The pretty little girl, all wrapped in pink ribbons and curls, sits listless with her head propped on her left arm resting on the table and her right hand tracing the patterns on the mantle with the handle of a spoon.

She ponders over the brick wall in the garden that wasn’t there yet last night.

It blocks the view to her friend’s house, the friend she took great pains to win.

It took her almost a year to finally get the boy next door to smile at her.

How dare that stupid wall keep her from claiming her hard-earned prize?

She decides she can’t take this sitting down, so she sits up and smoothes her skirt.

She stands up and, gripping the spoon tightly with her right hand, trudges to the garden.

She stands face to face with the offensive wall which was way over her head.

She prods the dirt holding the bricks together and finds that it is still somewhat soft.

She sits daintily on the grass, soiling her pretty dress in the process, and holds her spoon to the wall.

She starts chipping away the soft dirt holding the bricks together.

She starts doing this while the wall casts a comforting shadow over her.

By the time the sun reaches her head, she removes one brick.

She peers through the hole and sees the house on the other side.

Her friend is nowhere in sight.

She could only get her arms through and not much else.

So she chips another brick lose, and another, and another, with the spoon until it was dark, and there is a hole big enough for her to crawl through.

She does so, all dirtied and famished, and comes up to the door of the looming house on the other side and knocks.

The door opens up a crack and she sees her friend peeping through.

There is no note of a smirk, much less a smile, on his face.

What are you doing here, he asks. Go away.

She is taken aback. But she is unfazed.

I came to rescue you, she says. They built that wall to keep you away.

I built that wall, he exclaims. I want to keep you away.

She is flabbergast and flustered. He clearly doesn’t know how much trouble she had to go through to get to him.

Why, she mouthed, with tears brimming her big, drooping, tired eyes.

Because you broke my resolve to never smile at you, he murmurs.

She drops her head and stares at her muddied hands still clasping the spoon.

She hands the spoon to him and says, here, hold this in your mouth to keep you from smiling. Just please tear down the wall. It’s ugly.

She turns around and starts heading back to the hole in the wall.

She can’t see much anymore because she is blinded by the downpour from her eyes.

She doesn’t hear the footfalls behind her.

She is startled by a hand over her shoulder.

Wait, the boy says. She turns around to find the boy grinning.

But the boy suddenly turned serious at the sight of tears muddying the soiled cheeks of the girl.

I don’t like smiling, he says softly. But I can’t help but smile whenever you’re around. I guess I’m really such a jerk. I’m sorry.
He hands back the spoon.

Keep it, says the girl. I don’t need it anymore.

She doesn’t know what to make of what he said. She is confused. She was mad earlier but now she feels relief, although something tells her she shouldn’t.

She crawls back through the hole in the wall.

She finishes the day with a tired and confused heart.

The next morning, there is no wall in the garden, just a bright and sunny smile of a boy on her front porch.