Suzie’s House 127: Tickets

“So, you going to do it?”

Ben watched Gene dump all his old notebooks into a garbage can the school left in the hall for everyone cleaning out their lockers. He couldn’t help think it was a waste to throw away so many blank pages. He could use those pages for his writing.

“Do what?” he asked Gene.

“Talk to that lady down the street who writes books. Aren’t you going to ask her if your stuff is any good?”

“Oh. Yeah. Maybe.” Ben would much rather have talked to Miss Spring about it, but Miss Spring was already gone and he didn’t know if he’d ever see her again. Today there’d been a different substitute in English. Not that it mattered, being the end of the school year and all.

“All right. Let’s go.” Gene slung his backpack on his back, dropped his skateboard out of his locker onto the floor in the hall, and took off riding it.

Lately Ben had been riding his skateboard to school too, but even if it was the last day of the year, he wasn’t going to ride his down the hall. No matter how much fun it looked.

“Gene, wait!” Lisa came out of a classroom in time for Gene to not notice her at all. If it had been him instead of Gene she was waving it, Ben would have noticed, for sure.

“Ben!” She came running up to him. Actually, it was more like cutting through the stream of people to get to him as he walked past, but it still felt good. “I want to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded more mad than he felt. He started to say something about wouldn’t she rather talk to Gene, but didn’t, which was a good thing, cause she gave him a hurt puppy look and begged, “Please.”

“Yeah, sure.”

The two of them walked out the front, right past Gene, who was getting hauled into the Vice Principal’s office for skateboarding. Ben hoped he didn’t get his board confiscated so Mom wouldn’t have to come down and get it back for him.

“Is it all right if I come over to your house to visit sometime this Summer?”

“You want to hang out?” Ben straightened his back. He felt like doing a high five, but kept that to himself too.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, you can come any time.”

“It’ll have to be in a couple of weeks, though. My folks are taking me to visit my grandmother. Oh, that reminds me, I’ve got something for you.” She fished around in the front of her backpack. “Here.”

She shoved a pair of tickets at him. Tickets to a Shapeshifter concert.

“Oh wow! Shapeshifter? Where’d you get these?”

“My cousin. But now I can’t go because I’m not going to be here. So anyway, you want them?”

“Yeah! Yeah, thanks!”

“Sure. You’re welcome.” She grinned as she yanked up the strap of her backpack, then looked kind of uncomfortable. “So, anyway.” She glanced around like she didn’t know where to look. “I’ll see you when I get back. Right?”

“Right! Anytime. You can come over whenever.”

“I will. Bye.” She walked off, but when she got to the corner she turned and looked at him and even waved.

He grinned and waved back.

Once she was gone all the way, he looked at the tickets in his hand. There were two of them.

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