(A/N: The introduction's been on my computer since like, forever. But recently I've been on a site where you can give help and ask help to random anonymous people from all over the world, and it made me want to continue the story, with a sympathetic twist. You decide what it means for you. And that I'm sorry for the men who are reading because it's in a girl's POV.)
She rose
up her hoodie and went to the exit.
She walks past the school hallways, as silent, still and
steady as the surroundings; nothing but a couple of leaves for their janitor to
rake, and a couple of cigarette butts and unfinished soda cans and beer bottles
all over the school grounds. The wind was cold and sharp, and she stuffed her
hands in her hoodie. Summer isn’t technically until next week, but it seems
like everyone else is already on a head start, because there was nobody but the
ducks in the old school pond. She was alone. She finds everyone gone funny, as
if summer is just going to slip right through their fingertips and disappear
just as instantly. It was ridiculous.
But either way, she was still alone.
Her sling bag bobbed as she went down the stairs, and she
breathes in as she passes by their school stadium, which was beside the parking
lot, where her trusty steed (namely bicycle) was waiting to take her home under
her own horsepower. It was when she counted how many nests the birds had did
she hear a sniff. It was a reluctant one, coming from someone who repressed
pain and felt embarrassed about it. She knew this, since she has heard it many
times before.
She has to leave. She knows she has to leave. She has a
cozy little home to get back to, a fluffy orange hamster to feed, and she’s
afraid of being…too late. She’s always afraid of being too late. She knows how
big a second can mean to the world when the world is too busy being busy being
busy. But when she heard the sniffs become actual sobs, she marched right into
the stadium, where the sound echoes from.
The sobs were real and heartbreaking. It was stifled and
it’s the kind that chokes you with tears until you have trouble breathing. It’s
the one you have when the edges of your vision are paralleled with black spots,
and you want to clench and unclench your fists until they hinge off their
joints. It’s a cry of help, pain, anguish, and surreal emotion.
She hated herself for liking how genuine it was.
It was coming from a boy, far off into the other side of
the stadium court, trying to be as hidden as possible. But he was too noisy to
be left unnoticed. She was slightly doubtful to approach him, and had a little
second thought to pivot out of there. But the boy’s cries only became louder,
as if beckoning her, and she suddenly finds herself beside the boy, her hand
softly on his shoulder, and he stared back at her, eyes withdrawn yet
wide-eyed, grayish blue although bloodshot, and very, very tired.
He sniffs, and nonchalantly wipes his tears by his
sleeves. He fixes his hair in the form of ruffling it a bit, and straightens
himself, rather unconsciously, and finally, coughs up enough courage and says,
“What is up with you?”
“You tell me.” She
replies, smugly.
They look away from each other, and they let their vision
crowd towards the empty stadium space. The growing grass, the fallen net, the
stack of balls, they all screamed how sports was seasonable. She never really
liked sports, and tried to avoid any physical exercise of any sort, except her
trusty steed.
“Was I that loud?”
“I could hear you
from outside the stadium. So no,” She smiles, “Not really.”
His
facial tension loosens a bit, his eyebrows slowly moving away from each other,
and he clears his throat. “Are you interested in, you know, why I’m being so
pathetic?” he asks bravely, as if it’s a trick question.
“I
don’t think I’d come all the way here, taking my time off my precious
lifestyle, if I wasn’t interested.”
“Oh
please.”
“Excuse
me?” She sneaks a look at him.
“You
call your lifestyle precious?” He
mocks.
She shakes her head in disbelief. This dude, this guy he
barely knows and has only recently found crying like a pansy, is mocking him.
She is also delighted. He is oblivious.
“I don’t mean to ruin this bullying session but last time
I checked, you were the one getting your tear ducts wet.”
“I love that.”
“You love what?”
“How you use those scientific terms on a normal
conversation; like tear duct.”
She barely knows this guy, and he is acting like he has
known her his whole life. She finds this terrifyingly mysterious, but
otherworldly interesting. She receives another thought to run away because he
might be a mad man, but when she turns to look at him, he is staring at her,
head slightly tilted. It was another version of adorable.
“There’s this girl.”
She pushes her other thoughts away and nods.
“You see, she loves a lot of wonderful things, she’s very
down-to-earth, she’s cute and funny and she wants to be as helpful as she can.
She’s hesitant, but she acts for the better good. She has many secret talents
and desires and she’s a little weird but she hides it because she doesn’t
appreciate herself sometimes.”
“So?”
