Beautiful Day In My Neighborhood

Work of fiction. All OC characters are mine please do not use without permission.

All characters involved in mature situations are 18 or older.

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I currently stare out of the window of my bedroom on the second floor. Ignoring the harsh rays of the setting sun and all of the colors. I am just overlooking the yard.

Our back-yard, oddly enough, is larger on the side instead of the back of our property.

A strip of grass that takes one pass West to East, turn at the gate, then head back the other way, and it is done. The mower is put back into the shed.

The largest part of our yard is mostly dominated by Mother's flower and vegetable garden.

With stepping stones on black gravel paths winding between planter boxes seemingly filled with just about everything you could possibly grow.

I can only point out the varieties of hot peppers and the three fruit trees outside of my window. I like hot peppers. I like lemons and limes and I know what a pear looks like but I hate those.

The apple trees, of which there are two, red and yellow respectively, are not in view from my window, but I like those too.

To be honest, gardening is not my thing.

Mom once had me pull weeds and I tore out a few hundred dollars worth of flowers and killed our onion and garlic crop last year.

I can still sit in the garden on the bench or in the gazebo, but I no longer may touch the plants, except to pick peppers or the lemons, limes and apples.

Which is fine by me. Even though I rarely go outside when home.

Today I badly want to!

Maybe it is because I have been grounded for the first time in my life, that I remember.

I get ahead of myself.

My name is Tuyet Cinders. I am eighteen one week and nine hours old.

"I'm so bored that I am calculating my age."

My first name is Vietnamese and it means Snow White. I shit you not!

My father's last name just happened to be Cinders, to top it off. I don't why he picked Cinders, I will explain more on that later.

I am named after my great grandmother, who was a war wife... at least that is what Mom told me.

Great Grandpa Nicolson brought her back with him when the U.S. pulled out of Nam.

Honestly, that is as much as I know about Vietnamese culture. There was a war there, my name means Snow White.

Mom hardly talks about her family after Great Grandma and Great Grandpa.

I am five foot three. Just an inch taller than Mom.

I stay thin no matter what I eat, or how much, as I have a high metabolism. I am not sick. My thyroid is normal, as far as the doctors I have seen know.

I burn through calories and if I skip a meal, I can faint. So really my thin status is no blessing.

Though I am thin, I dress bulky, and it makes me look pudgy.

I dress like this because I'm almost always cold. I have hardly any biological insulation, also known as body fat.

I am always snacking to keep my energy up.

Quick recap.

I am thin but my clothes make me look pudgy. I eat a lot.

Naturally I get teased because of this.

I could always wear skinny jeans and a belly top, pretend to be anorexic and become popular, but that isn't me.

I don't weigh myself as I don't see the point.

My last checkup at the doctor put me at around eighty-five pounds. My doctor prescribed a couple cheeseburgers and a large pizza, because apparently this is supposed to help me reach a hundred and four pounds. The lowest healthy weight for me.

Hey, I like pizza, not so much the greasy burgers. I can live on pizza!

He really was just telling me to put on my required, healthy, weight.

Dr. Shoals is a nice guy and pretty funny. Handsome, but as gay as the fans of The Village People. Which is a shame. Mom doesn't seem to understand that there is a second definition to the word GAY and I think she fancies him to the point that she turned down dinner with Mr. Seville, the middle-school music teacher.

That all aside, back to me. This is my new diary after all, and the first time I have written in one. So I am not use to it.

I had bought this pad because I figured that I could write while I am sitting here bored, but after all the time without an idea, it is a diary now.

I have shoulder length dark brown hair. Straight, of course.

My skin is the typical color of the average Vietnamese person, whatever shade that is. I look a lot like Mom and Great Grandma, they aren't fully Vietnamese. Neither am I, so, I guess that is an assumption about being average in skin tone. My Asian features show well enough, so I get the occasional racial remark from a few of the ignorant meanies out there.

I compare my skin tone to the two half-Mexican kids in our small town.

Did I mention that Great Grandpa was half Chinese? His mom was born in Hong Kong and his dad was a British soldier in The Great War. They moved to America afterward.

