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Dear Diary,
Griddle was so mean to me today! We were both at the park and she was playing with some of the other kids, and I was reading my book (Mother and Father say that it’s important to practice my reading, and that with how smart I am I should be reading as good as the girls three years older than me). But when all the other kids were done playing and they left, did Griddle play on her own? No! She started to bother me.
She went right up to me and said “play with me Harrow,” and I told her “no I’m reading,” and she said “play with me now and you can read later,” and then she smiled.
I HATE Griddle’s smile! It’s so annoying! She’s lost her first baby tooth (lucky) and she always shows it off with her big stupid grin. Plus I have to look at her stupid face whenever she smiles. Her eyes and her hair are so pretty (it’s so unfair), but she always dresses like a boy and cuts her hair short.
So I told her “I’m not going to run around and roll in the grass and get dirty, like all of your stupid friends like to do!” and then I stuck my tongue out at her. She just stuck her tongue back out and said “I’ll let you choose the game if you play with me. I’ll even let you pick a really girly game with dolls if you want.”
I didn’t have any dolls to play with because Mother and Father say toys are immature, but I didn’t want Griddle to know that. So I decided pick a game she wouldn’t know. I said “let’s play princess and knight,” and I knew Griddle wouldn’t know that game because she doesn’t read books, but she just said “oh like in cartoons.”
Like in cartoons! What a Griddle thing to say. I tried to roll my eyes like what Mother does when someone says something stupid, but don’t know how yet so I just looked around in a circle.
Before I could say anything, Griddle said “so how do you play princess and knight?” And I told her “You play the knight and I play the princess whose been captured by the dragon. You have a horse and a sword and you have to rescue me from the dragon.”
But before I could say anything else, Griddle said “Horses are lame and girly. Swords are cool but I don’t want a horse.” I said “too bad, knights ride horses,” and she said “I don’t wanna ride a horse,” so I just put my hands on my hips and said “well knights have to ride something Griddle! That’s how you play princess and knight.”
“I wanna ride on a velociraptor,” Griddle said, and then she added “velociraptors are cool.” I wasn’t sure what that was, so I asked “what’s a velociraptor,” and she said “It’s a dinosaur! They’re super cool. They have big claws on their toes, and they run fast and eat meat, and some scientists think that they had feathers!”
This made me upset. “Mother and Father told me that dinosaurs aren’t real.” Griddle looked confused by that. She said “Nuh uh, they’re real,” and I said “Mother and Father told me that God didn’t make dinosaurs and that scientists just pretend that they’re real.” Griddle said “they’re real. They found whole dinosaur skeletons,” and I said “no they didn’t,” and she said “yes they did let me show you.”
And Griddle grabbed my hand and dragged me over to where her parents were sitting. Griddle is mean but her parents are nice. Miss Abigail gave me a cookie and a juice box once, and Mister Magnus is really funny. They said hi to me when Griddle dragged me over, and I said hello to them, and tried to have good manners like what Mother and Father say.
Griddle reached into Miss Abigail’s bag, and pulled out a big white book with the word dinosaurs on the cover. She opened it up and showed me a lot of the pictures of dinosaurs. Most of them looked like dragons or really big lizards, but a few of them did have feathers, just like Griddle said. The dinosaurs all had really long names, and she knew the names of all of them, which was pretty cool. Then she showed me the page with all of the dinosaur skeletons on it, and they were all looked so strange and cool and mysterious and scary, but in a good way.
I was looking at that page for so long, until I realized that Griddle was looking at me and not at the book, and she was smiling that awful smile again. So I stuck my tongue out at her again, but she kept smiling, which is awful. “Okay fine, dinosaurs are cool,” I finally said. Griddle pumped her arm and said “yes!” and I tried to roll my eyes again.
Griddle took a while after that to find a good stick to use as a sword, and I climbed up onto the jungle-gym by the slides while I waited for her. When she was ready, she climbed up onto her velociraptor and drew her sword, and started to ride across the lands towards my tower. The dragon that had stolen me was big and red and it had 10 heads and it breathed blue fire, and was very dangerous. Griddle climbed up the tower, swinging her sword back and forth and saying “haya!” and “die monster!” and more, while I said “save me Sir Griddle!” and held onto the bars of the tower window. The dragon breathed a lot of fire, but Griddle was able to cut all of its heads off, and made it all the way up to me and wrapped her arms around me, which means that she saved the princess.
I was gonna say that we should try playing again this time with a 20 headed dragon, but Griddle was blushing and looking really weird after saving me. I was just about to ask her what was wrong, when she closed her eyes tight and leaned forward and pressed her lips against mine! She kissed me! I wasn’t sure what to do so I leaned backwards to get away, but we were near the top of a slide and my foot slipped and I started to slide down. Griddle was still holding on to me and we both tumbled down the slide together, her on her back and me on my stomach.
We both landed in the sand hard, and by then my eyes were stinging. I said “why did you do that Griddle!” and she said “that’s what the knights and princesses all do in the end!” but by then I was already crying, and she was soon crying too. Mother and Miss Abigail both ran up to us and I think they said some grownup things to eachother, but I wasn’t listening to them.
After that, Mother took me away and we went back to the car to head home. Mother was quiet in the car ride, but she seemed really angry. Eventually she said “You’re not playing with that Gideon kid again, after she pushed you down the slide.” I was really scared all of a sudden that I wouldn’t be able to play with Griddle anymore. I said “Griddle didn’t push me Mother, I tripped backwards and she fell with me.” Mother thought for a bit before saying “swear to God?” and I nodded my head and said “Swear to God.”
Griddle was very mean for kissing me by surprise like that, but she was playing properly. As soon as we were back home, I went to my room and found my princess and knight books and read right to the end, and the knight did kiss the princess in those books. But how was I supposed to know that Griddle would know that when she didn’t read the books and just watched the cartoons!
Next time we play, I’m going to kiss HER by surprise! And I’m going to make HER fall backwards in surprise (but not next to a slide this time). And then I’m going to tell her that we’re even, and if she ever wants to play games with kissing in them, she has to tell me first. Let’s see her smile her stupid smile after that!
I’ll let you know what happens next, Diary. Until then.
Love, Harrowhark