SOMETIMES (standard:Flash, 635 words)
Author: Ramon	Added: May 25 2004	Views/Reads: 3292/2265	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Sue Ellen has a big sister's guidance . . . Tommy doesn't understand.

SOMETIMES (599 words) 

by Ramon Collins 

Shadows circled around the backyard as chickens scampered for the safety
of the gooseberry bushes. Tommy reached up for the handle on the screen 
door and yelled, “Mom! Chicken Hawk . . . and here comes Sue Ellen and 
she's barefoot.  Can I go barefoot?” 

Tommy's mother walked out onto the porch, shaded her eyes and searched
the sky, then looked down the lane toward the gravel road. “It's kind 
of early in the season for bare feet.” 

“Sue's barefoot already and she's a girl.  Can I?”” 

“Oh, I guess so.” 

Tommy untied his shoes and pulled them off. Socks went into shoes. He
stood, folded the bottom of his pants legs up two turns and wiggled his 
toes. “We're goin' down to the pond to look for frogs.” 

Sue Ellen and Tommy walked between the tool shed and the pump house,
helped each other through a barbed-wire fence, then onto a worn cow 
path that cut through the south pasture, toward the pond. She walked 
ahead, stopped and turned.  “You were thinking about me on the 
backsteps just now, weren't you?” 

“Nah . . . I was watchin' a Chicken Hawk.” 

Sue Ellen walked on.  “You were thinking about me . . . I saw you.” 

Tommy stepped over a sticker. “I wasn't . . . well, sometimes I do.” 

“When?” 

“Mostly when we're catchin' frogs.” 

Sue Ellen ducked under a willow branch and held it back. “You were too
thinking about me and  that means you're in love.” 

“Ah, I‘m not in love.” He wrinkled his nose. 

“You are.” 

“Nuh-uh.” 

“You are.” 

They scrambled down the bank and sat down on the cow-mowed grass. Willow
trees, tall marsh grass and brambles bordered the pond. Clumps of clear 
jelly with black dots clung to the stalks of marsh grass in the limpid 
water. Soon the dots would wiggle out of the goop and hundreds of 
tadpoles would sprout arms and legs and become baby frogs. 

Sue Ellen dangled a switch in the water. “My sister told me you're in
love when you can't stop thinking about a person.” 

Tommy rolled his eyes. 

Sue looked at him. “Do you think about me in the morning?” 

“When we walk to the bus, sometimes.” 

“At lunch?” 

“Lunch? You sit at the girls' tables.” 

“After school?” 

“Sometimes.” 

Sue Ellen stood up, threw the branch in the water and watched the
ripples spread in ever-larger circles. Tommy frowned. “What did you do 
that for? Now they know we're here.” 



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