A Certain Kind of Friend

A Story by RCullison

Short story about a girl, her father, and a certain kind of friend.

I caught her in her bedroom cutting her hair, right down to the roots, in the middle of the top of her head. Her two small hands each held one half of the big scissors, the ones she wasn’t supposed to use. She paused when she caught sight of me in her peripheral vision, but it was not a guilty pause, just a nonverbal, “Yes?”

I ran my hands through my own hair and sighed. “Katie,” I said, measuring my words. “What are you doing?”

“Haircut.” She turned away and opened the scissors, repositioning them for another go.

I hurried to take the offending implement from her before she could remove another swath. She let me take them without a struggle. I guided her into the bathroom so she could see herself in the mirror. She didn’t look surprised.

“I’m not done,” she complained.

“Yes, you are. This will take months to grow back.” I was in an internal war, trying to get her to understand that what she did was not acceptable, while also holding in my laughter. It would not do to lose it now.

“I don’t want it to grow back. I like it this way.”

“Look, I’ll take you to a hair stylist.”

“No!”

“Hopefully they can figure out something to do with it. They’ll probably have to cut the rest really short, anyway.”

“Oh, okay.” She relaxed and smiled, shaking her hair and admiring herself in the mirror. “I like short.”

“So I see.” Taking her by the hand, I turned the pair of us back down the hallway.

“Mary says she likes it.”

“Who’s Mary?”

“My friend. She lives in my room with me.”

“Oh. Is she nice?”

“Yeah. I like her.”

“You’ve never mentioned her before. Is she new?”

“No, I’ve known her a couple of years.”

Everything was a couple of years to Katie. She was still young, and had no real concept of time. I steered her into her bedroom. If seeing herself in the mirror was no deterrent, perhaps forcing her to deal with the aftermath would work. “Well, let’s clean up your-”

I groaned. “Oh, Katie. You did all your dolls, too?”

---

The next morning, at breakfast, while Katie ate her cereal, I mused that it was a good thing she wouldn’t be starting kindergarten for a few more months, though I realized her hair wouldn’t really be that much longer by then. I would have to look up very short hairstyles for girls and hope for the best.

Katie was a champ at the stylist, cheerful and chatty, and the stylist gushed over her. The lady had done her best, but a thick patch of quarter-inch hair in the middle of the head was a tough thing to work around.

Katie, however, did not care. She munched her cereal happily and told me the thrilling tale of giving all her dolls haircuts that resembled hers.

“Why all of them? Why every single one?” I asked her as she ate. “How long did that even take?”

“Practice, daddy,” she said, giving me that look, the one that said I was asking a silly question.

Pure logic, I supposed, as filtered through a five-year-old’s brain.

“Did you cut anything else? Like your blankets, or clothes?”

“No,” she said, but her suddenly curious look told me I should not have asked that question.

“Never mind,” I said, then steered the conversation elsewhere. That night, after Katie went to sleep, I hid the scissors on top of a kitchen cabinet.

---

“Go to bed,” I told Katie, for probably the fifth time. “It’s way past your bedtime.”

“Mary’s annoying me,” Katie said. She huffed and had an adorable frown.

“Why? What’s she doing?” She hadn’t mentioned Mary since the hair salon, and I’d mostly forgotten about her imaginary friend.

“She hides in the corner and gets all grumpy.”

“That’s… interesting.”

“She says, “Be quiet! Go to sleep!”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Well, Mary is on to something. I agree. Go get in bed. Go to sleep.”

---

The next morning, Katie was playing and watching her little pony show on TV, while I wasted some time on the computer nearby.

“Daddy?”

“Hm?”

“Mary said she’s glad you made me go to sleep last night.”

“She did?”

“She was at her witty end! But you saved the day.”

“…I see.”

“Hooo!” Katie said, copying something I apparently said too much, and stretching her back the same way I do. “It’s been a long, long day!”

“It’s nine in the morning.”

“Yep!” She whirled around, surprisingly graceful, which was completely unlike me. “I’m gonna go see if Mary needs me.” She darted down the hall and into her room, slamming the door behind her.

After a good ten or fifteen minutes, I turned off the TV, which was still showing colorful ponies, and decided to see what Katie was up to. I didn’t know if I should talk to her about Mary. It was normal for kids to have imaginary friends, as far as I knew. If this was her coping mechanism, then I really should just let it run its course. Still, I thought talking to her about things might help her, maybe help me. Just a bit.

As I approached her room, I heard talking from within. I crept closer to listen, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. A conversation of some sort with Mary, I was sure, but I wanted to hear what Katie was saying so I went to press my ear up against her door.

