Harper didn’t get upset often, so I knew she’d had a rough day.
“Of course we can. Let’s go check this slide out and cheer Lily on,” I said, slipping her backpack on my shoulder and taking her hand.
Lily and Harper were filling us in on all the drama from the day. The way Denise had made fun of several kids, and Bianca had gonehome with a stomachache after Denise had told everyone that Bianca had gone up the ladder on the slide and then come back down the ladder because she’d been too nervous to go down.
Denise Quigley was a bully, and I had a problem with bullies.
I would assume the teacher was aware at this point, but I was going to insist that Charlie make an appointment to discuss this situation to see how they were going to handle things.
“Harper told Denise to leave Bianca alone, so Denise got real mean to Harps,” Lily said. “And Denise had to pull a red card, which means she sat out recess for being a meanie.”
“What did she say to you?” I asked.
I didn’t miss the way Harper shook her head ever so slightly at her best friend, as if she didn’t want her to repeat it.
“It wasn’t a big deal. She just called me a baby,” Harper said.
When we turned the corner, I laughed at the sight before me. It was just an older playground slide like I used to go down when I was a kid. It wasn’t like the new fancy slides with the high walls on the sides and the spongy padding on the bottom. It was certainly not anything I hadn’t seen before. The park had some older swings with chain-link sides and black rubber bottoms, like the kind I used to do flips off of. There was a merry-go-round and a wooden seesaw that looked like it had seen better days. I watched a few kids go down the slide, and it was a bit steep and the sides were lower than on the slides you saw at newly remodeled parks, but if you came down carefully, it wouldn’t be a big deal at all.
Several kids stared up at it like it was some sort of mythical beast they’d been told about. A kid was up at the top shouting at his mom to take a picture before he came down. It was definitely steep, and the kid came flying down, then tucked into a ball and rolled on the ground before coming to a stop.
“Oh, look who came to watch me,” Denise said as she walked up behind us. “I’ve done this so many times. It’s so easy for me.”
She marched past us and climbed the stairs, and I glanced over to see her brother attempting to get on the seesaw, which looked like it would be impossible to ride without getting several splinters.
I waved at his mom and then pointed to the seesaw to make sure she knew he was on it, but she just turned her back to me and continued talking on her phone.
“Who is she talking to all the time?” I huffed.
“I have no idea. But she’s got one on the demon and one on the death-saw,” Jeanne said.
I laughed. This park had quite the reputation from the locals who’d grown up here.
“Harper! Lily! Look at me! I’m not a big baby!” Denise shouted from the top before sitting down and pushing off. She came down faster than the last kid, and my instincts had me running toward the bottom of the slide to break her fall.
She crashed into me, and I fell back and wrapped my arms around her to keep her from hitting the ground hard.
She got up and laughed. “You didn’t need to do that. Maybe Harper needs help, but I don’t.”
“You’re welcome,” I hissed, scrambling to my feet and brushing off my jeans.
“Come on, Mom,” Lily said, and she took Jeanne’s hand and walked toward the back of the slide.
“Lily’s going down and you’re not,” the little hellion taunted as she moved to stand in front of us and laughed. “Poor Harper Huxley.”
“Hey, walk away, Quigley,” I said.
“You can’t even take her down because you’re not even a real mama. You’re just her friend. Only a real mama could go down the slide with her.” She smirked.
This kid was like seven going on seventeen.
She could write the mean girl manual all on her own.
And this slide had been ridiculously built up, as it wasn’t even the tallest I’d seen—not that I was a slide connoisseur by any stretch, but this was not that big of a deal.
“How about you go find your own mom?” I grumped, wrapping an arm around Harper’s shoulder.
I leaned down and whispered in her ear, “She’s just jealous.”
