​​​​​Jenny ​didn't understand why Tom didn't look at her. They used to exchange glances every time they passed each other in the hall. She knew when his face would appear. Every day, at 11:15 in the morning, the school bell would ring clamorously with a sharp peal of delight—at least that's what she felt in her heart, because she knew she would soon see him...Tom. She'd walk out of class, turn left and head down the hall toward her locker...and then he would appear, amidst the babble of the other faces, walking slowly in the direction of his locker too—looking at Jenny with his nice eyes. Then, he would face the locker door (it was all beat up, like hers), and she would see his straight, graceful back, as he inserted one book and took out another. Once, when he pulled the locker door back very, very far, she received a glimpse of two portrait photos Scotch-taped to the metal surface of the squeaky door. She assumed they were members of his family, because one time she glimpsed an older lady in one photo, and she thought she saw an older boy in another. (The pictures weren't large enough for her to make out more.)​​

          She liked that about him, about Tom—the nice, family photos.​​

          Every time she saw him, when they looked at each other, he would look at her with a slightly bashful, yet also brave look. Jenny had figured he was just at the point where he would be willing to get to know a girl a bit more, and she hoped it would be her—and she certainly had the feeling it might be her—.​​
          Tom! she would think...during her spare moments, or when she had a chance to look out the nice window of her room in her house and watch (it was autumn now) the auburn, wrinkly leaves flutter to the grass, which was still green in patches, but would soon be covered by snow, so it wouldn't matter which color the grass was, because everything would be white—like the color of her love for Tom—.​​
          Tom....​​
          Jenny had studied colors. Like many of her girlfriends, she had colors she liked more than others, but her favorite had been white: clear, unblemished white. She liked the fact that it spoke of, at least to her, cleanliness, freedom, and purity. It didn't go speak out loud about itself, like pink or purple or even black—the boys loved to wear all-black clothing and smoke cigarettes in the empty parking lots behind the mall. Her studies had shown she had been right. Most cultures of the world saw the color white as speaking of purity, chastity, and honesty of heart, things she thought she saw in...Tom! (Although in just a very few cultures, even ancient ones, white symbolized death, she'd seen—which was a subject she didn't want to know much abou—. So white was for purity, she'd decided—like her heart—and, she hoped...Tom's as well.)​​
                           * *
One day—it was a usual early autumn day by all outward appearances—the leaves were turning a mellow brown at the wrinkling edges; the squirrels were hopping about, picking up acorns with their little teeth and lips; and the air would blow a bit cooler towards the evenings, when the sun would set slowly, as if saying "goodnight" to the world—she, as usual, stepped up the steep, rubber-matted stairs of the school bus, and found a seat midway back (where she liked to sit), by the window, and looked out as the bus curumphed off to finish the school route and then drop off the young, fresh-faced students smack dab at the nicely-paved-front of Lincoln Intermmediate School (she had read Lincoln, and he was a very wise man, she thought), a school known throughout the small state for its, well, lack of problems, to put it simply (they'd never been in the news for anything bad—although they'd had their problems, to be honest).​​
         In the school bus she watched the trees go by, trees that she'd seen a million times before, but they were new now, as they had been for about the foregoing two weeks—ever since, she'd recently realized, she saw Tom. Indeed, she felt as though she had never truly seen a tree, let alone trees, before seeing...Tom!​​
         She found herself daydreaming about nothing (except for Tom) and the only reason she knew this was because the school bus hit a really darn large bump in the road and brought her to, out of this early-morning reverie.​​
         "I should've known that bump was coming," she thought, almost scolding herself. "This bus has bounced on that bump I don't know how many times. What was I thinking?" She put her cupped hand to her mouth and inhaled in a whistley breath. "Of course," she said to herself. "I was thinking of..." and she looked around, as though the other students could perhaps hear her thoughts, "...Tom."​​
         All of a sudden the bus lurched to a stop and the front door squeaked (loudly) open.​​
         "We must be here!" she thought. Again, she didn't even see it coming. "Where have I been?" she wondered.​​
         She followed the boy ahead of her down the aisle, and, upon reaching the bus's stairs, stepped gently down to the almost sparkling white pavement, feeling the open air brush against her neck and her cheeks as she stepped outside. She could feel her rib cage expand as she took a deep breath of the clean, crisp morning air before having to enter the sometimes a bit musty aired school, as a precaution of sorts, just to get her "fair share" of fresh air before entering the nice, even charming, but just a bit old building.​​
         Then she thought of Tom (Tom!). She'd seen him first no more than two weeks in the ago. Two weeks!​​
         Why hadn't she noticed him before? Where had he been? And her? Where had she been? It was as though neither had existed, literally, until they first saw each other! She was no longer the just-fun-person she was before she first saw him; she, now, found her chest roiled by unfathomable feelings—deep, scattering, and wide, wild feelings—as though there were a storm inside her. (Sometimes she felt as though she'd "had the wind knocked out" of her, words she'd hear Ben, her older brother, use about when he was pummeled while playing state-wide football. He seemed very proud of it—that is, having the wind knocked out of him, although she didn't feel proud of hers. In fact, she could hardly breathe when it happened. She couldn't understand why he liked that!)​​
         But Jennifer didn't always know what to do with this storm of feelings, except lie in her bed at night and think about him, Tom: his shy-seeming but kinda solid way of looking when they were around each other. They hadn't even spoken a word yet! When would he speak to her? Or should she speak to him, first?​​
         She'd asked Sally what to do. Sally wasn't her best friend, but Sally'd gone out with one guy before (who Sally said she really didn't like). But, Jennifer wondered, how did Sally and that boy ever, a) talk, and b) actually make the decision to go together? Who said what? (Jennifer thought she remembered they'd gone to a movie at the local theater (which Jennifer's mom said they were "lucky to have." That way, her mom always said, they didn't "have to go to the mall"—which—she would continue, looking up thoughtfully—had "once never been there." Jennifer always looked at her mother strange when that happened. Was there something wrong with the mall? It was fun there! Oh well. There's no accounting for taste, as they say...or as someone said).) But Tom wasn't, or at least hadn't, looked at her...for the past three school days! Instead, he would walk with his head down, to his old beat-up locker, a, what's the word...somber look on his face, his eyes downcast, as though he might be sad, or something might be wrong. What could be wrong? Was it her? Did she do something he didn't like, and he was angry about it? Was that anger she saw on his face, or just glumness?​​
         She had to know, so she had decided that next day, unequivocally, without a doubt, she would look straight at him, and, and....​​
         And what? What could she say? What do you say to a boy you never even spoke to before? And all that looking at each other for almost two weeks seemed to make it even harder! He, Tom, would know she was speaking to him out of...concern, for...the change in their—what would you call it: Relationship? A change in ther relationship? (A boy she'd once spoken to at the mall said we were all—what was it! Yes: we were all in a, quote, "state of relationship" with each other, even if we never spoke to each other. He (the boy at the mall) said he was a Buddhist, and that's what Buddhists believe, or at least part of what they believed—that we were all related—all of us—every last single person...on the whole planet! So in a sense she and Tom had a, well...relationship, at least on a Buddhistic level! Well. That was better than nothing. (That guy was kinda strange, though—and not just because he was a Buddhist—. Well, some advice's better than none, even if it's from a strange-Buddhist-mall guy—).)

