Fallout

It was her seventeenth birthday. She looked at her phone: 4pm exactly.

Her face fell.

Her best friend was right; this was a practical joke. She wondered if the cruel video of her standing in a park looking like a dork would be seen by everybody at school.

She was born an odd ball. A purple birthmark ran from stomach to her forehead leaving half of her face scarred so she looked like a super villain. The girls called her "Eggplant."

Their cruel taunts echoed in her brain. "No boy will ever want to come near you! You'll be an odd maid. Hey, freak, when I look at you I want to puke but when I do it reminds me of your face!"

She reached into her purse to touch the carefully folded note. This ordinary piece of college ruled notebook paper asking if she would be at the garden next to the school at 4pm was her ticket out of mired mundane of menace and mediocrity. Maybe the other girls were wrong and she did indeed have a chance of romance.

She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes she saw him. He was seventeen, captain of the soccer squad with a chiseled chin and eyes that shimmered like the ocean. Every girl in school was in love with him.

She looked from side to side. No giggles from beyond the bushes. This moment was real.

"Hi," he said in a deep, masculine timbre.

"Hi," she squeaked.

"Thanks for reading my note. This is going to sound weird but, please, hear me out."

"I will."

"Last week, outside of the grocery store you saw an elderly woman trip and tumble to the pavement while trying to cross the street."

She nodded.

"Then you checked to make sure she wasn't hurt. And then you walked on to the street to pick up the cans and bottles she bought. You returned them to her. You helped her up and sat with her on a bench."

She slightly shrugged. "I did."

"It was raining." He gave her a slight smile. "You went back into the store, got a box and walked her home. You helped put away her food in the pantry and then you spent two hours with her looking at old photos."

"She seemed lonely," she tried to explain.

"When I was driving over for dinner I saw you walking down the sidewalk. I was wondering why you were there."

He reached out and touched her left hand. She trembled and gulped.

"My grandmother spoke so highly of you. And from listening to her and recalling my interactions with you over the years I have come to a conclusion: you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen."

She whispered "What?"

"My grandmother gave me something that I want to give to you." He gently opened up her hand and gave her a heart shaped locket.

He touched the bottom of her chin. Her quivering lips moistened. And he gave her the greatest, richest, sparkling kiss in the history of the world.

The boy faded into dust. The garden became out of focus as the greenery morphed into black except for a lone lit candle. Soon other lights illuminated. There stood the girl, fifty years later. The metal walls of the makeshift classroom filled with poorly dressed, unkempt children sitting on wood crates.

"And that is how we will rebuild our world and, once more, make it" she pointed at her birthmark, "beautiful by seeking those things in each of us that are tender, good, resplendent and divine."

She held up a drawing of a flower. "And finding the garden within."

The girls all had tears in their eyes. One of the boys pumped his arms up in the air and cheered "Yeah!" And they leaped for joy.

And there was faith, hope and love.