Not The Place It Used To Be

What came next? Nothing particular exciting for you, maybe, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday I sat at our table, just her and I. It was lucky too, all the other groups had at least five members, and here it was only her and I. Her and I. We actually finished all our stuff weeks early, so we just sat around in class and she would show me stuff on her laptop while I played a silly game on mine to beat her score. We had an earthquake drill, and had to get under our table. We sat there, and she looked me in the eyes in a way she never looked at anyone else for the entire time I’ve known her.

October came on in a big way. She invited me and others in the class to come help carve one hundred pumpkins at her house. I volunteered, and she asked for my number so that she could let me know the details and everything. I couldn’t wait.

I wish I had never signed up for that. Never answered her hail, or gotten that ride from her dad to her house, never stayed to carve all the pumpkins, just her and I carving most of them.

The next couple of days, I was in the schools annual Halloween parade as some stupid costume I put together. My real costume was in my bag. A few friends collected me afterwards, I grabbed my costume and we all drove to a party, that Halloween night. The night went on, we ate, we laughed, I acted silly and all the time, I was thinking about her. After the pumpkin thing, I texted her again asking what was up, small talk and all that. We hadn’t talked much, but we were definitely more than acquaintances even before the pumpkin carving.