An Old Love Story

An Old Love Story

“And so it must be,” said Ms. Miller with a smile.

Ms. Miller was the school librarian. I think she was probably from ancient Roman times because of all the crinkles in her skin. You couldn't find a spot anywhere on her face that did't have a wrinkle of some sort. Her hair was stiff and white. If you looked hard enough you can see her pink scalp shining through her thinning hair.

She was pretty scary to look at too, especially when she looked back.

She wore large, dark rimmed glasses with thick lenses that made her eyes look enormous.

It never failed that some poor child would wonder into the library by mistake only to be frightened half to death by the appearance of Ms. Miller.

She had a mean, coarse sounding voice. When she told you to do something, you did it. No one really knew what happened to those who didn't.

I can tell you this, however, I don't know of a single person that ever returned from wherever they went.

For their disobedience she dragged them off to someplace far away that nobody knew about, and they never returned. Well...at least that's the story I heard.

There was a rumor that Ms. Miller was really a zombie.

I failed to believe this because it would mean I had to believe in zombies, and I didn't.

I mean really, walking dead people.

But then again, she did posses some zombiesque qualities about her.

I think this was partially due to her arthritic condition. She walked kinda' funny like.

It was said that poor Ms. Miller never married.

The rumor, however, was that she had been engage once to a handsome young man from some foreign country with some exotic sounding name.

As the rumor went, he ran off with her best friend Sally Anderson, just days before their wedding.

Later, it is said, the feeling of guilt for leaving poor Ms. Miller, overcame him greatly and he stabbed poor, dearest, sweet, little Miss Sally to death with a butchers knife.

He later then drowned himself in a river of tears and whiskey.

I swear, I don't know what to believe.

No matter what the truth of it is, it left Ms. Miller a sour, bitter, old woman.

On this particular day, however, something was strangely different.

She seemed happy and friendly, and for heavens sake, even a bit joyous! This wasn't like her at all.

At first I thought I was having an outer body experience when, suddenly, I came to the realization, I didn't believe in them either.

Really people, get serious.

Getting outside your body, oh please, give me another break here.

But something was up, that's for sure.

I suspected it because she almost smiled once.

My classmates all held their breath when she did.

They were sure her face would crack into a thousand pieces.

It was a different place in the library today.

It was a pleasant place, a place where someone might actually enjoy coming to, if they had a mind for it.

But at the same time, an eeriness crept all about us. We were almost certain we were no longer in the library.

My classmates, the more brilliant ones, were certain we were all in some sort of altered state of being.

It made us appear to be in the library, but actually we were someplace else.

Don't ask for any explanations on this one, not even I understand it.

My classmates were all pretty weird.

I think Sandra Goodall and I were about the only two normal people in our entire class, and I'm not too sure about Sandra.

She let her dog kiss her on the mouth.

There was just something about that which was not right.

“And so it must be,” chirped Ms. Miller again.

“What does that mean?” asked Mary Short.

Mary, like her name suggest, was the shortest person in the entire school.

This one tiny obstacle, however, did not keep her from being very outspoken. She was, perhaps, the bravest short person I knew.

Last April she beat up Jimmy Wilson. Jimmy, as everybody knew, was the class bully.

He pestered poor Mary until she could stand it no more.

She lit into him like a cat on fire. With a series of swift kicks to the abdomen, followed up by some short jabs to his oversized lower jaw, which turned out to be made of glass, he went down like a giant blob of human flesh.

Jimmy was a bloody mess before it was all over.

It cost her two weeks of off campus suspension, but she said it was worth it, and would do it again, if needed.

No one knew it, but Mary was an expert in the martial arts.

Jimmy never had a chance.

I only knew because I caught her coming out of the karate place.

She swore me to secrecy, but I don't know why.

Mary looked at me again and repeated her question,

“What does that mean?”

I shrugged my shoulders and replied,

“I don't know.”

Well, Ms. Martin certainly was happy about something, that's for certain.

About five minutes later an old man walked into the library.

He must have been at least as old as Ms. Miller.

His hair was silver gray.

Turned out, he had just as many wrinkles as Ms. Miller, but none of us could be absolutely sure.

Randy Miller placed a wager that Ms. Miller had twice as many wrinkles as the old man.

Mary Short wasn't so convinced and was more than happy to take Randy up on his bet. She promised that if he were right, she'd buy him a chocolate malt at the Dairy Queen after school, and then kiss him on the lips.

The class thought this was the greatest contest to ever come down the porcelain clad hallways of our little school.

There was one thing, though, something thing that dared put a halt to our westward moving, wagon train of hopes and dreams.

What exactly that means, I'm not sure.

Here in lie the problem; who would, or even could, get close enough to count all the wrinkles on both the old man, and Ms. Miller's face.

Could anyone do it without raising some sort of suspicion?

Annie McFarland was certain she thought she had the solution.

She could use the old telescope located on the back wall of the library to zoom in on Ms. Miller's face.

