Fresh grass, and it's staining the bottoms of my feet, but I don't care. Mother will come to get me soon. She's probably been looking for me for hours now. Laughing! What fun is sitting home in that dull living room with the lumpy chairs, watching those women whom my mother calls my sisters, anyway? They look like they've never taken a deep breath the way their faces are always slathered with paint and they're hardly daring to move an inch in any direction. Click, click with their knitting needles, that's all they hear all day. Clicking, and it echoes through the whole house. Drives Papa insane. He says he hears it even in his sleep, and he'd be just fine if the house burned to the ground if it meant the damn knitting would burn too. Sara, the lady Momma lets watch me on Sundays, teaches me to crochet. Crocheting is much quieter. Papa loves me more than those girls that knit. I can tell.

"Eaddy, do ya have to lag behind as much? C'mon, I wanna show ya somethin' before your momma sends out the bulls on us!"

I run faster, wishing I was a boy like Roody. Why doesn't he have to wear a skirt like I do? He doesn't even have to live in a house if he don't wanna. He doesn't have to eat any real meals either, but he wouldn't mind if he had to do that. That's all he ever talks about, is food. I tell him he can come home with me one day and eat one of our meals. He'd get a kick out of that, I bet. Him in his raggedy trousers and his suspenders and nothing else. And my papa in his top hat, even just at dinner. The thought of it makes me giggle so much that I can't run any more and I topple into the grass and roll, staining the nasty white lace a nicer shade of sticky green.

I hear Roody huff and fuss all the way back to where I'm rolling around and he plops on down next to me and glares.

"Or maybe the princess of the manor don't care ta see the fish market, huh?"

"That's where you're taking me?" I ask in awe.

"Well maybe, but not if you'se dressed like that, all prim an' proper. Any a da guys'd stop me an' slug me."

"And I'll slug you too, Roody McGabe, if you talk about me being like that any more!" I pounce on him at the same time he pounces on me and we both fly back down with a satisfying thud. My heat thwacks against the rocky ground hard, but I know if Roody sees me cry, he'll get to laugh about it for days.

There's no time for crying, though, because he starts to tickle me and before long I'm squealing and poking and tickling him back and we're both rolling around on the wet ground in the daylight, and I'm filled with rebellion and I'm thinking I can do anything because I'm seven years old and I don't need any family anymore, because I'm going to run away and marry Roody who's a whole year older than me and when we have kids, we won't make them learn how to knit.

"Edith Susan!" The shrill screech knocks me out of my tickle fight with Roody, and I have to sit up, which knocks him out of his tickle fight with me. He sits up too. I see Sara running up to me with the most terrified look in her eyes. As she gets closer, a big smile smears its way across my face. I hold out my arms to her and she stops in front of the two of us. Her fists pummel into her hips and she stares at us.

"Edith, what on earth are you doing with this hooligan at ten o'clock on a Sunday morning? Oh, if your mother knew how often I lose sight of you.." She scoops me up into her arms and I wrap my arms around her neck like I used to when I was a little girl. "Sara, he's not a hooligan! He's my friend Roody."

"My, but he's so sickly thin!"

"I am -not- so sickly thin!" he repels instantly, leaping to his feet, staring up at her with a voracious glare. I catch his eye, and I can't help but let out a snide giggle because yes he is so sickly thin and I'm almost taller than him already.

"He's all rags and skin and bones." Sara states calmly to me, and I grin at her and nod.

"He hasn't eaten anything in three days, he says." I am obliged report.

"My, then we shall have to change that. Come along, you." And she holds out a big, warm hand to the scrawny little boy at her side. He is hesitant to take it, but when he asks if she's gonna pretty him up and she says she wouldn't dream of it, he's happy and we walk towards home and the warm food and the knitting noises.