bird – Never Short On Words

Cali opened Brent’s notebook and began thumbing through. “What class was this for?” she asked.

Brent looked up from his bagel and mumbled. “That’s a diary that I had to keep for a math class. Differential equations.”

Cali flipped to a random page. “I think Laplace transforms are the devil, since the details are what matter,” she read aloud. Cali looked up at Brent. “That’s deep.”

“What?” Brent whined after licking his fingers clean of cream cheese. “Who makes a class write journal entries for a senior level math course? He deserved deep.”

Cali flipped to another page. She showed Brent a picture of a large bird of some sort walking across a stick representation of a differential equations book. “And this?” she asked.

“I wanted to give the dude the bird,” Brent said, picking up the other half of his bagel. “I also wanted to pass the course, so the middle finger wasn’t allowed.”

Cali shook her head putting the book down. “What did you get in the course?” she asked.

“That’s the best,” Brent said. “Look at the last page that I wrote on.” He took a large bit of his bagel and began chewing behind a wide grin.

Cali picked back up the book and started searching for the last page. “I don’t get it,” she said. “All it has on it is a large question mark.”

“Exactly,” Brent said. He took a big swig of his chocolate milk.

Cali threw the notebook at Brent, almost causing him to spill the rest of his milk. “Okay smartass, what did you get?”

Brent took another bite and made her wait till he was done chewing. “You will never know,” he said.

“Why not? Did you fail?” Cali asked.

“Nope. It’s because I don’t know,” Brent said.

“You dropped the course?” Cali asked. “How lame. Why not stick it out till the end?”

Brent smiled. “Because I wanted to start going out with a certain cute girl in my psych class, and if I told her I couldn’t go out during the weekends because I had to study differential equations and write in my diary about my feelings on the subject, I don’t think she would have said yes.”

Cali smiled. “Yeah, probably a good decision,” she said. “But why the question mark?”

“Because I wasn’t sure if I was making the right decision,” Brent said holding his hands up.

“And now?” Cali asked.

“Let’s just say I think I am getting a higher grade here than I was going to get in diff eq,” Brent said.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Cali said. “I might fail you right now.”

Brent leaned forward and gave her a gentle kiss. “No makeups for this examination?” he asked.

Cali smiled. “Depends, do you want to walk to the store with me. I need some more seltzer,” she said.

“Walk?” Brent asked. “Why not drive over?”

Cali held up her phone. “So I can catch some more Pokémon. Got to catch them all.”

Brent shook his head. “Nerd!”

Cali pointed at Brent’s notebook. “Like you’re the one to talk,” she said.

“Touché. Actually this works for me as well,” Brent said.