“NOW I KNOW MY ABCS,” Katie sang at the top of her voice, then laughed her little head off.

I knocked on the door, then opened it. “How’s it going in here?”

Katie grinned at me. “I’m just teaching Mary the laughabet. She likes it.”

“Alphabet,” I corrected her. “Katie…” I wanted to ask her about Mary, but the words stuck in my throat.

“What, daddy?”

“Just… keep the door open, okay?” I went back to the computer and sat down in my chair, but didn’t touch the mouse. I just spun slowly around, using my toe to keep me going.

---

Katie didn’t bring up Mary again through the whole summer. I took her to kindergarten orientation and we met her teacher, Miss Simmons, who was fresh out of college and eager to meet her students. A week later, when kindergarten started, Katie’s hair still looked like she had a dad who might have tried cutting it with hedge trimmers, and I was alone at home. It was only for part of the day, but it was too long.

I found excuses to not be there when Katie was at school. I saw every movie at the theater, I took advantage of the fall weather and read books in the park, and I ate at every local restaurant. I tried to visit friends but most of them worked regular hours. I visited my parents a lot and helped them around the house. They knew something was wrong, but they didn’t pry.

One October day, windy and suddenly cold, I was driving Katie to school. The school was halfway across the city, handpicked by me because I liked its mission statement. The route was straightforward and I always took the same roads.

Katie and I were talking about what makes weather work, when she suddenly interrupted.

“Mary says you can’t go this way, or we’ll be late to school.”

“What? Why would she say that?”

“I don’t know.”

I kept driving, but the conversation was done. Katie stayed quiet, and when I glanced at her, she seemed to be waiting to see what I was going to do.

In between intersections traffic stopped dead, and I was stuck in the wrong lane. I didn’t know the side roads anyway, having never explored them, so I resigned myself to waiting it out. Katie said nothing, even as we crept past the car accident that had so ensnared traffic. I escorted her into school so I could apologize and explain why she was late. The lady at the front desk very nicely asked me to sign Katie in.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said after Katie disappeared deeper into the school, hurrying to her classroom. “She your first? Being late isn’t going to keep her out of college.” She eyed me and must have felt I needed more reassurance. “It’s okay, really. Things happen.”

I mumbled something I hoped was a polite reply, then went back to my car. I got in, but not without first thoroughly inspecting the back seat. I found one of Katie’s dolls, hair cut short, but I don’t know if I was relieved or more disturbed. I got in the driver’s seat and sat there for a while, my hands carefully inspecting the nooks and crannies of the steering wheel, fingertips tracing the Toyota symbol in the center.

Lucky guess. It had to be. But Katie had never, not even once, commented on the actual drive to or from school. She hadn’t even started asking, “are we there yet?” Maybe she noticed the cars stopped ahead, way before I did, because I was focused on the more immediate traffic? I didn’t know. She’d also never given any piece of advice and claimed it to be from Mary, so this was a morning of firsts.

Feeling a little creeped out, my brain too full to think straight, I forgot I didn’t want to be at home alone and accidentally drove straight there. With a strange mixture of my skin crawling and feeling foolish, I picked up Katie’s doll and took it inside, into her room, and placed it on the bed.

I looked at the doll for a good, long while. It was just a doll. But…

“Mary?”

No response. Nothing happened, except now I graduated from fool to idiot.

I glanced around the room. All of Katie’s dolls, even her ponies and any stuffed animal with enough to cut, had short hair. She had apparently found the scissors again, because the haircuts had been touched up, much the same as her own at the stylist.

I left the room, then left the house. Time for a movie.

---

Breakfast time, but no cereal. Katie didn’t like cereal anymore, she claimed. Waffle time. I was okay with that.

“Mary says thank you.”

“For what?”

“For putting her on my bed. She says it’s comfy.”

I froze, all my short hairs standing on end. “How do you know that?”

“She told me.”

“No, I mean how do you know what I did?”

Katie gave me that look again. “She was on my bed. I left her in the car. I didn’t do it, so that means you did.”

“Right,” I said, blinking furiously. Logic. That was logical. “Sorry, I had a rough night.”

“She’s mad at you, though.”

I sighed. “She is? What for?”

“For not listening. You made us late to school.”

“I’m sorry. Katie… what does Mary look like? Does she look like the doll you had in the car?”

“Sometimes.”

“What do you mean?”

“She can if she wants. One time she looked like my big dinosaur. That was fun!”

“Does she have really short hair?”

“No. Hers is long and crazy.”

That wasn’t what I expected her to say, and it completely derailed my train of thought. “Uh, does she talk to you?”

“Yeah.”

“What does she say?”

“I’ve told you.”

