The Best Days Ever

     It was Rosy, and the way she immediately leapt up; the carpet of dry leaves crunching under her feet.

     "What do you mean you don't like Usukis anymore?" the Pink Aisha asked, mouth agape. Her ears were doing that funny thing they always did when she'd had a bit of a shock, and we're standing up stick-straight. "Don't you like playing with us?"

     The Red Cybunny absently brushed through her doll's blonde hair. “Of course I do. And I didn't say I didn't like them. I said I'd grow out of playing with them. Mama said so.”

     “Well that's just dumb,” Rosy declared. “I’m always going to love my Usukis.” And to prove it, she sat back heavily on the ground and hugged her own doll tight.

     Lacey looked troubled, but didn't back down. “I mean, do you ever see any of our mamas and papas playing with them?” She held up her doll. “This one used to belong to her! Why would she give it to me except if she didn't want it anymore?”

     “But they're old,” Rosy said. “It'll be ages and ages before we're that old.”

     “Well sure, but one day we will be,” Lacey countered. “Maybe that's what mama means when she says ‘soon’.”

     “Seo, what do you think?” Rosy asked, suddenly grabbing Seo’s arm.

     Both of Seo’s friends turned to stare at her, and the Pastel Aisha, suddenly uncomfortable, dropped her eyes down to the Usuki in her lap. She fiddled with the doll’s pink dress.

     What did she think?

     She thinks Rosy is right, of course; because Rosy is rarely wrong. And Seo certainly loved her dolls. She'd gotten this one just last week, in fact — after a months-long campaign asking her mother to buy it for her. Seo put the doll on her bedside table every night, so it would be the first thing she saw every morning. She couldn't imagine giving it away.

     She couldn't imagine that changing.

     But then she remembered the light-up squeaky shoes she'd dug out of her closet last week. Those ones that her mother told her she'd loved when she was younger — so much that it was a task getting her to take them off for a bath. Seo didn't remember. Then she had turned them over in her hands, and they'd squeaked; and all she’d thought was that the sound was a little annoying.

     Seo looked up just in time to watch a yellow leaf drop from the tree and join the carpet around them on the ground.

     “I'm not sure,” she said. “I like them right now, though. Isn't that enough?”

     It was that afternoon that Seo was thinking of, years later, at her desk in the bustling Neopian Times office. More specifically, how Rosy had kept her promise. She still loved her Usukis. In fact—now that she was a doll designer at the Usuki Company—she now had several she had designed herself.

     (Seo wasn’t sure what Lacey was up to these days, but she didn’t think it could be anything even half as cool as a job that got you free Usukicon tickets. The only thing that was comparable was being a Neopian Times reporter.)

     A file landed on Seo’s desk. The yellow sticky note stuck on top of it (“URGENT!”) fluttered to the floor, detached from the force of the impact.

     Seo blinked at it. “Miranda.”

     The Blue Elephante who had started to move away after delivering the file stopped mid-step. “Yes?”

     “I know this isn’t extra work. Tell me it isn’t extra work.”

     Miranda laughed, but not unkindly. “Sorry, Seo. Boss just came out of the meeting. Said she wanted that done by tonight.”

     Seo wrung her hands. “But I can’t stay late tonight. I have that thing with my friend. I told you.”

     “Oh, you did mention that. Usukicon?”

     “Yes! Please can I do it tomorrow? You’d be the best assistant editor ever.” Seo pleaded.

     Miranda swung her trunk to and fro as she considered it. “No,” she said finally, after a few seconds of contemplation. “It has to be tonight. But tell you what, I’ll help you.”

     Seo cheered. “Best assistant editor ever!”

     Miranda playfully rolled her eyes as she began to divide the stack. Seo deflated a little when she saw how tall her portion still was. It was so much easier when they were kids, to just decide to go on a big adventure; Usuki dolls in tow…

     That afternoon a thousand afternoons ago, a few minutes after Lacey’s mother had asked her to come back inside so they could leave for a dentist appointment, Rosy had told Seo that she couldn’t bear the thought of their last game with their Usukis being so boring.

     “Lacey always makes us do the same story!” Rosy complained, crunching some of the leaves with the edge of her shoe.

     Seo was confused. “But it’s like you said. The last one won’t be for ages and ages.”

     “We won’t know when it’s the last one,” Rosy huffed. “Well, the last one for you. I won’t ever stop.” Then she shook her head. “That’s not the point! The point is that from now on, we always have to have more fun than the last time we played. Just in case.”

