(A Little Late) Daily Short Story: Thursday Edition

The Weather Up There


Jonah Simmons is too tall.

"Getting to be such a big boy," his mother crooned nervously to him in his infancy, hitching the diaper up around his chubby legs.

"He's tall for his age," said irritating acquaintances, eyeing Jonah as he hulked miserably beside his mother, caught in the act of shopping for extra-long jeans.

"He takes after his father's side," Mrs. Simmons whispers in the cool cucumber-sandwich air of the tea room. 

The girl across the street has hair the color of milky tea. It hangs down her back like a rippling curtain, a place to hide as she peeps shyly out at Jonah. They talk over the white fence that boxes in the Simmons' yard, their fingers searching between the spaces where the paint has grown gritty with dust. 

The girl's name is Mia. Her smiles flashes through the curtain of hair. He can see the curl of her eyelashes, the freckles on her nose, a smudge of makeup on her cheek. 

"How tall are you?" Jonah whispers through the fence. 

Mia's eyes smile a secret as she whispers the number back. 

Just his height.