“That’s all? She’s never said anything else?”

“No, she helps me. She told me where you hid the scissors. But she wouldn’t tell me unless I promised to be careful with them.”

I didn’t know what to believe. Katie was a precocious, intelligent child. She could very well have been climbing around in the kitchen while I was elsewhere, and discovered the scissors herself. Except that I’d never once seen her doing so, nor seen any evidence of any climbing.

“Does she ever say anything mean, or bad?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s good.” I glanced at the clock. “Whoops, time to get going. Get your backpack.”

---

What was left of the year’s good weather was blowing elsewhere, so one day in November, after school, I took Katie to the park with the big playground, the one she likes but I hate because there’s no shade in the summer. It was cool enough that I was fine, but not so cold that she was unhappy. Best of both worlds.

As soon as she saw it, she beamed. “I haven’t been here for a couple of years!”

More like a couple months, I thought. I hadn’t planned far enough ahead to bring a book, so I grew bored, but Katie was still having fun, having joined in some sort of tag game with other kids who looked to be about her age. I sighed and settled in. It wasn’t going to kill me to stay.

Those kids left, but others arrived, and new games emerged and merged and split and changed rules mid-game. While she played, I took a look in her backpack to see what homework she had, still mildly surprised that she, a kindergartner, had any at all. Inside her backpack, nestled alongside her empty blue homework folder, was one of her dolls. Katie wasn’t supposed to be taking toys to school, except for show-and-tell.

While I looked at the doll, I heard a cry that I immediately knew was Katie’s. I looked up, searching the playground for my daughter, but I couldn’t spot her. I stuffed her doll into the backpack and stood up, just as the cry turned into a pained shriek. Other parents were looking around, trying to see what was going on, since sometimes you can’t tell if kids are screaming for fun or not. But this was my Katie, and I knew this was real.

I hurried toward the playground equipment, following the sounds of her crying, and quickly found her, cradling her arm. As soon as she saw me, she lost what little control she still possessed and descended straight into the impossible-to-understand blubbering that young children do. I did my best to comfort and calm her, while vainly trying to understand her words and get a look at her arm to see how bad it was.

What kind of parent was I? No. I pushed that thought aside as best I could.

I’d learned the hard way that I remain calm in stressful situations. I am, apparently, a man of action, though in my experience, when there is no action to take, it just means you are deeply, painfully aware of how useless you are.

“Is your arm hurt?” I asked her, my voice smooth and reassuring. I tried to pry her other arm away, but she resisted. I had to repeat the question several times before it got through and she nodded.

“Are you bleeding?” I asked, moving calmly on to the next question. I couldn’t see any blood, but to a five-year-old, a little cut was no different than a severed limb.

“No, daddy,” she said through her tears. She took a deep breath and swallowed. “Mary says I broke it.”

“Broke… your arm?”

She nodded vigorously.

“Can I see?”

She let me gently move her unhurt arm out of the way so I could take a look. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but when I touched it, she cried out in pain.

“Maybe you just sprained it,” I said. I carefully gathered her in my arms and stood up. Several other parents and their kids were standing nearby in a semicircle, watching us. “But let’s take you to the doctor anyway. Just in case.”

“Nearest Instacare is on University Park,” one of the moms said. I thanked her as I left.

---

“That must have been quite the fall, Miss Katie,” the doctor said as he returned to our room. He was skinny and bald as an egg, with black horn-rimmed glasses that might be older than me. “There are two bones in your forearm, did you know that? And you, my dear, broke one of them. The ulna. Have you heard of that before? I think it’s a fun word.”

“So it is broken?” I asked the doctor, even though he had just said it. He nodded.

“No,” Katie said. “Can you fix it? I like that arm.”

“Well, it is a good arm, I agree,” the doctor said. “And yes, we can fix it.” He winked at her. “We are pretty good at that sort of thing.”

“She means that’s her dominant arm. She’s right-handed,” I said. I felt like I had to say something, anything at all, but that was the best my brain could manage. A pointless explanation to a man who was doing a good job keeping my child’s spirits up.

The doctor nodded again. “Makes sense. Let me get the nurse and we’ll get you all squared away. What’s your favorite color, Katie?”

Katie was exhausted and fell right asleep when we got home. I told her she wouldn’t have to go to school the next day.

---

“My arm hurts,” she said as she struggled to eat left-handed.

“Well, you did break it. Do you need my help?”

“No, I’m used to that now. I mean this arm. It hurts.”

“You probably bruised it when you fell.”

“It’s dumb. It doesn’t know how to eat.”

“You’re right-handed,” I explained. “That means you prefer your right hand and do most things with it.”

