The wedding bells ring, and I'm suddenly old.

That girl - she's my age. Well, a year older, but not a full year. She's a peer. She's a friend.

She's a wife now.

She's beaming, so beautiful, and he looks so cute. The wonderful couple, with their pink-Beetle-convertible love.

And I'm alone. Listening to the bells, as they ring their goodbyes to my youth, the death knell of my childhood.

Damn, Nova. One of those moments, isn't it?

a chemistry fantasy

Their golden heads are close together. Their voices are low. Not so low I can't hear them, but I'm invisible, so.

"She was almost...but then she said she was scared!"

"Scared! Of what?"

Of pregnancy, of AIDS, of the loss or gain of your love.

I say, "I wouldn't be scared." They turn and look at me, mouths slightly agape, as my puritan image slowly tarnishes in their eyes.

"What?"

"Well, not for just anyone, but for either of you two, I would."

No, I don't. I don't say anything. I stay invisible. The bell rings. They leave the classroom.

Wow. This "Bells" topic has been very inspiring.

It's definitely a power topic, isn't it?

Yes -- I mean the "Looking Down" topic produced lots of great drabbles -- but I am impressed with the speed and quality of the submission for "bells".

Yeah. It's fun. And I thought that "bells" would be limited.

And you know where this one came from, too? From kat's "what would you write about if you were writing about these school subjects" call for titles for her class project.

I'd said, "My partner, the pyro" for Chemistry, and that got me all nostalgic about my old crush on my lab partner in high school. It was great! I did all the math and he did all the things that involved any sort of danger. We only cleared the classroom once.

Then came the bells topic, and ping! There was the trigger for this memory of an intensely whispered sexually charged conversation between my eighth grade crush and my sophomore crush. Oh, the sweet tingle of adrenaline, the glorious possibilities, the inevitable complete inaction and loss of the moment. Teen angst is the best angst evah!

Liese, sounds like I have to take your word for it - I somehow missed most of the usual realities associated with being a teenager, and angst was one of them.

But it sure makes for some good reading.

a quick, very brief drabble freewrite just to try to get myself back into the thread again...

They ring every 86 minutes. They shriek into the empty halls, a shrill admonition to jump, move, hurry hurry. They drive me into polished bits of time, swift and sleek and sudden. I am whip-toned to them, quivering in their silence, waiting.

Like a horse trained to the gate, I leap forward when I hear the bells.