This is a little something that was randomly inspired while flipping through a Cosmopolitan one night. I don't know if I want to let it stand on its own, or make it into a longer piece (the last line of the story sounds like the closing of a chapter, which made me consider fleshing the concept out a bit), but either way I like it. I'd like to get some outside criticism though... it was mostly an exercise to help me experiment with description, so if you do review I'd appreciate you focusing mostly on that. Otherwise, enjoy and let me know what you think in general. :]

Bobby stared at the Cosmopolitan between Louise's painted fingernails with burning curiosity. She wanted to ask what it was, but she knew the older girl would scoff at her for her ignorance. Make a comment about her age, for sure. That's what older kids did, and Louise definitely qualified as an older kid.

She was clad in a royal purple dress garnished with blue and green flower prints, and a green sash that brought the otherwise voluminous material together in a neat cinch at her waist. Where the belt-like accessory ended, the skirt billowed out, doubling her width at her hips. Her lips and some of the surrounding skin were stained with a purple-pink gloss, and her fingernails were haphazardly coated with a thick layer of neon green. Her eyelids were dusty with baby blue, a few stray grains of the colored powder tainting her dark lashes.

Bobby wasn't sure if her cheeks were naturally or artificially colored, but a bright red lingered on them like the after burn of a crisp slap. Either way, the girl reminded her of the bigger girls at the high school across the street from their old home, only barefoot and half their size.

Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail, an acrylic yellow flower fastened at the base of it, and flowed well past her shoulders in a slightly frizzy, yet straight, cascade of chocolate.

Instantly, Bobby knew she wanted to be like her.

"Louise looks cute," Bobby's mother commented from the other room. The sound of a coffee cup meeting its saucer counterpart filled a brief pause before the other woman sighed.

"She insisted on doing her makeup herself. I tried to tell her that the entire getup was too colorful, but she wouldn't let me dress her. Then she made it her business to get into my makeup drawer when I wasn't looking and went to town. I swear she does it to spite me."

"She's nine," Bobby's mother laughed. "She's experimenting. I'm sure it's just a phase."

Louise snorted. She continued to flip through the glossy pages, sprawled out on her mother's ugly maroon-and-navy rug, ignoring the young girl just ten paces from her. She seemed to concentrate on her quick, practiced flicking as if it were a complex enterprise. She would turn one over briskly, gaze seriously at the pictures, and then move on. When she had sufficiently taken in the last one, she snapped shut the cover and sighed.

"It's a magazine," she informed dully, inspecting the model in front of her.

Bobby was unsure of whether she should introduce herself or respond to the girls statement. Whichever she chose, she was unresolved on how to go about it. However, her mother had always taught her to be polite and introduce herself.

"I know who you are," came the snide response.

Bobby tugged insecurely at her yellow Power Ranger T-shirt. She was suddenly very aware of how boyish she looked next to the older girl.

"What does it do?" she ventured hesitantly.

"It's supposed to help you with your sex life." Matter-of-fact, nonchalant, and completely beyond comprehension. But she was ready to feign familiarity this time.

"Is it… helping yours?"

"I don't think I have one yet." She sat up then, moving gracefully from her pointed elbows and exposed thighs to her knees. She stared down at the magazine discontentedly, arms crossed. "The writing is too boring, so all I see is pictures. I don't like those either though. I don't know why people read this stuff." She flipped open the cover once more.

Bobby nodded and glanced down at the pages. There were blocks of writing comprised mostly of words she couldn't pronounce and both colorful and black-and-white pictures. Above two columns of black text on the left page was a picture of a girl—probably about the same age as her older cousin Melissa—with honey-blonde hair much like her own. She was lying on her stomach, facing the camera, in a blue bra that left most of her exposed. A laugh was eminent on her pretty face, and underneath her was a topless man about the same age, his short brown hair and muscular torso his only visible features. Bobby crinkled her nose and returned her attention to Louise.

"I know," the girl said, similarly distasteful. "But grown-ups like it."

It didn't take more than that for Bobby to understand that that meant they were supposed to like it, too.

"I'm Louise, by the way, but I know you already knew that."

She didn't respond. The girl was entirely different from what Bobby was used to back home. She was always brought up politely, friendly. To introduce herself, to listen to people when they spoke, and most importantly, not to—

"Didn't your mom ever teach you it's rude to stare?"

Stare.

"Bobby, we're going home now," came her mother's voice from behind her. She turned around and looked up at the older woman; she was smiling, as she usually was, with the car keys in hand. "Did you two have fun?"

A plop came from Louise's direction as she closed the magazine a second time. "Yeah," she replied, "your daughter is really cute."

Bobby's mother giggled. "She's not much younger than you are, Louise."

"She's younger."

Bobby glanced from her mother to the mocking fourth grader for some kind of defense from the former. But adults never understood, or never noticed these things in the first place.

"Well, I'm glad you guys got to see each other again. Your mother and I have been close for a long time, you know, and you two have met a few times but you were very young."

When the girls didn't respond, the woman retrieved her daughters limp hand from her side. "Ready to go?"

"Yes," Bobby mumbled, avoiding eye contact with the predator. Her mother, preoccupied with her goodbyes and promises to catch up with Louise's again "sometime soon", left her daughter's uncharacteristic timidity and silent pleas unnoticed.

"See ya," Louise chirped, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder and opening the magazine for a third time. Bobby gave her a hybrid look of confusion and disdain before being tugged out the door.

In her seven years, she'd never met anyone quite like Louise Greene.