She almost turned around when she saw the sign.

The Lily Pad, Bakery and More

“So help me Cheryl, if he’s as corny as that name...” Liza muttered. Her sister rarely made a mistake in picking a guy. But when she did, it was always memorable.

She took at deep breath and stepped inside.

Into a fantasy world.

The front of the store was lined with case after case of baked goods. Liza was expecting the normal bakery fare - some donuts, pastries and birthday cakes with maybe a loaf or two of raisin bread thrown in for good measure. If there was a loaf of raisin bread in the bakery, she couldn’t find it.

Instead she was surrounded by desserts that belonged in a fairy tale. One case was full of pies. Lemon topped with a mountain of meringue. Chocolate curls floating on a cloud of whipped cream set in an ocean of chocolate. Mountains of apples peeking out from under latticed strips of crust.

Another case was filled with pastries, delicate creations that looked almost too beautiful to eat. Another held cakes with labels like “Raspberry-filled Double Chocolate Ganache” and “Heavenly Hummingbird Tropical Pineapple”. Yet another held birthday cakes shaped like princesses and Porsches, Barbies and Batman.

“Can I help you?” The rumbling voice broke Liza’s trance. Looking up, she saw a man in a chef’s coat nearly hidden behind a display of chocolate-covered fruit.

“Possibly. I’m looking for Mit.”

She watched as the man carefully balanced a white-chocolate dipped blueberry on a chocolate-covered strawberry. His hands were large, yet they handled the delicate fruit gently and with a surprising dexterity.

“I’m Mit. You must be Liza. Cheryl’s told me a lot about you.” He walked around the fruit display and extended his hand.

“Well, don’t believe everything you hear,” she laughed. “Most of it was Cheryl’s fault.”

He smiled as his hand closed over hers. “Knowing your sister, I’d believe it.”

His hands were strong and clean, except for a tiny drop of chocolate on one finger. Liza had a sudden urge to lick it off. She quickly quelled the strange compulsion.

“This is an amazing place,” she said. “I had no idea that bakeries like this existed outside of Disney movies.”

“Thanks. When I left the corporate world, I wanted to do something to make people smile.” He looked around with pride. “I think I’ve succeeded.”

Liza looked thoughtful. “Well, it makes me smile. But you know what they say...” she let her voice trail off.

“No, what?” he asked.

“The proof is in the pudding. Or in this case, the proof’s in the cake. Do they taste as good as they look?” she asked with a mock serious expression.

“Hmm. Good point. People say they do.” His blue eyes twinkled as he matched her serious look. “But you know what they say...”

“No, what?” she asked.

“Don’t take their word for it. What would you like to try first?”

Liza realized that he was still holding her hand - and that it felt strangely right. She looked around the room.

“What do you recommend?”

Mit dropped her hand and assumed a formal pose. “As the official tour guide for today’s culinary journey, I would recommend that we start with the pastry section.” He gestured to the case with a flourish, then offered her his arm. “May I escort you, Madame?”

“Gallantry is not dead,” she declared, placing her hand on his arm. “Lead on, kind sir.”

He whisked her away to the pastry case and she again noticed his hands. The little piece of chocolate was still there, enticing her. She thought again about the blueberry and wondered what other delicate work he could do.

“And here we have the cannolis,” he announced. He reached into a case, removed one and placed it on his open palm for her inspection.

“As you can see, this is a cannoli of the highest order,” he continued. “Notice the delicate, yet crisp shell.” He gently tapped it with his finger. “And the filling is made of the highest quality ingredients available to man. Finished with a light dusting of powdered sugar, this is truly a treat for the discriminating palate.”

Liza laughed. “Very impressive! Almost sounds too good to eat.”

Mit smiled. “Ah, that’s the best part. Anticipation is fun, but culmination is better.” Liza glanced up sharply, but he looked at her innocently.

“You know, I’m never sure how to eat a cannoli,” she confessed. “Do you bite right into it, or do you lick the filling out of the ends? It should come with instructions.”

