Danny by Claire

The crunch of grass under his feet was the only sound as Danny Alexander walked outside late Saturday afternoon.

Suddenly something hit him in the back of the head.  He jerked around to see nothing but a ‘duck crossing’ sign.

“Whoa, that was weird…” Danny muttered to himself.

“Danny wa’cha doing?” A girl’s hands covered his eyes.  “Guess who?”

“Charity, what do you think you’re doing?  And what did you throw at me!?” Danny asked with an agitated wisp in his tone.

Charity put her hands on her hips and looked confused.

“I didn’t throw anything at you.  What do you think you’re doing accusing me of that!?” She replied pointing at him.

Danny started to walk off after that statement.  He didn’t look back.  He knew Charity was a bad liar and she turned all red when she did.  She obviously wasn’t lying.

Charity came padding up to Danny.  She walked just behind him not saying anything. Finally Danny flipped around, “Stop, okay?  Please, just leave me alone!” he snapped at her, running his hands through his short black hair.  “What I want is for you to leave me alone!…  Okay!?…  Got that!?”

Charity stood there with a stunned look on her face.  The stun molded into anger quickly.

“Fine!” And that was the last word he heard from her in a long while.

After Charity left he thought about the thing that hit him in the back of the head, if there was anything.  He thought about why he did that to his best friend.  And he pondered where it came from because usually he’s a really nice guy.  Then he didn’t think of Charity, only of the sharp jolt he got when something hit him.  He thought about how his kid brother, Marlow, ate all of his stashed away chocolate and maybe that was why he was mad all of the sudden.  Maybe, but what did that have to do with this…Hmm.

A few weeks passed and this new kid, Mai, walked up to him at his school.

“I heard about you and Charity,” Mai said, not even introducing herself (even though he knew her name already).  “Did you know she had a huge crush on you?”

“Yeah, hello I’m Danny.” He said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

Her blue eyes bored into his green eyes and the intensity of her determination for an answer forced him to look away.  He looked back after about a minute and she was gone.

Danny searched everywhere to find her after the information finally sunk in.  She was nowhere.  He even got his friend Bekka to check the bathrooms (until now Bekka was his best friend other than Charity).  He kept searching for her to find out if the information was true.  It was eating at the back of his mind.

“Y’know, I coulda told ya that Charity liked you.” Bekka said as they walked home from Husky with a Mars Bar™ each.

“Yeah, I bet you could Bekka, I bet you could.”

Danny continued walking when Bekka stopped surprised at his reply.  She ran right past Danny, stopped about a meter in front of him, chucked her Mars Bar™ at him and screamed.  Danny dodged the bar calmly, showed no emotion on his face and kept on stepping.

“You’re weird!  I don’t know you any more,” Bekka whispered and walked into her house.

“…I don’t know you any more.”

The words rang in Danny’s head and he stopped in his tracks.

“I don’t know myself either.”

A few years later the same thing happened; he was hit on the head again.