Your heart

(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.