FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #8

'I wouldn't do that if I were you,' she told me the first time we met. But I was too young and foolish to listen at the time.  Besides what fifth grader would listen to a girl with red hair, freckles and scabs on each boney knee who could barely be in the second grade?  Despite her warning I made my way across the school yard to stand face to face with him.  He was holding my brown, orange and blue polka dotted metal lunch box in one hand and using the other to lean up against the tetherball pole. 

“I don’t think you understand. That is my lunch box and my tetherball quart.”  I could barely believe the conviction that came from my own mouth as I spoke the words, but I knew I was right.  I tried to make myself as tall as I could and scrunch my eyes together like I had seen people do in the movies when they were mad and trying to look tough.  I even tossed my left pigtail over my shoulder.

“Is that so?  Was that also your bologna sandwich and your chocolate pudding?” The words floated from his lips.  I hated him but at the same time I felt a strange attraction towards the boy.

“You’re a jerk!” I screamed.  My words seemed to echo across the school yard.  You’re a jerk?  Is that the best I could come up with?  He let go of the pole and walked toward me.  My heart was the only thing that didn’t seem to slow down in that moment.  He leaned down to look me in the eye.  I looked straight back into his amber eyes.  He kept leaning closer and closer towards me until our noses almost touched.

“Would a jerk do this?”  He said as he leaned in even closer and kissed me.  I turned as red as the girl’s hair with freckles and scabbed knees.  The kiss only lasted a second and took me by complete surprise.  I heard a few giggles coming from behind me.  As he leaned away from me I took a deep breath made a fist and punched him square on the face.  He immediately dropped my lunch box.  I grabbed it before he could and ran.  Shrieks came from the other girls in the school yard, I looked back and there he was running after me.  He was gaining on me.  I looked back at him once again; he smiled at me and winked. I dropped my lunch box hoping to pick up some speed.  As I turned to look where I was going I ran right into the principal who witnessed the whole thing.  He grabbed me by the collar and walked me inside. 

I sat in shame in the chair outside his office while he spoke to my mother on the phone.  He left the door slightly open so I could hear the anger and disappointment in his voice.  The bell rang and my fellow classmates began running through the halls.  The girl with scabs on her knees walked up to me holding my lunch box which now had two dents on one side.  She handed it to me and said, “My brother says he’s sorry.”

I handed it back to her, “tell him he can keep it.” 

That was fifteen years ago.  I had nearly forgotten about this story as they had to move away at the end of the school year and I never heard from them again.  That was until this afternoon; when I arrived home from work there was a package sitting on my porch. Inside the package was my brown, orange and blue polka dotted lunch box and inside the lunch box was a note that said, “I.O.U. one bologna sandwich and one chocolate pudding, but would dinner do?”  His number was on the back of the piece of paper.  His sister’s words filled my head, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” but hell I’m still young and foolish.  I picked up my cell phone and dialed the number.

back to Contest #8