|
Written by Brady Russell
|
For as long as Samantha had been able to call Jim her (totally platonic)
best friend, he had had this shoebox painted pink on the top of the
bookcase in his bedroom, and he would not tell her anything about it.
She had long since told him about how she had changed the grades in
their senior math teacher's grade book in order to insure that she had
never gotten anything but an A in high school - despite the fact that
she did not understand calculus. She had also told him about how she
couldn't decide if she'd lost her virginity to the captain of the hockey
team or the captain of the tennis team, since it had all sort of
happened at once. He knew all that garbage, but he wouldn't show her
what was in the box. Jim would only shrug. She liked Jim because he
shrugged a lot. That is, he didn't talk so much, and let her talk.
That's what she liked.
One day Samantha came over to his place because she was helping him to
get it ready for a birthday party he was putting on for his little
sister. His mom would be over in an hour or so to bring the presents,
but he'd said he would take care of everything else. Jim really loved
his little sister, but he had a hard time thinking of ways to show it.
She liked to ride her bike to see him at the autobody shop he worked
at and he would let her repaint her bike whatever color they had in the
gun whenever she wanted. She really liked that, but he always felt like
he could come up with a new trick or two. But what? The party had been
Samantha's idea, but Jim was trying really hard to make it good.
He'd announced that they needed candy. He said he wanted to make a game
of finding candy around his place for the kids coming over. It was a
rare idea for Jim. So he left in his Omni to go buy a bunch of cool
candy at the cool candy store.
While he was gone, Samantha could respect his privacy no longer. She got
down the box and looked inside. She felt many twinges of many things,
but not quite enough of any of them.
When Jim came back, he found her sitting on his couch, the pink painted
box on her lap, the top off and her hand inside, stroking the contents.
Once they made eye contact, she took her hand out and it was full of
paperclips.
"Paper clips? Jim? It's just a bunch of paperclips," she said.
Jim shrugged. "I wanted to have a mystery."
(c) Brady Russell, 2005. All rights reserved. Brady Russell grew up in Pittsburg, Kansas and has been into writing
since he was a little kid. Now, he works as a Community Organizer with
the Philadelphia Unemployment Project. His work has appeared in Moxie
and Skirt Magazines, several on-line journals and on his own web-site:
thistoowillpass.com.
Click HERE to Leave a Comment |
Writings 