“I want to be both-handed,” she said. “And I want to go to school.”

---

I was the first car in the pick-up line after school. I hadn’t gone home. I went to my parents’ instead, and told them about Katie’s broken arm, since I realized I hadn’t bothered to text or call or Facebook anyone at all the night before. As I recounted the story, I choked up a bit, and my mom was there to put her arm around me.

“It’s okay,” she said. “She’s okay. Kids fall and get hurt. You never broke anything, but your sisters did, and I felt the same way. Like I failed as a parent by letting my kid get hurt. It’s life. It happens.”

I nodded and thanked her, although that wasn’t entirely what had tangled my emotions into a ball. I wanted to ask her if any of us ever had imaginary friends, but I couldn’t manage it.

Katie came out and I waved her over to the car. I helped her in and buckled her up. At home, I helped her take off her jacket. I was surprised to see her new, bright pink cast was untouched by pen or marker and commented on it.

“I like it this way,” she said. “But all the kids were really nice to me, and my teacher said I don’t need to do any homework for a few days. My arms hurt.”

“Let’s get you some medicine. The doctor said you might need it for a while, for the pain.”

“I can’t open my backpack. Will you help me? I want to get Mary out.”

I undid the zipper and opened the backpack so Katie could reach inside.

“Mary is mad at you,” she said as she retrieved yet another, different doll. She seemed to be rotating which one she took to school.

“Why?” I asked, suppressing a sigh.

“You didn’t believe her.”

“How could Mary have known you broke your arm? She was in your backpack.”

“No, my other doll was in my backpack. I had Mary with me. She wanted to play.”

“You did?” I did not remember a second doll at all. “Which doll is Mary?”

“Whatever one she wants. I told you. She’s mad because you didn’t believe her. She doesn’t lie.”

I exhaled slowly and rubbed my face with both hands. “Katie… how could I believe her? She only talks to you, and I can’t see her.”

“Yes you can. You’ve seen her lots of times.”

“I have?”

“She can look like any of my toys, remember?”

“Where is she now?”

“Right here,” she said, holding up her doll. “This is Mary, for now.”

I stared at it. “All I see is a doll. You said she has long, crazy hair, but I can’t see that, and I can’t hear her. Take your medicine.”

---

“You’ve seen her lots of times.” Katie’s words were now engraved on my brain. She was at school, and I was at home, against my better judgement. Her dolls were scattered around her room, but one was nestled in her bed, tucked in up to its little chin. I assumed that was Mary for the day, or the hour, or however it worked, since Katie had specifically said she left Mary at home. Just looking at it creeped me out. What was going on?

---

“Mary says you don’t like her.”

“I’ve never said that.”

“She says you looked at her and you got scared.”

A powerful shiver ran down my spine.

There was no point in asking how she knew that. I already knew what the answer would be. “If I can’t see her or hear her, it makes me uncomfortable,” I admitted.

“She says she’s sorry.”

“For scaring me?”

“For not seeing that I was going to break my arm. She was having too much fun playing, and didn’t see it in time to stop me. She is really sad about it.”

“It will be okay,” I said, though my mind was racing. How was this happening? “You’ll heal, and the bone will be as good as new.”

“She says you’re sad, too.”

“A lot of people are sad.”

“She says you miss mommy.”

“Of course I do.”

“She says you think it’s your fault. But you’re wrong. It’s not your fault.”

Katie was looking at me with her big, serious eyes. I’d never talked about this with her. Why would I? She was a kindergartner, and she was only three when it happened.

“I know it’s not my fault. It couldn’t be. But sometimes… things just stick in your head. And you can’t stop thinking about them. Do you remember much about mommy?” I asked her, fighting to keep my emotions in check, struggling to keep any tears from welling up.

“She had hair like this,” she said, holding up her doll again.

“Yeah,” I said. “Katie…” I leaned in close, examining the doll’s face. “Is Mary… mommy?”

Katie gave me that look again. “No, silly. Mommy’s dead. A couple years ago. Mary is my friend.”

I sighed. “Yeah, a couple years ago. Never mind, it was just a question.”

“Mary says she’s going to go away for a while. How long is three hundred and eight days?”

“Most of a year. Why such a specific number?”

“I don’t know. She says good-bye.”

---

Katie’s arm healed and the cast came off. She did well in school and rarely mentioned Mary, except to say that she missed her. Winter and Christmas passed, then Spring, and she was out of school and into her first summer vacation. But I kept track of the days, because when I looked at the calendar and counted just where exactly three hundred and eight days would land, I was filled with a strange mix of dread and powerful happiness, along with a whole lot of questions, because that was the exact date of my wife’s death.

