Chapter Text
Summer Before Third Grade
Mid July
The leaves of the trees now surrounding Lara Rajagopalan provide her a very welcome break from the hot, beaming sun as she enters the newly-found wooded area. She’d initially intended to go to the playground several meters from where she walks now, but all the swings were taken and that’d been all she was interested in playing on.
Moving all the way from Texas to California has been quite the adjustment, but it’s a new adventure that Lara’s kind of excited for at the same time. New house, new environment, new people.
Back in Dallas, she wasn’t the most outdoorsy girl on the planet; much preferring playing around with the random music software she’d once put a virus on the family computer for or making dance routines with her older sister to playing with the other kids.
Due to her parents being more well-off and therefore raising her in a more well-off neighborhood, the other children were all a bit stuck up and, frankly, boring. She’d had some classmates that were better than others but had no desire to continue any friendships once she exited the building. It didn’t help being a year younger than everyone else since she’d been allowed to enroll in school early, acing the kindergarten testing at four with flying colors.
Thankfully, her parents had chosen to move to a much more modest neighborhood. Still nice, but Lara doesn’t feel like she needs to walk with her nose high up in the air, her shirt tucked in, collar popped, and her chest puffed around here. They’ve only been here for about a week and a half now but it just feels warmer and more lively.
Lara drags a long stick she’d spotted right outside of the woods’ entrance through the dirt. She takes mental note of the cool birds and bugs she’s seeing so she can tell her dad all about it when she gets home later.
He had practically pushed her out of the front door, unplugging a small phone from a charger and slipping it into the pocket of the girl’s jean shorts, when she asked if she could go and explore on her own. Her parents trusted her to be safe and to call them if anything happened, and she knew to be home as the sun started to set before the streetlights flickered on.
The stick snags on something hard and she accidentally drops it. She reaches down to pick it up and notices it was a stepping stone she’d hit. Her eyes follow the path, which stretches between two trees and winds to the trunk of a third one, each of the stones a couple feet apart.
Curiously, she drops the stick again and hops from one rock to the other, ending up face to face with a cardboard sign. It’s stuck to the trunk of the tree, the edges frayed and nonuniform like the small rectangle had been carelessly torn from a larger piece of cardboard.
‘MANON’S TREEHOUSE!! BEWARE!! STAY OUT!!!!!’
Lara squints her eyes at another line under the main writing, the handwriting considerably more messy and smaller. ‘Unless your Megan!’
Now Lara’s even more intrigued, and she can’t let someone that can’t even use the right ‘you’re’ boss her around. She surveys the tree for the best way to get up, jumping and grabbing a rope ladder that had been wrapped around a wooden beam supporting the treehouse once she notices it, and begins to climb up. She has to adjust to the swaying, taking longer than she probably should but choosing to be safe instead of sorry, as her mom would say.
Finally, she reaches the top of the ladder and steps onto the platform. She looks around with her new height, surprised she can still see the entrance to the woods when it feels like she’d walked much further into them. She turns and faces the treehouse, it looks like it was once painted white but a lot of it has chipped off to show the weathered brown wood underneath and what’s left is a bit dingy looking. She pushes the door open, ignoring another sign warning her once again that this is only intended for Manon and Megan to use.
The first thing Lara’s eyes land on is the cool, purple beanbag chair. She’s wanted one for as long as she can remember but her parents had gotten one for Rhea’s game room instead and insisted they could both use it, just for her sister to outlaw her from even entering the room.
She continues to take in the rest of the treehouse; a fluffy, rainbow polka dot rug in the center, a small white table and two matching chairs situated on top of it. In one of the chairs is a haphazard stack of board games, and a few books are scattered near the beanbag chair. On the table lies an opened box of crayons with a few spilling out and white sheets of paper that have seemingly random doodles on them.
She gathers the books and drops into the beanbag. She figures if she inspects them, she can get a feel for whoever these Megan and Manon people are through their literary choices. She places the pile of books into her lap, moving them onto the floor as she goes through them.
Captain Underpants, yuck. The Boxcar Children, better but still not the best. Magic Treehouse, ironic. Dork Diaries, now they’re talking.
“Tales from a Not-So-Smart Miss Know-it-All,” Lara reads aloud to herself with a giggle. She hasn’t read this one yet, but she’d loved all of the other books from the series that she has. She gets more comfortable and flips open the paperback.
She’s just about to start chapter four when she hears feet on the platform outside and a girl’s voice sounds. “Whoever’s in here, I hope you know how to fight!”
