FFOct10 - Flash Fiction 4

Girl sees boy on the bus.
They smile at each other.
What happens next?

A. The girl's too shy. They sit in silence. Boy gets off the bus. They never see each other again.

B. The boy is shy, but the girl engages him in awkward conversation while she texts her boyfriend. He asks her out; she rejects him without a second thought; he gets off the bus, goes to a nearby pub and asks for a beer. They never see each other again.

C. The boy is a football player at the local high school. He's had his eyes on the rival school's lead cheerleader for a while. He talks to her and falls in love, but the girl is dating the rival quarterback. She's attracted to the boy, but weighs the pros and cons, and decides her future is safer with the rival. She lets him down gently and gets off the bus. He quits the football team. They never see each other again.

D. The girl admires the quarterback. She musters the courage one day to talk to him. They hit it off well--she doesn't know he's quit the team or that he was in love already. He uses her as an ego boost and an easy A in Biology I AP. He takes her virginity and hooks up with the class president. She finds out and due to a family history of clinical depression and attempted suicides, she hangs herself from the football goal. She never sees him again.

E. The boy is sad. He feels guilty. The girl notices his sorrow and comforts him. They fall in love and get married. They have two beautiful children and great, challenging, high-paying jobs. The boy gets on an airplane for a business trip in New York. He hates flying, so he takes a couple of sleeping pills before the flight. He didn't know the plane was hijacked or that the hijackers rammed the plane into the World Trade Center. He dies on impact, peaceful in sleep. He never sees her again.

F. She's crying, holding her children close. They're still too young to understand. They keep asking her why Daddy wasn't coming home. She can't answer because she's crying too hard. The boy gives her a handkerchief and gets off the bus. She never sees him again. She raises the children on her own, put them both through college, and they emerged as the top of their class, and soon the top of their field. They both get married and she sees her beautiful grandchildren every holiday and some weekends. She falls victim to a heart attack in her late seventies. She dies, and they see each other again.

Moral: you live, you love, you die. The end is always the same. But it's interesting anyway.