     That sounded doable to Seo.

     It was Usuki dolls they were talking about, after all.

     “Okay. Let’s go to the shops!”

     Seo didn’t think she’d ever read so fast in her life. Not in school, when she had a whole page of the test left and the teacher said she had fifteen minutes left; and not when her new Virtupets vacuum had started making the scariest noises, and she had to read the manual to find out how to turn it off before it finished eating her curtains entirely.

     But here she was, demolishing this stack of reports (with an efficiency she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to replicate again in her life).

     And then she reached for the next set of papers, and felt fatigue overcome her like a wave when she saw how densely the text was packed together.

     Would it be that awful if she asked Rosy to meet her tomorrow instead?

     Seo shook her head, banishing the thought. No! She couldn’t start skipping the things she enjoyed. She owed that to herself, and to Rosy; and to the two little Aishas they were, promising to always have enough room in their lives for these little joys.

     That afternoon, Rosy and Seo sent their Usuki dolls on their grandest adventure yet.

     On their way to the Neopia Central shops, the dolls heard terrifying prophecies (old Mrs. Appleby called to them as they passed her yard, saying that it would be raining that evening, so to please get back home before that), vanquished mighty foes (a stray Spardel barked at them, asking them to play with him), and as a reward for the vanquishing, were granted faerie powers by Queen Fyora (present in spirit) herself!

     For this last bit, they figured splashing a bit of Rainbow Pool water on the dolls would do the trick. It didn’t, so they settled on dripping some of the colourful melt that came off of the popsicles they bought with the neopoints Rosy’s mother had given them for a treat.

     “You know what?” Rosy asked, on their way back home along a tree-lined street. “I don’t want to grow out of anything, but maybe growing up wouldn’t be so bad.”

     Seo was examining—with great satisfaction—how her electric blue popsicle had turned part of her doll’s pink dress into a wonderful purple. “Why’s that?”

     “So I can make money and buy an Usuki Dreamhouse!”

     It was that same street that Seo found herself hurrying down that night.

     She paused for a minute to catch her breath. As a child, this street had seemed so much wider, and so incredibly long. Every walk into Neopia Central was a journey, and every journey a possible adventure.

     And now? Well, it was a bit boring, if she was being honest. She supposed that’s what happened when you walked along a street to your job every day. The lights strung through the trees didn’t look like stars anymore; they just looked like lights.

     Seo remembered trying to time their walks back home to be as late as they could without getting in trouble, just so that they would be walking down this street when the lights turned on. You could see them coming, starting at the end of the street, flickering to life in succession. They would pretend they were casting a beam of light magic down the street.

     The Pastel Aisha frowned. It simply wouldn’t do for a night at Usukicon to start off like this.

     She took off her glasses. The lights blurred and lengthened before her eyes. There, that was a little bit like casting magic, wasn’t it?

     She giggled to herself, and set off again; putting her glasses back on so she wouldn’t trip on anything.

     Just as (the great sage) Mrs. Appleby predicted, large grey clouds were beginning to roll in by the time Rosy and Seo got to their street. Even still, the sun was on the opposite side of the sky, and the world was bathed in a beautiful orange glow.

     They waved goodbye to each other in front of Rosy’s house. Seo walked on for a few seconds, but then stopped and turned back.

     “Hey, Rosy?” Seo called out, just as Rosy was pulling the latch back down on her front gate.

     “Yeah?”

     Seo sprinted back to the gate. “I just— I had a lot of fun today. I know today isn’t the last day, but even if it was—”

     Rosy giggled. “You’re being silly. Even if we stop playing with Usukis, we’ll still be friends. There’s not going to be a last day to that.”

     Seo believed her, completely.

     Usukicon, in a word, was colourful. But there were so many colours a single word wouldn't do it justice at all. So it was pink, purple, blue, and green; and it was satin, tinsel, shimmer and sequins too.

     (Oh, that was good. Seo needed to write that down to include in her report later.)

     Seo rocked back and forth on her feet, watching the pets in costumes go past. Music gently pulsed out of the venue behind her.

     What would Lacey say about this, she wondered. Usukicon was full of the people she would have thought had grown out of liking dolls.

     "Seo!"

     Rosy emerged from the crowd, waving excitedly. Seo squealed in excitement and ran to hug her.

     "I'm so excited, Rosy!" she exclaimed. "Let's go to Usukicon!"

     The End.