• She waited.

    She waited for him every day, though she didn’t know why.

    It was perhaps a strange fascination; for every morning she waited, drunk with anticipation.
    Maybe that’s why she was late for school all the time.
    She didn’t know his name, or his age. She knew he still went to school though, because he always wore a backpack on his back and a blank expression on his face.

    His face.


    She didn’t really know what it looked like. She tried to recall a picture; she had caught a glimpse of it once, half shadowed with sleep and the hazy morning light. But all she could come up with was a fuzzy image of his profile: the brown, average length hair, the definite outline of his nose, his straight, neutral mouth. He was just an average kid.

    Bu he was more than that to her.
    She looked at the clock; it was almost time.

    And she waited.

    The sounds of the morning provided a sort of bizarre background music, seemingly appropriate provided the somewhat unusual circumstances. It was sort of like listening to a restaurant kitchen closing up at night, or the wheezing groans of an organ grinder. Or even perhaps it was like the sounds of a carnival at dusk. Blurred, almost indistinguishable, but certainly there...

    She was suddenly jolted out of her whimsical rumination by the peripheral view of a figure approaching down the blocked. She rubbed away the condensation that had collected on the glass of the storm door as a result of her pensive breathing and looked out, squinting to get a better look.

    There he was. It was him, her weatherman. The timepiece.

    She felt a thrill of excitement run through her. As he passed the invisible boundary marked by a three-by-three sidewalk cement square, she could make out his familiar profile, his backpack…and a light windbreaker jacket.

    Ah, so it would be chilly this morning.

    Another moment passed by, and he was gone.

    The spell was broken; the movie-camera lens that had been the storm door returned to its ordinary, inanimate glass and metal state.

    She checked the clock once more. 7:30 am, right on time.
    She smiled to herself, grabbing a jacket and her own backpack and ran, knowing she’d be late. No matter though, she would wait for him again tomorrow.

    This morning’s game was over.