Chapter 2 Part 1

Franc couldn't believe it.  His beloved mystery girl was sitting on his front porch!

He froze midstride and simply stared.  He couldn't bring himself to do anything else.  His knees were too weak to walk; his mind was too frazzled to think; his mouth was too dry to talk . . . or breath.  He didn't realize he wasn't breathing until Tom slapped him hard on the back, bringing him back to the moment.

"Cassanova," said Tom with an unnecessary amount of pride in his voice, "why didn't you tell us you had a date?"

Tom was grinning from ear to ear, and Franc's mouth hung open.  Liza, on the other hand, simply looked curious.  "Franc," she said cautiously, "what is she doing here?  Did you know she would be here?"  Franc's attempted response failed.  "I'll take your silence as a strong yes," she said sarcastically.

"Dude," Tom said enthusiastically.  "You have to go talk to her!"

He was right, of course.

His dream girl was sitting on his front porch.  Moreover, she was sitting on his front porch, waiting!  She kept looking around expectantly as though whatever, or whoever, she was waiting for would be there any minute.  Was it possible she was waiting for him?  Possibly.  Who else could she possibly be waiting for?  No one else from their school lived on his block . . . and definitely not in his house!  She HAD to be there for him!

In that moment, something changed inside him.  A powerful force erupted inside his gut and flowed through his entire body.  He practically radiated confidence as he set his gaze and began the home stretch to his front door and his destiny!

His thoughts were swirling.  His entire life flashed before his eyes:  past, present, and future.

He saw himself growing up, going through elementary practically alone.  Some friends, but most of them moved away or moved on.  He saw middle school where he first met Tom and Trystan.  He saw Tom slowly change over that year from bully to best bud and Trystan reluctantly following along.  He saw the first day that his mystery girl arrived at school.  He saw scene after scene of her flipping her hair, laughing with her friends, and walking down the hall.  Her montage was only briefly interrupted by their ragtag group being joined by Liza.  Then it was back to her all the way up to this moment.

He saw the block, virtually empty save himself, Tom, Liza, and his beloved.  He saw the houses, virtually silent save the Custer's beagle in their backyard.  He saw the street, virtually abandoned save the oddly familiar yet out-of-place car sitting across from his house.

He saw himself walking up to her.  He saw their first date and their first kiss.  He saw them dating, going to prom together, and kissing.  He saw them going off to college together, getting engaged, and kissing.  He saw their wedding, their honeymoon, their honeymoon, and their honeymoon again.  He saw them growing having children, growing old together, and kissing.  He saw himself lying on a hospital bed and her holding his hand as he took his last breath.

It was beautiful.

With this new vision giving him confidence, he charged forward.  There was no hesitation in his steps nor concern for anyone else in his mind.  The only people that existed at that moment were him and his beloved.

And she was beautiful.

He reached his driveway, and as he approached she stood as if to meet him.  She flipped her hair over her shoulder and straightened out her shirt.  A smile spread across her face as he approached and she turned . . . to meet Jermaine as he came out of the front door.

The ground vanished, and he fell into a bottomless abyss.

He vaguely heard Liza up on the surface speaking to Tom, "Really?  Jermaine and Penny?  I never would have guessed!"

He could hear the doors close as the two of them climbed into the car that had earlier picked Jermaine up from school.  He heard the engine start and drive away as Tom began to speak.  His voice echoed into the hole, but Franc only picked up a few words.  " . . . Liza . . . did you . . . name . . . fun . . . Penny."

The last word was like a rope that he grabbed onto and used to pull himself up.  He came back from the abyss to land softly on the surface and look into the faces of Liza and Tom.  He felt life reenter his body.  Finally after all this time, he knew her name.

And it was beautiful.

Penny.

Jermaine had to go.

Interregnum I Part B

He waited until just before the foreigner was to pick up his bag again, and stood up to go to the desk and ask the woman there about the status of his flight. He figured by the time he had his answer, it would be about time for a mark in the notebook. Since the route between his seat and the desk passed right by the foreigner, he would get one good chance to peek. Just as he got to the desk, he caught a glimpse from the corner of his eye of his target picking up his bag.