“Fortunately, your tour guide for this evening can assist you with that.” He picked up the cannoli between two fingers. “I’ll hold it so you can fully devote yourself to savoring the flavor.”
Mit held the cannoli out to her. She leaned forward and tentatively licked some of the filling off one end. She felt a strange sense of intimacy, eating from his hand. She drew back, suddenly shy. She looked up and saw a strange look cross Mit’s face. It disappeared almost immediately as he slipped back into character.

“Ah, Madame chose to go with the famous outside-in technique. A very wise choice. And how did it taste?”

Liza licked her lips, savoring the creamy taste. “Quite delicious, thank you.”

Mit lifted the cannoli to his lips and turning it, deliberately took a bite from the end she’d tasted.

“You’re right. Very delicious...and tempting.” He held it out to her. “Would you like another bite?”

She leaned forward and he slowly drew it back, keeping the pastry just out of her reach until she was inches from him.

“Are you teasing me?” she asked. She looked at the cannoli and licked her lips.

“I’m not sure which of us is being teased,” he said softly. Liza leaned towards the cannoli. Mit pulled it away again and her body touched his.

She felt like she’d touched a live wire. Electricity arced through her body. Everything around her seemed to dim, except for Mit. Gone was his laughing expression, replaced with something much more serious. She leaned in, feeling the heat of his body through her thin sweater. His arm wrapped around her and pulled her closer still. A heart - his? hers? - pounded between them, counting the seconds.

“I think you have some cannoli on your lips,” he growled softly. “Let me get it for you.”

She watched as his head dipped toward her. Then his lips touched hers and the world exploded.

It wasn’t a passive, tentative kiss, or one that demanded total submission. Instead, it was a gentle, searching kiss. She answered the silent question, taking it deeper. He groaned and pulled her tighter against him.

Her hands explored his body, learning the feel of his arms, his chest, his back. She could feel his hands on her, feel the way their bodies fit together perfectly. Heat pooled in her body.

They were both breathless by the time the kiss ended.

“I don’t think we’ll be finishing that cannoli,” he said, looking down at the floor. The partially eaten pastry was lying at their feet, dropped during their minutes of passion.

“Nope,” Liza agreed. “But I want to try a lot of things tonight. Fortunately, I have an excellent tour guide.” She paused and looked around, then wrapped her arms around Mit’s neck.

“Do you have any recommendations?” she whispered in his ear.

“Me,” he replied.

“I have a very discerning palate,” Liza murmured.

“Then we’ll just have to make sure that you try only the best.”

Mit was an excellent tour guide.

The sun's bursting through the window as I wake up. Where's my watch? What time is it? I roll over, throwing my legs off the side of the bed and only then, as I see the red digits, do I remember that there's a clock next to my hotel room bed. It says 11:41. Based on the sunlight, I just assume that means AM. Geez, I almost slept in until noon! I never get to sleep in until noon.

But I guess that's what happens when you're on a "business trip" to Amsterdam, and you finish your "business" a few days early. You also get a few days free to explore the city. I look around my suite, every inch of it absolutely illuminated by the clear sunlight. It's just so incredible what my company is willing to pay for in order for this deal to go through. The thing's apparently really important to them. I'm not even a main guy, yknow? Just here to make it look like they've got a big entourage. But even so, I got included when they decided to pay for all outgoing calls from hotel rooms, including calls back home. I think I heard someone say something how if this deal is signed, the European market is essentially ours for the taking, so I guess the guys upstairs see it as a kind of investment or something.

Wait. There was something I had to do today. We finished with with the Dutch guys, but there was something else I had to do. My planner. Gotta find my planner. If it's not there, I don't do it, so it's gotta be there. Where'd I put the planner?

I get up and make my way to the closet. Is it in my briefcase? No. My hand luggage? No, empty. Did I put it on a shelf? Just clothes. Where'd I put the planner? The desk! This suite has a fancy desk, and when I saw it, I decided I was going to use it, even if it was just to stick my planner in one of the drawers. How could I have forgotten that?

