Jimmie was sitting at his bay window in his desk chair in his bedroom, upset that he was grounded for stealing an Almond Joy candy bar from the convenience store earlier this morning. He knew it would be a long two weeks confined to his bedroom. His father had removed all the electronics from his room earlier to reinforce his punishment. He only had his books, pens, markers, and paper.
Sitting there feeling sorry for himself, he noticed a rapid movement in the bow window across the back alley. Looking across the passage, he saw a blonde-haired girl sitting in a window staring back at him. She smiled and waved excitedly at him, and he smiled and waved back. Holding one of her fingers up, she left the window to return with what looked like a pad of paper. She scribbled something, then held it up for him to see. “Hi, my is Amy. What’s yours?” Her sign read.
Smiling, Jimmie grabbed his paper pad and wrote back, “My name is Jimmie. I am twelve years old. How about you?”
“I’m almost twelve. My birthday is next month,” Amy wrote back.
“My birthday was last month. I’m serving time, grounded to my room.” He wrote back.
After some concise thought, Amy wrote back, “I have covid. So I have to quarantine for two weeks.”
“I have an older brother and sister,” Jimmie wrote.
Amy said, “I have an older brother and a younger brother and sister.”
“I got Covid from my grandma Jenny,” Amy added.
With a bit of shame, Jimmie wrote and showed his pad of paper to Amy, “I got caught stealing an Almond Joy this morning. Now I am grounded for two weeks.”
“Why did you steal the candy bar?” Amy wrote back.
“I don’t know. I don’t like Almond Joy anyway,” was his answer after some thought.
He could see her laugh and shake her head. “Oh, well. Live and learn as my dad says.” She wrote back.
“My cat Tittles just had kittens.” Amy wrote
“I love kittens. My cat died last year.” Jimmie wrote back.
“You can have one of these if your parents say yes,” Amy wrote. “Would you like to see them?”
His answer was yes, so Amy went to get the kittens and held them up to the window for him to see. There was an orange one, two black ones, and a grey tabby. They were as cute as possible, even from the distance of the alley.
For the next three hours, Jimmie conversed with Amy by cue card. They wrote jokes, shared secrets, and wrote about dreams they had. They wrote about their school and the teachers they had in common. He found out she attended the Lutheran Church two blocks over while he attended the Baptist Church just down the street.
When his mom called him to lunch, he forgot about being grounded. The two weeks would fly by with Amy across the alley for him to write back and forth. For the first time today, he realized he was looking forward to the next two weeks.
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Off the Book
It ended like every other stupid idea. Badly, and alone. I’m researching digital confession ethics, he said. A tech ethicist. He gestured at floating data I couldn’t see then pulled out a physical notebook. Actual paper, fountain pen. He held it up like he was showing me scripture.
By Nicky Franklyabout 17 hours ago in Fiction
Comments (1)
Awww, this was so sweet! Looks like Jimmie stole the candy bar and Amy got Covid so that a friendship would bloom between them! The talking by writing on papers reminded me of the music video of You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift!