Adelaide and Her Friends

Adelaide's hair shines like gold, just as an old farmer's harvest on a sunny day. She wears it in plaits and ties a bow, so the farmer's hard work wouldn't get blown away. Adelaide has eyes that are big and blue tinted with ash; a lot similar to the car that her father owned before his impending crash. Adelaide's mother, the prettiest woman in town, only cares for Adelaide. Very much like her husband, she has brown hair and eyes, nothing like her own daughter, which makes the town question and wonder if she really is Adelaide's mother. For Adelaide is a girl unlike the most, you see, she brings her mother flowers and smiles with her teeth.
But Adelaide's mother holds her hand and takes her daughter to her friend down by the lake. Except this lake is not a lake, but a gutter pipe leading down from the drains. Here, Adelaide had flushed down her pet fish when she was only five, and often her eyes would wander to the lake to see if her fish had survived. But for not too long, because when her mother would see her, she pulled her hand and walked away.
The friend that lived down by the lake had a large red building where he stayed. The large red building stayed empty and abandoned, apart from the people that Adelaide had befriended. But her friends hid from her mother and her mother's friend and that often drove Adelaide insane.
“How are you, Adelaide?” would ask her mother's friend, in a big brown chair that was even bigger than him.
“I am fine,” answered Adelaide every time, watching her friends dance around in the ceiling tiles.
“How are your friends?”
“They're great,” Adelaide could never lie.
The questions would go on and Adelaide would grow bored. This would not be the first time and these were not the first lies she'd told. But it would go on like a routine -- one friend would leave after another, they'd all get restless and tired of her mother. The clock would eventually hit one and the session would end, the man in the big brown chair would smile and call himself her friend.
Her mother would walk in after, an hour late, her mascara again, running down her face. The mother's friend would open his arms and hold her against his chest, and Adelaide's friend would whisper that the mother's friend has lived long enough as it is.