An Evening Concert - by Sasha

“Well, darling, are we ready to go to the concert yet?” asked Mr. Collingsworth.

“Dear, I told you not to rush me,” Mrs. Collingsworth called from the top of the grand marble staircase. She wore a sleek black dress and a scarf of silver fur, her dark hair in tight curls that framed her face. She held a mirror in one hand and a tube of bright red lipstick in the other, which she applied as she descended down the steps, her delicate silver heels clattering against the stone.

“I’m sorry, darling, but we’re already running short of time,” Mr. Collingsworth replied, checking an ornate pocket watch which he pulled out of the breast pocket of his elegant two-tailed jacket. “The driver has already arrived.”

Mrs. Collingsworth finished applying her makeup and set both down on an ebony side table. She picked up her silver clutch from the same table, careful not to break her perfectly painted nails. “It takes a lot of preparation to look this good,” she told her husband.

“And I dare say you look stunning, dear,” Mr. Collingsworth replied.

“Mr. Collingsworth! Mrs. Collingsworth! You’re going to be late!”

A scrawny young man burst through the ornate front doors, calling frantically for the couple.

“Oh, dear – Bradley, I thought I told you to wait outside,” Mr. Collingsworth chided.

Mrs. Collingsworth scoffed. “Bradley?” she said to her husband, outraged, and then in a more hushed tone that could still obviously be heard by the young chauffeur, “I thought I told you never to hire him again.”

“I know,” Mr. Collingsworth replied in the same tone, “but it is quite a busy concert tonight, darling, and there weren’t many options available –”

“Oh, Bradley promises to be a good driver today,” the young boy exclaimed, evidently unperturbed by the thinly veiled criticism. “He knows he made some wrong turns last time, but he has been practicing.”

“Practicing?” Mrs. Collingsworth exclaimed. “Oh dear, I don’t want to be in an automobile with a driver who needs practice.”

“Come now, it can’t be that bad,” Mr. Collingsworth promised distractedly, looking at his pocket watch again. “What was so bad about the first drive, anyway?”

Mrs. Collingsworth looked confused. “I can’t quite remember, dear, but it was awful.”

“Oh, nonsense,” said Mr. Collingsworth. “I’m sure it couldn’t have been that terrible.” With that, he took Mrs. Collingsworth’s arm and guided her gently out the door after a very excited chauffeur.

It was a very chilly February evening, with a few snowflakes drifting this way and that, and the air was so frigid Mr. and Mrs. Collingsworth could almost smell the cold. Mr. Collingsworth put his arm more firmly around his wife, who was not dressed for the weather, but nonetheless she shivered rigorously and let out a small, pitiful sneeze. “Oh, this weather is simply awful,” she complained.

Bradley, attempting to make sure he fulfilled his duties as a chauffeur to the best of his ability, ran to the car and graciously opened the door to the back seat. It would have been an excellent gesture if Mr. and Mrs. Collingsworth were not still several paces away, and as a result, the entire back seat was soaked by the falling snow before the couple even entered the vehicle. Mrs. Collingsworth shifted uncomfortably in place, but resorted to heaving an enormous and pointed sigh instead of expressing her disappointment in words.

“Do you need directions?” Mr. Collingsworth asked prudently as Bradley sat down behind the wheel.

“Oh, no, Mr. Collingsworth, Bradley knows the way. You don’t need to worry one bit. Perhaps some music might help you become more comfortable?” At this, the young chauffeur promptly hit a button at the front of the car and a boisterous melody began to resonate through the vehicle at a decibel level that was thoroughly unsuitable to delicate Mrs. Collingsworth. Bradley then started the car, and before Mr. or Mrs. Collingsworth could react, they were speeding out of their driveway and into the street.

Mrs. Collingsworth had only to give her husband an icy glare and the poor man tapped the back of Bradley’s seat. The boy nodded. “Good music, eh?” he said, bopping his head in time to the pulsing beat. He didn’t seem to hear Mr. Collingsworth when the middle aged man asked him to turn it off. Mrs. Collingsworth wanted to press her hands to her ears to block out the sound, but she felt that such an action would not only be inelegant but also an admission of defeat.

