by Focus
© 2000, all rights reserved
"It's an invitation!" Jenny squealed, hugging the envelope to her blossoming chest. "From Shane!"
Mary made the appropriate sounds of joy. Then, "An invitation to what?"
"Um, I dunno! He just shoved it at me, said it was an invitation, and rushed off to class."
"So, are you going to open it?"
Jenny stopped hugging the invitation to her heart just long enough to kiss it, and to admire the scrawl across the front. "Look! It's my name, in HIS handwriting! " She kissed it again. "Oh, this is to die for! I think he made the envelope himself!"
"But are you going to open it?" Mary was much more practical in this type of situation than Jenny was.
"I guess I'd better. But dang! I sure hate to spoil this envelope!"
"Here - use my nail file as a letter opener."
"Ok. Thanks. That'll work." Jenny squinted her blue eyes and sucked in her lower lip in concentration as she carefully inserted the letter opener into the flap of the envelope, and cut it carefully open along the fold. Then she returned the opener to Mary, and stood there, in the middle of the girl's rest room at Fullerton Junior High, staring at the envelope in her hand as though it were a bomb about to explode.
"So? You going to look at it?"
"I will. I will. Don't rush me! This is an event I've been waiting for all my life!" She carefully put her thumb and forefinger into the envelope, and withdrew a folded white piece of paper.
"Let me see!"
The two girls stared at the invitation. "U R Invited" was written on the front, and when hesitant fingernails with pink nail polish opened it up, the girls read, "2 go 2 the movies with me this Friday nite." On the back it said, "Pleese reply."
"Oooooooh! How sweet!" Jenny hugged the invitation to herself again, and danced around in a little circle.
Ever practical, Mary asked, "Will your parents let you go?"
"Of course not, silly. You know they say 'No dates till you are 15.'"
"Then what will you do?"
"I'll send regrets. But Oooooooh Mary! He asked me out! He asked me out!" Jenny danced around in a circle again.