From classroom to classroom she floated, a vagabond finding her home in the warmth of her friends' embraces. Every day, gray or sunny, rainbows materialized and ricocheted from wall to wall each time she smiled. Oh yes, that smile was contagious. Those eyes of hers were something else--they weren’t just big brown eyes. An entire universe lay beyond those dark lashes, an exquisite, wonderful galaxy that somehow mirrored my unspoken dreams.
You know how some people are great at hiding their feelings? Their eyes become cold and distant in a second, and vacant, like an abandoned house. Their smiles are plastered on the moment you ask how they are, and their entire bodies become stiff with an unseen worry that weighs them down like Atlas, who had the entire world perched on his shoulder. But not her. Those eyes revealed all. They were the truest thing I knew, the one thing I could count on to be real and beautiful in a world so artificial and ugly. When you shared with her your sorrows, her eyes filled with so much compassion they sometimes spilled out in quiet streams of tears. If you explained to her (hopping from foot to foot) that you just had the best weekend of your entire life, she came alive, that wide smile touching your heart and those eyes set to glittering like a handful of gems in the sunlight. It was like she wore her soul on her sleeve--shamelessly and without regret--and opened her heart to all who needed even a glimpse of hope.
During class, I’d catch her staring desirously out of the window at the cobalt sky, a wistful expression on her candid face, and I’d wonder what it was she was thinking on. Indeed, what did she wish she was doing instead of listening to our history teacher drone on about the Civil War? I guess I’ll never really know, though I could make many suppositions.
She lived a few doors down from me on Jasper Street, and every day after class dismissed, I’d hurry to my locker, shove my books in my backpack, and run home as fast as I could. It only took five minutes to sprint from school to our portion of Jasper Street, but it always took her longer. I timed it more than once. There are two ways to get home, the proper, stay-on-the-sidewalk way, or, the make-your-own-path-between-houses way. The latter, as you might guess, was shorter. But even though we left at approximately the same time, she would arrive ten minutes--sometimes thirty minutes--later. So I would sit on my front porch step, my dad’s pocket watch in hand, and eat the cookies and milk mom always left for me on the kitchen counter while watching for her. Her smile and the peaceful aura about her that brushed goosebumps onto my arms when she passed my house always perplexed me. She intrigued me like no one else...and yet, I would let her pass without a word or collision of gazes.
Until that day.
One afternoon I couldn’t hold in my curiousness any longer, and so, with a mouthful of chocolate chip cookie, I raised my voice, rumbling through partially-chewed dough, “Where do you go after school every day?” She looked kinda surprised at first, as though she hadn’t realized that I was there, in that particular moment or ever, really, for she stopped rather abruptly on the sidewalk and blinked at me. The aura, however, never faltered. Neither did the dreamy tilt of her lips. In fact, she smiled at me, her lashes pressing lightly into flushed cheeks. “Not anyplace you would know of,” she answered matter-of-factly, tilting her head and eyeing my plate of what used to be cookies and a half-finished glass of two percent. I hastily clanked the glass onto the cookie-crumb decorated plate and stood, wiping my hands on my jeaned legs. Suddenly unsure of myself, I reached down to grab the unhooked piece of my overalls, the one that stopped hooking last year, twisting it between my thumb and forefinger. “Can I come with you sometime?” I breathed quickly, not exactly believing what I had just asked. “Tomorrow, maybe....” I hastened to add, the words more of a tentative question than a statement.
“Maybe.” I watched as she pivoted on a toe and pirouetted. “You can come, but following doesn’t mean you’ll get there.” And that was all. Swishing her skirt as though it were an elegant evening gown from her mother’s wardrobe, she curtsied and continued to the blue house. I stood there for a while before tromping back inside to ponder the encounter. I’m sure I was quite the quiet daughter that my mother always wanted me to be that night.
It took me a while to find sleep, but in the morning, I had forgotten the words spoken between two strangers. Yet as soon as that final bell rang at three o’clock, it all came back like a tidal wave. Jumping out of my chair, I charged toward the door--I don’t remember forgetting to visit my locker and take all my homework books home, but I DO recall the miffed exclamations of my teachers when I had nothing to turn in that next Monday.
She was just about to cross the street when I reached her, panting. I never considered that she wouldn’t wait for me; I was too excited to let that bother me, though. I followed silently, ill-content with my own ponderings but mystified by ethereal serenity that was her. She wore a sun dress, a beautiful pale yellow, and she wore her long brown hair pulled back from her face with simple barrettes. The material of the dress was worn but not in the sense that it described the wearer as poor. No...this dress was a part of her as was her arms and legs, familiar, comfortable, right. I looked down at my own attire...and was dismayed at the unfeminine grass-stained overalls and untied tennis-shoes.
