Breadcrumb #238
JENNA KNORR
Mom says the world is ending, but I am flying my kite. We’ve been watching the sun get big for a few days now. It’s been really bright for the past month or so but ever since Monday it looks like it’s a lot bigger in the sky and mom says that that’s because it is. She says that it’s going to keep getting bigger and bigger until it touches Earth and then we’ll all be a part of the sun.
I like that mom is letting me fly my kite outside in the yard behind our house. We didn’t have to go to school today. I think the man on TV said that we shouldn’t be outside when the sun is growing, but I don’t like doing anything inside as much as I like flying my kite. My teachers even let me fly my kite at school, at recess, when the other kids are playing games that I don’t like. My mom says that I just don’t have the patience for them, but that I have the patience for kites, and that’s why I’m allowed to bring one from home. I don’t know if mom means that I don’t have the patience for the other kids or if I don’t have the patience for their games, but I know that I have the patience for my kites.
“She says that it’s going to keep getting bigger and bigger until it touches Earth and then we’ll all be a part of the sun.”
I’m flying my yellow one today, it’s my favourite. Plus it’s like the colour of the sun in the sky, so I like the way it looks when I look up. Two yellow shapes. A diamond and a circle. The diamond gets smaller as I let out the string. The circle gets bigger.
I know I’m different from the other kids at my school, the ones my age who don’t play with kites anymore. The other girls don’t even want to talk about kites; they like the way they look and they like to pretend that they don’t like boys, but I know they do. They tease the boys because the boys don’t wear makeup, they say that the boys don’t come from Earth and that they come from Mars instead. I’m pretty sure that that’s not true, but I do know that we’re all on Earth right now, and that Earth is the world, and that the world is ending.
I hear my mom calling me from the house so I swing my head to look. She is screaming my name and she is crying. My dad is standing behind her, holding her tight, and he is crying, too, but he isn’t saying anything. I feel a rush of heat on the back of my head so I turn back to look at my kite. It is touching the sun. The string burns and falls slowly to the ground and as I watch, I become part of the sun, too.