Suddenly, the popular music was interrupted by a jarring ringing sound. Mrs. Collingsworth jumped in her seat, but Bradley seemed unperturbed. He hit the radio button again and reached absentmindedly across the passenger seat to grab his cell phone, which he pressed to his ear. The sudden change in noise level was nearly as unsettling as the music had been itself.

“Soporfligoramapherin?” Bradley said into the cellular device, or at least something to that effect.

“Good gracious, what is the boy saying now?” Mrs. Collingsworth asked, finally breaking her silence out of the sheer strangeness of Bradley’s actions.

“Haranimorphogloseris,” the chauffeur continued, apparently deep in conversation.

“I don’t believe he is speaking English,” Mr. Collingsworth remarked. “I don’t believe he is speaking any language.”

Mrs. Collingsworth let out a sigh of disapproval. “I daresay he shouldn’t be using his cell phone while driving at any rate. Isn’t that dangerous?”

Mr. Collingsworth shrugged, checking the time again. “I do hope he knows where we’re going,” he said. “The concert starts in ten minutes.”

Bradley continued to babble into the phone for another few moments before disconnecting and tossing the device back on to the passenger seat. Just as the cell phone hit the leather, Bradley yanked the steering wheel to the left, and the entire car went careening down a side street that Mr. Collingsworth didn’t recognize.

“Hang on now, boy, where are you taking us?” Mr. Collingsworth exclaimed.

“Oh, it is no problem,” the chauffeur replied. “Bradley has been practicing. He is a good driver. He will get you to the concert on time.”

“Bradley, my boy, I do believe that the concert hall is that way,” Mr. Collingsworth pointed out.

“Oh, no, Mr. Collingsworth is mistaken,” Bradley assured him. “You want to go this way.”

“Ah… very well.”  Mr. Collingsworth had always been adverse to arguing, and was not about to start now.  Give it one more minute, though, and he’d show this young man to respect his elde – 

Car wheels screeched as Bradley slammed on the brakes, coming to a stop in the middle of a back alley.  Bradley hopped out of the car, leaving Mr. Collingsworth and Mrs. Collingsworth in confusion. The young man quickly disappeared down the street into the shadows of the nearby buildings.

“Hey, now, where are you going?” shouted Mr. Collingsworth quite uselessly into the night. “Come back here, boy!”

Mrs. Collingsworth opened her door and stepped out on to the snow covered concrete, her breath visible in the frigid air. She crossed her arms and glared at Mr. Collingsworth. One of her pincurls had come undone near her right eye, but she was so incensed that she didn’t even realize it.

“That boy is mad!” the woman exclaimed. “This is exactly what happened last time!”

Mr. Collingsworth, who was at the time already halfway down the alley, still screaming obscenities, turned back, defeated, to his wife. “I wouldn’t say this is exactly how it happened last time,” he pointed out, then trailed off. He found that he couldn’t actually remember how it had happened last time, only that both he and Mrs. Collingsworth had agreed that Bradley was the simply worst chauffeur they had ever had the fortune of meeting.

Mr. and Mrs. Collingsworth were rather at a loss. They were not dressed to trudge through the snow, and Mrs. Collingsworth certainly was not willing to walk anywhere in her three-inch heels. Instead, they stood at an impasse, equal parts mad at each other and at themselves. Mr. Collingsworth pulled out his pocketwatch one last time. “Well, we’re officially late for the concert,” he remarked. He looked at the sky, as if he would suddenly have a brilliant idea about how to save their evening.

“Say,” said Mrs. Collingsworth after a moment. “Do you notice a strange smell?”

“Yes, in fact, I do,” remarked Mr. Collingsworth. “It smells faintly of…”

“Eggs and bacon,” Mrs. Collingsworth finished.

“Yes,” Mr. Collingsworth agreed. “I don’t know why, but it seems strangely fitting, doesn’t it?”

“Quite.”

The smell seemed to be emanating from somewhere above Mr. and Mrs. Collingsworth’s heads. Mrs. Collingsworth looked up, to try to spot the source of the smell, only to notice a change in the gently fallen snow. The flakes, which had once glinted white and silver, now seemed to be a strange orange color.

“How bizarre,” Mr. Collingsworth remarked.