I pull out the planner and lay it right in the middle of the desk. Pushing the chair aside, I flip the planner open and find today. Which is Tuesday. Tuesday, February 15th. Nothing's written for the 15th. I shrug my shoulders. It's not in there, so I don't do it.

I let out a breath and pull on some clothes. It can get cold in Holland in February, and the wind is pretty strong on these higher-up floors. But so far on this trip, I've found that the best place in the entire city is right out on the hotel room balcony.

There's no chair out there, but I can pull one out from my room. Which I've been doing at some point every day of this trip. You'd think, living in Schenectady, I'd have gotten to New York or Boston or Philly at some point in my life. Nope. Never been. This is one of the few times I've ever even been inside a building with more than ten floors. And I'm on the fifteenth. You get a good view of the city, and wow, is this an amazing city.

I want to say it looks Parisian, but that's supposed to only mean for Paris. I don't know, though, it looks pretty Parisian to me. It's just got that feel. The cafes, the pedestrians. I dunno, they look Parisian. If Lisa ever heard me say that, she'd hit me with her dictionary, but that's just how I feel.

Lisa. That's what was supposed to be in the planner. But why was it missing? I know I wrote it in there. I remember writing it, and circling the date at the top of the page: Call Lisa, Valentine's Day. But I didn't circle the number 15. I hit myself on the forehead. That's because Valentine's Day is on the 14th. She couldn't blame me that the company sent me off to Europe in the middle of February, but she could definitely get angry at me for forgetting to call. The huge buildings outside suddenly lose their interest to me.

I fly back inside, taking the chair with me, and pick up the hotel phone. There's a little card with instructions on dialing internationally. Nine dials out of the hotel, zero-zero gets me to the international registry, and 1 is the country code for the US. Dial in the home number, and it starts ringing.

Oh no. Time zones. I think quickly. Holland is, um, six hours ahead of New York. I look back up at the red digits: 12:00 on the nose. That's good. Lisa wakes up at 6:00 anyway. She picks up after three rings.

"Hello?"

"Lisa, it's me."

"Ted? You're lucky I picked up! The phone said 'out of area.' I half expected you to be selling me something. What are you doing calling me so early?"

"Um, happy Valentine's Day."

I could tell from her tone that she wasn't quite pleased. "You're off a day. It was yesterday."

"Time zones! It's still yesterday over here!"

"Nice try, but the hours go the other direction. It's noon where you are, not midnight."

My voice drops to the register of a rodent. "I'm sorry, honey. I know I didn't remember on time, but I did remember."

"Yeah," she says, more gently than before, "for once, you did remember." I feel for a moment as if maybe she wasn't upset before. That maybe I've just never spoken to her over the phone right when she wakes up. "I love you, Ted. Happy Valentine's Day."

The girl folded her book over her finger to keep the page. "Happy birthday," she said softly to herself as she got up off the edge of the bathtub and flicked off the light switch, making it hard for her to see the pink sleeve of her night shirt. It was almost 6:00. People were going to be waking up soon, and she didn't want them thinking she was sitting in the bathroom reading all night, even though that's precisely what she'd done. But she just hadn't been able to get to sleep!

She stepped out into what she considered the actual "room" of the hotel room and rubbed her rear end, which still tingled from losing circulation on the edge of a bathtub. But, she thought, if that's what you've gotta do to find a private place to read, that's what you've gotta do.

Everyone was still asleep. Her mom was alone in the bed the two were supposed to be sharing with, and her dad's round body was dwarfing the form of the boy, Eric Ciderman, who was lying next to it.

Eric Ciderman. It was almost like a superhero name. Cider Man vs. the Evil Pony Killer, she thought. He'd never really done anything super heroic, or even regular heroic, but still, to the girl there was something special about a boy with a name like that.

