The boy and the girl made up for the lost time they could not have done though stamped pieces of paper. For the next several days they were inseparable, with the passing days representing the years they had spent without the other. Of course, a portion of details were missed, but there was so much of an entire year that could be summarized with the limited hours in a day. They talked, middle school, high school, college admissions, summers; there were a lot of little trivial things that made up their conversations. He had told her how entering college was not much of a worry without the rising medical bills. A detail she missed.
“How’s your brother?” The girl smiled, it was one of the brightest ones she had ever shown, the dimples in her cheeks began to appear.
“He’s well….” the boy responded back. “Well…. he’s happy.” The girl beamed thinking back to that same boy she remembered seeing in her childhood memory. She wondered just how much the stubborn little boy had grown. She breathed in the cooling air and gazed into the distance ahead. There was a patch of lilies of the valley up ahead. Excited, she dashed to pick a few. Her hastened pace did not hear the final words the boy spoke about his brother.
“I hope.”
The girl met Al when she first moved into the neighborhood. She was not the girl next door. Next door lived some high drug rollers; there was always a strong scent wafting in the air around the disheveled townhouse. Despite the high sense of morality in the community, no one seemed to care enough to report it. They all had their own problems to deal with, more urgent and concerning to be dealing with the pharmaceutical trips their neighbors took during their free time. These neighbors had even offered the girl some lucky charmz one time. This was how she met Al.
“Here you go mister,” said the little dark auburn haired boy who had just interrupted the scene. He held out a sticker to the tired man slouched down on the blue plastic lawn chair stationed under the withering cherry blossom tree in front of the townhouse.
The heavy lidded man reluctantly took the sticker from the boy. He read the bright red words written on the tiny decal. “D. A. R. E.”
“We learned about it in school today. They said you shouldn’t do these kinds of things if you want to live a long and healthy life.” This child was giving this adult a lecture.
To this, the man’s response just a chuckle, a deep chuckle, slowly disintegrating into a smoke sputtering scoff. He had no words left. The boy then immediately turned to face the little girl.
“Hi! My name is Alan, but you can call me Al,” the boy grinned. “They also said you should say no to people who ask you…if you can.”