prompt: holler, title: places in-between in misc. flash fiction

Sophie would wander out, sometimes, to the holler in the countryside at the edge of town. It was the kind of place the old folks spoke of fondly, where she and her friends had run wild when they were little but had been forgotten or rejected with dismissive disdain by most upon the on-set of adolescence. There were more “adult” things for them to worry about, cars and ATVs, hot dates and stolen beers, the thrills of the not-quite grown, reaching for possibilities of age without quite understanding the responsibility that came with it. This was no place for those in-betweens, only for those too young to know better and those old enough to know the value of briefly being that young. This suited her just fine. The posturing of her peers, fighting to shed innocence fast as if unfashionable clothes, she was glad to be distanced from it, happy to not rush growing up. It’d happen soon enough, it didn’t need her pushing it along too.

The holler was her sanctuary. It wasn’t that she was simple-minded or unhealthfully attached to childhood, she was in her teens, nearly a woman, she didn’t bring toys or juvenile fantasies, she brought a few books and sometimes her guitar, to think and maybe sing. She was bright enough to know that in bigger cities, they wouldn’t call this a “holler”, out in Raleigh, up in Manhattan, they’d call this a “hollow”, a sheltered valley green between low hills, a stream to dip her feet in when the sun baked. Out there in the larger world, to holler was to yell, announce yourself bold as a braggart, like the boys from school with their growling crashing ATVs. That was okay, too, she knew what you’re called isn’t half as important what you are. Exact phrases being just more preening postured fashion.

The cusp of seventeen, late-blooming into beauty, Sophie didn’t mind beauty in and of itself but she hated the way it changed how people treated her. As a bookish child, folks might’ve praised her precociousness or ignored her in a way she enjoyed, now the boys looked at her as if a jewel to steal and hide away, a scary number of the older men as well. Far too many of the women and girls alike now looked upon her as their rival in some race to be stolen and hidden away first.

But not there in the holler. In that holler, in the summer, none of all that yelling, there was only the green and the water and her thoughts, which suited her just fine. Everyone else could sprint headlong into the world, for her, it would happen when it happened. She could sing into the hills around the holler, echoes warped by the valley’s unique shape, harmonizing with her own voice. Whole symphonies of variations on herself, for her ears alone. For then, for however long until life eased her into adulthood naturally, for Sophie, that was more than enough.