Mackenzie Louise and The Bunny

Image by A3DigitalStudio from Pixabay

The bunny’s ears flicked from side to side as it nosed through the grass. Mackenzie stared at it through the chain link fence. Sometimes she held bits of dandelion leaves through the holes and the bunny would come close enough that Mackenzie could touch its inquisitive nose with the slightest tip of her chubby finger. Mackenzie loved bunnies, but especially the neighbor’s bunny. He had soft speckled gray fur and his placid eyes sparked occasionally, as though he were laughing at a secret joke.

Her mom refused to buy her a pet; especially a bunny. She’d press her purple tinted lips together whenever Mackenzie started to beg, and it was settled. Her mother would never tell her why, but Mackenzie guessed it had something to do with how her dad traveled so much for work. Sometimes he’d come home and announce out of the blue that they were moving again and there wasn’t anything Mackenzie could do about it. It never mattered that she was just beginning to fit in at school. Again.

“If I had a bunny, I’d smuggle it right along with me in my backpack.” Mackenzie thought out loud.

The neighbor was sitting in her outdoor rocking chair, watching the bunny roam from behind pitch black sunglasses. She often gave Mackenzie butterscotch candies and toothless smiles, but the speckled bunny was the old lady’s and for that Mackenzie hated her.

Just now, the old lady stood with a sudden jerk as a phone went off like a shotgun somewhere inside the house. With a hasty glance at the bunny, who was half submerged in overgrown clover, she shuffled into the house.

Mackenzie sat up. There was the beautiful bunny, only feet away, and no one around. She knew he’d be happier with her. She’d play with him hidden in the bushes, and when her dad said they had to leave again she would bring an extra box, with holes in the lid. She’d name him George, because she felt it fit the hansom bunny, and she’d be glad to go. Glad to leave the neighbor and the chance she might be found out and forced to take him back.

She didn’t care if it was wrong. What mattered was that he’d be hers.

She stood up.

“Mackenzie Louise! Just look at your clothes! I told you not to lie in the grass.” The little girl flinched with all the weighted guilt of a deed decided upon yet undone as her mom glared at her from the back door. She glanced back at the little speckled bunny. The elderly neighbor appeared again and crossed her yard to put the bunny back in his cage. “Your father says we’re leaving tomorrow, so pack your bags.”

Mackenzie thought she saw the bunny’s eyes meet hers, and they sparked with a hidden secret.