Cherry Beach

by Laura McPhee-Browne

My thick eyebrows, the cross-over of my front teeth, the woolly hair that sat unbrushed against my shoulders: these were my messages to the world that I didn’t care, that I wasn’t the kind of person who worried about what others thought of them. I can see now that this was just a different type of vanity.

I’d never lived somewhere where people cared for each other so much, and concentrated earnestly on the best things about being young and alive.

I felt my love for Hetty in my chest, where it always was, and at Faith’s comment it roared like a cub.