Right on time.

In all honesty, the notebook was not Kenneth’s only motivation for this trek. He really did want to ask about his flight. He had only recently realized that he had been so wrapped up in watching the man that he hadn’t heard anything about his plane in at least an hour. The woman at the desk asked a bit too pleasantly for his flight number and, after he gave it to her, began typing furiously at her computer, plastered smile never wavering once.

“I’m sorry, sir, but it looks like your flight has been cancelled,” she said after several minutes.

“Cancelled? What do you mean ‘cancelled’?” His voice sounded significantly more upset than he actually felt. He had expected this. He rarely travelled with both luck and airplanes.

“I mean, sir, that your flight will not be departing today.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Well, sir, you can exchange your ticket for another flight, but there are none leaving for Des Moines today. The earliest we can get you out is tomorrow morning.” She continued to keep up her smile even as Kenneth began to notice a slight bit of tension in her voice. “Unfortunately, you missed the grace period for a full refund.”

“Grace period?”

“Yes, sir. The airline’s policy is to allow a two hour window after a flight has been cancelled during which your ticket could have been refunded for the full purchased price.”

Of course. Luck and airplanes. “Two hours?” he asked angrily. “Did anyone plan on telling me that my plane had been cancelled over two hours ago?”

“We did, sir, make three announcements. The last one was nearly two and a half hours ago.”

Crap. Way to zone out. “Fine. I guess let me get on that flight for tomorrow morning.” Thank God it wasn’t anything urgent. “Do you happen to know of any hotels nearby? Preferably one in which I won’t be murdered or sodomized.”

The woman forced a chuckle. “Yes, sir. Would you like me to make a reservation for you?”

“Well that would be lovely,” he said, offering the phoniest smile he could muster.

After another twenty minutes waiting for her to figure out how to work her computer, the woman handed Kenneth his new ticket and wrote down the confirmation number for his reservation at a hotel a few miles from the airport. He begrudgingly thanked her, reminding himself that all of this was more his fault than hers, and turned to leave.

He felt the impact before he saw the other man standing there.

“I’m so sorry,” said Kenneth as he righted himself. “Are you . . .” His voice trailed off as he looked into the smiling face of the foreigner.

He held his bag in one hand and had his notebook tucked under the same arm. His other arm was extended to offer his hand in greeting. “It is a pleasure to finally speak with you,” said the foreigner pleasantly. His voice confirmed his status of outsider thanks to a slight accent that Kenneth couldn’t have placed if his life had depended on it. “So sorry to hear about your flight.” He never broke eye contact and his smiled didn’t waver even slightly.

Kenneth gripped his hand tentatively and spoke slowly, cautiously. “Yeah. Me too.” He found the man’s light brown, almost yellow, eyes to be very disconcerting. It didn’t help that the foreigner seemed to have evolved beyond the need to blink. “If I may ask, what do you mean ‘finally’?”

The man chuckled. “We’ve been watching each other for the last couple hours. Haven’t we?”

Crap. He knew. “What do you mean?”

The chuckle became heartier. “I mean you’ve been watching me while pretending to read your book for the past several hours and I’ve been watching everyone all day, waiting for someone to notice me.” For some reason, the ends of his sentences seemed to come up very abruptly. It was almost as if the man was calculating each word and was relieved whenever he got to the end of a thought.

“You knew I was watching you?”

“Of course. As you should know by now, when you watch people for hours on end, you start to notice things about them. You should really turn your page every once in a while when you pretend to read. It will make it much more convincing.”

Rookie mistake.

The foreigner then reached down and casually picked up Kenneth’s bag and smiled a deliberate smile rather than his natural one. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”

Kenneth’s face broadcasted his confusion. “What do you mean ‘late’?”

The foreigner turned without another word and started walking toward the exit.

“Excuse me,” Kenneth called after him, “you have my bag!”

The foreigner turned to look back at him, “Come on!”

