Dark Night

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I'd looked up the Shakespeare garden and found that its official name was "The Garden of Shakespeare's Flowers." I learned other facts, including that the garden, by whatever name, had over 200 plantings of different flowers like roses, poppies, lilies, and violets. John came to the door to pick me up, received congratulations from Grandpa, and brushed my lips with a hello kiss. I had to admire his guts; most guys wouldn't do that in front of a girl's family. "You look wonderful as always, Leia," he said, and escorted me down to his car. No need for the seat warmers today; highs were forecasted to be in the low 60's and sunny. As usual, there was no shortage of conversation and we held hands on our way to the garden.

Our plans received their first setback there; the garden was closed for a wedding.  "We could go to the Conservatory," John suggested, and that sounded good to me. We oriented ourselves and strolled along the walkway to the immense white Victorian structure, which wasn't that far. It was warm and humid in the conservatory, but I forgot about this as we strolled through the different areas, exploring aquatic plants, highland and lowland tropic areas, and extraordinary potted plants. In the highland tropic area hung a wonderful warm, lush, fruity fragrance that a helpful volunteer said was from the egg magnolias, and showed us the small yellow flower, which blooms for only a day. We wandered around for a couple hours, until we started to get hungry, and John proposed lunch at a restaurant. But I knew from my frantic research to plan our first date that there was a Whole Foods nearby, and I proposed a picnic. He liked the idea a lot, so we diverted, got a little of a lot of things to sample and went back to a meadow in the park where we ate and talked. It was harder than I expected not to talk about college; our pact not to discuss until we'd all made our decisions was a lot easier to adhere to before we had started getting the news back.

After we ate, I started to get too warm, so I pulled my hair back and was going to braid it. "Will you show me how?" John asked. "I adore your hair. It's such a beautiful color, so thick and soft. I love to play with it." So I had fun teaching him how to do a basic braid, then a French braid. We didn't want to go just yet, so we went down to the carousel first and rode it twice. He helped me onto an extraordinary sea dragon, taking the horse next to me for the first time, then we sat in one of the little carriages for the second. It was fun and lighthearted. But eventually we had to leave; he had a lot of schoolwork to catch up on. And while our grades wouldn't impact college, we still had to to concern ourselves with our final class rank. And John had family expectations to meet. No way did I want to get his folks mad at me because I distracted him. Although it was kind of nice to think I could. It just wouldn't be responsible.

Sunday I went out to buy a few posters to liven up my room. I'd tossed the ones I'd brought from Michigan when they wouldn't stay up, and in any case, my tastes had changed a lot. I bought one that looked like a retro travel poster of the Golden Gate Bridge, a beautiful black and white poster of the drum bridge in the tea garden, a picture of the Great Wall, and a couple botanical prints that I liked. I spent the afternoon deciding how best to hang them, then Grandpa and played some cutthroat Monopoly. That evening I did some homework, but my decision to have a study hall this semester was really paying off, and I spent most of the time reading in the living room with Grandpa and the cats. I was a little surprised how much I liked just being around somebody else, even if we were doing different things. I didn't forget to make the cupcakes.There were plenty for everybody; I increased John's allotment to three and even made a small batch of buttercream frosting for my brother. Grandpa is like me, he loves the white downy seven minute frosting.

Sooner than I'd thought, it was Wednesday. I stealthily logged into the USC admittance portal, like many in calculus. Ms Starmore sighed and told us just to get on with it. Cell phones came out from under desks all over the room; guess we hadn't been as stealthy as we'd thought. I was more relaxed than I'd been a week earlier; that admittance to UCLA was valuable in taking pressure off from other decisions. But USC had also admitted me. I was going to get a choice. John turned around, smiling, and we showed each other our acceptances. It would not be cool to smooch in class, but I brushed his lips with my fingers.