The lights were dim as I wandered through the rows of tables, crowded by people twice my size. My mother never liked attending office Christmas parties, but this year my older sister and I had begged to come. I was wearing a red dress, the sleeves were a fake velvet, and the skirt flowed around my scraped up six-year-old knees. At such a young age I would fall at least twice a day. I seemed to have been especially careless when it came to any sort of movement.

I had made a fuss about my hair earlier that evening, this was when it was still red. My curls stuck out in every direction, and my bangs made my eyebrows vanish completely. But I forgot about my hair upon entering the party.

I felt like Cinderella, walking into the ballroom, only no one turned to look at me. There were no other children there, only serious suits with an occasional strand of pearls. Along with falling down and banging my head, I also had the tendency to get lost in crowds as a child. I would often scare my parents half to death on occasions such as these, so it was only natural that I let go of my mother’s hand and began wandering through the crowd, losing myself completely in the pointless banter and clinks of wine glasses.

My shiny Mary Janes dragged against the smooth, waxed wood floors as I made my way over to the dessert table. Rather flamboyant red and green cupcakes had caught my eye. They were arranged in the shape of a Christmas tree, with a single gold cupcake at the top for star. If I could reach the gold cupcake, then the disappointment caused by the lack of other children at the party would surely go away. My greedy little hands shot forward as I reached the display of cupcakes, only to be stopped by a much larger, manicured hands.
“Those are for later.” A woman around my mother’s age snapped, looking down at me. Her tone was condescending, the kind of voice my first grade teacher would use almost all the time except for when she spoke of her honeymoon in Africa and when she read us stories from Aesop's Fables. My cheeks flushed, the shame rising in me. Of course the cupcakes were for later, desserts were never meant for beginnings, treats always came last. The cupcakes would probably be handed out after my mother had dragged my sister and I out of the party at nine o’clock. I removed my hand, placing it by my side and looked down at my Mary Janes which didn’t look as pretty as they had before. When people yell at you everything that was good seems to go away until your mind lets you forget the incident. My mind never forgets.

The woman pointed at the other side of the table where there was an assortment of cheeses and crackers. I fought the urge to wrinkle my nose, I’d had crackers almost every day of my life. Christmas was supposed to be special, didn’t she know this? She scooped a piece of gooey cheese onto a cracker and handed it to me.

“It’s brie.” She said, emphasizing the word as if that was supposed to make me want to eat the unfamiliar substance with an acrid odor. I didn’t want to eat the brie, but the woman was looking at me expectantly so I placed it into my mouth.

The taste came as soon as the cheese touched my tongue. It wasn’t sweet like cupcakes, it almost stung. I wrinkled my nose, but the woman seemed satisfied and walked away. I needed to get this awful taste out of my mouth before I threw up all over the decorative cupcakes. Someone tapped on my shoulder and I turned to find a young-ish man, probably one of my mother’s colleagues, was holding out a napkin. I grabbed it eagerly and spit the cheese into its soft folds.

“Nasty, isn’t it?” I nodded, crunching up the napkin and then glaring at the back of the woman who had tried to poison me. My savior laughed and then reached for one of the cupcakes.

“Those are for later.” I said without thinking.

“Not really, they just say that so their toxic cheeses aren’t wasted.” With this comment I let out a soft giggle, and the man hands me a cupcake. It was the gold one, the star at the top of the Christmas tree. I took a large bite, it wasn’t particularly good. A sugary cake with a dyed frosting. But anything tasted better than that God awful brie.