She walked carefully past the sleeping forms, past the closet that they hadn't used, past the TV where they'd watched, appropriately enough, The Incredibles the previous night, over to her backpack which was sitting among three other bags near the door. She withdrew from it a pair of flip-flops, a card-key, and her cell phone, then went out the hotel room door.

It's really cool sometimes, she thought, to live driving distance from Orlando. Even cooler when your birthday falls on a weekend. They'd drive up Saturday morning, spend the day in one of the theme parks, find a hotel for the night, spend the next day at a different park, then be home by midnight on Sunday. Her mom had told her that doing this with one friend was cheaper than inviting thirty to "one of those big party places," and that she thought it was more fun this way, too.

The girl wandered through the chill humidity of a February Florida morning into the courtyard next to the hotel pool and sat down on a bench. One of the hotel workers was unloading ice from an ice machine into a large bucket. Not much else was going on between the sabal palms and elephant-ear bushes. So she opened up her cell phone and started looking through old text messages. Most of them were from Eric.

Her parents had been a bit wary of bringing a boy with them on an overnight trip, particularly considering the fact that Saturday had been Valentine's Day, but she convinced them that he was her closest friend at school, and had even come up with the idea to have him in the same bed as her dad. And besides, they just weren't like that. They were friends, and that was all.

As she was reading some conversation about Yoda that they'd sneakily back-and-forthed during a particularly boring math class, the phone vibrated in her hand. It was Eric, calling her.

"Hey, where are you?"

"Courtyard. Are my parents still asleep?"

"Yeah. You wanna see if the continental breakfast is open yet?"

"Sure. Come out here and we'll go together."

She clicked the phone closed and swung her legs back and forth beneath the bench, watching as a pajama'd boy carefully made his way out the hotel room door and shivered his way over to where she was sitting. Then he straightened himself up as best he could, held out his elbow, and said "To the breakfast room, M'lady," but the girl just giggled and walked past him, causing him to lose his composure and chase after her, calling as he did. That just earned him a stern "shh, you'll wake people up," which barely concealed the girl's grin.

As they got to the stairs to the breakfast room, she bolted straight up them, taunting the boy about being slower than a girl, but as her head was turned backwards, her foot mis-stepped, and she fell backwards, straight into the boy's arms.

The girl was in shock. She'd fallen, but she hadn't gotten hurt. She looked up, the weight of her shoulders resting on the boy's arms, and saw his face. "Thanks, Cider Man," she said, reaching her hand out towards the railing to pull herself upright.

"What?"

Now standing straight, the girl just turned back towards the top of the stairs and said "I said thanks, Eric."

A little perturbed, the boy nevertheless followed the girl up the stairs the rest of the way until they got to the locked glass door with the sign that said "Continental Breakfast starts at 6:30."

They sat down at the top of the stairs, looking back into the empty courtyard, both too deep in thought to really want to speak, waiting for the sign to be lifted and the door unlocked. At one point, the girl turned to the boy and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, then turned back to where she was sitting. He blinked, looked at her, then looked back down. After a few moments, he asked "So does this mean we're boyfriend and girlfriend now?"

"Maybe."

The boy just smiled. "Happy birthday, Becca."

She smiled back. "Happy Valentine's Day, Eric."

My heart was pumping. My hands were shaking. I couldn't keep the grin off of my face. I felt so enthused. I know that seems odd word choice, but you've gotta trust me: there was no better way to describe it. There I was, 6:00, morning after the Valentine's Day office party, standing in the hotel room I reserved for an unconscious Gwendolyn Arianna Payne, who was currently seated with a salad bowl on her head.

But it wasn't a regular salad bowl. This salad bowl was covered in tin foil and had a jack at the top so that one could connect to it an iPhone. If one knew what they were doing, they would connect an iPhone with the recently-released Mind Control app.

I knew very well precisely what I was doing.

