I sighed as I saw the glistening manacles in her hands. She flashed me a bright smile and held up the object she had found: a pair of metal police handcuffs. She was dressed in a denim skirt, a yellow and pink striped t-shirt, and she was kneeling on her bare feet on the carpet of my room. She suddenly turned in my direction, her hair, now long enough to go past her shoulders, whipping around as she did. “Hey, what are you doing in there?” I asked, approaching her. Then, one day I entered my room to find Marie going through the bottom drawer of my dresser. We did all the things we used to do, and for a while it was all pretty routine. I was out of college for the summer and my parents were going away for the month on vacation, so it would just be us two for the most part. When Marie was 10, she once again came to visit for the summer. She was energetic and cheerful, so it wasn’t long before I was looking forward to her annual visits. Marie was a small girl with brown hair and grey eyes.
It helped that I didn’t have that many friends, so I would just take her to places like the mall, the park, or just stay at home and play. My parents were always busy with their work, so I became her de facto baby sitter since I was on summer vacation. It helps that every summer since she was 5 she would come to our house and visit for two months. Despite this, we’ve always been very close. My cousin Marie is 11 years younger than me.