Angela sat twiddling with her silver necklace, the crucifix spinning around, leaving fine white scratches on her sternum. Her eyes are closed and she is whispering to herself. A Midsummer Night's Dream under her breath. Her toes dug into the sand.
The sun is beating down on the crowded beach. Summer holiday teenagers swarming between the road and the water.
Angela sits in her own world. Her pale skin wishing it could tan. Her heart wishing for a ma.... a distraction. A chance to know what she kept missing out on. She lies back, her lank brown hair in the sand. Dreaming. Soaking the suns rays. Photosynthesis. Lost in the moment, free from her thought, her face becomes pure beauty. And is struck by a beach-ball. She opens her eyes to a lopsided face, grinning at her like a madman.
"Ummm, sorry. I didn't mean to, umm, you know, get you with that, sorry." He stutters.
That was how they meet. Angela and Sean. Angela a grade A student at an underfunded catholic school. Sean, a jock at an exclusive school his rich grandparents sponsor. They spend the summer together. She drags him to see "twelfth night". He enjoyed it but would never admit it. He took her to a few games, she faked liking them, for his sake. He took her to all the exclusive expensive places she had always wondered about. And she found they were all exactly as her cynacism expected they would be. Shallow. Mindless.
But she was living a dream. A dream of all the wealthy things she had never known. She was no poor caterpillar scavanging the berrybushes of life, anymore.
The summer was drawing to an end, Sean was stretched over the sofa, in just boxer shorts, napping. Angela sketches him, a lil bit of beauty in the back cover of her diary. He took her to a party last night. He drank alot, she drank coke and rasberry. He had tried to press the issue, but she didn't cave. All his friends, and their girl-friends, were just like him, just like all the people who had never spoken to her before - and only speak to her now because she is Sean's little woman. She is living a dream. But like the little mermaid, she is out of her water. She is living a dream. A dream that was never meant to come true. A dream that was never hers.
A mermaid can never return to the sea.
Can a butterfly trade in it's wings?