Chapter Text
Kindergarten is scary.
All of the kids seem to be bigger than Trixie and the chairs are too tall for her short, stubby legs. While the other children scream and laugh as they run around the classroom with their stuffed animals, dolls, and cars, she chooses to sit in the corner hugging her stuffed pig, hoping the teacher will notice her trembling and will pick her up and give her cuddles until it’s time to go home. It’s unlikely she will say anything about it, though. The best she can do is sit, wait, and hold back her tears.
Trixie isn’t new to the class. She joined at the end of August like every other five-year-old in town, but according to Ms. West, she has “a little trouble making friends.” Well, Trixie thinks that all of the other kids are the ones who have a little trouble being friendly to her, and she’s crossed her arms and stomped her foot trying to defend her point on this topic more times than she can count (she’s not very good with numbers yet).
The other children are blurs of energy who speed by her like lightning and screech like thunder, while Trixie is a soft field, freshly-coated with snow before anyone has gotten the chance to leave a footprint there. Plus, she has Peaches the Pig. She doesn’t need anyone else.
As her lips quiver in a stiff pout, arms wrapped tight around Peaches, an airplane materializes itself out of thin air and lands at her feet, which are hanging from the chair, not even the tip touching the floor.
“That’s mine!” A blonde girl yells, running towards her. Trixie knows her, but they have never talked or sat together at lunch. It’s Katya Zamolodchikova - the scariest kid of them all. She always screams the loudest and the other girls say that Ms.West has her name on the naughty list, ready to give it to Santa. “Don’t touch it, it will explode!”
Trixie frowns. “I don’t wanna touch it,” she grunts. Katya reaches her, gasping for breath after having run five full steps to get to her. She stands in front of Trixie after picking up her stupid airplane and stares.
“You look like him,” she points to Peaches. Trixie’s grasp on him tightens even more. “Your nose is round and you two are pink. He’s your brother!”
“He’s not my brother!” Trixie argues. Nobody had ever told her she was pink before. She still doesn’t know if it is a good thing or not. Coming from Katya, it’s probably bad.
“What’s his name?” the girl asks.
“Peaches.”
“Nice to meet you Peaches,” Katya pats the pig on the head. “Peaches is a good boy!” Trixie nods. Maybe she isn’t all that scary.
Before she can respond, Ms. West claps. “Okay, everyone, let’s put away our toys?” A wave of unintelligible screams follows as the children rustle around and throw their toys into differently colored boxes at the back of the classroom. Katya runs off to put her airplane there too, leaving Trixie alone with Peaches. The CD-player starts playing the tune to the sit-down song and the kids stroll to the rhythm to the desks. Trixie chooses to sit at the big red one, and Katya happens to sit right next to her.
When the song stops, the teacher starts talking as she walks around the desks placing colorful papers, sequins, markers, glue, and all kinds of crafty materials in carefully-prepared baskets that will be destroyed in less than 30 seconds. “As you guys know, this is your last day of school before your Christmas break! Are you going to miss school?” A chorus of yes es echoes through the room. “And will you miss me?” Another wave of confirmations. “And will you miss your classmates?” This time the students answer even louder. Ms. West stops at the front of the class, before all of the desks. “What if we made something to give our classmates so they can remember us while we’re away from school? Wouldn’t it be cool?” The children cheer. With a kind smile on her face, the woman instructs the children to craft Christmas cards for the classmate who is sitting next to them on the desk.
Trixie works in silence. She does her best to glue down sequins in the format of a snowflake on green paper and she spells Christmas with a “K”. The background music and the chatter don’t distract her, but Katya’s deep breathing next to her does.
“You are loud,” Trixie complains.
“You are pink,” Katya snaps back, but there is a smile on her face. “Are you finished?” Trixie shakes her head as she pokes her tongue out, focusing on gluing a silver sequin on the correct spot. “So you're slow too.”
“I’m going to tell Ms. West you’re being a meanie! Don’t call me slow!” Trixie smacks her hand on the table.
“No, don’t tell Ms. West! I’ll get in trouble!” Katya begs.
“I won’t if you stop being annoying!”
