Dear Son,
By the time you get this I will most likely have passed on to a better place but, before I do I wanted to tell you the story I told your brother when he was your age, young and naive. It’s the story of how I met the love my life, your mother.
It was 1998, I was a junior and your mother was a senior. I was new to the school. I had just moved from London with your grandmother, we had been running from my drunk of a father. It was the middle of the year, my first day at Catwalk High School in Bolder, Colorado. I had to walk to school because my mother did not yet have a car. By the time I made it to the school, the late bell had already rung. I thought I was the only one not in a classroom at the time.
I was lost, not knowing which class to go to find out anything. I wondered if I should interrupt one of the classes to ask if anyone had any idea where I should go.
I stopped at one of the doors with a window, peering through at the half asleep class. I felt a tap on my right shoulder. It was an embarrassed tap that you might use to get the attention of someone you don’t know.
I turned to see a girl my height, she had on a Black beanie I did not notice much else at the time I had gotten lost in her mesmerizing eyes. I realized that she was trying to find something, probably my attention.
“You look lost”, she said.
“What? Lost?” I said “I’m not lost”.
“You’re new, huh?”
There was a short pause.
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“I haven’t seen you before and I’ve been here sense 9th grade year”, she said with a slight chuckle.
“Oh ………yeah”
“I like your eyes…. your face…….. and your accent” she said
“Thank? I guess.” I said with extreme hesitation
“Come with me”
She then grabbed my hand and rushed me down the long dull gray hallway and through a large blue double door at the end of the hall. She pulled me behind the small quite school and lugged me to the door of a large green storage crate.
“What are you doing?”I said
“Just wait” she was quick to answer
She then unlocked the old rusty pad lock hanging from the latch of the fire truck sized box and opened the large metal door. She slipped inside, pulling me in behind her then shutting the huge door with a bang and a clank. I heard a click then a dim light flickered tell it became solid and bright. She sat me down on a green bar stool facing the back wall in the middle of the room. I looked around and saw the walls had paintings of people on them, famous people like the beetles, and___ all over them. the floor was paint stained carpet. It was hard to tell what color it was originally. She had an old rustic looking record player along side a stack of old albums in the far end of the large box-like room and there where a few large clear tubs of paint in the corner that she was rummaging loudly through.
She pulled out a few paintbrushes and a box filled with tons of assorted colored paints. She set the paint box down and opened it. She whipped out a few paints and set them next to the box.
“Pick a wall” she said while looking up at me.
I pointed to the back wall, the wall I was facing. She then pushed the brush behind her ear and slightly under her large black beanie. I watched her as she went to the record player and dropped the needle on the Frisbee-like record.
“I love this song” she said as the music began to play “Elton John, Candle in the Wind”
She swaggered to the back wall and began carelessly pouring paints on to a small weight paint tray she had also slipped out of the tub.
“Who are you anyway?”I asked in my British accent
“Well who do you think I am” she said after giving me the prettiest grin I had ever seen “You can call me Anna” she said with a bouncing voice
“I’m Chris but…..uhhhh.....you can call me…..well
Chris I guess”
She giggled in her sleeve, as if to hide it from me. I blushed out of embarrassment. She turned to me and began inspecting me over ever so carefully so not to miss a single detail in the image of me she had started to paint on the metal wall. This slow moment gave me time to observe her as well. She was about my height 5 foot 7 inches. She had long brown hair that reminded me of the walnuts on the walnut tree in the front yard of my new American home but the long black beanie covered most of it. Her eyes where as blue as the dark blueberry blue paint stained carpet of the storage crate. She had on jeans and an olive green cardigan on over a black shirt that had yellow lettering that read here comes the sun. I stared at the letters tell she turned to the wall again.
“What is this place?” I asked
“Well it’s my place” she answered “This is where I come to get away from the world; it is where I keep my favorite things like my records and my paints.”
“How did you come across it?”
“I ditched class one morning to go see an old silent film in the theater down the road. I liked it so I made a deal with a teacher that if I graded all his papers for him for a whole two years, he had to let me have it. That was my sophomore year, I'm a senior now.”
“Oh, that’s cool I guess.” I said
There was a long drawn out pause that seem to freeze the air around us until it was broken by a loud squalling noise. I look to her brown leather satchel where the noise seemed to be coming from. A gray mouse popped from the side pocket of the bag to the carpet of the crate. It sqiked again and scurried to Anna’s right foot.
“What the hell is that thing” I yelled as I crumpled up on the stool
“Oh, it’s Ralph my pet mouse.” she said as she bent down and picked up the ball of gray fuzz.
“Pet?” I asked in hawk
“Well he was in this crate when I first found it, I kept shooing him out only to come back the next day and find him sleeping in here again. So I thought if he was just going to keep coming back, I could try training him. So I did and now here he is.”
. "Oh, can he do any tricks" I said as I unraveled from the stool
"No but he knows his name"she set the mouse down and it quickly scurried to its pouch in the side of her bag.
"I should probably show you to your class now, huh?"She set the paint soaked paintbrush on its paint tray walked to me then to the closed door
"Well come on then, I’ll show you there" I fallowed back through the gray school. We passed numerous gray doors before stopping at a room marked 24
"Well here we are"she said
I walked to the door and grabbed the handle.
"How do you know what class I needed to go to?"
"The school told us students if we see a new student we should direct them here"
"Thanks"I said gratefully
"Your cute you know that?"
I blushed as I opened the door and stepped through, and as I entered room 24 I peaked through the window of the closing door Anna’s beautiful face, until the door shut with a loud bang and brought me back to reality.
