Spaghetti in a Chocolate Sauce

They walked past arm in arm, taking cover under a pink polka dotted umbrella. They wore galoshes and yellow raincoats, stomping playfully through puddles whenever they'd see one that was big enough. The smaller one carried a pink Barbie lunchbox containing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a few Oreos and a Yoo-hoo. The other one carried only her backpack and a smile.

The wind whipped and thrashed, kicking rain around, spitting at their faces. Haley winced and scrunched her nose. Her hair swirled around like a mess of blonde snakes. A car horn blared out through the beaded curtains of hanging rain. A wet newspaper flapped in the gutter. The hurried footsteps of careful feet clattered across the pavement, equine and aqueous.

"You hear that, Haley? It sounds like horsies," Dakota said, looking up at her sister with wide, sky-blue eyes.

"Yeah, I hear it. But to me, they sound like old wooden blocks, like the kind Mrs. Marrety has in class," Haley said.

"It doesn't sound like blocks," Dakota said giggling, "it sounds like wooden horsies!"

"You're right, like the Trojan Horse. Did you learn about the Trojan Horse yet?"

The light turned green. They crossed the street and kept walking.

"Uh-huh," said the little one, "with Hercules!"

"Hercules wasn't in the horse," Haley said snidely, with a pedantic emphasis on wasn't.

"Was too," Dakota said excitedly, "he was in the horse, and Abraham Lincoln was in the horse, and Batman was in the horse, and Grandpa was is the horse."

The road ahead of them was mostly dirt which had turned to mud, with only a few thin pieces of sidewalk spread across it, like concrete slices of Kraft cheese. Dakota wrenched her hand free from her sister and went off running. She jumped from square to square like a frog and managed not to fall into the mud.

"Dakota, get back here," Haley yelled charging after her, "we're not going that way; it's too messy!"

The little one just kept on running, giggling madly with mischief in her eyes and dimples on her cheeks, drunk on adventure. "It's a shortcut," she yelled out, her feet and arms dancing spastically, "try'n catch me scardeycat; betcha can't!"

"Eeeewwww! Haley, look," Dakota said, as she stopped and pointed, "worms."

The worms looked strange, like swollen spaghetti, in a chocolate sauce.