“You started it!”
“Girls! You are not being very nice to each other!” Ms. West calls them out. “Maybe you can think of some nice words you want to say to each other and write them on your cards. How do we feel about that?”
Trixie looks at Katya, and then looks at Ms. West. “Fine.” Katya nods too.
“I think this is a wonderful opportunity for you to make a new friend, Trixie, what do you think?”
She doesn’t answer, simply turning back to her card and squirting more glue on it. The teacher seems satisfied enough to leave them alone. Trixie knows exactly what to write.
A few minutes later Katya pokes her on the shoulder. “Are you finished now?”
“Yes,” Trixie says, picking the card up and holding it against her chest. “Are you?”
“I’m fast, I finished twenty-seven years ago!”
“Twenty-seven is not a real number,” Trixie rolls her eyes.
“Yes it is!”
“No it isn’t!”
Ms. West clears her throat next to them and they fall silent immediately. With a pout, Trixie sticks her arm in Katya’s direction and hands her the card. In return, Katya slides the card she made for Trixie on the desk, the red of the paper almost camouflaged within the color of the table. When Katya opens her card, she finds, in multicolored sequins, the word “anoyn” written inside. Trixie doesn’t even try to hold down her smirk, but Katya’s own beam with a missing tooth distracts her from it and instead she frowns. Trixie’s parents have told her that her teeth will only start going away next year, so she wonders what Katya has done to make hers leave so soon.
“Where is your tooth?” Trixie questions, moving her head closer to inspect her classmate’s smile.
Katya’s finger finds the gap. “It ran away! Kyle said that... That... That I was wearing stupid shoes but my shoes are not stupid, look at them!” She lifts her feet up for Trixie to inspect. The shoes are so ripped at the sides that Katya’s right pinky toe peeks out and the color is so faded that what once must have been a beautiful shade of navy blue is now an attempt at grey.
“They are a little stupid, but Kyle is stupider,” Trixie concludes. “He likes to grab Peaches by the tail and it hurts him!”
“Yes, Kyle is a poop head!” Trixie laughs at the insult. Katya shouldn’t be saying things like this, it could get her in trouble. “And I didn’t like that he said my shoes are stupid so I pushed him but then he pushed me too and I tried to push him again but he was more fast so I fell down and my tooth stayed on the floor after I was standing up.”
“Your tooth doesn’t like Kyle.” Katya shakes her head. Trixie giggles at the thought of a boy being so nasty not even a tooth would like him. “Do you miss your tooth?”
Katya nods. “A little,” she confesses. “But I have this card now,” she lifts it up and shakes it in the air. Trixie’s cheeks hurt from how wide she smiles. “I like the colors,” Katya says. “But that’s not how you spell ‘annoying’. It’s A-N-O-I-N. With an I. But it’s okay. We know all of the words in English so it’s difficult to write all of them right sometimes.”
Trixie nods. “Sorry I messed up the writing. I can’t fix it now because the glue is dry.”
“No, I like it! You used all of the colors and it also has a snowflake. It’s my favorite card ever! Now open yours, open yours!”
Even though her cheeks have been dipped in redness from Katya’s comment about the card she gave her, she opens the one she was gifted with firm hands. Well, as firm as hands this small can get. Inside, she finds the word “pink” scribbled in glittery ink along with a pig made out of pink beads and snow falling around it.
“It’s Peaches!” Trixie gleams. “You made Peaches!”
Katya nods. “Do you like it?”
“I really really really really really really…” Trixie stops to breathe. “Really love it! It’s my favorite card ever too!”
Suddenly, Katya blinks a little more slowly. “Trixie, do you want to be my friend?”
She responds with an enthusiastic nod. Katya smiles back at her and offers her hand for Trixie to shake. Instead, the little girl gets up from her seat with a small leap and flings her arms around her new friend’s shoulders, holding her as tight as she previously held Peaches, who now watches from beside her chair.
When Trixie gets home that day, she tells her mom and dad everything about the new friend that she and Peaches made. Her mom finds a special place for Katya’s card under the Christmas tree along with all of the boxes of gifts that are laid there, waiting for December 25th.