Startled by the sudden disturbance to the quiet, Lara drops the book onto her chest. She quickly picks it back up and dog ears the page she’s on, setting it to the side of her on top of the others. The door swings open and she jumps up (with some difficulty due to how much she’d settled into the beanbag).
“Who the hell are you?” the girl asks, brown eyes wide.
Her dark hair frames her otherwise stoic face, a royal blue hat nestled backwards over unruly curls. Lara recognizes the logos scattered on it immediately, her father an avid Dodgers fan while her mother is loyal to the Rangers. She notices a hot pink bandage on the girl’s left knee. She looks to be about her age, maybe a little older.
“I- um-” Lara stutters, suddenly a bit breathless. “You shouldn’t curse like that.”
Baseball Cap Girl raises an eyebrow. She walks toward Lara slowly, eyes narrowing a bit. “Are you lost? Why are you in my treehouse? Can you not read? The signs say this belongs to me and Megan and not you.” She pokes her in the chest with the last word, accenting it.
Oh, so this is Manon.
“Okay, first of all, I can read just fine!” Lara defends, crossing her arms with a frown. “In fact, I was just reading the Dork Diaries book you have over there.”
“You touched my stuff too?!” Manon closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Whatever. Just leave and I’ll forget this ever happened.”
Stubbornly, Lara refuses to let this rude girl tell her what to do even if this is her treehouse. “Why should I?”
“Because this is mine and Megan’s? What kind of question is that?”
Lara sits back down with a smirk, picking the book up again and flipping to the marked page to make a point. Annoying this girl is too easy. “I don’t think I will, actually.”
Manon stares at her incredulously for a moment before giving up with a huff. She turns and walks over to the table, flipping over one of the papers to the blank side and choosing a crayon.
“Wait, you’re actually letting me stay?” Lara asks, placing the book down again. She’d seemed like she was going to push her out of the window or something. A bit extreme, but she has an extreme aura to her.
“What can I do if you’re saying you won’t leave?” Manon scribbles something onto the sheet in front of her as Lara grins triumphantly. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Lara Rajagopalan, but it’s probably easier to just say Raj.” She slips into one of the empty chairs at the table, looking down at what Manon is drawing. It doesn’t look very good but she won’t say that to her and push her luck. “I’m six and three quarters, and I just moved here from Texas a week ago.”
“Say howdy,” Manon requests, an amused glint in her eye.
Lara deadpans, all laughter draining from her face as she doesn’t say a word, and Manon giggles at the look. “Sorry, I had to.”
“We don’t say that!”
“Yeah, whatever.” She giggles again, sorting through the crayons on the table for her next color. “I’m Manon and I’m eight. My birthday was last month.”
“So the ‘n’ is silent,” Lara notes with a hum, handing her the blue crayon that was sitting in front of her, guessing Manon’s hoping to color in the pants on her drawn people next. “My birthday is in November.”
“On Thanksgiving?!”
“No, I wish.” Lara spots a coloring book in the midst of the board games and grabs it. She scrunches her face up at it being Tinkerbell themed before shrugging and flipping to a page with no color on it anyway. “It’s at the beginning of November. The 3rd.”
“Did I say you can color?” Manon suddenly snaps.
Lara jumps in her seat and frowns again. She thought they were becoming friends. “Maybe I will leave. You’re mean.”
“I’m just joking, Lara Raj.” Manon laughs, hitting the back of her hand against Lara’s arm lightly. “You’re kinda cool, you know. For a six year old.”
They fall back into conversation after that, Lara quickly realizing Manon’s not as rude as she initially appeared to be, maybe just a little rough around the edges. Manon gives her a run down of the neighborhood, explaining who’s cool and who’s not.
She learns that the infamous Megan’s been her best friend since preschool but she also has other really good friends named Daniela and Yoonchae that they also hang out with a lot. They’d met them in kindergarten; during a field day with the other classes that’d ended with the four of them standing face to face with the chain link fence outside on the playground while everyone else continued to balance eggs on spoons and try not to trip over their own feet inside of burlap sacks, trying to keep their whispers and giggles low enough to not have their punishment extended by the monitor standing a few feet away from them. They’d been inseparable since.
(If you ask Manon, she’ll say Dani landed them there. If you ask the rest of them, it’s a unanimous vote for Manon.)
Manon informs her that the best time to go to the park if she wants a swing is around noon or before, especially during the summer because after noon is when all of the stupid moms and their stupid toddlers start to show up, as she’d so gracefully put it.