“Indeed,” said Mrs. Collingsworth. The aroma of breakfast foods and strange orange snow seemed to have a strange effect on the woman, and she felt herself getting drowsy. In a moment, she swayed on her feet and without warning, tumbled backwards into the snow. A thump to her right meant that Mr. Collingsworth had done the same.

The night sky above Mrs. Collingsworth changed from a dark, impenetrable black to a lighter, metallic grey, and just before Mrs. Collingsworth eyes’ closed, several figures bent into her field of view. She thought she recognized one of them – he looked strangely like a young man in a chauffeur’s cap, only his eyes were much larger than the average persons’. He looked at Mrs. Collingsworth and turned to his comrades.

“Flabberhoggencast,” he said. “Earthlings.”

P.S. It was Ninjas - by Nikachan

A breeze stirred the lightly falling snowflakes into a whirlwind.  Tokimimotaku watched as it swirled past her. One snowflake almost went into the ninja’s eye as she perched, invisible, in a tree.  But she batted it away with silent precision.  She focused, and then glanced up at her partner.

Mekurukito looked back at Tokimi, and his eyes, the only visible part of his body asked her,  are you ready?

I was born ready, Tokimi replied, and then they leapt.  Silent as the wind, and quicker than the swirling snow they used as camouflage, they sliced through the air.  One swipe, than another, Merkuru went first, and Tokimi mirrored his movement from the other side.   As they alternated, all any onlookers could see was that the wind seemed to be cutting right into the snow bank, making it smaller and smaller.

Their rhythm was only interrupted once, as a little 4-wheel drive utility vehicle drove past down the alley-way.  An onlooker would have been impressed with the little thing, for it seemed to move twice as much snow as it went by then one would have expected.

There was no source, and no explanation.  Tokimi loved the rush she got from being a ninja. Jumping, hiding, sneaking, silent, but she liked the invisible part the very best.  The possibilities were literally endless, and with Mekuru by her side, they doubled that.

But most of the time, the two of them just looked for different ways to have fun.  This whole game of slicing through the snow bank, was really just a snowball fight.  The challenge was that snowballs could only be made from snow in the snowbank.  It would be too easy for either of them to cheat, so they just didn’t.  That was a game for another day.

The snow drift at the bottom of the alley had half vanished in minutes. Both parties were darting fast.  Usually Mekuru got the first shot, but Tokimi was quicker that day. It soon became all-out war, which was perfectly acceptable, as long as it remained silent and invisible.  It began snowing more heavily, and soon another vehicle was coming down the hill.  This one was smaller, and lower to the ground. Tokimi also noticed that it did not have winter tires yet.   The car didn’t slip or anything, that was just the sort of thing that a ninja could notice.

Unlike the previous vehicle though, this one did not sail through the bank.  It got stuck.

Finally, a real challenge! Tokimi thought as she glanced next to her at Mekuru.  He winked.  Then they leapt, as synchronized as back up dancers, towards the car.  It really felt like dancing sometimes, Tokimi thought as she sliced through the air and snow around the car, completely unseen by those inside.

The car, white as the snow, suddenly lurched forward; its passengers called it a miracle.  One even claimed that only the help of the supernatural could have freed the car.  The other two agreed, but only on that one idea. For from then on, until the end of the drive, the debate raged between the passengers whether it had really been ninjas, or if it had in fact been wizards who had provided the miraculous help.

Mekuru’s eyes were laughing as two snowballs acutally collided in midair, right before a second one thrown by his adversary hit the side of his face, jarring his mask. Tokimi thought she had the upper hand when he feigned left and throw it right.  The missile hit her square in the chest. He winked and disappeared.

She followed him back to the house and there he presented her with a fresh cup of hot chocolate.

“How did you…?” she said out loud

“I’m a ninja” 

And the girls in the car never knew, the debate continued endlessly.  P.S. It was ninjas.

Chelsea the Sixteen-Year-Old High School Student, by Sasha

“What’s in that bag, and why are you hiding it here?” 

“That’s not important.”

“Danny, you can’t just show up at my door and expect me to cover up for you. My parents are going to be home soon and they’ll figure it out eventually.”

“Please, just for the night – I’ll pick it up in the morning.”

“I can’t let you – hey, who said you could come in with that thing?”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Can’t you at least tell me what it is?”

