Madison picked up a handful of sand and let it fall through her fingers again. It was a pretty day outside, green and alive, but it had rained the night before and the sand was damp and clumpy. She didn’t mind, though; it made the best sandcastles that way.
She filled up her yellow bucket and scraped off the excess sand with her matching spade. She then dumped the contents onto a smooth area of the sandpit in front of her. Once she was satisfied that her first tower had no imperfections, she proceeded to carefully dig out a small door with her finger.
Suddenly the sunlight was blocked and she looked up. A boy stood above her. The shadow from the sun hid his face, but she could tell he was around her age.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hello,” Madison replied and grinned brightly.
The boy stepped over the low wall that surrounded the sandpit and sat down opposite her, but far enough away that she had space to play and he couldn’t knock anything over. “I’m Tyler. What’s your name?”
“Madison Keeler,” she said, staring sideways at the second tower she’d now made. After she hollowed out a door in this one as well, she looked up and smiled. “You can call me Maddie, though. Everyone does.”
“I like your sweater,” Tyler said as he watched Maddie fill up her yellow bucket again.
She looked down at the coral-coloured sweater she received the month before for her sixth birthday. “My mom got it for me. She said it was Timmy Hilfiger or something like that.”
“Sounds fancy,” Tyler said. “Hey, I haven’t seen you here before. Are you with your mom?”
“No,” Maddie answered and looked at all the adults sitting on benches near the entrance to the park. Her babysitter was there, listening to music and typing on her cell phone. “Usually, when she’s feeling okay, my mom takes me to the private park uptown. But this one is closer to our apartment and my babysitter didn’t feel like getting a cab there. Is your mom here?”
“Yeah,” Tyler said and pointed her out. She waved and blew a kiss at him, then returned to the conversation she was having with one of the other mothers.
“She’s really pretty,” Maddie observed, and went back her sandcastle. She had now finished all four towers and had to connect them. This was the hardest part because she needed to make a large, solid square without any mould to help her. She got up and started scraping sand into the centre of the towers, being careful not to knock any of them over.
“So, where is your mom?” Tyler asked while drawing circles in the sand beyond Maddie’s castle.
“She’s lying down at home,” Maddie told him as she started to smooth out the pile of sand so that it touched the towers. “She fell down the stairs last night. Only a few though. But she hit her head pretty hard, I think.”
Tyler’s eyes widened. “Wow, is she okay?”
“Yeah,” Maddie said while she made sure the edges of her square were perfectly perpendicular to the ground. “My mom and dad argue sometimes and she’s really clumsy afterwards. The day after I usually just ask her what she did this time because there’s always something. Tripping over stuff, burning herself on the stove, walking into the wall.”
“Oh, so then I guess she’s used to it?” Tyler asked.
“I guess so.” Maddie picked up her spade and began to dig a mote. She bent over and walked backwards around her castle, dragging the spade through the sand with her. “I asked her this morning why she gets so clumsy but she told me not to worry. She said she had a feeling that it’s all going to end today, and that she loves me more than anything.”
“Well, that’s good. Here.” Tyler picked up a stick from the grass outside the sandpit and stuck a leaf on through the end of it. He held it out to Maddie. “A flag.”
She smiled and took it, and then delicately twisted it into the top of one of the towers. “Thanks. It looks really good.”
Before Tyler could reply, a man screamed Maddie’s name from just beyond the entrance. He was so loud and looked so angry that all the kids and parents in the park stopped what they were doing to stare at him.
An anxious look flashed across Maddie’s face and she got up. “That’s my dad,” she said. “I have to go now.”
“Oh, okay,” Tyler said and stood up too. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach, seeing the look on Maddie’s dad’s face, but he shrugged it off.
Maddie picked up her spade and bucket, and brushed herself off. “I call this creation ‘Fort Tyler’,” she said and then she jumped over the sandpit wall and began walking hurriedly towards her dad.
“Hey,” Tyler yelled after her. “Tell your mom I say hi.”