There’s two corner stores in the area but Lara should only ever go to the one on Fifth because the owner is super cool and sometimes gives them stuff for free. The other one doesn’t let them in without an adult. She’s sure there’s a reason behind that but when she asks Manon to elaborate, she brushes it off and says she’d learn about it with time.
Manon pulls her cap off around the time they both move from the table onto the floor, leaning up against the beanbag for cushioning. It immediately makes her look less scary, not that Lara was ever really scared of her in the first place. She shakes her head a few times, bringing back the shape to her curls that’d been flattened by the hat. She somehow looks even prettier, Lara thinks.
“Oh yeah, we get to do sports this year,” Manon mutters, “now that we’re third graders.”
Lara shifts to look at her. “Yeah? You going to do one?”
Manon shakes her head again. “Probably not, I can’t focus on destroying Adela if I’m spending time on sports.”
They both laugh at that. Lara’s heard all about her rivalry with Adela Jergova and the three-year history behind it.
“You really had no friends in Dallas?” Manon asks softly after a few beats of silence.
“None,” Lara confirms. It really didn’t bother her before but now, after spending a couple hours with Manon, she can’t help but feel like she was missing out on something all that time.
But those kids in Highland Park weren’t anything like Manon.
“Well, now you have me!” Manon beams, and it makes Lara smile too. “We should go before it starts getting dark, we can get ice cream from the store and I can show you where everyone’s houses are.”
Manon stands up then and holds out a hand which Lara takes, being pulled up with a surprising lack of effort. “You said you live on Elm, right?”
“235 Elm Avenue, yes.” That’d been one of the very first things her parents drilled into her head when they got here, along with their new phone numbers.
“I live two blocks over on Pine.” Manon smiles and walks over to the door. “Megan actually lives on your street, and Yoonchae and Dani live next door to each other on the next one. It’s called Hill.”
Lara nods, trying to memorize all of what she’s telling her. It’s so cool that all of her best friends live so close to her. Judging by her stories, it’d led to a lot of fun memories over the years.
She just hopes she can make memories with them, too.
Manon lets her go down the ladder first, knowing it’ll take Lara longer than it will her since she’s had a lot of practice. She laughs out loud as Lara shakes going down, and Lara has to bite her cheek to stop herself from laughing as well. Why is it so much harder to climb down than it was for her to climb up?
She can barely blink before Manon joins her on the ground, standing on her tiptoes and reaching up to wrap the ladder around the wooden beam Lara’d pulled it off of earlier.
“Come on,” Manon says, putting her hat back on as they walk towards the way they came in. Lara tries to match her pacing but Manon’s footsteps are so sure while hers are still a bit uncertain. She’s working to catch up.
They walk through the park, heading for the sidewalk and street. The yells from the other kids running across the mulch and cartwheeling on the grass seem so loud that Lara almost feels like they should’ve heard them over in the woods.
“Our school’s back there,” Manon uses her thumb to point somewhere behind them while they walk down the sidewalk. “but I’d rather not go there before we have to.”
That makes Lara chuckle softly. “Me either, we only have a few weeks left.”
“I hope we’re in the same class so I can keep an eye on you,” Manon teases.
Lara rolls her eyes playfully. “Yeah, right. You’re going to be sick of me by next week.”
Manon throws an arm over her shoulders. “Never, bestie!”
They walk like that for a little bit while Manon is still pointing out the different places around them. She drops her arm once they reach the crosswalk. Lara looks up at the street signs, taking mental note. Central and Fifth. Got it.
The bright red hand turns into a white walk symbol and Manon bolts across the street, Lara following right behind her. They pass the shop on the corner and she stops at the next one. It’s nice looking; made of red bricks and well lit.
“This is the store I was telling you about. Vinny’s the best.” Manon grins, pushing the door open. A bell dings and the cashier behind the counter looks over.
The man looks kind enough. His Italian accent is strong as he speaks. “Is that my favorite kid? I thought you weren’t coming by today.”
Manon puts her folded arms up onto the counter. She beckons Lara over with her head.
“I had to bring my new friend. Her name is Lara and she’s all cool and from Texas and she just moved here.” She nudges Lara forward with her shoulder in mock encouragement. “Go on, give the nice man your best yeehaw.”
“We don’t say that!” Lara fixes the girl with a glare until she laughs, looking away and back at Vinny before she laughs too. “Hi, sir.”
