Penny For Your Thoughts

The girl grimaced at the student identification card that had just been handed to her. Her photograph was horrible, she noted silently, when she saw herself smiling up from the shiny surface of the card. Bright blue eyes sparkled from camera lights and a toothy smile showed two neat, tidy rows of teeth. And then there was her name, it was long enough that it had to be specially printed in a smaller size of a font.

Princess Penelope Olivia Elliot-Abbot-Woods

The text was small enough that the girl had to squint just a little to read her name properly, even with her glasses on.

Princess wasn’t a title though, or a nickname, it was just that her parents thought it would be revoltingly adorable to have their first born be named ‘Princess’. Giving no regard to how much their daughter would be teased for being named Princess. But it wasn’t like she ran around introducing herself as Princess Elliot-Abbot-Woods. Her classmates give her enough weird looks as it was. No, she decided at the very mature age of three to call herself Penny.

Muttering something about sadistic photographers hired by schools, Penny shoved the card deep into her schoolbag, successfully burying it underneath a textbook from her science class and a binder full of notes from her four classes.

Rounding the corner in the hall to get to her locker, and to throw a jacket and a binder into the hall, Penny crashed into someone and things just went flying. Papers were drifting down to the ground, pencils were rolling on the ground and there were binders faced down on the ground with some papers that looked like they were threatening to come out.

“I’m sorry about that, I didn’t see you there.”

Penny looked up, fully ready to glare at whomever it was, but the words caught in her throat when she saw who it was. He had on a zipped-up sweatshirt that proudly proclaimed that he was a student from a rival school, and that he was there for the soccer tournament that the school was hosting.

“Are you okay?” the boy asked carefully when she didn’t reply to his first comment.

“Oh yes, I’m fine,” Penny answered quickly, feeling like he was mentally docking IQ points for her stupidity. She got up off the ground and he quickly picked up handful of pencils and markers that had strayed away from their owner when their owner and the handsome boy from the rival school crashed together.

Wordless, the boy handed over the handful of writing utensils and Penny took them. Dropping them into her bag, she flashed him a quick smile before she picked up her binder and murmured her thanks before she hurried away.

Penny ignored the blush on her face that she saw when she opened her locker and peered into the mirror that was stuck onto the metal door with magnets.

She knew him from somewhere.

And she was sure of it.

But if only she could remember where she’d seen that boy before. He was taller than her by at least half-a-foot. He had a tanned complexion, probably from spending so much time in the sun, and cheerful brown eyes that were framed with brown lashes that matched his hair.

After Penny hung up her jacket inside her locker, and put down a binder, she locked the metal box that was supposed to protect all her things and she leaned against it, sliding down until she was sitting down on the ground with her bag at her side and a novel in her hand.

She had an assignment to finish for English class, and Penny had a half-hour until her father came to pick her up. So she should probably have it finished by then.

But she was too busy wondering who that boy was.

He looked so familiar. There was something about his voice that nudged at her memory; there was something about his eyes that looked like someone else’s eyes. But she couldn’t place the handsome stranger to any of the other boys that she’d ever met in her life. But he was so familiar.

Penny took out a clean sheet of loose-leaf paper and began listing people that she knew that she hadn’t seen in a while and that attended the rival high school.

Every time she wrote a name down, she quickly scribbled it out when she remembered how they looked.

None of them were that much taller than her in height and nor did they have those particular set of eyes with the sparkle that reminded her of hidden mischief.

A soft beeping sound suddenly erupted near her and Penny jumped before she looked down at her wrist and pressed a button to stop the alarm that had been set by herself that morning. She had five minutes before her father would be at the front of the school, waiting to pick her up. He would ask her about her day, ask her about her classes, and then ask his darling ‘Princess’ if she would like ice cream before going home.

With a sigh, Penny stood up and collected her things before she went to the closest stairwell to get down to the main floor so she could meet her father out front. There was a light tapping on her shoulder before she reached the doors and Penny whirled around.

When she saw who it was, she smiled.

“It’s you.”

Written March 31 2006 for a short story contest.