Random Act of Kindness
He really hadn't meant to do it.
He was glad that he had done it, glad beyond glad even, but he really hadn't had any idea what that one random act of kindness would lead to.
It had started- as most things did for him- at the library.
He had never been a very library-ish person before.
He wasn't like she was, the girl who spent every waking second in the place. He was more the "look it up on the internet" kinda guy. He couldn't even remember why he had gone in there in the first place.
It had been another dreary lunch time in September. The sky outside the windows was grey, the food was bland at best, and the room was more crowded than usual thanks to the rain. Now usually, he would have enjoyed this.
Always one for loud noises and large crowds, he would usually revel in the tightly packed feel of it all. But not that day, not that day.
There was something about that day, something about how his head hurt, how his Chemistry teacher had given him a detention and how his dad was away on business again. That something just made him want quiet, something he usually hated, and solitude, something he usually couldn't stand.
So he left the lunch room.
Unsure of where to go, he wandered around the commons for a bit. He walked to the coffee shop where the girls shrieked too loudly, to the courtyard where the rain sent him back inside and finally to the library, where he stayed.
He had never really noticed her before. He didn't even know her name. All he knew was that she was the quiet girl who sat in the back of the classroom, wore vintage t-shirts, nerd glasses, and always had this cute little smirk on her face.
Well, it was kind of hard not to notice her now, not now that they were the only two people in the library.
She didn't even realize that he was there, she was just too absorbed in whatever it was she was reading to look up and see the boy staring at her like a blind man seeing the sun for the first time.
He wasn't used to that. He was the guy that everyone knew, the class clown that everyone got along with and wanted to be friends with. By high school logic, she should at least glance at him quickly and blush.
But she didn't, she just kept reading her book.
He was annoyed now. How dare she ignore him? He knew what he would do, he was going to make her notice him.
So he waited.
He pulled up a chair from a nearby table and just sat down at her table, she didn't even look up. He scowled and just stared at her, and kept staring, and just kept staring. As you can imagine, he got a little bored. So he studied her.
He noticed things about her that he never would have noticed before. Like how her hair curled just the slightest bit, how her eyes were bright and shiny behind those glasses, or how she bit her bottom lip whenever she started to read something suspenseful in her book.
What was she reading anyways?
He frowned a bit more and leaned in closer, trying to see the title of the book. Before he could though, the bell rang and she got up, left and didn't even look back.
And so it began.
Every day he would scarf down his lunch and dash to the library, where he would take that same seat and stare at her in a desperate attempt to make her notice him. She never really did, but he began to notice more things about her.
Like how she always wore band t-shirts, but the Beatles seemed to be her favorite, how her hair wasn't really brown in the sunlight, it was more russet than anything, and just how darned pink those stupid smirking lips of hers were.
He finally read the title of the book she was reading, "the Phantom Tollbooth". After a week of staring at the preview on the back, he got up and found his own copy.
He finished it in a day.
The next book was called "The Cupcake Queen", he read that one in three days.
After a month, they had moved on to Shakespeare. He was surprised to find that he really liked those old plays. At first, they had been hard to understand, but as she left one day she left a copy of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare Made Easy. She turned and smiled at him as she left.
That was the first time she ever acknowledged him.
By the time they had reached Twelfth Night she had finally talked to him.
"I think that Olivia might be my favorite character," she said softly, "She puts Orsino in his place."
He was too shocked to say anything, and then the bell rang and she was gone.
The next day, he came back with a serious look on his face, having stayed up all night to finish the play. "I like Sebastian better," he had said, "He's the one who makes everything right."
Then they started talking.
By Halloween he knew that her Dad was a police officer. She knew that his Dad was a doctor. By Thanksgiving break, they knew each other's favorite subjects. She liked Language Arts, he liked Lunch. And by Christmas, well, by Christmas he knew that he was in love with her.
Like he said, he wasn't totally sure how it had happened. Or even when it had happened. All he knew was that they had been reading the Phantom Tollbooth again, and he had realized it.
What to do about it though, now that was a different question.
The day before winter break, he slipped into the library with her gift hidden in his sweatshirt pocket.
She was sitting in her same old chair, wearing a red sweater that made her look beautiful and a sprig of holly in her hair.
He took his seat and stared at her seriously.
"Merry Christmas," she said.
He nodded and fiddled with the book in his pocket. "Merry Christmas," he said abruptly, then handed her the book quickly and stood up.
She looked at it curiously, reading the title. "The Phantom Tollbooth…" she murmured.
He didn't need to explain, she knew why.
It was her favorite book. She read it all the time, and her only copy was falling apart at the binding. He knew because the last time they had read it, she had been forced to read the Forest of Sight chapter over his shoulder, because those pages had fallen out of her copy.
It was just a random act of kindness, he didn't expect to get a reward for it, but he was happy that he did.
She smiled, those absurdly pink lips looking extremely soft. "Merry Christmas," she said again.
And then she kissed him.
He stood stock still after she pulled away, and watched as she gathered up all her things and left the library.
He really hadn't meant to do that…