No one had remembered her birthday until someone looked at the schedule which had everyone's hiring date and birth date on it.
``Hey its Cecile's birthday,'' Ramona called out. Then she went to her locker and got Grow-a-Date and gave it to her.
``Gee, thanks,'' said Cecile. When she got home she threw the thing in a kitchen drawer and forgot it.
Months later she was cleaning out the drawer and there was Grow-a-Date staring up at her. A gnarled red plastic figure with a heart over its genitals. Immerse in water, the instructions said. She dropped Mr. Grow-a-Date in a coffee mug and filled it with water. Next morning his head was poking out of the cup.
``My, how you've grown,'' she said. She put Mr. Grow-a-Date in a bowl. Next day his head was poking out of the bowl. She bent Mr. Grow-a-Date so he would stay under water, but next day his feet and head were sticking up above the surface. She put Mr. Grow-a-Date in a big pot but he soon outgrew it. She filled the bath tub with water and put Mr. Grow-a-Date in it. A few days later Mr. Grow-a-Date was sitting up in the tub.
``This water's cold,'' he said. He climbed out of the tub and grabbed a towel. His flesh was red and bubbly and knobby. His face, though good natured, was not attractive. Mr. Grow-a-Date came out of the same mould as Ms Grow-a-Date. There was something questionable about his sexual identity. Mr. Grow-a-Date had large thighs.
Cecile stepped back in consternation. Mr. Grow-a-Date was seven feet tall.
``I'll set you free,'' she said.
``But I'm your date. I don't want to be free. I want to stay with you and be your friend. I want to sleep in your bed.'' He appeared to leer slightly.
``What the hell,'' she thought and got in bed with him. He hadn't a clue it turned out. No hormones raced through his plastic form. When she awoke in the night his bubbly body felt slightly reassuring as well as repellant.
The following night she took Mr. Grow-a-Date for a ride in her car. She stopped on the Fremont Bridge and pushed Mr. Grow-a-Date off the bridge and into the river.
``Goodbye,'' she called, and drove away before she attracted any interest.
For weeks Mr. Grow-a-Date floated back and forth in the tidal waters, and every day he grew larger until in a couple of months he was thirty feet tall and all his features had disappeared. He washed up at a superfund site, caught up on rotting pilings. He staggered out of the water and wandered the industrial wasteland calling out ``Cecile! Cecile!''
He wanders there still. And inhabitants of urban renewal river front condominiums sometimes think they see him on moon bright nights along the river's edge.