“No!”

“Oh – it’s drugs, isn’t it?”

“Of course not!”

“Don’t lie to me, Danny, I’ve seen Glee. I know what’s up.”

“I don’t –”

“I saw you at Kathy’s party.”

“That was one time… besides, I wouldn’t hide drugs in my girlfriend’s house!”

“Oh, but you’d hide that? Whatever it is?”

“Yes! This is different. This is –”

“I don’t care what it is, Danny, I want it out.”

“Do you think there’d be somewhere to hide it in the basement?”

“I don’t think – ugh, what’s that smell? Is it coming from that?”

“No! …Yes, okay, it is, but it’s not what you think –”

“Did you just bring a body into my house?!”

“No –”

“I knew you were mixed up with some crazy stuff, but I didn’t think – are you in some kind of gang?”

“Seriously, a gang? That’s what you think? Don’t you trust me?”

“You’re trying to hide a dead body in my parent’s basement!”

“It’s not – it’s not the whole body…”

“SO IT IS A BODY! What the heck, Danny, what were you thinking?”

“It wasn’t my fault!”

“Then why did you pick it up? I knew you were stupid, but I didn’t think you were this stupid.”

“We couldn’t let the cops see it.”

“That’s their job!”

“This is different –”

“No it’s – okay, if you’re going to hide it in the pantry, at least put it back behind the rotten stuff so it’ll mask the smell.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“Seriously, you can’t even hide a body properly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You failed Mrs. Norton’s English class because you spelled your name wrong on an essay twice.”

“I still don’t get how I can fail English when I can obviously speak it.”

“That’s not the point. The body!”

“Oh yeah – so you’ll keep it here?”

“No! Ugh… We’ve both seen it now, we’re both in trouble if the cops find out. So fine, yes. But you better tell me what’s going on.”

“Yes! You’re the best, Chels.”

“What are girlfriends for?”

“I couldn’t have done it without you. Anyway, gotta go.”

“You gotta go?”

“Yeah, I’ve still got some stuff to do!”

“So you just came here to drop the body and leave?”

“Yeah, thanks so much! I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You so will not see me in the morning you – are you seriously leaving right now?”

“See you later, Chels!”

“If you walk out that door, I swear I’ll –”

“Bye!”

“You –! …Ugh, what a waste. I am so dumping him for Brad tomorrow.”

Magic Cow - Grievances by Lenitschka

Dear BA in English Graduate,

Farms are not very interesting places. I have no idea why it’s been decided that so many epics should start here. I could easily provide the same services in a palace, or perhaps in a grand hotel, but NOOOO, epics begin with simple homespun farm kids to make them more, well, for lack of a better word, more epic, and so I have waited here.

You should also know that barns are horribly drafty places. There really is no where suitable to get a full eight hours of sleep, which makes me cranky and ineffective in my work. Straw doesn’t really taste that good. It disagrees with me, and then there’s the noise! The sheep are the worst. Do they ever shut up? Well, as someone who has spent more than one night trying to get their beauty sleep in the next pen, let me tell you. They. Never. Stop. Ba-ing.

This whole producing milk thing isn’t that comfortable either. I’d say more on the matter, but I don’t think it would suit polite company.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I love my role. I like that heroes come to me with trust in their eyes before they leave their simple farms in forgotten little mountain towns and disappear into the forest with  parcels tied to sticks and naïve smiles on their faces. I like that they misinterpret how to use my magical powers and get into further scrapes, and I simply love it when I get to be the lynch pin and bring down my good friends Giant or Hairy Beast. They have good stories and sometimes even smash this infernal barn, but I am not a happy bovine. I am trapped between two worlds. I must both be simple to suit the farm world and ethereal to suit the mystical world.

How does one act ethereal with droopy eyes? I never have been able to figure it out. Also, how does one stay in a positive professional relationship with chickens? Having superpowers is much less cool when you are large, slow, have dopey eyes, and sound like a zombie when you try and say hello.

It is for these reasons I think you should reconsider my application to transfer from Magical Cow to Magical Chihuahua. I understand that dragon is out of the question. Not enough heroes keep them as pets, but the amenities of a lap dog would be much more to my taste.