Kenneth paused for a moment to weigh his options before muttering to himself, “To catch a cat, you hafta know where its tail is.” He always hated when his dad was right about things. “Wait up,” he called after the man, hurrying to catch up with him.

Interregnum I Part A

The noise in the airport could have been worse, but it wasn’t. The schedule could have been running more behind, but thankfully was not. And Kenneth Laurence could have been more uncomfortable, but, by the grace of some powerful benevolent being, felt relatively alright.

“Things can always be worse,” he muttered to himself.

It always amazed him how deeply his father’s little sayings had planted themselves in his mind. He could practically hear him offering his superfluous pearls of wisdom even after all these years: “To catch a cat, you hafta know where its tail is. Time flies, so make sure you clip its wings. A good tornado don’t do any less damage than an earthquake. If you’re gonna catch a leprechaun, you better damn like rainbows.

“Things can always be worse.”

He did occasionally make sense.

As his father’s long list of mantras rattled through his brain for what was certainly not the first time that day, Kenneth looked around the crowded airport, watching the people bustle to their destinations. Most people walked very quickly, avoiding eye contact with as many people as possible. Occasionally, there was a person or two running to catch their connecting flight or realizing that that was their plane taking off out the window, but in general people milled about or sat waiting like he was.

Then there was the foreigner.

He had no distinguishing features either in face or in clothing to suggest where he was from. In fact, at first glance, most people would have never picked him out as a foreigner. However, since Kenneth had been waiting for his delayed flight for several hours, he had had time to take in his surroundings, including this foreigner. When Kenneth’s plane had first been delayed, he had taken an initial survey of his new environment: where were there open seats, who was already sitting and waiting, where was the bathroom, et cetera. The foreigner had stuck out in this initial search because his behavior was so very different from everyone else in the room. While everyone else was doing something, he did nothing. All of the other people sitting in the room were reading a magazine, doing a puzzle, working on their computer or phone, or talking to a travel companion. Even Kenneth had pulled his book out as soon as he sat down, so he would look like he was doing something while he people-watched. The foreigner, on the other hand, seemed to do nothing. He sat, looking at the room and the people around him.

Smiling.

This was probably the surest sign he was a foreigner. It wasn’t a happy smile or a cynical smile or even the smile of a crazy person. It simply seemed to be the way his face settled. The smile made him stick out not because of any particular quality it held, but the simple fact that he was smiling. Everyone else was very obviously unhappy with their situation, and who could blame them? What sane person enjoys sitting in a crowded airport, running late for their appointments and lives? Yet here this man sat, simply smiling.

Weird.

By this point, Kenneth had been sitting in the same seat in the airport pretending to read his book for nearly four hours. The foreigner had been sitting since before Kenneth had even found out his flight was delayed, and Kenneth had been watching him for much of the time since. However, the foreigner had not once during that entire time looked at the boards to check the status of his flight. After watching for about an hour, Kenneth had figured out his odd routine, and it had not changed in pace or form the entire time. After looking at various places in the room for about ten minutes, the foreigner would pick up his bag and look through it. He started with the pocket on the outside, then opened the main compartment and dug around inside for a couple minutes before zipping it shut, setting it back on the floor, and picking up a notebook from his lap. He would then make a mark and return the notebook to his lap. Then, after ten minutes of looking around, the foreigner would repeat this process.

Kenneth had been spending the last hour imagining the possibilities of what the man was writing in the book. Each time, he would only make a small mark. It wasn’t enough to be any kind of notes, so that ruled out the possibility of him writing something. Then again, he could have been writing one stroke of a letter at a time. That made as much sense as some of his other theories including that he was drawing a self portrait and had to think about each line and freckle on his face before drawing it. He also considered the possibility that he was simply testing to make sure his pen still had ink.

Kenneth smiled as he reconsidered these theories. He had finally decided that the most likely scenario was that the foreigner was simply keeping a tally of something. Kenneth then decided he would spend the next inevitable hour of waiting thinking about what this man could be tallying. If he could get a look at that notebook, he would have a better idea of how long the man had been sitting there and hopefully what he was waiting for.

