John’s first name was Kalia, but his parents were sensible parents so they told him that he could go by his middle name, John, if he wanted to. John liked trousers and girls, but since trousers were easier to woo John mostly bought trousers instead of fancy dinners. The trousers came in handy, though, because Jane thought John looked good in trousers (her first name was in fact Jane, and she had no middle name, though her parents were quite sensible as well). John thought Jane looked good in clothing in general, but never told her so. John just stared at Jane in class, with nothing much to say in his mind or his mouth. Jane knew that John stared at her in class because she had eyes on the back of her head (actually, she just had many friends with eyes on the fronts of their heads who sat behind John). As she did her classwork, Jane smiled, but never told anyone why, least of all John. They went on this way for a while, staring and smiling, until one day John decided to not buy those fantastic grey corduroy trousers and, instead, try to win Jane’s heart.

        This was no light decision, of course, and John had mulled over his situation for several days before coming to his conclusion. He walked up to Jane the next day after school, as she was just saying goodbye to some of her many friends, and proceeded to win her heart. Unfortunately, John thought that all the smiling that Jane had done during class was a sign of her passion for Advanced Placement Physics, so he began with a comment about thermodynamics. Jane, however, did not understand much of Advanced Placement Physics at all, but luckily remembered thermodynamics had something to do with heat.

        "That’s hot," she said, smiling that smile of hers at him for the first time.

        The battle won, John then told her how radiantly beautiful he thought she was, and how she was like some Greek or Roman deity (one of the ones that was beautifully radiant). John did not know he could say those sorts of things, and neither did Jane, so they both stood silent for a moment to contemplate John’s romantic outburst.

        "I like your feet," Jane said. Jane was being honest; she did in fact adore John’s feet. Jane liked the way John’s trousers fell about his ankles, and the way his toes bunched around the ends of his sandals.

        John did not know what to say. His burst of creativity had spun out, and now he was confronted with the prospect of examining his feet to find what she liked in them, or searching her eyes to figure out if she was lying. He chose to look at a car that drove by, then another, and back at the school towards a boy who fell down on his skateboard. All of this made Jane very impatient, as she was used to waiting, but not being made to wait. John started staring at a tree on the other side of the parking lot that had started to sway in the wind when Jane turned around and left. Because there was no one to see whether John followed, she walked quietly.

        John felt her move and watched her as she began to walk away. Time seemed to slow down (though Jane was just walking very slowly). John tried to move his feet, but all of the slow motion had made them heavy and useless, so he just watched her until she got into her car. Once she got into the car, though, everything sped up, and soon John was alone in the parking lot. That was not the first time they had ever spoken to each other (that was a time in third grade neither of them remembered), but it was the last.


        Time passed rather steadily after that, neither faster nor slower, and both John and Jane went to respectable colleges and graduated with a much better grasp on life’s happenings. During that time John, now Kalia, found several girls that he thought looked good in clothes in general, and even a few that he thought looked good without clothes at all. It was with one of those girls that he began to live with in a sunny apartment where they always kept the blinds closed. Her name was Jane as well, but John, now Kalia, simply called her Jay. They were lying together on a couch watching an old movie from the 80s or the 70s when the main character began to profess his love to a girl who was walking away. He told her how radiantly beautiful he thought she was, and how she was like some Greek or Roman deity (one of the ones that was beautifully radiant). This made John sit up a little. He laughed, not a lot, but enough to make Jay wonder why Kalia would laugh at such a romantic outburst.

        The real Jane, or rather, the Jane who had walked away so slowly that day in October, had never seen that movie, and if she had she probably would not have laughed. Jane, in fact, still sometimes thought of John (she did not know that he was now called Kalia) and his trousers and the way his feet looked poking out from his trousers. She also sometimes thought of that day in October when she had walked away so quietly, and often wondered why she had not heard John’s footsteps even though she had listened so carefully for them.