Anna and the Insects

once there was a girl named anna who attracted lots of bugs. she wished she attracted other things, because she really liked bunnies and money, for instance, but no, when ever she sat outside for more than a minute all the bugs in the world would begin their slow crawl (or hop or buzz or slither) over to where she was.

the people who liked her said that it must be because she was so sweet, while the people who didn't like her said it was because she probably smelled like garbage. either way, the bugs came.

anna didn't mind visits from the ones that didn't bite or sting, but the mosquitos and wasps made her nervous. shooing them away didn't help.

one day she met a boy she liked and they went for a walk and sat under a tree to talk and look at eachother. anna saw, with sad resignation, that the bugs were starting to arrive. the boy hadn't noticed yet.

'great.' she thought, 'what boy is going to love a girl covered in bugs?' she tried to discreetly flick an ant off her shoulder.

more and more bugs came, especially tiny little black ones. they were beginning to cover her pretty blue top. she pretended she was smoothing her top down while she was really squishing and displacing hundreds of little bugs.

she had to do this often.

she started to wonder if it looked like she was just constantly feeling herself up.

the boy looked at her curiously. she looked back at him and sheepishly told him about the bugs. he squinted and peered down at her shirt and saw that she was indeed covered with the smeared carcasses of hundreds of tiny bugs. he looked around at her back and started to brush the ones off that she couldn't reach. it was the first time he had touched her. soon, he was brushing her back lightly with his hand even though there weren't any bugs left. he rested his forehead on her shoulder. and then she knew: he liked her even though she was covered with bugs.

the end.