---

Katie started first grade in August. She was excited and happy and hadn’t mentioned Mary in over a month, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her imaginary friend. September rolled around and I was getting more and more excited, and then, on the final night, I could barely sleep.

What if this was just a total, freakish coincidence? Katie had only been three. But three-year-olds don’t have any sense of date, certainly not to an exact day and month. In kindergarten, she learned the days of the week and the months of the year, complete with cute songs to help with the memorization, but the chances of her landing on this exact date just seemed impossibly remote to me. I wanted it to not be a coincidence. I wanted something more to come out of this. I wanted… everything to be how it was before.

At breakfast, I could barely contain myself. I prepared Katie’s food and sat down at the table across from her and waited. It was so difficult, but I didn’t want to prompt her, or suggest anything. I had deliberately avoided mentioning Mary at all. If this was real, it had to come from Katie on its own. If I was going crazy, I couldn’t inflict that on her.

Mid-bite, Katie said, “Mary’s back.”

I nearly leapt up in triumph. My heart was pounding. I swallowed twice before answering.

“Oh?” I managed with such fake calmness that if Katie hadn’t been six years old, she would have laughed at it.

“She told me she was sorry again. I showed her my arm. She said it looks good.”

I couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Katie,” I said, going over in my mind the words I had been rehearsing for weeks. “Does Mary have a different name that she sometimes goes by?” I had to put my hand on my knee to stop it from bouncing under the table.

“No, just Mary.”

“Has she ever told you any secrets about herself? About how she knows you?”

“No. Why?”

I squeezed my knee hard. “Katie… are you sure that Mary isn’t mommy?”

She gave me that look, with another years’ worth of refinement. “No, silly. I already told you. Besides, I showed Mary a picture of mommy and she asked me who it was.”

“Oh.”

Completely and utterly deflated. That’s how it was. Like a popped balloon, all the nervous energy and excitement, coupled with nine months of my own imagination going absurdly, ridiculously wild, building up expectations so unrealistic it would make a psychologist consider admitting me to the psych ward right there on the spot.

I rubbed at my face, barely able to keep my hands from trembling. “But why today? Why this day, this exact day?”

Katie had no answer for me.

---

That night, I fell asleep early, right after seeing Katie to bed. I was still wiped out from a night of barely any sleep, plus my own exhausting idiocy. I was embarrassed by what I had been willing to believe. Coincidences had gotten the better of me. Played me. Made a fool of me. No. I did that myself.

I needed to sleep, so badly, which is why I struggled so hard to stay asleep while Katie, with her little six-year-old hands, fought to wake me, somewhere in the middle of the night.

“Daddy!” she said. I was pretty sure she’d been saying it for a while, but I was so groggy I could barely think.

“Katie? What are you doing?”

“Daddy! Wake up! We have to go. Now!”

“What?” I tried to sit up, but the blankets were too heavy.

“Mary says we have to get out of here. She says you have to take us and go!”

I forced the covers off and rolled out of bed, knocking Katie aside as I fell. I struggled to my knees.

“Now?”

“Now!” Katie was crying in fear. She had her blanket and a stuffed animal clutched in her arms. For a long moment, I stared, wondering why it was a bear, rather than a doll. Any other time, I would have chalked this up to a bad nightmare. But this was my Katie, and I knew this was real.

Shoes. I had to have shoes. I crawled past Katie, feeling around for my shoes, but couldn’t find them. I was about to give up and go back to sleep, when my hands suddenly came across them, forcefully, as if they had been shoved into my reach. I put them on and took Katie by the hand. As we were hurrying down the hall, Katie squeezed my hand tight and whimpered.

“Mary says to pick me up and RUN!”

And so I did. I rushed out of the house, pausing only long enough to fling open the front door, and then out into the cold night air. Dizzy and barely able to breath because of the tightness in my chest, I sprinted down our long driveway and into the cul-de-sac. Huffing and puffing, I kept going, Katie clutched tightly in my arms, and as I set foot on the curb on the far side, a terrific explosion lit the night. Debris shot past us, one piece striking me in the back hard enough to knock me down with the sound of snapping bone, Katie still in my arms.

I writhed in pain and struggled to breathe. Katie rolled out of my arms. “Daddy? Daddy!”

Car alarms all around were going off in a cacophony, and already the first shouts of my neighbors reached my ears, though everything was muffled and slow.

“Mary says we’ll be okay now,” Katie said, her face close to mine. “Do you hear me? We’ll be okay.”

I tried to respond, but could only nod. Katie held my hand until the paramedics arrived, and as soon as I saw she was safe, I passed out.

We’ll be okay. Mary said so.