         "Jenny!" she thought she heard.​​
         "Jenny!"
         This time she heard it. "What are you doing, standing there? You're going to be late! Since when have you ever been late, Jennifer? Don't tell me you've grown tired of school already?"​​
         Jennifer turned her gaze away from the upward distance and recognized that Ms. Pheelie was looking at her, dressed in her usual bright outfit: a nice red sweater with a wide, loose weave, the wide weave kind of suggesting, Jennifer had always thought, that Ms. Pheelie was a fair and friendly person, not stuck up, just a nice, good person (Jennifer thought of the next-door neighbors. The lady there, unlike nice Ms. Pheelie, always wore a very, very tight weave-of-a-sweater, sweaters which were also very (very) thin—almost like eggshells made of wool! Or was it cashmere? (It must have been cashmere. The weave was so tight that it simply couldn't be wool—or even cotton!) Somehow, that skin-tight weave gave that woman an even chillier look than she already had on her sharp, raised-eyebrow of a face! Jennifer laughed inside at the thought. A face that's just one, raised...eyebrow! Scoffing at the world just by being so sharply raised, looking down on everyone, in cold judgment! Jennifer hoped she would never be like that woman. She would always make sure her eyebrows would always rise at a nice, gentle angle, not like a steep waterslide eyebrow that would probably only lead to a bone dry hard pool bottom at the bottom anyway!).​​

         "Jenny!" Jennifer heard again. "What on earth's name are you doing? Have you lost the ability of walking? You're a bit young for that, Jennifer. Now come on before you get yourself in trouble...and I woudn't want to see that—and you know how Mr. Johns is anyway, always being bothered by this or that. Poor man. He needs his rest, you know, and I wouldn't want him to blame you for not getting the rest he feels he deserves! (Sometimes," Ms. Pheelie seemed to say on the side to herself—kinda like the way her mother spoke to herself and let out a sigh when she'd say, "Well...that was when the mall wasn't there..."—"I think he regrets applying for that principal's job. Oh well. Looks like he's stuck with the job! There've been worse fates!")​​
         Jennifer walked into school and smelled the musty, but not unpleasant air. The smell reminded her, immediately, of Tom! Not that Tom smelled musty! In fact, she didn't even know how he smelled—sweaty, or not?​​
         She walked toward class and along the way passed her locker, and then...Tom's. Tom's locker, beat up, like it always was, always had been her entire life (she guessed), and would always be (she guessed again). Metal school lockers were just that way, bruised, battered, dented, but charming, after all. There was a charm in their damage, as though they, the bruised lockers, had been there with the students all along—through their trials, their tribulations, and their joys—and the dents and scratches and marks—and whatever else there—were just a kind of record of the unpredictable, often very emotional lives of the students at Lincoln Middle High.