He chuckles at the exchange. “Nice to meet you, Lara. I guess I’ll be seeing you a lot if you’re gonna be hanging with this little rascal.”
“Hey!” Manon playfully glares at the man before pulling Lara over to the freezer by the door. “Pick something. I’ll buy it, I just got my allowance.”
Lara sifts through the selection the store offers, eventually settling on an orange creamsicle bar while Manon grabs a strawberry shortcake one. They walk back up to the counter and Manon fishes into her pocket and pulls out a wrinkled five dollar bill, sliding it over without even bothering to straighten it out.
Vinny hands it back to her. “It’s on me. Welcome to the neighborhood, Lara.”
Both of them smile at that, grabbing their ice cream and heading out of the door with goodbyes and a thank you and a you’re the best, Vinny. The warm summer air is a contrast to the air conditioned store, and it suddenly hits Lara just how hot it is. She guesses being out in it for hours had caused her to get used to it and she hadn’t realized.
They continue walking down Fifth, turning onto the next residential street at Manon’s lead. They walk about halfway down the block, stopping in front of a grey two-story house. A well taken care of yard, big bay windows, a fancy car parked in the driveway. “This is mine. It’s me, my mom and dad, and my baby sister Lena. My dad calls it Casa Bannerman sometimes.”
“It’s huge!”
“It’s boring. And cold.”
Lara takes a bite of her bar, getting a good look at the house. A large front window towards the left on the second floor has stickers all over it with pale yellow curtains serving as a background, and she knows immediately that it’s Manon’s room. “At least you have a baby sister. I wish I did.”
Manon grabs her arm gently and they continue their walk. “No, you don’t. Lena’s cute and all, but all she does is scream and yell. All day, all night. That's why I’m glad I have the treehouse to go to.”
Lara nods, she gets it, she thinks. She doesn’t think she’d be able to handle all of that crying all the time either.
They cross to the other side of the street once they reach the corner, now walking down the side street. They bypass Lara and Megan’s block, going to see Daniela and Yoonchae’s houses before they double back.
“What?! They have balconies?! No fair,” Lara exclaims in astonishment. “They can sit up there and talk to each other.”
“That’s exactly what they do,” Manon licks at the ice cream that’s starting to melt and drip down her hand. “They sit out there after bedtime and just hang out. They both have a DS and they play on those and stuff together.”
Lara’s jaw drops again. “That’s awesome!”
Before she knows it, they’re on Elm and a feeling of dread settles in her stomach knowing their day together is coming to an end.
She finds out she and Megan basically live on opposite ends, but not super far apart. She’s apparently coming back from her family’s summer vacation in two weeks and Lara’s heard so much good stuff about her, she’s pretty excited to meet her.
They reach her house and she opens her front door and peeks her head around it, hearing her parents in the kitchen. “I’m home!” she shouts. She waits till she hears acknowledgement of the words, Rhea telling her to shut up from somewhere in the house the same moment their parents respond, and closes it again. She sits down on the step next to Manon who’s finally finishing her ice cream.
“Thank you for today,” Lara says.
“I’m just building my team of minions and you’re the newest member,” Manon jokes in response. “Kidding. I had fun today, too. Thanks for being all cool and Texan.”
She shakes her head with a smile at that. “Is that the way you’re going to keep describing me?”
“You know it!” Manon taps her nose with a grin. She hesitates for a moment then. “I should go, the street lights are coming on soon.”
Lara fights against the urge to pout. Manon lives two blocks over, they’ll be seeing each other a lot, she’ll be okay. “Yeah... see you tomorrow?”
Manon nods, standing up. “We have swings to get at the park,” she reminds her, leaning down and giving her a hug, which Lara happily returns.
“Noon or before.” Lara recalls as Manon starts her trek down the street.
“Noon or before,” Manon echoes over her shoulder.
Lara watches her until she turns the corner and she can’t see her anymore. She enters her home, sliding her shoes off and locking the door as she heads upstairs to wash up before dinner. Whatever her parents are in the kitchen making smells absolutely amazing.
She bounces back down the staircase, skipping the last step and landing onto the glossy, hardwood floor. She sits down just as her mum is placing the fourth plate onto the table. Perfect timing.
“One good thing and one bad thing about your day, go,” Lara’s dad requests a little into the meal. It’s a tradition they’ve been doing since she began to talk. Probably even longer with just Rhea.
Lara doesn’t even have to think. “One good thing? I made a new friend.”