She would count the wrinkles on one side of her face and multiply them by two.

Then she would do the same for the old man.

Annie was a cunning girl who was always full of strange and new ideas.

She always seemed to have a solution to every problem.

She was the type that could tell you the exact amount of time it takes for the light from the sun to reach earth.

According to Annie, it takes exactly eight minutes and twenty two seconds, depending on the time of year.

Annie snuck her way to the back of the room and began making adjustments to the telescope when the viewfinder fell off and landed on the one spot in the library not carpeted.

THWANK....It landed with a loud clang.

It's a sad thing too, because it was a very old telescope, an antique from the olden days. I think that means it was really, really old.

My brother told me anything older than twenty years was classified as an antique.

I guess that makes my parents antiques too.

I didn't know anybody older than my parents, except Ms. Miller and perhaps Mr. McCarley, my science teacher.

The class let out a loud gasp as the viewfinder shattered on the tile floor.

Ms. Miller looked over the top of her eye glasses to see the cause of the commotion.

Annie stepped back away from the telescope and announced,

“It wasn't me Ms. Miller, it just fell off all by itself. It's pretty old you know. It probably fell off because of metal deterioration.”

Leave it to Annie to come up with something intelligent sounding.

“It's OK Annie.” replied Ms. Miller calmly.

The class let out another gasp.

This was so unlike Ms. Miller.

Was this the same Ms. Miller we all knew and feared, or some imposter who was now occupying Ms. Miller's body?

Something strange had happened.

Now I'm beginning to question if perhaps my classmates weren't right.

Maybe we have been tossed into another dimension of time and space.

Maybe Rod Sterling from The Twilight Zone was standing right behind me.

The whole thing was giving me the creeps.

Mary was convinced Ms. Miller was under some sort of spell cast by some alien from Mars.

She also believed that half the population of earth were actually aliens from Mars.

She once caught her mother reading a book called Women are from Venus, Men are From Mars.

She was convinced this revelation proved her point.

Jimmy Wilson agreed with Mary's assessment of Ms. Miller.

He would agree with just about anything Mary said, since he was madly in love with her. He set out on the task of locating some sort of antenna sticking out from Ms Miller's head.

Of course he failed to locate any such thing.

He concluded they must be retractable.

Jimmy also believed he had a Sasquatch living in his back yard.

He was a little weird to say the least.

The truth turned out to be a large bush someone had sculpted into a human form.

In the shadows of the evening light, it did look a little like a Sasquatch.

After the commotion had settle down, the old man walked over to Ms. Miller's desk and led her to an isolated area of the library.

He reaches into his pocket and pulled out a small square box.

Ms. Miller's face lit up like a beam of sunlight burning holes into your skin.

“I think the old man just proposed to Ms. Miller,” gasped Annie.

Excitement pulsated throughout the library.

Soon the old man left.

On his face was a huge smile.

Ms. Miller walked to her desk and sat down.

She looked at her ring finger and sighed.

On it was a golden engagement ring with a rather hansom diamond located in its center.

Tears began to flow down her cheeks.

Mary was confused.

"Why is she crying when she should be celebrating?"

Mary didn't understand things the way other girls did.

She plays football, for heaven's sake!

Our English teacher, Mrs. Blagburn, walked to Ms. Miller and huged her.

Randy looked up at Mary and said,

Yuck! This just ain't normal.”

I suppose Randy would know what's normal and what's not.

In a moment Mrs. Blagburn stood and announced,

Class, Ms. Miller has something she wants to tell you.”

Mary looked at me and whispered,

“I don't think I want to hear this.”

Ms. Miller moved away from her desk.

“Class,” began Ms. Miller, “ I want you to be the first to know. Today, just a few minutes ago, Mr. Charles Lockheart asked me to marry him. I said yes.”

“Ms. Miller,” protested Mary as she stomped her feet on the floor.

“Your too old to get married. Why on earth would you do such a thing at your age?”

“Mary,” replied Ms. Miller, “I don't believe the heart is ever too old for love.”

Mary and I never figured out what she meant .

Come to think of it, we never figured out what she meant when she said, “And so it must be,” either.

What secret little meaning hides behind those mysterious words?

Mary and I didn't figure out a lot of things that year, but I think I figured out one thing, I think I'm going to marry her someday.

I wonder if our grandchildren will try to count our wrinkles.

It's just the way things are I suppose.

I wonder if I'll have as many wrinkles as old Ms. Miller.

The End

Author's Note

Inside the mind of a middle schooler.

Reviews

[roarke]

I think ya nailed it M.E. like trying to herd cats into a sack... I once taught middle school and can attest to the accuracy of this tale. So many cool characters here, in middle school there aren't anything else but "characters"... and ya squeezed in a love story, yer just showin' off now. Enjoyed.

[M.E.Lyle]

Thanks for reading this old story. I had fun writing it.
Middle school kids are a riot. They provided me with years of fun and joy.
Thanks again.