Great Grandpa was born just a bit late to serve in Korea, but was just the right age for Nam. He did have two brothers that died in Korea, but that is all a story for another time.

Anyway, I think I am closer to Guido Franco's shade of skin.

He sits next to me in math class, but the cheap lights in that room give off different colors of light. Some are a bit yellow, some are white, a couple seem to be some kind of orange.

I hang out with Marissa Cruiz here and there. Usually when she needs the notes from history. At least she is nice to me and acts like I exist when we pass in the halls or if she sits with me at lunch when rain forces us to eat indoors.

She plays one of the sports, I think softball. The jerseys all look the same. They were mass purchased by the school and divided up between the different teams.

Maybe if I got a bit more sun... maybe I can be a bit darker like her. Marissa can be described as caramel colored.

This is where I place my mom's skin tone when she gets a tan. That caramel color.

Then again, I am no color expert, and I don't think that I have looked at a colored pencil since I was seven.

The only thing I get from Dad is the freckles, a sprinkling of pepper across my nose and cheeks.

I have counted them. There are thirteen. No more, no less. Four on the bridge of my nose, five on my right cheek and four on my left cheek.

All of them are situated as if I was sprayed with a one inch thick line of black or dark brown paint and I had just managed to get most the paint off of my face except those thirteen flecks.

They are medium freckles, I guess you could say, not small but not overly big. They fit my face.

Anna had added them to the cute factor that I supposedly have. Some years back when we were talking about how we weren't popular and why boys didn't like us for some reason.

I have got buck teeth. Not goofy, more like... cute? I have heard a couple boys talking but I am not sure if they were honest or sarcastic. No braces, those came off when I was nine. Again, Anna added my buck teeth to that "cute factor" as well.

My eyes are light brown. I have great vision, so luckily I do not need glasses.

I have an A cup, maybe half an A cup, bust.

I would be a liar if I said that I wasn't jealous of the other girls.

Mom proudly carries a perky set of B's, as did Grandma, so I think my Dad's mother must have been a plank of wood with a vagina.

At least my butt fills out my pants, my friend Anna said I have a bubble butt before she moved. I get that from my mother as well, but she got that from Grandpa's side of the family.

That's it. That is me in a nutshell. Almost.

Did I mention that I'm not popular.

I hardly register on anyones radar. I pretty much like to be alone, especially after Anna moved.

She had been my best friend since I had moved here eleven years ago.

Keep in mind, I am eighteen now.

Dad was a Marine, I say was because he was K.I.A. in some small "policing action" or "peace keeping detail" about three years after we moved to this town. A town that I still cannot find on a national map. State wide, I can find it if I am lucky. Hell, even the county often forgets to include us on a regular basis.

We had a man from a town about three miles away stop at the grocery store once, asking for directions to his town. When we pointed out that he was just a fifteen minute drive South, he thought we were joking. He had never been down this way before!

We have a small Marine post out here. That is pretty much why the town still exists. Most of the businesses cater to them and their families, and it all seems really like a bland tourist trap.

Without actual attractions. The stores are imitations of bigger stores in bigger cities, and all are pretty much mom and pop style and focus on a set of items or theme. There are three stores, so if I made the town sound bigger, I didn't mean to.

Then there is the grocery market, more on that later.

The laundromat slash dry cleaners, where Mom had worked.

The gym and local pool, on opposite sides of the park playground.

The town hall which is also the library. The library part can be accessed from the park while the town hall entrance in on the street.

Jen's Cafe and Myrtle's Inn, Myrtle's doubles up as a dinner place because Jen closes down at five and Myrtle hardly gets guests so she needs the extra income. Jen and Myrtle are sisters, but they don't particularly get along.

The auto shop, slash mechanic garage, slash gas station is run by Owen. Owen also teaches auto shop for the high school. Kids head on down at the end of the day to learn how to work on cars. I took it last year. I passed, but I just don't care for the grease.

The lawyer's office, there are three but one is the top dog, more on him later.

The three school buildings and our one stoplight are all at the intersection of Main Street and Base Avenue.

No, Base Avenue was not named for the base, it was named after a local sheriff back in the day. Sheriff Lloyd Base.