Thank you for your consideration. I love forward to meeting you in person so we can further discuss how to make my position more suitable.

Sincerely,

Magic Cow

A Night at the Opera, by Dima

A story that has nothing whatsoever to do with the opera.

I hate olives.

I really hate olives.

I don’t hate how they taste.  They are delicious.  They are wonderfully tart but not over sour and they are juicy and finishing off a meal with a few green olives in like chugging down Gatorade after scoring the winning goal.  But now I can’t stand the sight of them- my breath catches and my throat tightens and my head hurts- and so I haven’t eaten one in years.

I blame Jamie for this.  Jamie is beautiful.  She was always a beautiful girl, and I always liked her.  When I first saw her across Mrs. Merle’s classroom in the first grade, she had mousy features and messy brown hair that fell over everything and she sometimes wore those green-rimmed glasses that I thought were so cool and I thought, oh, wow, she is really cute, she also looks nice, she’s probably a little shy but that’s okay because I can talk for both of us if we were friends, but I’m also really nice to other kids so I will make sure she gets to talk when she wants to talk, and maybe we’ll be friends for the whole year,  and then within a few seconds I already had this great story in mind about how we would be really close friends all throughout school who would share secrets with each other and secretly long to be dating the other but not at the same time so it would never work out, and then we’d go off to college together- I’m not really sure I understood what college was, but anyway- we’d go off to college and just naturally start dating and maybe one day we would even be married and everyone would think oh, that’s really sweet and that’s just perfect because they know each other so well, and they aren’t even too young for it, because it’s not like they’re in their teens anymore, and they’ve known each other so long that it’s like it’s overdue.  And then every time after I’d come up with this story and I’d see Jamie my breath would catch and my throat would tighten and my head would hurt, but not in the way like when I see olives, because I hate olives and want to get away, but it would hurt like I really just was too far away from something I needed but that was happy because it was the kind of hurt that you like and you know that it’s the kind that has a beautiful ending.

Jamie is beautiful.  She turned from a mousy type into a boyish active girl, and she cut her hair short, and I thought that was so cute.  And even today she is beautiful and she still sometimes wears those green-rimmed glasses that I think are so cool and she has brown hair that perfectly frames her face and her face is like movie-star perfect except that Angelina Jolie has misshapen features and Jamie is, like, legit beautiful.  Because she looks happy.

When I was in middle school, Jamie had long and kind of curly hair and her eyes were a little more blue than green, and we were really good friends.  I sat next to her in English Language-Arts and I was kind of fat and probably really awkward and everyone liked to pick on me and call out in the middle of class that I was gay or that I had farted and I didn’t know why they were saying this, but I figured the best thing to do was to laugh at it and try and be cool about it so I’d laugh and act as though it was some sort of inside joke and sit tall and hope that everyone else in the class would think that Chad and I were buddies and then I’d try to quickly look at Jamie and she would laugh with me and she was beautiful.  And I would try to make sarcastic comments if anyone got too mean so that, even if I wasn’t very good looking or popular, I could at least win people over with my brain because I was witty, and I don’t know if that’s why, but I guess Jamie liked me and we would talk all the time before class and after class and sometimes in the middle but Miss Hodgeson would usually overlook that because we were normally some of the better-behaved kids and so Jamie and I would talk and she was beautiful.

Jamie was probably the one friend I had in middle school.  If I had others, other than maybe Drew, I don’t remember them, and Drew doesn’t count because he decided in November of the seventh grade that I wasn’t cool enough for him and so he started to hang out with Chad they played soccer together during the second lunch bell and when I tried to talk to him he would pretend I wasn’t there.  Jamie and I would hang out during break, though, and it didn’t occur to me then, but now I realize that it was, like, every single day that we would hang out and she didn’t really talk to other girls and now I think that’s really unique and beautiful.  I knew that she liked me, because we were friends, but I didn’t ever think that she like liked me, because I knew that people just didn’t like like me, because I wasn’t cool.  But I really liked our friendship and I was okay with whatever happened because in the back of my head there was that story and it didn’t matter where we went because all roads lead to Rome and college and dating was Rome.

“Jake!”  That was the first thing she’d called out to me on that one day.  It was lunch time and she hadn’t been in any of the morning classes.

