She Blew Away the Dust

Part 1

School was finally out for the day! She mentally jumped for joy on her way out of the classroom to meet up with her friends.

They had an odd assignment to complete as homework, though.

Right as class was about to get out, 49 seconds until the bell rang, to be exact, the English teacher gathered everybody's attention.

"I want you to bring something tomorrow, for show and tell." All the students looked at each other. Show and tell? This was High School... they hadn't had show and tell since middle school? Elementary, maybe? "I want it to be any item of your choosing." The teacher cast a quick glance at a few key students, "Something appropriate." A few chuckles were heard from the back of the room. "But it should be something important; maybe something old or new. It might be something of your own, or maybe something of your parents. You won't have to actually do the "telling" part. This is an experiment I want to try. Bring someth—." The bell cut off her last sentence, and students rushed to get out of the room and to their friends.

The joy of the school day being over was slightly overshadowed by the mystery of tonight's homework assignment.

After her friend dropped her off at home, Tricia got her snack of string cheese and orange juice and took it up to the attic. Something old...or maybe something new the teacher had said.

Tricia checked out the attic window to make sure the driveway was still empty. The last time her dad caught her up in the attic, he turned into a zombie for a month, not noticing anything.

Boxes coated in thick layers of filth covered the floor of the room. Some boxes were open, some were toppled over on the ground, and some were even stacked quite pristinely.

Looking over the boxes carefully, Tricia kept her eye out for a very specific box she was looking for. She read the labels one by one, prudently, lest she miss her goal and have to start over. She'd been trying to think of an excuse to come up into the attic again for a while now, but nothing had seemed important enough to risk her father going zombie-mode.

Out of the corner of her eye, Tricia saw the box. She glanced over quickly and read the label, her heart starting to pound with excitement.  She stumbled her way to the box and fell to her knees in front of it. Sweat beaded itself on her forehead and her fingers trembled as she reached for the tape holding the box closed.

This was it. No one could stop her this time from getting what she wanted. She was going to take it to school tomorrow, and not have to tell a single soul what it meant to her.

Before she grabbed the tape off the box, she wiped her sweaty hair off her forehead with the back of her hand and took a deep breath.

Then... she blew away the dust.