He clearly looks taken aback by the question.
“Have you ever…” He pauses. He licks his lips. “Have you
ever looked at something so beautiful? So unique and wonderful and so full of
potential and talent and amazing things…” He pauses again, and she notices how
his eyes turn watery.
“But what?” She presses on, trying to keep the momentum.
“But that thing. That thing so special, so different from
everything else, doesn’t realize it. It’s…awful. It breaks my heart and beats
my soul.”
“Well,” She gives it some thought. She runs through a
couple of pages of thinking space and words to say she has at the back of her
mind, and she ends up with, “Maybe she’s an eclipse.”
The boy trickles away his tears with his pinkie and
laughs.
“I’ll give you a couple of minutes to explain that
analogy.” He says in between chuckles. She makes a little clicking noise with
her tongue, and she looks to the sky for a second, as if inspiration will
bellow from above.
“This girl you’re saying.” She points upwards, at the big
shining orange thing in the sky, “She’s like the sun, see? And she’s bright and
beautiful on her own, like you said.” The girl does not know where she’s going
with this, but it brings her peace that he’s paying attention to her. “But then
in an eclipse, the moon, although tempting and passionate but all pale and dark
and lonely, covers the sun, encasing it in its immense depressing glory for a
couple of minutes, and at that moment, the earth is in a state of beauty and
disgusting morale, an experience when they see the sun so often that they
appreciate that moment when it gets covered and disappears, even for a little
while.”
She waits on him a little bit, waiting for a reaction, an
objection, but when she saw concentration, she continued on. Slightly more
cheerful now.
“But an eclipse, no matter how long or short, will always
end. And if the sun, or that girl, is really meant to spread light into the
world and warm our hearts with her beautiful atmospheric presence,” She smiles,
“Then it shall be done.”
“I told you I love it when you use scientific terms.”
“They are not scientific,
they are common sense.”
“But what if…” He bites his lip. He is always doing
things on his lip that the girl only finds slightly distracting, “What if the
moon comes back?”
“The moon will always be there.”
“You’re making this worse for me.”
“No, I’m not. This is not a matter of being a whole new
person.”
“Then what is it about?” He shifts in his seat, annoyed
and impatient.
“It’s about acceptance.” She says softly, lightly tapping
the concrete underneath them. “The moon is always there. It will not pop away
or disappear, and there will be moments when you think it will outshine you.
But the moments that matter are the ones when you don’t let it.”
Silence.
More silence.
She worries that he is not breathing, because the world
makes absolutely no sound of any sorts.
It starts to worry her,
until he grabs something from his pocket. It’s his cellphone. She frowns a
little, and he says, “Would you mind telling her that yourself? I doubt she’ll
believe me.”
She grins. Then she nods, so her little blonde cut-away bangs
shimmy.
He presses a couple of
buttons, and puts the phone up to her.
“Uhm, hello?” the voice says, and the girl found it
creepily familiar.
She whispers something to it. And it clicks, as if on
voicemail.
“What was that? That had nothing to do with your eclipse analogy.”
“If the girl you’re talking about is smart enough, she’ll
understand.” She looks at the time and slings the bag overhead. “I have to
leave now, since you’re no longer crying.” She jokes, and starts to walk away.
She thinks she hears a thank you, but when she turns around, he’s gone.
She sighs. She didn’t even get his name.
The sky was turning into that purple, pink, red, orange
gradient that happens every sunset when she was paddling home. Her hoodie was
down, and she was humming a great tune when the wind carries her blond locks
into beautiful dancers. She parks her bicycle in the garage.
Then the comforting world she has, the one with the
miserable turned mysteriously cheerful and understanding boy, the one so
enthusiastically morale-boosting, just shatters.
She enters the house.
She glances at her parents fighting again in the kitchen.
Her older, hotter, skinnier and more popular sister making out with a random
guy in the sofa. She goes up the stairs and passes by her little brother’s
oversized display case of achievements. She enters her room and changes her
clothes and notices how she doesn’t have a thigh gap or that her arms are too
big for her body.
She sinks to the floor and opens her cellphone when it
rings.
“Uhm, hello?” she anxiously says, since the number wasn’t
registered.
Her own voice replied,
“True brilliance is untouchable. Let it define you, if
it’s who you really are."
Her voice is trembling and the phone vibrates in her hand
as she croaks back,
“W-Who
are you?"
The
boy’s voice replies,
“I’m
your sad, sad little heart.”
And
it hang up.
