Cookie
Copyright© 2013 by Emerson Laken-Palmer
Chapter 6: The Delivery
The next day was Saturday and her father had gone to clear up some things at his office while her brother had his first football practice.
Cookie used this time alone to go through her closet and see what pitiful clothes she could set aside for her first day of school on Monday. Pershing had a dress code and the girls could wear only skirts or dresses to school with socks or stockings and proper shoes. The brown skirt and yellow sweater were the most presentable things she had and she'd already worn them on registration day. Everything else was in such awful condition and too short and way too snug around her hips now.
Cookie sat on her bed and almost cried but then she choked back her anguish and wiped away her tears, with the heels of her hands, and she scolded herself for being so vain. She would just have to make due with what she had and that was all there was to it.
Walking back to her closet, she heard the odd sound of a large truck that seemed to be idling just outside the house and then came the sound of knocking from down at the front door.
When Cookie ran down and answered it, she found two delivery men on the porch standing next to two very large cardboard boxes that were almost as tall as Cookie herself.
"These are addressed to a Cookie Mullins," the older man said, holding out a clip-board toward her.
"That's me," Cookie stated, in wonderment, as the man offered a pen with his other hand.
"Then sign here, by your printed name," he instructed.
Cookie signed the paper and the man asked, "Where do you want these, Miss?"
"Just in the living room, I guess," Cookie said, stepping back and watching the men lift the two boxes and bring them inside.
Once alone with them, Cookie looked the mysterious cardboard containers over, walking around them and seeing that their shipping labels had no return addresses and that they opened from the front like steamer trunks do.
Anxious and yet curious about what could be in them, Cookie ran to the kitchen and returned with a sharp knife to cut the retaining twine from both boxes. She then struggled to pull one of them open. Looking inside, she was surprised to discover that the mystery box contained clothes. Girls' clothes. School clothes. New clothes. Beautiful clothes. Lots of clothes. Some hanging on hangers from a wooden pole, across the center of the box, and some folded or still in packages at the bottom. The second trunk contained more of the same.
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