“Hello, m’lady!” I called back, and she looked down and laughed and she was beautiful.

“Good sir!” she said, in a really terrible British accent once she’d finished laughing, “Careth thee to eat with this female individual whilst we lunchest?”  I guess that’s what she thought knights and maidens and medieval people talked like.

“Yes!  Yes...eth...  Yea!” I finished, and she laughed and she came up to me and she pushed me into a locker and I laughed but inside I was afraid because I wasn’t sure if she was mad at me because that was just the world I lived in, and it was just what happened if one day someone was your friend and the next day he wasn’t, and now that I’m older I can’t believe that I just accepted that was normal but I guess I thought that was normal.  But I laughed and she laughed again and we headed out the doors by the art room that smelled like soapstone dust and we sat right outside the doors at the edge of the field just like we always did.  We opened our lunches.

“So...” she intoned, prying the lid off the slice-of-bread-shaped Tupperware container she had every day, “what’d’ya get for lunch?”  I pulled my sandwich out of my plastic bag and tried to un-smush it and get it out of the sandwich bag.  I tried to hide it from her view because why couldn’t my mom just buy sandwich containers like everyone else’s mom and put fruit-by-the-foot in my lunch?

“Peanut Butter and Pickle” I answered.  Jamie crinkled her nose.

“That’s gross.”  I was immediately angry.

“It’s delicious.  Have you ever tried it?”

“No.  ‘Cause I know it’s gross.”

“Do you like peanut butter?”

“Yes...”

“Do you like pickles?”

“Yeah.  Not sweet ones.  Just dill.”

“Yeah, you only use dill pickles.  Pokey Ogorkee are the best.  No name baby dills are good if you prefer juiciness over crunchiness.”  I tried to say this like I was a pickle connoisseur and I wanted this to make Jamie think I was right because I was smart but instead she laughed and pretended to be impressed and that also made be happy because I just want to know people don’t think I’m dumb.

“Oh, wow.  You should be a pickle maker.  And own a pickle factory.  And sell luxury pickles to the prime minister.”  We laughed and that story popped up in the back of my head and so I forced myself to laugh louder and carefreer than I normally would have.

“Yeah.  I’m kind of an expert.  So, anyway, if you like both, you’ll definitely like it.”

“Like what?”

“Peanut Butter and Pickle sandwiches, you tard!”  I was trying to be angry but funny angry where no one could be angry at you for being angry.  But I don’t know how well I did that.

“Oh,” Jamie said, and then bit into her sandwich.  She didn’t say anything, and I felt like it was her turn to talk, and so I couldn’t say anything, and now I really was angry.

“If... my... what is your sandwich?” I finally asked.

“Huh?”

“What kind of sandwich do you have?”

“Mmmmmmmcream cheese and olives,” she took a bite and chewed a bit and then gave me a goofy smile where her mouth was kind of open so I could see the green and white gunk and bit fell out of her mouth and she was beautiful.

“Oh.  Olives.”

“Yeah.  I have olives.  AAAAAaaahLAVHS.”  She smiled a little and chewed really loud for a few seconds.  “Do you like olives?”

“Ha ha.  Yes.  I love olives.”

“AAAAAAhlevs,” she said again, “want some?”  She held up her lily white-bread meal.

“Yeah.  Okay.  Thanks.”  I leaned in to take a bite but she pulled it away and then moved her head in front of mine and opened her mouth and said, “AAAAAH!  Hab sum!  Hahahahaha!”  And I was like, “Hahahahahahaha” and a little more of the gunk fell out of her mouth and we laughed really loud and then she picked the gunk up and tried to throw it in my mouth but it hit my cheek and bounced into the dirt but I was still grossed out that she would try to do that and so I picked up the dirty gunk ball and tried to put it in her mouth and her eyes widened with surprise and then narrowed in anger and she hit me.  And I didn’t know what to do so I laughed and then she finally laughed, too, and  I was glad she wasn’t really mad at me or at least that’s what it seemed.

“Fine,” she said in mock bitterness, “you can’t have any.”

“I don’t really like olives anyway.”  That was a lie.  But Jamie looked disappointed.

“Oh.”  A pause.  “But they’re magic words!” she said quietly.