Chapter 1 Part 5

By the time Franc got over the shock of his history class dream, he had been shuffled through the halls to four different classes and sat through each one in a daze.  He finally came back to his senses and looked around to find himself sitting at the end of his last class of the day.  In fact, the bell rang almost the moment he woke up.

He waited outside the front door for Tom, looking forward to taking the walk home without Trystan for a change.  Things were still looking up despite the dream . . . and the fact that other than in that dream, he had not seen his beloved all day.  The pop quizzes had been easy; Trystan hadn't been at school; none of the homework assignments he had forgotten to do were actually due; they worked on his favorite song in band; Trystan hadn't been at school; he was given no new homework from any of his teachers; and Trystan hadn't been at school.

You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone . . . even if you secretly hate that thing's guts.

Franc could almost feel his face light up as Tom walked out the front door without his constant companion.  It didn't even bother him that Liza, Tom's girlfriend, was with him.  What did bother him and caused every last bit of light to leave his demeanor was the person walking right behind them.

Jermaine.  Ugh.

He had forgotten that his brother didn't have baseball practice this afternoon . . . or at least that that was the story he told their parents.

Franc relaxed a bit as Jermaine ran past all of them and hopped into a car that Franc didn't recognized.  He didn't care about the fact that he had no idea who Jermaine was leaving with.  Really, he was just glad that he didn't have to walk all the way home with his humming, his obnoxiously loud phone, his laughs that were clearly intended to get you to ask him what was so funny when there was actually nothing funny, or those three little words that Jermaine insisted on prefacing every other statement with:  "Oh, don't worry."

"Hey there, lover boy," said Liza playfully.  "I noticed your darling wasn't here today.  Did you miss," she paused for dramatic effect, tapping her chin as though thinking very hard, "what is her name?"

Franc smiled.  "Haha," he said dryly, "very funny."  Liza smiled in response, hugged him, and led the way away from the surprisingly happy prison they called a school.

It really didn't bother him when Liza teased him.  Maybe it was the fact that when she said it, she genuinely sounded like she was kidding.  Maybe it was the fact that she had been very encouraging to him, trying to get him to actually talk to his beloved.  Maybe it was the fact that she always smelled like strawberries and wore short shorts.

He looked up at Liza and Tom walking away from him arm in arm.

It was definitely the shorts.

When Franc caught up with them, he was pleased to find that the topic of conversation had moved pleasantly away from his mystery girl.  He was slightly less pleased to find where the conversation had turned.

"So Franc," said Tom, "who was that picking up Jermaine after school?  I didn't recognized the car."  Liza leaned her head on his shoulder in agreement.

"I dunno," replied Franc flatly.  "I've never seen it before."

Liza picked up her head and feigned offense.  "And you aren't desperately chasing after the mystery vehicle, trying to find out who's in the driver's seat?  I am shocked and appalled.  I have never once known you to have a mystery on your hands and not solve it."  Her face was upset.  Her voice was cheery and facetious.  "Whether that mystery be the answer to a math problem, who shot the sheriff and not the deputy, or the name of a beautiful girl that you've been staring at for four years."

Franc was about to reply, but was cut off by a wink from Liza accompanied by a hearty laugh from Tom.  They really fit together very well.

Liza was one of those girls that you didn't notice right away.  She wasn't awe-inspiringly stunning in the way his mystery love was, but she definitely grew on you.  She had hung out with Franc, Tom, and Trystan a lot since she moved to their school in junior year, and basically all three of them had had a crush on her at one time or another.  Eventually, when all three had finally admitted it to each other, they had had a week long rock paper scissors tournament to determine who would get to ask her out.  In all honesty, Franc was more than a little relieved when Tom won.  He didn't have the guts to ask her out, and Trystan didn't deserve her.  She and Tom fit.

But still, as he looked at the two of them together he couldn't help thinking back through the opportunities he had missed to ask her out:  homecoming, junior prom, that time that the two of them were sitting on his bed alone working on anatomy homework the day after the rock paper scissors tournament ended.

Franc sighed and chuckled to himself.  Why oh why did he choose paper?

