("Reader's Digest" version)
I've always believed in a spiritual explanation of the world. Now, after the shocking turn of events, finally I know that I have been right all along. But what am I doing? The proper place for a story to start is at the beginning!
I have always been a good girl. Mother says that I have more sense than father has. So imagine my surprise, to find myself caught up in any wild doings! At the close of this past July, I had just broken up with my boyfriend Johns Stevens Phillips Matthews, and was having second thoughts. I remember that I took a walk through the graveyard to clear my head, as I often do, when things feel as if they are closing in around me. It was a foggy morning in spite of the heat, and I very nearly stumbled over a marker that had been all but obscured in the fog. It was very odd, but somehow I lost my shoe when I tripped. I couldn't find the shoe anywhere. It simply vanished! I searched and searched.
Later that day, I was in my bedroom on my computer. I was debating whether to send the angry version or the sulky version of my e-mail reply to Johns. He can be such a dear sometimes, but the way he behaves in school can make me so mad! Before I had a chance to decide, I noticed a new message in my inbox, with a subject line that said: "You lost your shoe"!
Amazingly enough, someone had found the shoe that had disappeared so thoroughly from the graveyard. It was a boy named Jeroen Wren, who had contacted me using the e-mail address that I carefully print on the label of all my belongings.
His first e-mail to me was funny and sweet. He almost seemed apologetic about finding the shoe! I felt so instantly warmly towards him that I impulsively clicked "send" on the angry version of my reply to Johns, and deleted the other version. I then replied to Jeroen introducing myself, and asking why I hadn't seen him before at school, or around. I know just all of the kids in town! I thanked him for finding my shoe, and offered to meet him so he could give it back.
I was getting up again from my computer again when his reply appeared - just that fast! He seemed so shy, and he explained that the reason I hadn't seen him at school was because he was home-schooled. "Oh, that's just awful! You poor dear!" I thought, but I didn't type it of course. He told me there was no need to arrange a meeting, that I could go and get my shoe at any time. He told me how to find it where he had hidden it, in a secret nook of the big oak at the center of the cemetery. I knew exactly which tree he meant! That was my favorite tree in the whole cemetery.
I wasn't sure whether this was some joke, but just the way he explained himself and he seemed so shy - I didn't think he had it in him to play a trick. And how could he have arranged to have my shoe come off? It didn't make any sense. I held off replying, got changed and went straight to the big lonely oak. It's such a beautiful, safe tree! I often climb it, just a little bit up, and sit where the two biggest limbs come out from the front of the trunk. I sit there when I want to think. No one ever sees me. And right there in my favorite perch - in a nook I'd never taken notice of before - was a shoebox from Kiernan's Department Store (which closed before I can even remember!). And inside it, wrapped in faded gray tissue paper, was my shoe!
There was no note or anything. I even looked inside the shoe! Puzzled, I walked home with my shoebox and returned to my computer.
Then began a long exchange of notes and letters, carried through the electronic wires between Jeroen and I - tentative at first, but we so took to each other that after only a short while it was as if I had had a friend for life and never known it! As weeks went by, I tried to draw him out. Tried to get him to agree to meet - at the ballpark, the library, anything. I began to be sure that his parents were some sort of nuts, who kept him from going out into the world at all - though he certainly never said anything of the kind to me! But something was sure weird.
Little did I know! Little did I know, up until the day when my whole world turned upside down - when the puzzle finally started making sense, but everything else stopped. It was only last week. I was walking in the graveyard again, and I came to the same fateful marker that had caused me to trip, all those months ago. I'd been feeling so hopeful about Jeroen and I. I was beginning to feel certain that the mysterious wall between us would break through, and we would meet soon! I can't describe how it is when I get one of my feelings. When I just "know" that it's right - and sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't, but it always turns out to be something very significant! I could feel how close we were to being together. I knew it was going to be right, this time.
As I walked closer to the marker, I felt that in some way, this plain flat marker was responsible for bringing Jeroen and I so close to being together. I was curious. I wanted to see who was there - and to thank them. And of course, that's when I had the shock of my life! Because the marker said: "Jeroen Wren." Same age as me, only dead in the ground for a dozen years. I couldn't believe it! All of those beautiful e-mails he crafted and sent with love, all of the secrets I confided in him, and here he had withheld the greatest secret of all: the boy I had fallen in love with...was a GHOST!
It was a bumpy adjustment at first, but my shocking discovery really did resolve a lot of the unpleasant questions I'd had! Soon, the secrets between us had been cleared away, and we were closer than ever.
I love him. We'll be married when I die. Jeroen wants to do it right away, but I told him that we should wait one year.
I've always believed in a spiritual explanation of the world. Now, after the shocking turn of events, finally I know that I have been right all along. But what am I doing? The proper place for a story to start is at the beginning!
