The Tall Tale of Bubs and Beepah (Part I)

Let me tell you there was a boy named Bubs. He stood there in a sweatshirt, leaning against the door frame and eating. Orange-frosted cookie in his hand, he stared at the opposite wall, thinking something large compared to his small head. He either didn’t notice the younger girl, or he pretended not to notice. Beepah saw him, she looked at his eyes. Mesmerized, she thought him beautiful. She loved his eyes. He scowled, his mind full of philosophical arguments, and she turned quickly. With a flick of her light blond hair, she ran off to play. Bubs stayed, leaning on the door frame, his eyes betraying the new and exciting feelings inside.

            He ran around the right side of the building, jumped through the dugout corner, and ran to the back of the building. He stopped short and stared out into the prickly brush. He was too late; they had left him behind again. He wasn’t allowed to play with them there because it was too dangerous or too dark or too out of sight. He hung his head, sighed, and turned to leave the area. Suddenly, she appeared beside him. Beepah had startled him and he searched desperately for words, anything that would create a wall of security so he could hide his disappointment. He blurted something about flies in his room and how they bothered him when he was trying to sleep. She simply stared at his eyes, and immediately he assumed she had taken his comment as idiocy. He walked away embarrassed, disappointed from being abandoned, but with something still sparking in his soul.

             She stood in the dugout, delighting in the dirt and dark. An intrusion caught her attention and she saw him enter. Her heart leaped as Bubs leaped through the opening. Clearly he was playing hide and seek, but she couldn’t help but feel he had come for her. The stick should have told her that he had in fact come for her, but she couldn’t know that. Bubs did not know why he poked her; he figured it was preferable to poking her with his finger. He regretted not tapping her or just speaking to her, as his comment implicitly revealed.

“It’s a good thing I didn’t poke you with that end. There’s a nail there, you could’ve gotten hurt.”

What he really wanted to say, what his comment should have meant, was that he should not have poked her with the stick at all. He should have found a different reason to address her, but he was too afraid. After all, Bubs was only eight. There's not much an eight year-old boy can think he has in common with a six year-old girl. He would have to leave that sort of thinking for much later. Beepah had to leave—her absence created a longing in his heart, but that heart still firmly grasped a growing electricity.