When they reached his block and he looked to his porch, all paper related regrets melted away along with what felt like every last bit of support in his knees . . . because SHE was sitting there.

Chapter 1 Part 4

"Aliens did it!"

Franc jerked awake.  He normally found his history class to be a great place to take a nap.  His teacher was so incredibly boring that no one paid attention . . . until he got on a rant about ancient cultures and their "obvious" interactions with aliens.  Whenever he managed to get on that subject, he became one of the most entertaining people in Franc's life.

Today's rant revolved around the pyramids and the fact that they were too big, too exactly designed, and too perfectly lined up with the stars for humans at the time to have been entirely responsible for their construction.

Thank goodness.  A rerun.

Once he realized that this was a rant Dr. Mace had given them not once, not twice, but three times before, he decided to return to his nap.  The good doctor never seemed to care whether or not anyone was paying attention (which Franc strongly suspected was part of the reason no one did), so his nap was left uninterrupted until the bell.

At that point, he got up from his desk rather slowly.  It oddly felt like he couldn't move at full speed, almost as though he were moving underwater.

When he finally managed to get to the door, he turned to look in shock upon the beautiful face of his nameless beloved.  Her eyes were wide open and staring straight at him, but there was something different in her pale blue eyes.  It took him longer than it should have to realize why . . .

There was no life behind them.

Franc stared at her lifeless body for what felt like hours, willing it to move.  The way her corpse was propped against the locker she could have almost turned and walked away without acknowledging his existence as she normally did.  But today she didn't.  Today she couldn't.

Because she was dead.  And he had never even learned her name.

A single tear fell from Franc's eye.  He managed to pull his gaze away from the lifeless beauty long enough to watch the tear fall to the floor.  He watched it as if it were a slow motion instant replay.  It fell straight down, managing to avoid hitting anything before it hit the ground.  The moment it hit the ground, the world seemed to freeze.  No one in the hall moved.  The tear was stuck mid-splash.  The beautiful corpse's hand didn't move from his arm.

Wait.  What?

Franc looked back to his beloved's corpse to find her looking at him, now very much alive and frightened.  She opened her mouth wide and screamed at an incredibly high pitch that sounded less like a scream and more like . . .

The bell rang, jerking Franc back to consciousness.  He looked around the room, panting.  Dr. Mace was erasing the diagrams and drawings of aliens from the board as the class filed hurriedly into the hallway.

A dream.  Thank god.

He really needed to start getting more sleep at night.

Chapter 1 Part 3

The next morning, Franc went about his morning routine as though it were any other morning.  He was exhausted, but no one else need know why.

As per typical in his morning schedule, he had spent the last half hour sitting outside the bathroom, occasionally knocking to make sure his brother remembered that he was still waiting.  As per usual, his brother continued to ignore him, humming to himself the whole time, and as per usual, Franc began thinking, because he had nothing better to do.

Aren't girls the ones who are supposed to take forever in the bathroom?  What did he even do in there? . . . on second thought, he didn't really want to know.

If there was anything Franc could have been doing to get ready other than sitting next to the bathroom door waiting, he would have been doing that, but by this point, he basically just needed to brush his teeth and pee . . . the peeing quickly becoming significantly more important than the brushing.  Having been through this routine over and over again, however, he had figured out that he could hold it.  He had also figured out that what was most infuriating about the situation was not the fact that his brother was taking forever as much as his humming.

It wouldn't bother him if he were humming an actual tune, but it was more like he was mumbling to himself and occasionally punctuated it with a hum.  It also wouldn't bother him if he just did it every once in a while, but he did it basically the entire time he was in the bathroom . . . all 45 minutes of it.  Why couldn't he just shut up and get things done?

Franc looked down at his watch.  Assuming things went as they did every morning, his brother should be just about done.  He knocked once more, and, as expected, Jermaine finally and very grumpily opened the door.

"What do you want?"  His voice was far more ignorant than it should have been.  They both knew Franc had been waiting and knocking quite regularly.  The feigned ignorance, however, was far less frustrating than the way he punctuated his sentence with a little smack.  Every time his brother smacked, Franc wanted to smack him.

