Who Would Have Thought?

Who Would Have Thought?
June
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. That’s all I found as I groped in my pocket for money, standing at the cool, black restaurant counter. My food rang up on the register as seven bucks and three cents and all I had was this. I was too young to have a credit card, or to use one, and I had somehow managed to lose the other ten bucks I had been carrying… oh yeah. I lent it to my friend to buy something yesterday, and this was the change. What had I thought I could buy with only the change? I didn’t want to hear the lecture about money management, which my mom had essentially drilled into my head, for the thousandth time. The cashier, who was tall, thin, and wearing a lot of eyeliner, started looking at me impatiently. Maybe she thought I was being parsimonious. I just wasn’t sure what to do.
*****
Shannon
A teenaged girl, probably about sixteen, stood before me, wearing faded blue jeans and a navy blue hoody. Her dirty blond hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, and it draped down behind her like a curtain. Her confident expression faltered as she searched her pockets for money and found very little. I drummed my fingers on the cash register, watching each shiny red painted nail hit with a satisfactory thud. Her food sat on the counter, getting continuously colder. She glanced up, an apologetic, nervous look on her face. I shifted from one leg to the other, then back again, waiting.
“Are you gonna pay?” I finally asked.
She looked up again, and then continued pulling copious numbers of pennies from her pocket.
“I sure hope so.”
*****
Danny
I went out to lunch with Mommy the other day. She got us food, and let me play with her smooth, tan wallet, as long as I didn’t spill the coins on the floor. Mommy had lots of money in her wallet, with endless numbers of silvery, shiny coins, each like a little moon, and crisp, greenish dollar bills. I stuck a few coins in my pocket, ‘cause Mommy said I could. I felt like a big grown-up.
While we were eating, there was a girl who couldn’t find enough money to give the food lady. The food she was going to buy looked very yummy, and she looked very sad. I thought that maybe she would be happier if I gave her the coins that I had in my pocket. I told Mommy that I was gonna walk around, and, pretending that I was a knight, galloped up to the girl on my invisible horse. Up close, she looked very tall, almost as tall as Mommy.
I tapped her on the leg, said, “Here you go,” and handed her four very shiny quarters. She looked down nicely and said softly, “Thank you, little boy, but I can’t take your money. Why don’t you keep it?” I shrugged, shoved the quarters back in my pocket, and galloped away.
*****


Samantha
I was in the middle of my second meeting of the day when my phone started vibrating. I flipped it open, closed it, and then put it on silent. The meeting finished about ten minutes later, and by then I had sixteen missed calls, all from my daughter. I called June back.
“Hello?”
“Hi, June, it’s Mom.”
“Oh thank goodness! I’m at that restaurant downtown and I only have a buck eighty-seven. Can you come help me out?”
“Honey, I’m at work, and I have yet another meeting in about fifteen minutes for this big project the company’s doing. I can’t go running all around town.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Well… here, this is what I would do. Find someone at one of the other tables who seems like someone you would be comfortable talking to, ask if you can borrow some money, and write down their contact information. We’ll pay them back.”
“Um… ok… I guess.”
*****
Terri
The girl approached my table where I was eating lunch on my own. She seemed unsure as to which table to go up to, but mine won out.
“Um… hi,” she said. “Could I borrow six bucks? I will definitely pay you back if you write down some way I can contact you.”
I studied her for a minute, running my fingers through my curly brown hair, pulling it back. She seemed vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t sure from where. Did she go to my school? Was she in the dance class before mine? She seemed honest enough, either way.
“Sure…” I said, handing her the six dollars. “Here you go.”
She began to walk away. She didn’t have anyone to sit with either.
“Hey,” I called. “D’you wanna come sit over here and eat? I can give you my email address…” I clicked open a pen and began to scribble it down on a napkin.
“Sure,” she said. “Thanks.”
*****
June
Who would have known that one dollar and eighty-seven cents would lead to me meeting one of my best friends for the rest of high school and beyond? It turned out that Terri, the girl who lent me the money, went to the same school as me, and was the same age. We even shared an interest in cooking, something none of my other friends would even think of. I had just somehow never seen her at school before. I did pay her back for that day, both in money and in trust. We are great friends to this day.

Self Portrait Poem

A Cat’s Perspectives on Life: A Self Portrait Poem
She chose me when I was but more than a kitten,
And she was about the same.
I entered into a strange new land,
And I still love her – that, at least, has not changed.

I have watched her since then.
I’ve seen friends come and go.
She has changed and grown so much,
And who but I could know.

