Story Sent in by Nick:

The summer before I started college, I met Lucille online. We spoke for a little while on the phone, and made arrangements for a first date for a beautiful summer evening. I arrived outside the restaurant about five minutes before our meeting time, but she was already there, searching through a garbage bin.

I asked, "Lucille? What are you doing?"

She looked up, waved hello, and said, "I dropped something in here," and dove back into it.

"Can I help? What did you drop?"

She didn't look up, but said, "I can't tell you," then engulfed herself, deep into the trash.

I said, "Maybe I could help you dump it all out so that you wouldn't have to search through it all like that?"

She said, "Then I'd have to put it all back in, and… no."

I waited as she kept rifling through, then said, again, "Are you sure I can't help?"

"Sure, I'm sure," she said, and I waited as she dug deeper into the trash. After another few minutes, she said, "I might be a while. Want to meet up later?"

"When later?"

She said, "I don't know. Tomorrow?"

I told her, "I'm going out of state tomorrow," which was the truth.

"Okay, then," was her response. Trash spilled out as she pulled herself even deeper into the bin.

"I'm going to go," I said, finally.

"All right," she replied, "See you tomorrow."

I left. I never found out what she had lost, and I never heard from her after that.

Posted in: Stories,Written by a Guy