound asleep again.
Katy was wide awake. There was no way she was going back to sleep. She crept out of her room and down the hall. The door to her parents’ bedroom was closed. She crept into the kitchen and poured herself some cereal. She spilled the milk a little bit but she managed to clean it up without making things worse. She couldn’t watch TV though because there were no TV’s. There was a cartoon however, playing at the cinema later that she was planning on seeing. She pretty much liked any cartoon that featured an animal which meant she pretty much liked all of them.
While she was waiting on Nia to wake up, she decided to concentrate her efforts on solving a logic puzzle. She had been given a book that had logic puzzles them for her birthday. She learned how to draw a chart that allowed her to organize her thoughts and threw careful reasoning she had learned to deduce the answers. The puzzles had different difficulty levels. She wasn’t great at it but she was good enough to do the puzzles at the easiest level without much difficulty.
She was lost in concentration when somebody covered her eyes from behind. She knew immediately who it was and a big smile came across her face. She turned around and saw Nia, all dressed and ready to go. Nia left a note for her parents because she didn’t want to wake them up and the two of them left for the day.
The first thing they did was take a walk through the woods. They could hear the birds singing and the sun shone down on them through the branches of the trees. They saw lizards and frogs and every once in a while they spied a squirrel. Katy tried catching a frog but Nia discouraged her. Katy jumped in a shallow stream and Nia told her not to get too wet.
After their walk they went to the playground at the elementary school. Katy played and Nia sat on a bench and watched. Every once in a while Nia would get up and join her and Nia pushed her on the swing. Once Katy got tired of being pushed on the swing Nia went and sat down on the bench. Nia brought a book with her to read. She did this to keep herself from getting bored while Katy played.
It was getting to be about mid-morning and other children Katy’s age had come to play. All soon join together in a game of tag. After a while there was quite a gathering at the playground. Most people in the village did something outside and there was always someone out to play with.
While Katy was playing she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. There were some teenagers just hanging out. It seemed like that’s all they did. They just hung out and talked. Nia did that sometimes Katy couldn’t understand how just hanging out and talking could be very much fun. She noticed a girl that looked kind of familiar talking to this boy she had never seen before. She thought it was odd because the village was small and everybody pretty much knew everybody else.
The girl that caught her eye looked a lot like Nia. She walked closer to her to get a better view and it was Nia! She then looked back over at the bench where she thought Nia had been sitting and she was still there! How could Nia be in two places at once! The boy she was talking to had a black shirt, blue jeans and a jacket that went down to his knees. He was holding something in one of his hands but Katy couldn’t make out what it was. She looked at Nia standing with the strange boy, she looked back at the bench where Nia was still sitting reading her book. When she look back again at Nia and the strange boy they were gone. She ran over to where they were standing and looked around but she didn’t see either one of them. When she looked back at the bench Nia was still sitting there reading her book.
Katy didn’t know what to think. Did she really see Nia with a strange boy? Her mind couldn’t reconcile the contradiction so her mind just filed it away and she forgot about it. Katy played at the playground the rest of the morning and around noon they walked toward the cinema. Before they went to watch the cartoon, they stopped at a hot dog stand and got two hot dogs with kechup. There was one hot dog stand in the small village that did a brisk business on the weekend when everyone was out and about. Katy and Nia had been eating there for as long as either of them could remember.
The cartoons started around 1pm. They lasted for about 4 minutes and the cinema showed enough of them to last an entire hour. There were several that involved cats trying to catch mice and getting into all kinds of hilarious situations. Nia liked the ones that featured a rabbit outsmarting a dim witted hunter.
After the cartoons played, there was news about how much food had been produced and the how the world was all united and how wonderful it was and how there had not been a war in 300 hundred years, so something like that. Nia and Katy both found it very boring. The main feature was a movie about these two high school students who fell in love with each other but were kept apart due to belonging to a different class. Nia thought the idea was silly. She had learned about the class system in school but that system didn’t exist anymore. The world had in a sense become classless.
The movie was supposed to be funny and if she had stayed to watch it she would have found it hilarious but she didn’t. Katy thought the whole thing was boring and it was her day out, not Nia’s. So Nia and Katy left the cinema and stopped at the ice cream shop. Katy insisted on sampling all the flavors before she decided even though she knew what all the flavors already tasted like. Katy and Nia both finally settled on chocolate and they sat outside on a bench to eat it.
When they were done they slowly walked home. Once they got home Katy insisted on playing her favorite board game, Karma Kills. The object of the game is to do good deeds while making your opponents do bad things. If you do enough bad things you die and the last person still alive wins the game. It was one of those educational games that teach children that doing bad things have consequences. The game designer had a wicked sense of humor and as a result the game became extremely popular.
Nia’s mother served meatloaf for dinner. It was a family tradition to eat dinner together and then go around the table and talk about what happened during the day. Nia’s father believed that it was healthy to get everything out and he did not want anything to fester inside the heart of his children or wife. It also gave everyone a sense of closeness to each other that would not otherwise be there.
When it was Katy’s turn, she spoke a mile a minute. She told her parents everything that happened to her including seeing Nia and the strange boy. Nia assured her parents that she had not seen the strange boy with the cube for years and had certainly never spoken to him. Katy promised she wasn’t lying and everyone found the revelation disturbing. They had no idea who this boy was or what he wanted or was doing with Nia. Nia particularly found the news disturbing. She wondered what such a thing could mean.
After dinner the family played a game of cards together. They often read books and join each other in song until it was time to go to bed. Katy slept like a log but Nia was restless.
https://theprose.com/post/259552/stranger-in-the-woods
https://theprose.com/post/258276/the-birth-of-katy