New Flash Fiction: Palaces

Okay, I promised.

Palaces

When Amelia was eight, she lay awake in bed every night thinking about being a princess. In her thoughts she was rich and had a horse and servants and a name for her country and a castle. In the castle was a swimming pool and an entire video arcade and a playroom full of toys. But of course as she got older she grew out of that.

When she was twelve going on thirteen, her parents moved from the city to the suburbs so that she could go to a better junior high. They bought a townhouse in the only condo complex in town. It was red brick and had a dishwasher and a garbage disposal, which they had never had in their apartment in the city, two blocks from the park where Amelia learned to ride her bike.

She didn’t realize until she got to school the first day that her bike was different than everyone else's. Theirs had more gears than hers. On the second day she rode with her jacket over the handlebars so no one could tell.

On Halloween that year Amelia headed off to her new friend Debbie's Halloween party. She hadn't been over to anyone's house yet, so this was the first time. She was dressed as Princess Leia, with bagels on the side of her head. She thought it was pretty funny, and so did her parents. Outside, the jack-o-lanterns that the other people who lived in the townhouses had put out flickered in the darkening twilight against the trees and the grass and all the other landscaping around the complex. It was beautiful, and there was a dishwasher in the townhouse so they didn’t have to wash dishes, and Amelia felt like a princess.

Debbie had a pool. Amelia knew that ahead of time, but she didn't know about the playroom upstairs. Or the rec room by the pool where the party was. "Mom, the gardeners are still there, aren't they finished yet?" yelled Debbie soon after Amelia and a lot of other people got there, because it was unseasonably warm and they were going to have a barbecue. The maid had set up a table of popcorn and miniature Hershey bars. And there, against one wall, was a video arcade. Just like Amelia used to dream about.

She swallowed and turned away.

Amelia left early, riding her bike furiously. She wanted to cry but she didn't. She sat at her front door and put her face in her hands and saw the townhouses for what they were, the places where everybody's maid and all the newly divorced dads lived.

She pulled herself together and went inside. And her face was, and remained forever, just a little more ambitious, and a little less pleasant.