I took stock of my supplies once more, not because I think I'm missing something, but more to calm myself down. Two chairs facing each other, one currently occupied by Wendy. I quickly sat down in the second chair, then got back up. I just couldn't stay seated. Two "enhanced" salad bowls, one currently worn by Wendy. I hefted the other one from its resting place next to the second chair, but then put that down, too. Two iPhones with Mind Control app loaded, each in a separate pants pocket. I patted my pockets to make sure they were there, and also to release some energy. Then, of course, there's the useless things: bed, end-tables, coffee table, chest of drawers, closet. Standard hotel things I wasn't going to need.

I was still too excited, though. I needed my full focus to make sure this worked. I nervously eyed the front door. With the stuff I gave her, Wendy shouldn't wake up until the program activates. But "shouldn't" doesn't always mean "won't." After shifting my weight from foot to foot, my body made my decision for me and I found myself bolting towards that door. Once out in the hallway, unable to actually see my setup, I started feeling my blood pressure drop to normal levels.

I started going over in my head what I was doing, just one more time, just to clear my head. Then I was going to go in there and execute it all flawlessly, just like I did everything.

Wendy was insecure. She was capable of doing my job, and yet she was satisfied as a lowly secretary, because she didn't know she was capable of doing my job. But I saw it in the work that she did. She could be running the company one day, if she just got over her shyness.

But I didn't actually want that to happen. Call me selfish, or an opportunist, or whatever, but I'd been getting her to do portions of my work, then taking advantage of her insecurity so that she didn't take any credit for it. It was remarkably easy, and it didn't hurt that she was a hopeless romantic who had a barely-hidden crush on me, too. But there were a few close calls. If I was to take this to the next level, use her developing skills to progress through the ranks and eventually run the company myself, I needed something air-tight. Mind control.

So, once I'd found this brilliant little app, it was just a matter of taking advantage of her infatuation so that it looked like she was seducing me back to a hotel room, so nobody would suspect that I had done anything wrong, slipping her something interesting once we were in the hotel, and doing the prep work while she slept.

I took out the two iPhones from the pockets. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey. The one in the right pocket was the controller, and it would be connected to me to keep everything in my head tightly locked up. Left pocket was the receiver, and it went on Wendy so her mind would be loose and pliable. I briefly checked the program on each phone to make sure they were running properly, then put them back in my pockets. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.

I closed my eyes and breathed in. It was simple. Small modifications to behavior. Unnoticeable. I breathed out, opened my eyes, and made my way back into the room.

Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey. I put Wendy's iPhone into her jack, then sat down in the other chair and put the other salad bowl on my head. My salad bowl had the jack connected to a cord long enough for me to have it sitting on my lap. I need one of them in easy reach to start the process, but once it began, the whole thing was controlled mentally by force of will.

I plugged my iPhone in and dialed in the phone number of the other one. A little animation of a brain jumping rope looped while it tried to connect to the device attached to Wendy, and then the word "Okay" appeared momentarily before I feel a jolt in my head. The feeling cleared, and I looked up to see Wendy waking from her slumber, the screen above her head displaying the green logo that says she's ready to send commands.

That's not good. Breathing hard, I looked down at my lap and see my own screen had the red "receive" logo. No. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey! I made sure! I went to unplug it, stop the connection, but as my fingers were fumbling with the cable, Wendy said something that changed all of my plans.

"Walter? Oh, geez, Walter. Don't do anything, I need to talk to you."

She technically didn't need to say it. The sentiment alone would have been enough to stop me from doing anything but listen to her. But stating it as a command focused her thought and made it stronger. My hands dropped to my sides.

"Look, I can't keep going on like some lovesick teenager following you around." I knew this was coming eventually. That's why I'd come up with this plan in the first place. "Maybe it's just because of the party last night, or maybe it's because, I don't know, I just need to know what you think of me. Be honest. I can get over you, I just need to know for sure that you don't reciprocate."

Her face wasn't congruent with her words. She said she could handle it, but her eyes, teared up partially from emotion and partially from those knock-out pills, told me she really needed me to say that I loved her.

"I love you." The words popped out of my mouth, and then my face twisted in surprise. I did? I knew it was what she wanted to hear, but I could see her face wringing with pain anyway.

