The streets of New York City were busy as usual. People rushed by as they hurried to their next destination. The tall buildings shielded them from the sun’s rays, though the only thing that would allow them to escape the humidity in the city was going inside one of the many buildings they passed.
A woman and her daughter sat outside a cafe in the city. Both were enjoying a cup of tea and the warm breeze outside. Their fair skin glistened in the sunlight.
“Hey mom, look at that cloud,” the daughter said. She pointed to a large ominous cloud in the sky that was turning darker with each passing second.
“Looks like it’s going to rain soon,” the mom said. “Guess the weatherman was right. Let’s go, Kayla, we try should get home before it starts.”
But try as they did, they weren’t able to make it home before the rain started. There was a rumble of thunder in the distance as soon as they left the cafe, and when they got to their car, it started pouring. They waited a few minutes for the rain to slow down, but it didn’t show any signs of doing that, so they carefully ventured out onto the city streets.
The rain stopped as soon as they arrived home, but going inside was another disaster in and of itself. Their dog, a husky who was only six months old, was laying in her bed. The living room had pillows out of place, and papers were all over the floor.
“What are you all doing?” the mother asked. Father and son looked up.
“We’re looking for Snowflake’s toy,” the father replied. “The squeaking duck one.”
The mother shrugged and gestured to the couch. She took her phone out of her purse. “It’s gotta be under the sofa,” she said, moving to take a peek under. She had to turn her phone’s flashlight on to see, but all that could be found were a few crumbs and quite a bit of trash. The mother stood up and turned her phone’s flashlight off. “Okay, maybe it isn’t under the sofa.”
Snowflake whined and buried her head in the small pink pillow that was in her bed. Another toy, this one a small dinosaur plush that also contained a squeaker, was laying on the floor on its side.
“She misses her toy,” the son said. “We’ve looked everywhere.”
“Well, let’s look again,” Kayla said. “Check the backyard too, it might be back there if she took it out back with her.”
The toy they were looking for was a special toy, at least in Snowflake’s eyes. Her breeder’s home burned down in a tragic fire, and though all of the dogs came out okay, the breeder was unable to keep the dogs he had and a local shelter had to take them in. When the Carrington family came in to adopt Snowflake, she was the last of her family to be adopted. She was friendly with other dogs during playtime, and she was a good dog. A round of donations came into the shelter, and among them were several toys, enough for each dog at the shelter to choose one. Snowflake chose a large, yellow plush duck. It was larger than her body at the time, but she was able to pull it away from the pile. One of the shelter’s volunteers took it to her kennel, and since then, Snowflake and the duck were inseparable. The volunteers informed the Carringtons of this when they adopted her, and so the duck, affectionately named Quackers by the son, came home with them too.
But the toy was missing now, and no other toy could replace it in Snowflake’s eyes. Though she was able to be apart from it, it always remained in her bed so that she could sleep with it. The toy provided her comfort. She had other toys to play with, but Quackers was like her stuffed animal and nothing could happen to it.
The family searched high and low in the house, until finally, the mother stepped into her craft room, she spotted something yellow under her sewing machine. She pulled the chair back and a stuffed duck fell off of her sewing machine’s pedal. The mother picked it up and took it to Snowflake’s bed. She perked up instantly and took the toy from the mother’s hands and placed it in the corner of her bed.
“I found it,” she called out to her family as she received licks of appreciation from Snowflake. The family came inside, and lo and behold, Quackers was returned to its rightful place in Snowflake’s bed. The mother went to start dinner, and father, son, and daughter got to work on straightening up the rooms of the house.
After dinner, mother set to work on her latest sewing project: an elegant purple dress for her daughter’s prom the next night. Father, daughter, and son sat in the living room with Snowflake in front of them. Tonight’s entertainment was provided by Kitchen Cookoff: Dessert Edition, a cooking show that focused on a selection of contestants in a competition to see who the best chef, or in this case, baker, was. This was only the second season of the show, but each season thus far focused on a different cuisine; season one focused on different meats.
Tonight was the season premiere of the new season, so the family was introduced to one of the sixteen contestants on the show. One of those contestants was a woman in her thirties who had an interesting hairstyle. Her short hair was spiked, and the tip of each spike was a different color.
“What’s up with her hair?” the father asked.
“That’s just how people do it nowadays, dad,” Kayla said.
“Yeah, some people like having really weird hairstyles. I have a girl in my class who has half pink and half blue hair, it looks really cool but also kinda weird,” the brother chimed in.
Their father shrugged, and they continued to watch the show. They commented only on each contestant’s creations, though tonight was just an introduction to each of the contestants, and the real competition would begin on next week’s episode. The father, though he was unimpressed with the spiky haired woman’s hair, was impressed by her baking abilities as she pulled off an immaculate two tier cake decorated beautifully with flowers of various colors. He was convinced that she could possibly win the whole thing, though his children had different contestants that they were rooting for.
The children went to their rooms after the show. The son had to get to bed soon for he had school the next day; Kayla was excused for the day because the next night was the evening of the senior prom and the school decided it was easier to allow all of the seniors to have an excused absence than to have them only come in for a couple hours on the day of prom.
The next night, Kayla was at her senior prom with her group of friends and their dates. Strobe lights illuminated the dance floor, and there was a snack bar off in one of the corners of the venue. Their theme was “A Moonlight Sendoff,” so the strobe lights were varying shades of blue and white with a little yellow mixed in. The snacks were shaped like moons and stars, and some had yellow sprinkles shaped like stars on them too.
