best friends forever;;

[erinn lacey thomas]

Of all the places in the world, Erinn’s absolute favorite place most assuredly had to be the toy store. At five years old, she could spend the entire day there and not regret a single second of it. However, her family wasn’t quite the same. Erinn had four older siblings, some of whom thought themselves much to mature to be spending all day in the toy store. So, when their parents brought them there to go shopping for a new toy, they were much less excited about being there than Erinn herself was.

“Come on, guys. We have to get to the toys before we hafta leave,” Erinn complained, garbling on in her little five-year-old voice as they entered into the store. Their parents let them go off on their own, so they split up into their favorite sections. The boys went off towards the action figures, Frankie towards the more mature dolls with Erika, leaving Erinn to her own devices. That certainly wasn’t the best idea, since she had a habit of getting into trouble, but she was more than happy to wander off on her own.

Unlike the rest of her siblings, Erinn usually found herself in the part of the store that held all of the Quidditch gear for kids. She couldn’t play yet, but she knew that she wanted to someday. She’d watched many a game with her father and though he hadn’t played back in school, she had become entirely fascinated with the idea of it. So, Erinn wandered back to the aisles with the children’s Quidditch gear and started to mess with everything and anything that she could get her hands on. She didn’t really know how to use any of it, since she didn’t have anyone to teach her, but she tried.

Picking up a shin guard and flipping it around for a moment, Erinn strapped it to her tiny arm with a satisfied nod. Looked legit to her. Ruffling through the other things, she picked up a keeper’s chest plate and attached it to her back, along with a helmet on her elbow. Feeling like she was sufficiently in her gear, Erinn picked up a quaffle and set it on the ground to start kicking it, running after it and playing with herself in the aisle with a giggle of amusement. However, a moment later, the ball rolled to a stop before being picked up by another young girl in the aisle.

“You’re doing that all wrong,” the girl commented, a rather goofy smile on her face as she observed Erinn.

“Oh, I was just…playing,” Erinn replied, shrugging a bit. “Wanna play too? I’m the Flyer.”

“What’s a flyer?” the girl asked, tilting her head to the side in confusion. She’d never heard of a flyer in Quidditch before and she was pretty good at Quidditch things.

“They’re the people that fly with the ball, silly,” Erinn replied with a laugh.

“Those are chasers,” the girl replied, shaking her head. “Here, let me help you.”

The girl walked over to Erinn and started to take off all the gear that was haphazardly strapped on, readjusting it and placing it all in the proper place. Once she was satisfied that everything was right, she stepped back with a nod, pleased at her efforts. Clearly, this girl needed all the help that she could get if she was doing things this wrongly.

“There, that looks better. I’m Ellie, by the way,” she said, offering out a hand for Erinn to shake.

Taking the other girls hand, Erinn gave it a firm shake before pulling back and twisting around in the gear. “I’m Erinn and I think we should be friends.”

“You’re not a boy, so we can be friends,” Ellie nodded, since obviously boys were gross. With three older brothers around, she couldn’t help but think that they were pretty icky.

With that settled, the two of them took to playing with the Quaffle, tossing it back and forth and pretending like they were zooming about the aisle on their fake brooms. Ellie interjected at random moments with more Quidditch information, which Erinn took in with excited nods and smiles. It was nice to have a friend that actually knew something about the sport, rather than her family that knew nothing about it at all. Unfortunately, the moment was short-lived, as not much later Erinn heard her parents calling out for her to go meet them at the front.

“You should come to my dad’s game with us next weekend. Here, this is my daddy’s phone number,” Ellie said, offering a slip of paper to Erinn with a quick smile.

Taking the paper from the other girl, Erinn nodded her approval at the idea, quite excited that she actually had a friend. “I’ll have my mommy call,” she promised before quickly giving the other girl a hug and scampering off to meet back with her family.

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[ellie katherine wood]