Short Stories for You

Chocolate Munchkins and Basketball

I stared in my mirror, focused on the reflection looking back at me. There were still tiny traces of sleep in the tired hazel eyes. I brushed them out with my free hand while the other hand brushed my short black hair. I smiled broadly, checking my teeth and because I seemed to be making great time today. Usually it would have started by now.

“Good Morning! (Oooeeeeooooeeooo!)”  

I pulled my phone from my pocket and turned the ringer off, silencing Kanye West’s Good Morning and informing me that I’d spoken too soon. I barely glanced at the “Call from Munchkin” notification.

She was the only person who called me this early and she did it every day like clockwork. And then, also like clockwork, she started honking the horn after I ignored her call. I put my headphones in just as the horn began to blare outside and finished my morning routine. Before leaving out, I grabbed my bookbag and today’s breakfast from the usual spot in the refrigerator.

I walked to where her car was parked in my driveway, got in, and took the headphones out to receive my usual greeting.

“You know you move slower than anyone I’ve ever met, Grandpa.”

“And you know most people would have realized after an entire semester of riding to school together that honking and calling,” I pulled my phone out to check, “seven times and sending 8 messages doesn’t make me go any faster?”

“But it does annoy you.” She smiled and started up the car. “And I don’t know, I think it might be working. Today we might actually make it on time for first period.”

“You don’t even have a first period!”

“But you do.” She stuck her tongue out at me. As we rolled from in front of my house, and then passed her house, which was right next to mine, she reached over, straining to hit the play button on the radio and causing a strand of hair to fall into her face.

It fell against her cheek and clung to the gloss on her lips. I could feel myself falling into one of my slow-motion, ‘more-than-friend’-like episodes, but I couldn’t stop myself. So much about her drove me crazy: The way she was staring out at the road in concentration, her tongue peeking out of the corner of her mouth slightly, or her lips, pink, glossy and puckered, as if they were waiting for my kiss, but more than all of that was the way she didn’t seem to notice any of these things. That’s what made her—

I hit the stop button on the radio, silencing the high pitched noise coming through the speakers.

“Grandpa!” She whined, “no touching my radio!”

“You broke the deal! No One Direction!” Like any straight, teen guy, I didn’t want to hear a group of highly suspect guys singing--even if they were describing my situation pretty much dead-on.

“Well, if you won’t let me listen to them, I’ll just have to finish the song myself!”

“No really, you don’t have to--”

“Baby you light up my world like nobody else! The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed! But when you smile at the ground it ain’t hard to—“

I held her breakfast up threateningly. “I’m guessing you don’t want your breakfast!” I said loudly over her laughing and singing.

“No, no, of course I do! Gimmegimmegimme!” She said way too excitedly to be talking about donut holes. She could really be such a child sometimes, especially when it came to Munchkins.  I pulled the two donut holes out of the bag, passing her the chocolate one.

“A chocolate Munchkin for my chocolate Munchkin.”

She popped it into her mouth and finished it in seconds. “So, what’d you think of my serenade?”