Andy felt miserable. He had a warm head, upset stomach, and runny nose. And it still wasn't good enough for his mom to let him stay home from school.
His mom pulled up to the drop-off curb, barely glanced up from her Blackberry as he clambered down out of the SUV, and muttered something about not harrassing the other kids too much as she pulled away. Andy pulled his backpack on and began the trudge to Miss Finkleton's classroom. He stopped just before the door, however, and froze, his heart breaking into a bazillion tiny pieces. The love of his life, Abby Rose Howard, was crying.
Ducking behind a brick column next to the doorway, Andy strained to hear what the little girl with tear-stained cheeks was saying to her mother.
"But mommy, I don't want to stay with Daddy this week! That lady friend of his is mean and he never plays with me. I don't think he likes me very much."
Abby's mom, who was currently on her knees so as to be at eye level with her grief-stricken daughter, sighed and said, "But it's part of the agreement, pickle. He gets you one week a month. It's the court's rule, not mine. I would love to have you with me so we could hang out and bake and play checkers some more, but I promise we can do that next week. Okay?"
Abby sniffled and collapsed into her mother for a hug. Abby's mom watched her daughter head into the school building, feeling completely dejected and helpless. Andy felt equally devasted. He couldn't imagine divorced parents and having to spend time between the two of them.
His thoughts were interrupted by the jarring sound of Miss Finkleton's voice. "NOW CLASS," she screeched, rather bird-like. "I'm afraid it's FLU AND COLD SEASON. That means lots of little children will be carrying lots of little germs and making lots of their little friends SICK. I do NOT want to be SICK. If you think you're sick, DON'T come to school. I want everybody to keep WASHING THEIR HANDS. And DON'T touch me."
Andy thought about his current condition. He wanted nothing more than to make her sick. His daydreaming over Abby was always interrupted by her dulcet tones. But wait, that was it! Abby! He had once heard her dad saying that he would rather skip his week with his daughter than have her when she was sick. Well, his wish was about to come true.
Just before the rest of the class ran to grab their lunches, Andy snuck into the back where the cubbys were. Following the nametags down the alphabet past his own last name, Campbell, he came up to Abby Howard's cubby. He quickly pulled out her lunch, opened it, and took a deep breath of dust and will power. And sneezed all over her sandwich. He smiled, happy with himself, and went to put her lunch back in her cubby.
"Andy? What are you doing with my lunch box?"
Andy whipped his head around to see none other than Abby Rose. His eyes grew wide. "Uh...I was just going to grab your lunch and mine at the same time...and...ask you...if, um, we could...uh...sit together...." he finished lamely.
Her smile was beyond radiant and she bobbed her head up and down rapidly, her cheeks a little pink. "Okay. But my friends are all girls. Is that okay?"
He nodded. As long as you're there, he thought.
8 years later.....
"And then, when the body recognizes that a pathogen is present, it responds by..."
Andy couldn't really focus. Why again had he taken this class again? Oh, right. Because his girlfriend had convinced him to. They sat beside each other, fingers laced together, his thumb tracing circles on her hand. Out of the blue, she leaned over toward him and said, "Remember that time in...was it third grade? When we both got really sick, and Miss Finkleton blamed us and called our parents irresponsible for letting us still go to school because she was out for a week with a cold? We were heroes to the rest of the class. That substitute teacher was so much fun."
Andy chuckled and remembered the instance quite vividly. They had stayed together in the nurse's office while they waited for their parents to come collect them. He hadn't complained.
She looked at him with those green eyes he loved so much and said, "You know, I don't think I would have talked to you after that day if we hadn't gotten sick. You acted so weird around my friends at lunch and made me feel dumb for agreeing to you sitting with us. You were much better when it was just the two of us in Nurse Santos's office, though. That's when I got a proper look at you and realized you were cute."
"Well then. It's a good thing I sneezed on your sandwich, Abby."
