string bean | wilbur soot

7

          "Hello again. Can you hear me?"

          I look into the eyes of the curly brown-haired man on the screen of my small phone. I put on a small smile. "Yes," I say rather quietly. "I can hear you. Can you hear me?"

          Wilbur chuckled softly as he nodded. "Yes, I can. I don't know why I pictured you to look so different. Not in a bad way or anything- I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that."

          "It's okay. Most people don't imagine me looking like a small... bunny, let's say. A baby bunny. Or a chinchilla. I'm very small," I say as I let my head lie on my pillow, laying down.

          "I'd say the same, except the opposite. How tall are you?"

          I have to think for a moment. "I dunno. 5 feet and 3 inches maybe? Which would be around 1.6 meters if you wanna use your fancy-schmancy British way of measuring things."

          "Are you serious?!" Wilbur laughed. "You're actually baby!"

          "Oh, shut up! That's average! How tall are you?"

          "About 1.95 meters. Or 6 feet, 5 inches if you wanna use your 'fancy-schmancy' American way of measuring," he said, mocking me. He took a sip from a bottle of water.

          "Just because I live in America, doesn't mean I'm American. I have grown accustomed to their ways in the past few years, though."

          "Really? May I ask your ethnicity then?"

          "I'm Ukrainian. I lived in Ukraine up until I was 13," I explained. "Then my family came here to America. When I was 19, they decided to move back, but I stayed here. Well, I went from Washington to California, but yeah. I've been here for a little over 8 years. I've only been in California for 6 months, though."

          Wilbur smiled softly. "Wow, that's..."

          "Boring, I know. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to give you my whole life story there."

          "I was going to say interesting, actually. And it wasn't your whole life story. There's still plenty I don't know."

          He was right. There was still plenty he didn't know, but for some reason, I wanted him to know everything. And I wanted to know everything about him, too.