Re: The Runaway / The Confection
Dotty crinkled her toes in her flipflops, pressing the sweaty little undersides to cheap rubber. The curling of toes was thoughtfulness in movement. She thought all the way down to the toes, and her mommy had always said she was a deep thinker. An old soul, she'd said, and Dotty had feared wrinkles and gray hair. She wanted to be pretty and not old. She wanted to live, but that wasn't working out the way she'd intended it to. Here she was, candy floss dreams turned into technicolor nightmares. She hadn't even managed to run away right. This train wasn't running at all. It was still, and she felt like it lumbered on these tracks while her reality came at her from all sides until it loomed over the metal roof and embraced her with inevitability.
She stepped inside the cabin. She didn't think the other girl would mind. Dotty read invitation in the laidback demeanor of the girl, and she herself was bounce and bob and a twinkling smile. A few steps in, she sat on the floor with crossed legs and glitter sloughing off to litter the ground with the proof of her existence there. "I'm writing to him. My him. I had to leave without saying anything, and I didn't want him to think I had disappeared like people do sometimes. He's not in India. India sounds far away. Maybe this train goes to India." Dotty had no idea where the train was going. Dotty knew more than she let on, but she didn't know that. "Why do you think we stopped?" she asked in a whisper. She noticed the bruises, and she touched a hand to her own very makeup-ed cheek.