I have always been a good girl. Mother says that I have more sense than father has. So imagine my surprise, to find myself caught up in any wild doings! At the close of this past July, I had just broken up with my boyfriend Johns Stevens Phillips Matthews, and was having second thoughts. I remember that I took a walk through the graveyard to clear my head, as I often do, when things feel as if they are closing in around me. It was a foggy morning in spite of the heat, and I very nearly stumbled over a marker that had been all but obscured in the fog. It was very odd, but somehow I lost my shoe when I tripped. I couldn't find the shoe anywhere. It simply vanished! I searched and searched.
Later that day, I was in my bedroom on my computer. I was debating whether to send the angry version or the sulky version of my e-mail reply to Johns. He can be such a dear sometimes, but the way he behaves in school can make me so mad! Before I had a chance to decide, I noticed a new message in my inbox, with a subject line that said: "You lost your shoe"!
Amazingly enough, someone had found the shoe that had disappeared so thoroughly from the graveyard. It was a boy named Jeroen Wren, who had contacted me using the e-mail address that I carefully print on the label of all my belongings.
His first e-mail to me was funny and sweet. He almost seemed apologetic about finding the shoe! I felt so instantly warmly towards him that I impulsively clicked "send" on the angry version of my reply to Johns, and deleted the other version. I then replied to Jeroen introducing myself, and asking why I hadn't seen him before at school, or around. I know just all of the kids in town! I thanked him for finding my shoe, and offered to meet him so he could give it back.
I was getting up again from my computer again when his reply appeared - just that fast! He seemed so shy, and he explained that the reason I hadn't seen him at school was because he was home-schooled. "Oh, that's just awful! You poor dear!" I thought, but I didn't type it of course. He told me there was no need to arrange a meeting, that I could go and get my shoe at any time. He told me how to find it where he had hidden it, in a secret nook of the big oak at the center of the cemetery. I knew exactly which tree he meant! That was my favorite tree in the whole cemetery.
I wasn't sure whether this was some joke, but just the way he explained himself and he seemed so shy - I didn't think he had it in him to play a trick. And how could he have arranged to have my shoe come off? It didn't make any sense. I held off replying, got changed and went straight to the big lonely oak. It's such a beautiful, safe tree! I often climb it, just a little bit up, and sit where the two biggest limbs come out from the front of the trunk. I sit there when I want to think. No one ever sees me. And right there in my favorite perch - in a nook I'd never taken notice of before - was a shoebox from Kiernan's Department Store (which closed before I can even remember!). And inside it, wrapped in faded gray tissue paper, was my shoe!
There was no note or anything. I even looked inside the shoe! Puzzled, I walked home with my shoebox and returned to my computer.
Then began a long exchange of notes and letters, carried through the electronic wires between Jeroen and I - tentative at first, but we so took to each other that after only a short while it was as if I had had a friend for life and never known it! As weeks went by, I tried to draw him out. Tried to get him to agree to meet - at the ballpark, the library, anything. I began to be sure that his parents were some sort of nuts, who kept him from going out into the world at all - though he certainly never said anything of the kind to me! But something was sure weird.
Little did I know! Little did I know, up until the day when my whole world turned upside down - when the puzzle finally started making sense, but everything else stopped. It was only last week. I was walking in the graveyard again, and I came to the same fateful marker that had caused me to trip, all those months ago. I'd been feeling so hopeful about Jeroen and I. I was beginning to feel certain that the mysterious wall between us would break through, and we would meet soon! I can't describe how it is when I get one of my feelings. When I just "know" that it's right - and sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't, but it always turns out to be something very significant! I could feel how close we were to being together. I knew it was going to be right, this time.
As I walked closer to the marker, I felt that in some way, this plain flat marker was responsible for bringing Jeroen and I so close to being together. I was curious. I wanted to see who was there - and to thank them. And of course, that's when I had the shock of my life! Because the marker said: "Jeroen Wren." Same age as me, only dead in the ground for a dozen years. I couldn't believe it! All of those beautiful e-mails he crafted and sent with love, all of the secrets I confided in him, and here he had withheld the greatest secret of all: the boy I had fallen in love with...was a GHOST!
It was a bumpy adjustment at first, but my shocking discovery really did resolve a lot of the unpleasant questions I'd had! Soon, the secrets between us had been cleared away, and we were closer than ever.
I love him. We'll be married when I die. Jeroen wants to do it right away, but I told him that we should wait one year.
Comments
BTW, this story has that certain feigned casual tone that one finds in emailed stories warning of the dangers of accepting perfume samples from strangers, or telling us how to stave off a heart attack in progress by coughing properly. Is there any connection?
...or DO I??