She is eight years old. 

Her blonde hair is neatly combed back with a braid starting just in front of and above her right ear.  It swoops elegantly back, down, and then back up to her left ear where it terminates in a fashion that only her mother could know how to do.

She sits with her legs crossed and scans the room demurely, with the poise of a lady.

*****

He is 22.

He glances around and back, and their eyes meet.

She knows she doesn’t have a chance with him, but his dark hair and who he is overrides that question.

“Hey,” she says.

“What’s going on?”

“Not much, when did you get your haircut?”

“Yesterday.”

“It’s so short!”

“Nah, I like it that way.  Worn it like this ever since I’ve been back from India.  It’s how they cut it over there.”

“Whatever.  What did you think of our skit at school the other evening?”

“It was good.  I liked it.  Just can’t remember if you were in the house where everyone got killed or in the other one.”

“You should come to my place sometime.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know, just should.”

“Okay.  Maybe.  But I’m busy almost all the time so it might be a while.”

“Why?”

“Cause.”

“Whatever.” (very affected eyeroll)

And then she happened to look over and a bit back and saw me, his Dad, and realized I had seen it all.

And she saw I was laughing so hard that tears were beginning to form at the edges of my eyes.

And then she realized how it all must have looked and started laughing too.

And then her Mom caught a vibe from her, even though someone was sitting in between them.  Her Mom kept looking at her, trying to pick up what was going on, but she played dumb, which made me laugh even harder.

So, I covered the grin that I had been trying so hard to keep from splitting into an outright earsplitting smile, and tried to control myself.

And I told her, that this was church after all, it was Sunday morning in fact, and it was her Grandpa, no less, who was preaching right then and we should pay attention to him.

Of course, all three of us were at least 20 feet apart, and no actual words were spoken out loud.

Just eye language and thirty seconds.