I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

“Oh, you filthy little animals!” Nurse Ella yells, stomping over to the
edge of the mud bath. She plants her hands on her hips. “At this
rate, I’ll have to hose you off like dogs! Out! Now!”
Sam and I obey, trudging out of the water, side-eyeing each other in
the process, snickering under our breaths.
Nurse Ella drags us back home by our ears, all the while spouting
lecture after lecture. She drops us right outside the door, telling us to
wait for her unless we want to eat nothing but spinach for the rest of
the week. She comes back with buckets of water and pours them
over our heads. Sam and I squeal and shiver. Nurse Ella takes to
scrubbing our heads with what looks like a small broom.
Once our skin is raw, and we smell of soap, Nurse Ella grunts. “Silly
children.”
“I’m not a child anymore, Nurse Ella,” Sam says, his ankles rocking
back and forth. “I’ll be taller than you soon.”
“Yes, well, until you’ve learned not to play in the mud, you’ll be a
child in my eyes,” Nurse Ella says. She drops towels on our heads.
Tells us to come back inside once we’re dry. Before she goes, she
takes Sam’s temperature, releasing a heavy exhale when it comes
back normal.
She’s a good person, I think.
Good and mean, but good all the same.
“Sam,” I say. “Do you think we could have more adventures like
this?”
He looks out into the horizon, past the park and the bakery and the
newspaper stands. Past the construction miles in the sky and all the
noise with it.