“Olives aren’t words.  They’re vegetables.  Oh, actually, no, they’re fruits.”

“Yes, they’re words.  That’s why I wanted to give you some.  Because they’re magic words for you.”

“O...kay.”  I shrugged and just as I was doing that she sort of hopped in place, but she was still sitting, and then she was sort of sitting right before me and we were facing the same way.  I turned to look at her and she was looking at me.

“Do you want me to say the magic words?” she said quietly.

“What do the magic words do?” I choked out hesitantly.  When we were both sitting right beside each other but with both of our heads pointing toward each other our noses seemed really uncomfortably too close and I could see right into her eyes and there was a lot of green and I didn’t think they were that beautiful and I thought that was really odd that I should think that.  But, anyway, I couldn’t just look at her, so I turned my head back to look at the brown brick wall of the school and it was even odder that we would talk to each other without looking at each other but it seemed like the only thing to do but now it really did seem odd because Jamie didn’t turn her head, too.  She was just talking at my ear, now, and I could feel her breath on my cheek.

“Do you want to see?” she said even more quietly.  I hate it when people talk quietly to try to force you to be quiet, too.

“What do they do?” I said in a louder than necessary voice.

“They make me and you really happy.”  Another pause.

“Okay,” I said, quietly, and I hated myself for it, “say them.”  Jamie smiled- or at least, I thought she smiled, because her breath stopped on my cheek and I felt it burst out her nose- and then scooted and little closer and when she settled into place she put her hands down and she put her hand down so that two of her fingers crossed over two mine and my whole mind went blank and I didn’t know what to do because that just wasn’t what our hands did.

Jamie leaned closer – how was that possible - , pushing down on my hand, and it kind of hurt, but I didn’t really notice that it kind of hurt because my mind was still blank, and she said, “Okay.”  I turned to look at her and her face was too close and it seemed my whole field of view was just her thin lips with a speck of white bread perched under her nose.  But I wasn’t really thinking about the speck of bread or her lips or the unusually small distance between us.  I wasn’t really thinking.  I was just on “record” so that I could play it back later and think about it when my mind decided to come back.

And that’s when, in my memories, I wasn’t watching Jamie anymore, but I was standing in front of the both of us, watching the both of us.  I wasn’t really doing anything.  I was just sitting with my sandwich all squished up in my hand.  Jamie was starting to smile kind of nervously and then she pulled her hair behind an ear and then sort of frowned and she moved her head to whisper into my ear.

“Olive... you,” she whispered, and then she drew her head back quickly to look at my face, her eyes searching everywhere for some reaction.

“What?” I said, and I cocked my head to one side and furrowed my brow, but that wasn’t really in response to what she’d just said.  I’d just left my body on autopilot until I came back.  Jamie’s frown deepened, but her eyes grew very wide, unblinking.

“Olive you,” she repeated, and I didn’t respond, “Aaaahluhv you.”

We just sat there, staring at each other.  And then she came close again, this time resting her chin on my shoulder.

“I love you.”

And that’s when I was back, sitting there, her head on my shoulder, and I was thinking now, but I was thinking how odd it was that everything had gone quiet and there were no yells from the soccer field and the nest-building birds had taken oaths of silence and there wasn’t even wind and the whole world was waiting on this one moment, waiting for me to do something.

“Jamie,” I said, and that was it.  That was all I said.  And then, as we sat there, she reached across me to put her hand on my other shoulder and pulled herself in and pulled her lips toward mine.

And that was when the sound exploded back into the world and everything was commotion, and suddenly my breath caught and my throat tightened and my head hurt.  I pushed Jamie away with one arm, and that was the arm I was leaning on, and so I fell back, and she fell back.

I quickly jumped up, and Jamie and I locked eyes for one brief moment.  And then I ran away, and I never looked back.  She was calling, but I didn’t look.

The next day, Jamie wasn’t at school.  And when she was back at school, a day after that, we didn’t talk for the next week.  And that... was the end.  We didn’t eat lunch together anymore.  And every time I think back and remember Jamie and remember middle school and the friend I had and I remember that now I’m in college, I think stupid, stupid, stupid because it all could have been different and I could have done something better and she was so beautiful.

A musical gift for those of you who made it to the end: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtIfld84Ydw