He wasn't very good. He was shot four times, once in the foot by his own hand. The fourth shot had killed him, and that was an accident where his deputy dropped a revolver. Lloyd did save the mayor's young son and daughter in his seven months of duty, that is where he got his honor of having a street named after him. I had to do a report on local history, I thought that Sheriff Base's career was funny.

Only four streets have a stop sign, most have yield signs, so that was interesting when I was learning to drive.

The cemetery and church are between the base and the town, both share the name with the town.

At least half the kids here are military brats, and much of the local cast changes as families are shipped out and new ones ship in.

Mom and I pretty much got stuck. We had lived in base housing to start with.

Mom got started working at the dry cleaners. I know, cliche, an Asian woman working at the dry cleaners, but I am dead serious!

Dad paid for Mom to continue school, and eventually she had taken her savings from work and they bought the house we live in now.

Dad started to encourage her to open a market of her own, as Mom had always complained about how the owner of the local market made rude remarks about our heritage.

Red, he was some ninety-something year old man who had served in Korea and Vietnam, possibly even W W Two. I am not really sure, just exaggerating, but he seemed really old when I was a kid.

Mom still thanked Red for his service and sacrifice with a genuine smile and had always left the poor guy confused when we exited the store.

It was a shock when Red left the store to my mother when he had passed on.

It was just a few months after my father's funeral.

So a quick bit about dad.

Dad was abandoned at birth, so no family from his side.

Just the Marines, a few Seals, some sailors and a pilot he had helped rescue attended Dad's funeral.

Surprise surprise, Red dressed in his military dress uniform showed up. He wasn't a Marine, so he stuck out in his Army uniform.

Turned out that he always came to see off the local heroes when they were sent off to the great beyond.

I had gotten a new perspective on him that day. I also guess this is when he had finally realised that Mom and I were really American.

That is all I remember from that day. That and a bunch of crying.

As I had said, a few months later we get a letter. The old man had passed and left the market to Mom in his will.

I am not a lawyer. Law doesn't interest me. I don't know how that works. I don't care. Mom miraculously got her dream. That's all that matters.

Aside from Red passing, that actually made me feel bad for him. He didn't want a service and was quietly seen off at the crematorium. No obituary in the paper, we had only learned of his passing from the letter we had recieved.

The market is still named Red's Market.

My Mom has become known as Red, or Little Red because of the short stature that she and I share. She makes no attempt to correct anyone, and is now well known around town since taking it over.

Mom's name is Hazel, by the way. From one color to another.

Where is my Staples EASY button?

This is probably the first time I have thought about Red in a long while, and really the first time I have thought in depth about my Dad's passing, though I will not write more than I had to today.

Anyway...

For as long as I can remember, I have been bullied by this one girl at school. My main reason for wanting to be home schooled, but that isn't going to happen.

Anna, my BFF, used to defend me. Then Anna moved, and I was left on my own.

Just to be clear, I can fight, Dad used to teach me. I got the basics.

Before you bring that fact up, let me remind you, that I am a scrawny five foot three inch runner slash swimmer slash bookworm. I swim at the local pool and run on a treadmill in the basement.

My tormentor, Dina Howard-O'Riley, is a whopping one-hundred fifty pound, athletic star. She plays lacross, girls hockey in the winter, and I have seen her boxing... well, practicing on a bag at the small gym in town.

I walk past it on the way to the market to help my mom.

All of that said, back to where I am now.

I have no idea what I did to get in trouble.

I wasn't asking to be shoved into my locker.

This was one of those rare times I showed up on someone's radar.

It was Elain Bellany and Tyra Cole. The local wanna-be IT girls.

Fashionable, based off of what they see on cable TV and in magazines.

They gossip and chase boys. They usually get the boys as they are pretty, on the outside.

Like me, they will not transfer out when their parent gets stationed somewhere else, because their fathers aren't military.

Unlike me, their fathers are alive.

Mr. Bellany runs the local bank. Did I mention the bank earlier?

His ancestor, he never says which one but always brings them up, was a town founder. Supposedly. There are a few other ideas floating around town since the records hall burned up in the eighteen-nineties.

