Chapter Text
When Shirayuki is five years old, they get new neighbors. It’s a family like hers: just two people. Except also exactly the opposite, because it’s a boy and his mom instead of the other way around.
“We’ll go over to say hello,” her father tells her, wiping a smudge of dirt from her cheek. “Do you want to bring anything with you?”
Shirayuki wants to bring lots of things. She wants to bring cookies, so her father gets out the salt and the sugar and helps her stir in the vanilla. They raise a cloud of flour together and get a few eggshells into the batter, but all in all, they come out okay, and nothing burned. Before heading over, Shirayuki darts into the yard and uses a pair of plastic scissors to clip the stems of twelve whole tulips, each a different happy color.
Shirayuki steps over every crack on the sidewalk on the way next door. She wants this boy to like her, and every bit of good luck she can gather seems important.
When Shirayuki’s father knocks, the woman she’d seen earlier, walking from the car to the driveway, opens the door. She doesn’t open it all the way, just enough to see who’s standing on her doorstep. Shirayuki tries to peer around her legs, but there’s nothing to see. “What do you want?”
“We’re here to welcome you into the neighborhood,” says Shirayuki’s father. “My daughter and I baked cookies for you.” He holds up the plate.
“We have flowers, too!” Shirayuki adds, lifting them so the lady can see.
“I’m Mukaze,” her father supplies, “and this is Shirayuki.”
The woman regards them for a moment. She looks a little like Shirayuki’s dad on his bad days, the days he stays in his room and stares out the window. Her shirt is rumpled and stained, like she hasn’t had time to do the laundry, and her hair needs to be washed. There’s a tightness to her lips that makes Shirayuki feel small. Maybe she doesn’t like flowers.
“Thank you,” she finally says. “Come in, then.” She opens the door just enough and turns away, toward the stairs. “Obi! Get down here.”
The inside of their house doesn’t have much, Shirayuki notices. She can see the living room, where there’s a single, old couch and a low table, and that’s it. There’s nothing on the walls. The only lights are the ones set into the ceiling, and half of them are off. She wonders if maybe all of their things are still on the way, in boxes on trucks. Maybe Obi is missing his toys.
The boy appears just as the woman is taking the plate of cookies and the tulips. Shirayuki hopes maybe her expression will soften if she tastes them, because she hasn’t smiled at all.
“I’m Anika,” she says. She nods to her son, who has slunk down the stairs and is hovering at the bottom, like he’s not sure if he wants to run back up. “That’s Obi. He’s eight, about to be in third grade.” The way she talks about him is not like the way Shirayuki’s father talks about her, which feels like laughter and warm hugs. Instead, it’s like there’s snow inside her voice.
Shirayuki had seen Obi earlier, too, but just a glance at him. He had been running like the wind, out from the car and around the back of the house so quickly all she had time to see was a flash of black hair. Now she has a better look. He’s wearing a t-shirt with a Pokémon on it—she doesn’t know which one, but it isn’t Pikachu—and he has pretty gold colored eyes that keep slipping between her and his mother. Both his socks are on, but one has a hole in the toe.
Shirayuki feels her father’s hand at her back. “Why don’t you take Obi outside to play,” he suggests, voice turned toward her.
“Okay!” she chirps, and walks right up to Obi. He’s much taller than her. A very good eight-year-old height. “Hi,” she says, sticking her hand out to shake. She always feels adult when she shakes hands, and meeting someone is a good time to act like an adult, especially because she’s younger so she has to prove she’s okay to play with. “I’m Shirayuki, I live next door! The house with the roses in the front, and the white gate, and the birdbath.”
Obi stares down at her hand, and oh—maybe he doesn’t want to be friends with a girl littler than him, after all—but she keeps smiling anyway. Behind them, she hears her father walk with Obi’s mom into the kitchen, talking, Anika’s voice still flat and her father’s large and friendly.
Obi blinks slowly, and then the corner of a smile creeps onto his face. Shirayuki warms instantly. She had been worried no one in this family knew how to look happy.
His hand slips into hers, and they fold together. “Hello,” he says. It sounds shy, but he’s staring right at her.
“Do you like flowers?” Shirayuki asks.
He nods. “I like to be outside.”
“Me too,” Shirayuki says, very seriously. She tugs his hand, still folded over hers. “Let’s go!”
She can’t wait to show him everything, she thinks, and pulls him out into the sunlight.