He resisted the urge . . . this time.

"Just get out of my way," said Franc rather calmly as he gently pushed Jermaine aside and rushed toward the sweet relief of the toilet.

After an unnecessarily long walk to school with Jermaine filled with punctuatory smack after smack all leading toward the inevitable violent return smack that finally parted their ways, Franc met up with Tom in their first period history class.

"Franc, you look awful," said Tom, his voice full of genuine concern.  "Seriously, bro, what are you doing at night?  You need some real sleep.  Soon!"

Franc proved his point by letting out a huge yawn.  "It's nothing.  I'm fine.  Where's Trystan?"

"He's home sick," said Tom matter-of-factly.  "Pretty weird for him.  He usually just comes to school to infect as many people as possible so he's not the only one sick."

The two were forced to drop the matter by the arrival of their teacher who, uncharacteristically, was actually almost on time.  "Alright class.  Quiet down," he said, dropping his book rather loudly on his desk, knocking over the can of pens that always set on his desk and that was toppled almost every morning.

Trystan was sick?  Mr. "immune system of an ox" couldn't bring himself to get up?  Mr. "If I'm going down, I'm taking all of you with me" was going down alone?  More importantly, Franc would have at least one entire day with Tom and no Trystan?

Maybe staying up night after night was having more of an impact than he thought.  Maybe his little project was actually working!

"Alright, class.  Today we will be having a pop quiz.  I hope you all did your reading last night."

Then again, maybe it was just a fluke.

Chapter 1 Part 2

Franc left the school that day ready for his friends' mocks and jeers.  He didn't have them in any of his classes after the fateful English class, mostly because he was in AP classes and his friends just simply didn't care.  To be honest neither did he, but his parents insisted that if he was going to put something in his schedule as ridiculous to them as an art class then he would also take a few classes that were, as they said, "On the level that we expect from a Bar."

Ugh.  Stupid perfect brother.

Luckily, though, he had a couple friends who had to walk home in the same direction as him.  He could hear them behind him hustling to catch up.  When they finally caught up with him, they didn't waste any time.

"Well creep, you have sweet stalker dreams?"  Maybe friend was too strong of a word for Trystan.

Franc walked a bit faster to try and gain a little ground on them, but they were persistent.  Whenever he sped up, so did they.  If it was just Tom, it wouldn't have been so bad.  He was reasonable and at least his insults were usually somewhat clever.  Unfortunately, he and Trystan were joined at the hip.

"So Casanova, how come you can't even stay conscious long enough to stare at your sweetheart?  Usually nothing, including sleep, would get in the way of your view of . . . oh what is her name?"  Tom always got a kick out of this running joke.  Their entire social circle new her name, but they all refused to tell Franc what it was.

"Yeah, Frenchy," agreed Trystan with his favorite nickname.  Why oh why couldn't his parents have just used a 'k' like a normal human being?  "Something keeping you up at night?  Something . . . feminine, if you know what I mean?"

Really, Trystan?  You went there?

"Yes, as a matter of fact," said Franc matter-of-factly.  "There is something keeping me up."

Tom and Tristan looked at him expectantly.  Franc merely smirked and kept walking.  Knowing things they didn't seemed to be the only thing that Franc could lord over his friends.  The two looked at each other confusedly, but an understanding passed between them.  They dropped the subject immediately.  If they didn't get upset about it, Franc had nothing on them.

Normally, them dropping the subject would have driven him nuts and gotten him to spill his guts, but this was private.  He had anticipated their reaction perfectly and was going to take full advantage of it.

The rest of the walk was relatively uneventful.  All three complained about the amount of work that Unpleasant Plaisance had given them.  Franc pointed out that he had more homework for her class than all of his AP classes combined.  Trystan pointed out how much of a nerd Franc was for taking AP classes.  Tom pointed out that Trystan's college prep courses didn't give him much room to talk.  Et cetera.

