Thursday
Picture 2
Burntcore's Choice: Picture 2
Title:
The first thing students did upon moving on campus was run to the local office supply store and clear out the shelves of sticky notes. Seriously, all the stores in the area that carried sticky notes were sold out the first weeks of school every year. Some entrepreneurial students would actually order them by the case then sell them at exorbitant prices to their fellow students after all the store shelves were cleaned out. Usually it was the Freshmen who were the last to know about the importance of sticky notes and therefore were the ones who suffered the most from the hustlers.
Thankfully, Michelle and I had already done our time as lowly freshmen and bought our supply of sticky notes way in advance.
Anyone outside of our school would wonder why sticky notes were so important. They certainly didn’t look that important… just little squares of paper with adhesive on the back so you wouldn’t lose them. But here, here they were quite important. Only here were they used for more than mere notes. Here they were used on the Wishing Wall.
The legend of how the Wishing Wall started is shrouded in mystery and rumor, but regardless, the end result was still the same. Wishes, confessions, secrets, and silly thoughts were all posted on a seemingly innocuous wall in the middle of the Student Center for everyone to see, to read, and discover. People posted their wishes in hopes that they would come true.
Sometimes the wishes were for something simple like a good grade on a test but the wishes could also be about a crush noticing the wisher, or even, in one case, that a student’s mom would kick breast cancer.
She did.
The mother’s cancer remission just strengthened the power that the Wishing Wall had. People who may have been skeptical before were now believers. Beforehand, there may have been bare parts of the Wall that weren’t covered in sticky notes. After that, the Wishing Wall was coated with sticky notes.
A full Wishing Wall brought the question on how a prospective wisher would place their sticky note on the wall. A wish could not be removed from the Wall except by the person who placed it there, or if it fell naturally once the adhesive dried up. So the potential wisher had to wait until a spot cleared up.
Websites had been created, just to watch for clear spots on the Wishing Wall. At any time during the day, someone could log into the video feed of the Wall and see what was there. Sometimes a person would get lucky and would be able to get to the Wall without a crowd, but that didn’t happen often especially when it was nearing the week of finals. Really desperate people would camp out in front of the wall, studying or hanging out, while they waited for a sticky note to fall.
Thankfully Michelle and I had planned our trip to the Wishing Wall well. We had our stack of stickies loaded and ready to go. Approaching the Wishing Wall, we examined the best place to put our wishes. Several stickies were lying on the ground, having fallen off during the day at some point. Their absence left some rather choice places to put new sticky notes.
Our strategy was sound. We had determined that the stickies that were closest to the middle of the wall had the highest chance of coming true based on months of careful observation. So we wrote our wishes and carefully placed our stickies in the spots we could find closest to the center. Michelle and I giggled as we pressed the adhesive as tightly as we could to the wall. We didn’t want to take any chances that our wishes would fall prematurely, before they had a chance to come true.
“How long till you think they will start to work?” Michelle asked me in a whisper.
I shrugged my shoulders as we walked back to our dorm. “I have no idea. Hopefully soon.”
Michelle nodded and hip checked me as we entered our building. Standing in the foyer was the object of my wish. He was tall with dark hair, clean shaven, and hopefully mine... soon. Our footsteps alerted him to our presence, and he turned, slowly, towards us.
“Dani?” he asked, his face breaking into a smile.
“Hey, Masen, how are you?” I asked, feeling suddenly nervous.
“I’m good. How are you?”
I blushed, hoping he didn’t know where I just came from. “Fine. Have you met my friend, Michelle?”
Masen smiled at Michelle and she nodded at him.
“I have now,” Masen said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Michelle replied with a friendly smile. She turned to me and smiled wider. “Hey, Dani, I’ll meet you back up at our room, okay?”
“Uh, sure,” I said, my heartbeat pounding. Michelle winked at me as she walked by.
“So, what are you up to today?” he asked, after Michelle had turned at the corner and out of sight.
“Nothing really. We were just walking around to get some fresh air.”
He ran his hand through his hair, messing it up in a delightfully, adorkable way. “Are you doing anything tonight?”
I tapped my fingers to my chin to try to keep them from shaking. The wish couldn’t have come true this quickly, could it?
“Hmmm, I don’t think so. What about you?”
“Well, I was hoping, if you weren’t doing anything, if you wanted to do something tonight.”
I almost dropped my bookbag in shock. “Really?”
Masen smiled softly at me and walked closer, close enough to where I could smell his cologne. “Yes, really. So what do you say?”
“I think it’s a date,” I replied with a huge smile.
He hands his phone to me. “Great! Here, give me your number and I’ll call you later to make definite plans.”
My smile couldn’t get any larger as I typed my number into his fancy touchscreen phone. We parted ways with a promise to talk soon to make our plans. I floated up to my room, so incredibly happy.
In the Student Center, a sticky note floated down to the ground, having only been on the wall less than a day, but it’s purpose was fulfilled. The wish came true.
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