Just Dropping In

It was the sixth grade. I had gotten my first period just a few months earlier; I thought I was dying, but my mom finally found my underwear and explained what was happening to me.

Anyway, I was running late for school. I had missed the bus, and my dad had to drop me off. In addition to being late, the mysterious period returned the night before, and in a panic I had shoved a handful of pads into my backpack to use once I was at school and hopefully alone in the girl's bathroom.

I burst into school, running to my locker. Of course, as one of the shortest people in my class, I had a top locker. The hallways were empty, muffled sounds of "learning" coming from the closed doors of classrooms.

I guess I will never know why, but the guy who was my bottom locker, Zach, was kneeling on the floor, digging through his locker when I rushed in that fateful morning. I wheezed a "hello" and began emptying my backpack into my locker, desperate to get to class as quickly as possible. But I forgot the essential I had packed.

In the process of emptying my bag, a pad had come loose from my things and floated down, down, down, right onto Zach's unsuspecting head.

He looked up, confused, then down at the floor.

"I didn't see it!"

"It's not mine!"

We each frantically repeated these phrases until Zach had the sense to get up and run back to class. I picked up the pad, stuffed it back into the deepest dredges of my backpack, and never made eye contact with him again.

Thankfully, he moved in the eighth grade.