Bumble

Part 1

Penny Hale was perfectly sane. At least she'd thought so. Penny hadn't recently questioned her soundness of mind until she woke to find the imaginary friend she'd played with as a child perched on the end of her bed.

The air was hot. Choking. The fan overhead turned lazily, doing little to stir the heavy air that filled her room. She kicked off the sheets tangled around her ankles and slid from the bed that took up most of the space in the attic bedroom. The bed that now held a boy who was hardly a boy anymore. Funny how the attic had seemed so much bigger when they were both too short to ride the ferris wheel at the Brambleberry Carnival.

Penny took two strides to the window and hefted it open. A cool breeze and the music of spring peepers eased into the room to sing in time to the rhythmic clicking of the old fan. No one'd told them it was no longer spring.

There was thunder on the air when a very corporeal hand touched Penny on the elbow.

"Look at me," said Leander.

Penny went out the window instead. Outside, the metal roof was still warm from the beating July sun, but the breeze was cool enough. Leander followed. Penny finally obliged his request as she recalled the summer nights they'd spent gazing at the stars from this roof.

Leander, who was very much as grown as she, looked at home sitting at her side. The sleeves of his white linen shirt were rolled past his elbows, his beige linen pants cuffed at the ankle. His hair was the same golden blonde Penny remembered from her childhood. His eyes, the same dark brown. She shook her head, eyes pressed shut. This was a terribly inconvenient time for a mental breakdown; she was supposed to be going off to college in August.

"Penny," he said, his voice as gentle as the breeze against her cheek. "This is real."

She'd been ten when her parents first took her to a therapist. Ten was too old to still be playing with imaginary friends.

Penny took him by the hand. Dream or hallucination or figment of her imagination, he sure felt real. She turned it over to touch his palm, to trace the lines. His arms were dusted with freckles and his fingertips were stained purple from picking her mother's blackberries off the vine. Eight years had passed but so much of him was the same as she remembered.

"If you are real," she said, "then why did you go away." A sad lump swelled in her throat.

The lazy half-smile fell from his pale lips. "You needed me to be imaginary."

It had been an overly hot summer's day like this one, when a ten-year-old Penny had returned from her therapy session. She'd slammed the minivan door shut, sprinted through the rows of her parents brambleberry patch, clambered over the fence into her grandmother's garden and found Leander where she always found him.

He'd been sitting with his back to one of her grandmother's hives, talking to the bees. In teams, they had carried long-stemmed wildflowers to him and dropped them in his lap. The Prince of Bees. Her prince. As he prattled on, his fingers twisted the delicate blooms into a wreath of flowers. At the sight of her, he'd jumped to his feet and dashed over to meet her. He'd moved to place the flower crown on her head of white-blonde curls when she'd swatted it away.

"Why do they say you're imaginary? Why don't you show yourself to them? You have magic," she'd yelled as tears streaked her tanned cheeks, "Use it."

Leander's eyes had fallen to the flowers scattered between their feet. "I'm not allowed. Only people who believe in the fairies can see me. But I thought you didn't care if it was just us?"

"I don't, but people think I'm crazy when it looks like I'm talking to myself. And I don't know, maybe I am."

"I'm real!" He'd exclaimed.

"That's just what my therapist said you'd say."

"Penny..."

"What am I supposed to do?" she'd asked. "They think something's really wrong with me."

Leander had sighed. "Then it's probably best I go." He'd moved fast. One moment he'd kissed her cheek and the next he had disappeared in a flurry of wind and wildflower petals.

"I came back," the eighteen-year-old Leander said. He reached to brush a strand of hair from her face and his scent clobbered Penny in a wave of memories. Warm pecan pie. The Brambleberry patch after spring rain. Honey right off the comb. Best friends. Fairy Prince. Prince of Bees.

"So you have," she breathed as she tried to come to terms with the idea that her childhood not-so-imaginary friend had grown into a not-so-terrible looking teenage guy. "But why?"

"I'll tell you," he said, as a youthful smile crept across his lips. "After you tell me why you dyed your hair pastel pink."

"I lost a bet. Your turn."

THANK YOU FOR READING!

AND A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO RebeccaSky FOR INVITING ME TO BE A PART OF YOUR ANTHOLOGY AND FOR GIVING ME AN EXCUSE TO WRITE THIS STORY!