Mr. Cole runs the local furniture store and co-owns a mill with his brother somewhere else in the county. He travels out of town to golf and shmooze, so he spends more time away from home than at home. Mrs. Cole has a few affairs, so I see where Tyra gets her easy and free ways from.

To say the least the Bellany and Cole families are well off in the town, so their little girls get privileged treatment. Which is funny because my Mom owns the market and brings in good money too, not that it matters. I guess we haven't been here long enough to be "privileged".

So earlier today, I'm getting stuffed in my locker, and Tyra smashes her fingers when trying to close the door. She jumps back, waving her hand and crying out "ow ow ow".

This leaves Ellain supporting the door all by herself. Of course I am inside of my locker, pressing against the door. Ellain cannot hold it. I topple out as she falls backward. She hits the ground while I land on top of her. Ellain bumped her poor, little, empty head on the tiled floor and cried out.

Mr. Whithers chooses then to heed, not my earlier cries for help, but Ellain and Tyra's cries of pain.

In a whirl, and to my confusion, I got in trouble for attacking them.

A trip to the principal's office, a phone call, me waiting... meaningless tirade about bullying or something... I zoned out.

Cue Mother, note that I only call her Mother when I am in trouble or if it is important or serious, and she takes me by the ear and leads me from the school while scolding me for fighting.

This is how I got here.

A week long vacation from school.

I am now looking out of my window. Not at the garden that I had described. Not at the colors of the sunset. No, I am watching as my nemesis, Dina Howard-O'Riley, and her family move in right next door.

The cherry on a "perfect" day is knowing that I now have no real escape from the one person who makes my life a true living hell on a daily basis.

Here I am still trying to figure out what happened for the wanna-be Barbie knock-offs to try and stuff me in my locker. I am sure that Dina had a hand in it, though they really don't hang out in the same crowd.

For as mean as she is, and for the type of sports she plays, Dina is actually pretty. Maybe not as popular as those Bratz Dolls, Ellain and Tyra, but Dina has a couple more friends than me at least. Plus her team mates.

Dina has fiery red hair, actual red, like Chucky from Rugrats! She spikes it but the curls of her hair are stubborn and give it that flame look, which is why I said fiery.

Golden tan skin, not like dark golden tan, more like white gold tan... I'm over thinking it. A perfect, light tan. Not caramel but... okay I still can't think of anything for color sake.

She doesn't have freckles.

She doesn't have buck teeth and has never worn braces. One tooth is missing, her top right canine tooth, but the rest are straight and pearly white.

The only other flaw you could find on her was the small scar on her lip that accompanied her missing tooth. That was only noticeable up close, and she had been in my face quite a few times, so I noticed. She had natural rosy lips, never needing lipstick, and they were full and plump.

Her nose fit her face perfectly.

She looked like she could be an Irish princess, or Wendy from that new show Gravity Falls... minus the freckles.

The show is new to me. I had bought the book online, because of paranormal stuff, and only realized afterward that there is a show.

Thank you FireStick and Kodi! The episodes, I have watched them all!

Currently Dina is muscling through her back gate with a stack of folding pool lounge chairs. They are not cheap looking and appear to be solid wood and thick canvas. There have to be five, six chairs maybe.

She wears a light olive green tee with the sleeves cut off, showing off her biceps. Taught but not huge and bulky, just well toned.

She walks away from the fence, I now see that she has cut off jeans. Black, faded, and they were obviously well worn before they became the shorts they now are.

They are basically booty shorts, or Daisy-Dukes, and show off the same smooth skin that covers her well toned legs. The same legs that just last week had tripped me, leaving me to stare up at her from the floor of the gym.

"Tuyet!"

"Coming, Mother!" I call back and put down my binoculars. "I wish our yard was normal like hers." I mutter.

Seriously, even I think it is odd that I am envious of how normal Dina's yard is, with the thin strip down the side of the house and the big space in the back. An in ground pool. Okay I realize that last part is just envy.

"Tuyet!"

"Yeah, yeah, coming, just... putting..." I have to look down to check and see what I have on. "My sweats!"

Why am I still writing and why am I writing what I am doing and saying now?