The Terror at Blessed Saviour

Tags

It was an honest mistake that I walked into the washroom at our school’s basement after four o’clock and witnessed Nina Halliday throwing shreds of toilet paper into the air. Nina is called The Terror at our school. I think the sisters started it. No one likes her very much because she picks on everone, and the sisters, too. Seeing her as she watched little bits of paper floating down so harmlessly was very strange and it caught me off-guard. There’s a small window near the washroom ceiling. As the shreds fell, the tiny amount of sunlight that made its way inside turned them into bright little insects as they hovered lazily in the stale basement air.

She caught me looking, because I couldn’t sneak away fast enough. She swore at me and made me cry. Then she made me swear not to tell anyone, or else. And I said I wouldn’t, but I’m angry at her because I thought she’d just leave me alone after that, and she didn’t. My parents were angry at me today when I brought home my textbook which was all soaking wet and my notebook which was soggy and all ripped up. When they yelled at me to explain myself, I was too scared to say anything.

Damn Girl

Tags

Met up with a friend last week over coffee. Although he’s usually very neat about how he looks, his appearance that day shocked me. There was week-old stubble all over his chin, his nails were cut jaggedly, there were paper cuts all over his hands, and his eyelids were baggy and dark, as though he hadn’t slept in days. I asked him if there was anything wrong. This is the story he told me:

Continue reading

Bookworm’s Romance

Tags

I remember when I was younger, there were these kinds of love stories – fantasies, of course: a girl borrows a book from the library and sees a boy’s name on the library slip. She then vows to find the owner of the name who reads the same books as her. When she does, they fall in love. Even better, the boy had also been searching for her through the library slips. When they meet, they fall in love. It’s a happy ending.

The library has long since switched to a computerized system to keep track of the movement of books. Only the computer can find the names of boys and girls who have read some particular books. It’s not so interested in playing matchmaker to them, for obvious reasons.

So, I decided to stick notes in the books I read before returning them to the library. It was an experiment, in some ways. I did that a few times. A month later, I checked back on the books I had left notes in, to see if I had received a note back. In every one of them, my own note was still inside, untouched.

Working Man

Tags

,

My friend Chris claims that he loves his life. “Seriously, my life’s been great,” he told me when we met for his usual birthday party celebration among old high school friends – himself and me – together over a lunch or something between hours. As his sworn “study-buddy” all through five years of college and both still unmarried, the two of us are pretty close. Everyone else seemed to have drifted off somewhere and gotten married, leaving just the two of us geezers to contemplate life at the age of thirty-two.

“You say that,” I replied, “but you haven’t told me the ‘why?’ yet.” He nodded then, with that characteristic quick, cocky upwards tilt of his.

Continue reading

Blue-Eyed Boy

Tags

, ,

That lady named Diana who lived down the road from me picked up a new companion some day when I wasn’t paying attention. I should probably explain something first: Diana was at least forty-something, single, unhindered by Life. Which is to say, she was still beautiful at her age. In other words, she’s good at turning heads. In some ways, that’s how I came to know her.

Continue reading

The Wonderful Television

Tags

,

Thank God for the television. That it exists, such an appliance, which gives purpose and meaning of life to those who use it regularly!

It is just such a device that showed me a happy Ellie last Friday, on the first day I’ve seen her since high school. She was wearing a purple polo shirt. Her usual shoulder-length black hair with bangs that had not changed for years was tied up in a purple elastic. She also wore jeans and white runners. Glancing down at my own shoes, I wondered when I stopped wearing those things.

Continue reading