She is the one who hears me,
When my claws dig at the back door.
Her kindness is overwhelming,
I mean, what else are owners supposed to be for?

She, of course, gets angry and irritable,
Especially when her brother says that things are unfair,
But of course this means nothing to me,
For frustrated human affairs I have no care.

Her schoolwork tends to annoy her,
And stress sometimes leads to tears,
But she need not fear her physics,
When she has me - for comfort - near.

She has good friends, who like her,
And who pay attention to me.
When they are around and she is too,
I know that I need not flee.

Her family has endless conversations,
From complex schedules to honeybees.
Sometimes she laughs very hard,
Depending on where the conversation leads.

Endless nights she can be found,
No matter how late it’s gotten to,
Deeply engrossed in any book,
Whether it is an old reread or brand new.

Through all of her young life,
She’s had character traits and flaws,
But as long as she pays more attention to me,
I need not use my claws.

Flash Fiction

The Shovel

Savannah sat among the sand dunes, working with the other children around her, digging through heaps of smooth, flow-out-of-your-hand sand. They walked back and forth with brightly colored buckets, transporting sand from one huge project to another. Savannah’s job was to fill the buckets as fast as she could. Suddenly, while she was working, Savannah’s shovel broke with a loud snap. She turned confidently to her brother, Carter, and told him to give her his shovel. Her job was more important than his anyway. However, Carter stubbornly refused, taunting, “You’re gonna be in trouble with the oracle….”
Savannah was outraged and terrified at the same time. She consulted some of her fellow workers, but none of them had spare shovels either. Growing anxiety filled her. She began to see truth in her brother’s statement. The shovel had been new, a gift from the oracle just that morning. What if the Oracle was unhappy? Suddenly, her fear was replaced with resentment. Why couldn’t Carter just give her the shovel? She was superior in rank and more important to the project. Turning back to Carter, she announced confidently that she was going to report his behavior to the oracle. He glanced at her, and then replied smugly, “It’s you who’ll be in trouble, not me!”
Savannah scowled, then trudged toward the jungle. There was a huge root that you had to climb over, one foot after another, to enter the jungle, but Savannah, in her sulky determination, forgot about it. She walked straight into it, hitting her lower legs, and tumbled forward, straight into the green, wood filled jungle. When she pulled herself together, she noticed a huge gash on her leg. Her eyes filled with tears, but she remembered the cause of her journey. Looking back toward the sand dunes, she realized that there was no chance to turn back now. She pushed herself to her feet and continued on.
As she limped through the jungle, she saw other workers scampering around. She had to walk in a zigzag to avoid being run over, for there were jungle builders everywhere. However, her luck ran out. She did not get out of the way in time to avoid an extremely energetic worker, who crashed into her as he rushed from place to place, continuing up and into another tree. Without the use of her painful leg, she stumbled backwards, slamming into one of the trees. Her head began to ache slightly. She shook her head hard to clear it, gathered herself together, and continued on.
Savannah was nearing where the oracle sat, trying to figure out what to say. She gripped her broken shovel even tighter as she limped up to the oracle, worrying more and more about what the oracle’s response would be.
******
Monica looked up from her conversation to see her five-year-old daughter limping toward her, a neon pink shovel in her hand. Her knee was slightly scraped and some wood chips from the playground clung to her shorts. There was a bump on her head like she had banged it against something.
“Savannah, are you OK?” she cried. “What happened?”
Savannah turned and looked across the wood-chip covered playground, past the jungle gym, and to the wooden edged sand box where her three-year-old brother and several other children still played.
“My shovel broke,” she whined. “And Carter wouldn’t give me his and it was a new shovel and I was so worried that you’d be mad at me and- and-“
“I’m not mad at you,” Monica interrupted. “Now tell me – how did you get all scratched up?
Savannah smiled. “Well, it was a long journey here from the sandbox…”

Micro Fiction

A Failed Escape

Elizabeth scrambled up to the top of the blooming cherry tree, crawling out along the thick, strong branches until she found a comfortable place to sit, sitting on one branch and leaning against another.

She was completely content up there, especially due to the fact that her irritating younger sister couldn’t climb that high yet. It was her shelter, with the flowers blowing all around her, a wall of pink and white protection.

When she noticed her sister approaching she announced loudly, “I’m not coming down for any reason, so you might as well not come over here.”

“Fine,” her sister said. “But it’s dessert, so I’ll just eat your chocolate cake for you.”

Elizabeth jumped down from the tree and chased her sister all the way back to the house, where her delicious slice of cake sat, still intact and waiting.