"You're not being serious. I can see it in your face. You're just trying to placate me."

Oh wow. She was more nervous than I was. Her heart was beating like all of China just stood up one day and started marching to the same rhythm. I could feel it in my head. Which was dangerous. This app was intended for careful manipulations, and Wendy was wielding it like a flamethrower. I could feel the expression on my face shift against my will, moving to mirror her own. Tears started forming in my eyes.

"No. I'm being very serious. Wendy, I'm sorry I manipulated you in the office. I was just trying to prepare you, make you a better worker so that you'd be ready once you got a promotion." None of that had been true. But as I said it, I realized that, regardless of why I'd done it before, this was now how I justified it in my head. Self-service was an afterthought.

That's when I realized it must have been some romantic fantasy of hers. She was unwittingly using the app to make her dream a reality, altering my mind so that I fit her optimistic visions.

"I want to change our relationship." As the words left my mouth, I knew they were true. "From now on, I'm not your boss, I'm your mentor. I want to make it up to you for treating you so badly."

"Oh!" Wendy exclaimed, "I just knew it! Everything you just said, I knew it had to be true!" I could feel a welling of emotion flowing from her, and suddenly found myself standing up out of the chair, in perfect timing with Wendy. "I love you, Walter."

At that moment, we were feeling precisely the same thing. Devotion, caring, and some subconscious need for one another. We fell into an embrace, salad bowls knocking each other off our heads, and held each other as tightly as possible.

I knew all my new feelings for Wendy were artificial, but somehow that couldn't change the fact that they were now my true feelings. I loved her, and I'd love her for the rest of my life.

Naima felt like a movie star when she stepped out of the car in her high healed shoes in the convention center parking lot. Her dress was silver, a form fitting sweetheart shape on top which hung loosely around her legs down to just below her knees with a neat trim of black encircling the bottom. She loved the dress despite the fact it was actually a bridesmaid's dress she wore to her cousin's wedding. Now she was reusing it for the Valentines Dance, a traditional formal event held for the high school band students every year. Naima was a sixteen year old clarinet player, and this was the first time she ever had a date to a school dance, or a date to anywhere for that matter.

She had been so surprised that Craig asked her. When he had stopped her in the hall she assumed he wanted to copy her definitions homework for History class again.

"Naima!" he had called after her. "Wait wait! I wanna ask ya something."

Naima had turned and given him the look a disappointed mother gives a naughty child. "You didn't do your definitions?"

"No I did it, I did it, honest to God. You can copy it if you want."

"No thanks. I did mine. Are you going to do it every week now?"

"Ha, probably not. No no, what I want to ask is if you wanna go to the Valentines Dance with me. You don't already have a date do you?"

Naima had looked at him like he was speaking Swahili. "Huh? Already have a date? No."

"Cool, so you'll go with me?"

"Uh...sure," she had answered, a little dazed.

"Nice! Ok gotta go. Bye!" and he had run off, leaving Naima rooted there in the hallway wondering what had just happened and whether she had made a giant mistake.

Was this a trap? Craig was a nice enough guy, but he was crazy, Naima knew. A rather dorky sixteen year old with dark hair and a body built solely of skin and bones, he played the saxophone in the band, sitting right behind Naima and the clarinets. What scared Naima about Craig was that he was constantly the center of attention, which he achieved by constantly being outrageous.

She remembered when they arrived as Freshmen and were told that on Fridays during football season there would be a dress up theme to show school spirit. The first week's theme was the seventies. Most Freshmen were timid and either did not participate or wore something small like a bandana or a peace sign on their cheek. Craig, on the other hand, had walked into class wearing a curly blonde long haired wig, John Lennon sunglasses, chains around his neck, a shirt unbuttoned half way down his chest and giant banging bellbottoms. That basically set the tone for Craig's high school career.

