Semi-Daily Scribbles

Nellie didn't want to stay with the picnickers. The potato salad sat heavy in her gut, and she couldn't keep still on the grass-stained quilt to watch Sheena flash her engagement ring to her sorority sisters. Nellie was the first person to whom her cousin had shown the pear-shaped pink diamond. It was ugly. Sheena's fiancé was fake. Nellie thought of him as a plastic man, and figured someone else's plastic was what Bruce used to pay for the hideous ring. Feeling bloated and anxious, Nellie struggled to get to her feet. She felt Sheena's disappointment before turning around and seeing the pout on her cousin's face.

"Just need to stretch my legs, sweetie. Won't be long." Sheena spoke right over Nellie's words, telling the woman seated next to her about how she thought peas made a nice addition to potato salad. Nellie suppressed a belch and walked off toward the sound of a trickling stream hidden in a stand of poplars. She was nauseas as she approached the trees. Nellie wanted to hang from the highest silvery limb, or dip her head in a sparkling ribbon of water. It was a day made for just such activities, and Nellie sighed as she entered the thicket's cool, diffused light. She soon forgot about her stomach ache as she tried to keep count of the tadpoles darting in front of her nose.