The air was warm, the day somehow more optimistic because of her. We walked past the Jasper Church of God and its lovely garden, to which the pastor’s wife tended to daily. She didn’t seem to notice the greenery today, though, for I saw that her eyes were rigidly fixed on the cloud-studded heavens high above our heads. We paused at the post office box corner--or rather she stopped and I nearly ran into her. She placed her palm upon the bark of a white oak tree that I’d not noticed before, tilting her head toward it a moment before giggling and nodding her head. Her eyes turned upon me, twinkling gaily over her shoulder, wisps of hair framing her face impishly. And her voice was cheerful as she admitted, “Yes...I do have a friend with me today.” I’m sure my face sported the most befuddled look in the world, but she laughed aloud and glanced upward at the foliage-covered arms of the tree, which swayed in the wind and tinkled like leaves always do in the wind. She began humming, patted the tree trunk, and swept forward again.
“What? Who were you.....?” My words died, for she didn’t seem to hear me. I continued to shadow her, watching her feet (which seemed to have gone bare somewhere between the back steps of Jasper Elementary and our current location) carry her gracefully forward as a ballerina on toe shoes.
We strode toward the county playground, complete with jungle gyms, swings, and monkey bars, the latter of which I frequently visited while my parents sat beneath the pergola and discussed the events of their respective days. No one else was there; it was just she and I. And yet she stood on tiptoe and waved to the slide across the playground, eyes aglow, and laughed at the empty set of barely swinging swings as we meandered by. She headed straight toward the wooden jungle gym, the one with a fireman’s pole that went straight through the center. It was shaped kind of like a castle, this jungle gym, far enough above the ground to dodge enemy arrows or catapults. I was afraid of heights, but by the looks of things, I had no reason to fear falling off of it and plunging to my death. She chose the stairs over the rope ladder, but instead of going up, she stopped, sticking her left hand into the air in such a way as to request a gentleman escort. I watched as she curtsied, tipped her head, and smiled at the space at her elbow, picked up the hem of her skirt, and ascended with the dignity of a queen.
Before I knew it, she was talking again, rather animatedly for one speaking to the air. Oh, she was a queer girl indeed! “I’m so glad you‘re here today, Alastair. Yesterday I stopped by and you were out working all afternoon. I did wish to see you.” She grinned, eyes shining, then, “I‘ll bet you visited the Talbot house...Lacey told us that her mom had a baby yesterday around dinnertime...” As was becoming normal for her, she stopped abruptly, jerking forward in place. “Oh! Do forgive me, Mr. Alastair.........Yes....this is a friend of mine. We just met, actually.” She sat down on the worn wood, adjusting her dress so that it covered her ankles properly. I plunked down beside her, wide-eyed, seriously questioning whether or not she was out of her mind. Surely she saw that there was no one else with us. Surely she realized that there was no sound but the wind whistling through the splintery cracks. I dared to speak, perhaps interrupting the conversation that was going on aloud but entirely inside her mind.
“Who’s Alastair?”
Her brow crinkled, and for the first time, a semblance of a frown ran fleetingly across her lips. “He‘s Alastair.” Two brown eyes looked directly into mine, and, although I could tell she wasn’t mad at my question...she was instead almost...perplexed. “I couldn’t describe him to you...he‘s...he‘s just Alastair.” A mischievous smile replaced the former look of disappointment. Perhaps even she didn’t know everything there was to know about this ‘Alastair’. With a slight dip of her chin, she turned back to where ‘Alastair’ existed, leaving me with a comment that addled my eleven-year-old brain for the remainder of the day: “We see them differently, if indeed we see them at all.”
After a few more minutes of friendly discussion (which was more like self-talk from my perspective), we rose and left. I, for one, was glad, for the entire experience made my stomach unsettled in the I-drank-rotten-milk way and gave me a permanent case of heeby-jeebies. It was very unsettling. Honestly, I wanted to grab her by the shoulders, ask why in the world she was making up imaginary people and pretending to talk to them. But all I managed to mumble as she continued to her house was, “Thanks.” Had I looked, I would’ve seen her smile.
Lying in my bed that night, I sorted through the facts. I hadn’t gone anywhere new as I had anticipated; oh, I thought she’d take me to some secret fort or take me down some undiscovered path to some cobwebby barn with ancient plows or horse harnesses or a hay loft swing. However, the places we had frequented were entirely familiar and uninspiring: the playground and the mail box corner. Adventure indeed. And I determined that night that this wasn’t the end of the mystery of the tawny-haired girl with eyes the color of endless laughter...
***PLEASE read subsequent chapters of story...it doesn't end here!
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