From then on Craig was always trying to one up himself. Each Friday the costumes became a little more over the top until they were crazy enough to make Elton John blush. He was proudest of blue week where the theme was simply to wear blue. He had shown up looking like a member of the Blue Man Group with his clothes all spray painted the same shade of blue and blue makeup covering all his skin, including the top of his head which he had shaved completely bald. No one had more blue on that day than Craig Launten. His school spirit was without question.

He also had a number of gags which he could whip out anytime. All someone had to do was yell to him in the hall, "Dance Craig Dance!" and he would drop everything and start busting out his moves right there with a small crowd laughing and cheering him on. He had jokes. He had stories. He had songs he made up about teachers and students. He had a reputation as a clown, which was why the first two girls he had asked to the dance turned him down.

Naima was the complete opposite. Her goal in school was to glide through making as few waves as possible. Lannington High School was 97% white, with Naima the only Indian student. Her mother and father were a white couple who met late in life, marrying in their early forties. After trying without success to have a child they adopted three year old Naima. They were good and loving parents, providing her everything she needed. Her father owned a small roofing business, and even at fifty-eight years old he would still climb up on the roofs, hammering shingles alongside his men. Her mother worked part time at the library and liked to do crafts. She taught Naima how to crochet and cross stitch.

Growing up Naima was acutely aware that she did not look like the other students. For as long as she could remember she knew this, but the older she became the more conscious she grew of it. Sometimes she looked in the mirror and wished her nose were not so wide and pointing downward. She looked at the other girls around her and saw they had pug noses, like the people on TV and magazine covers. Starting around sixth grade she became shyer as she saw more clearly the ways she did not match society's template of beauty.

When other girls in junior high started wearing makeup, hair spray and designer clothes, Naima remained plain, continuing to dress and look the same as she had in elementary school. She focused on her studies, made excellent grades and generally avoided the other students. When she did join others at times such as lunch period it was only so that she would not look conspicuous sitting alone. Despite her attempts at invisibility she was still famous for one thing - her braid.

Naima had worn her hair in a simple braid down her back since Kindergarten. Every day for ten years she had come to school with the exact same hairstyle. Her wish to remain unnoticed by not changing it ended up having the opposite effect. The braid became her defining feature. The other students thought of her as "that girl with the braid." People were constantly asking her, "When are you going to stop wearing that braid?" This went on for years. The braid was so well known that Naima was afraid if she did change it everyone would be talking about it, which was the last thing she wanted. So she kept it, hanging down her back like a chain.

Formal occasions, however, gave Naima the perfect chance to wear her hair differently without everyone making a fuss. Her mother took her to the salon and they put her hair in a beautiful, intricate updo with shiny black curls sprouting out. At home she put on the silver dress and shoes and her mother helped her apply a modest amount of makeup, just a little lipstick and blush.

"This boy better be good," her father had said.

"Dad, he's very nice," Naima told him for what felt like the thousandth time.

"Yea right. I know what sixteen year old boys are like a lot more than you do. I used to be one, and I guarantee you if this boy looks anything like I did at sixteen I'm gonna drive you to that dance myself and watch you all night long."

"Dad!" Naima exclaimed, horrified. "You can't be serious," but secretly she worried he might be.

Her father was no fool, and he knew exactly where his shotgun was and how to use it to scare this boy from ever talking to his daughter again. If the boy had long hair or a tattoo or piercings or talked like a punk or behaved in any way other than as a perfect gentleman that is exactly what would happen. Naima knew Craig had none of those things but she also knew that he was not going to show up looking normal which added to her worry. How he would look she had no idea, but it definitely would not fit within the definition of normal.

When Craig rang the doorbell Naima hurried towards the door but her father beat her to it. He swung the door open.

"Hello," said Craig with a smile. Naima and her father both stood rooted in shock for a moment. Craig had gone all out for this formal occasion. He was standing on their doorstep wearing a tuxedo with tails, a black top hat, white gloves and a cane. He looked like a dashing child version of Fred Estaire(or Mr. Peanut).

Naima giggled and put her hands over her mouth. The look on her father's face was priceless. She knew she was going to have a wonderful time that night.