the girl with a cardboard box//a short story

Prolouge/Epilouge

Her light brown princess curls bounced up and down on her tan shoulders, her sparkling green eyes scanning everyone's faces for their secrets. I never knew her name but I'd see her all the time. She was carrying a box. It was a new box everyday, and I never understood why.

I had a million questions to ask her. But I knew that those million questions would never be answered.

Her feet pitter pattered on the sidewalk like a drizzle of rain, and her freckles looked like chocolate sprinkles you'd put on your ice cream.

I knew she liked Lilies. That's all I knew about that girl.

She'd buy a bouquet of lilies every week or so, and place them in her cardboardbox. She would buy the cheap ones that we sell for 50 cents because we already had too many lilies too count.

She'd but them three minutes before my mom closed up for lunch break and sometimes she's come to our shop on Sundays and see that we're closed but I always left a small bouquet of lilies outside for her.

One more thing I knew about her was that she was a farm girl. She lived with her father in the old barn across the street from Dairy Queen and she walked a mile to get to my mother's flower shop for a reason.

And I wanted to know that reason.

I'd watch her walk across the street sometimes. Whenever my mother wasn't looking I would take a flower and pick off the petals one by one whispering the childish chant in my head all over again.

She loves me.

She loves me not.

She loves me.

She loves me not.

She loves me.

I loved that girl more than my mother and my mother was my best friend. It wasn't until that dreary little Saturday I finally had a day off from the job my mother had made me do at her small shop in the middle of the street.

I sat on a bench outside of the café directly in front of the flower shop. It was almost the exact same second I sat down that she came bouncing happily down the street, a box tucked safely under her arm.

It was this Saturday that she decided to trip on the small crack in the sidewalk that she knew was there, but I guessed that she had forgotten about it this time.

The box fell out her arms and landed right at my feet as if daring me to finally do what I've been wanting to do for months and months.

I picked the cardboard box and sat it there next to where I had been sitting. Then I gave her my hand (which she glad-fully took) and helped her up quietly.

Our lips were inches away and I almost started to lean in when I realized that this girl in front of me was a complete stranger.

I did not know her and she did not know me.

"I knew the crack was there," She whispered, her warm breath touching my pink lips. "I just wanted an excuse to talk to you."

She smiled the smile I've been wanting to see for a long time and picked up the box and started walking away. She was already five feet away from me when she turned back and said, "Well? You coming or not?"

And I followed her like a lost puppy followed a person with food.

••••

The girl with the Cardboard Box seemed like an appropriate name for her. I followed her until we reached the vast, green field a few blocks away from the small plaza where we had first talked.