They reached Franc's house first and he waved them off, thankful that he had finally made it to his fortress of solitude.  He would knock out his homework for Plaisance, then it was time to get to work.  Guaranteed it would be another sleepless night.

Maybe if he got yelled at for falling asleep, she would notice him.

Probably not.

Chapter 1 Part 1

She sat there twirling her pen between her fingers, eyes intent upon the book in front of her.  She rarely wavered once she was truly focused on something.  Unfortunately for Franc Bar, that meant that he wouldn't get a good view of her beautiful eyes until class was over or she finished the assigned reading.  He did, however, have the entire rest of her face to gaze upon.

He didn't like to think of himself as a stalker.  That's not to say he hadn't been accused of such things by his friends, he just didn't see it that way.  He preferred to think of himself as a hopeless romantic that simply hadn't gotten the girl.

Yet.

All evidence to the contrary, he continued to hold on to the hope that one day, she would spontaneously fall madly in love with him.  It didn't make a difference to him that he had never carried on a conversation with her . . . or that he didn't know her name.  Four years and he had yet to make any kind of contact, but he knew . . . he KNEW they were destined to be together.

And as he sat watching her, he decided it must be true.  That was the only explanation for the fact that she looked up from her book . . . and straight at him!

She looked at him with those gorgeous pale blue eyes, flipped her long blonde hair over her shoulder and smiled at him, dimples shining from her face and stabbing straight into his heart.  The world seemed to slow down as she stood up and started walking toward him.  The way the window framed her, she seemed to glow.  The birds just outside seemed to shine brighter than normal and flew about singing to perfectly frame her figure.

Franc stared, flabbergasted as she walked across the room and right up to his desk.  She closed his book and leaned over so they were face-to-face.  Despite the powerful pull of her low-cut pink shirt, he worked very hard to make sure they stayed face-to-face.

"Hi," she said in her bright voice.  He simply stared at her and waited for her to say something else as she flashed her bright white teeth at him.  He couldn't bring himself to shape his mouth into words.  He simply continue to gaze into her hypnotic eyes.  Pale blue with a dark ring around the edge, he could almost feel them boring into his soul.  Words continued to fail him until she giggled and looked at him expectantly.

"Hi," he finally eked out.

"So I've been watching you for a while now," she said in a soft voice so only he could hear her, "and I thought it was about time I actually talked to you."

SHE had been watching HIM?  He knew for a fact that he had been watching her for nearly all four years of High School and he had never seen her even glance his way.  Either she was much sneakier than he figured he was or . . .

"Really?"  He muttered.

Really?  He couldn't come up with anything better than really?

She giggled again, tickling his heart strings.  "Yes, Franc.  I've been watching you for a while.  And yes, I've noticed you watching me."

Knew it.

She waited for a while just staring into his eyes, waiting for him to say something.  He desperately wanted to . . . he wanted to say ANYTHING.  But no words came out.  He just kept dwelling on the fact that she knew his name.  She knew his name and had been watching him . . . how could this get any better?

He could learn her name!  He just had to ask!

But there were no words in his mouth . . . or saliva.

Then she spoke again.  He swore he could listen to her voice all day.  "My name is," she paused dramatically.  It was as if she knew what he was thinking.  She knew he was on the edge of his seat.  She knew he was holding his breath.  She knew that all he had been waiting for was the next word that was about to come from her mouth.  He watched as she slowly formed her mouth into the first syllable-

SLAM!!!

Franc picked his head up off the desk to look into the stern face of Ms. Plaisance.  "I'm glad you could join us, Mr. Bar," she said in an unnecessarily stern voice.  "Now if you don't mind, wipe the drool off your book, leave your dreams at home, and get back to your assignment."

Franc looked over at his beloved.  She was still sitting at her desk intensely reading her book.  He tried to catch her glance, to find any evidence that what he had just experienced was real.

There wasn't any.  It had simply been a dream.

Franc sighed and returned to the epic oh-so-exciting writings of Jules Verne.  Wasn't this book supposed to be about a giant squid destroying a super awesome boat?  Why was this guy listing off all these stupid fish?

Ugh . . . if only dreams came true . . . if only.