"The Boy and the Girl, Part III" by Will Wright

            The 3:05 bell rang marking the end of the school day.  3000 students rushed out of their classrooms and to their lockers, then out to their cars and off to do whatever it is they do.  The boy couldn’t rush out to his storage unit.  He had detention.  He had been late for 5 classes that day.  That meant 5 demerits.  That meant a half hour detention.  The boy had never received a single demerit, let alone a detention.  What was wrong with him?  Harri.  That was the explanation.  Every passing period he would stand by his locker and wait for Harri to walk by again. He would stare intensely into the flood of students flowing by his storage unit.  He would examine every face, searching, always searching for his true love. He never saw her. He waited until the bell rang to even start to go to class.  That made him late. Very late.  Now he had detention.  He had to hurry to his locker and to the detention room, if he was late to detention, it would be doubled. The boy walked into his prison cell and sat down at one of the desks with graffiti all over it.  The boy began to draw on the desk as well.  He drew Harri.  The boy was no artist, much like he was no ladies’ man; except he was less of a ladies’ man then he was an artist.

            “No drawing on the desks!  Double detention for you!”

            Harri was causing the boy more trouble than she was worth.  But then again, she was worth it.

            The minutes ticked by as slowly as an old lady crossing the street.  (Have you ever experienced that before?  When there’s this really slow old lady crossing the street and your light is green but you can’t go because she’s right in front of her.  It’s the worst when you have to go to the bathroom really bad and she stops to pick a quarter on the street.  I hate it when that happens.) All the boy did was stare straight ahead and think about Harri.  He thought about the first time he saw her; the only time he saw her.  He thought about how he had never seen her before.  He thought about how he was going to find her again.  He thought about what he was going to say to her when their second meeting became a reality.  But most of all, he thought about her voice.  The sweet, angelic voice that asked him what his name was.  The voice that started a conversation with him.  It was like she had been singing to him, that’s how sweet the voice was.  He was almost positive that she wasn’t singing to him. He thought he would remember something like that.  Maybe she was singing to him.  After all, the whole thing happened so fast and he was in a blur for most if not all of it. 

            What was he talking about?  Of course she wasn’t singing.  It just seemed like she was singing. 

            The girl rushed to her locker and quickly grabbed her backpack and hastily threw some books into it.  She was as fast as a…as fast as a…um…[insert simile here]  She slammed her storage unit shut and nearly sprinted down the hallway.  She didn’t want to miss Logic.  She wanted to talk to him some more.  She liked him.  She wanted to learn his actual name and tell him her last name.  She might even consider giving him her phone number.  She thought that they could really go somewhere.  This was a rather curious thought, since they had spoken for a total of one minute, if that.  She just had a feeling.  She had been thinking about him all day, she was late to four classes because her mind was wondering.  One more demerit and she would have had a detention.  She went to where she thought his locker might be.  He wasn’t there.  She searched the entire hallway.  He was nowhere to be found.  Maybe he doesn’t like me.  I’m being stupid.  Of course he doesn’t like me.  I probably scared him. What am I doing? Indeed.  What was she doing? Harri started to cry.  The tears flowed down her cheeks like the students flow through the hallway.  She gloomily walked through the gloomy, empty hallways.  The gloom enveloped her, addressed her, and put a stamp on her. Then it put her into a mailbox and sent her off to Kansas City.  That was a joke.  The gloom didn’t send her to Kansas City.  What it did do was lead her to the detention room…

            The boy watched the clock with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.  He wasn’t sure what he would do when he got out of detention.  He was thinking about just waiting by the entrance of the school all night and being right there when Harri came to school the next morning.  I think I’ll just wait be the entrance of the school all night and be right there when Harri comes to school tomorrow morning.  Like I said, the boy wasn’t much of a ladies man. The clock struck 4:10 pm.  An hour of detention had been served.  Now, the boy got up, walked out of the room and immediately saw Harri, on sitting on the ground, crying.

            “Hey, Harri.”

            “Hi.” Harri smiled.