Reality

There she was. The girl of his dreams. He had been waiting for days to see her, having been waiting years to ask her out. And there she was. She had come all this way to see him, he thought, and he was so excited he couldn’t see anyone else. The crowded platform turned to a blur of colours at the periphery of his vision.

He had to look at her. Really look at her in case she should evaporate into thin air, or just walk on by. He knew he had to look at every individual aspect of her body and character. He looked at her feet, pretty and petite, being clutched by a pair of tan-brown, single-strapped sandals. Her red-painted toenails protruded from the end. His eyes spanned her legs and he thought they went on for longer than the moment itself. Her thin white skirt fluttered Monroe-esque in the breeze and the steam and the heat. He couldn’t help but look at her legs once more, somehow bronzed by God or man in the meek and mild weather that followed her throughout most of the year. A red top, cut low underneath her neck, billowed away from her mid-riff. There was no doubt she was thin. She was strung out like a stalk of corn, with crevices and ridges laid out at appropriate intervals. Her arms were long, thin, and speckled with freckles. Hands rested at the end of her arms, barely hanging on. And the hands held fingers with rings that sparkled in the midday sun. Her fingernails were grass green, painted to match her eyes. And his eyes were drawn to hers. The sharp bridge of her nose was an arrow. Her drawn-on eyebrows stood back to give the eyes breathing room.

Her eyes sent him back to a time when he was just a watcher. An admirer from afar. One lunch-time in school, he remembers, he was on his own at the far-end of the cafeteria, near the kitchen. He always got on well with the dinner ladies and, as a result of this, they always gave him his meal first, and at a discounted price, and treated him to their daily gossip:

‘That girl, Sandra. God bless her.’ 

‘Which one, Maggie. You know I don’t know which one you’re talking about you move on so fast.’

‘The one at the table to the left. You see her? With her pretty blonde hair tucked behind her ears?’

Sandra nodded. The girl was unaware. She was entirely focused on her Chicken Curry, pulling spoonful after stringy spoonful to her lips, blowing it twice, and slowly placing it on her tongue. After every bite she looked up, smiled, and laughed.

‘Well, I heard from Andrea that she’s having problems at home.’

‘She looks alright to me, Maggie.’

‘She hides it well. You see, her auntie, her father’s sister, is in Andrea’s spin class. She says her father came back late one night, God knows what he was doing, and was told to pack his bags and go.’

‘No way.’

‘Hasn’t spent a night there since.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Rumour is he has a bit on the side, and he is just waiting until the divorce comes through to make it official.’

When the boy left the cafeteria that day he had every intention of talking to her. Telling her he knew what it felt like, and asking if she would like to go see a movie. He had the speech planned out. He knew what her responses were going to be. He was sure she would agree to a date:

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I wanted to,’ he said. ‘I wanted to ask,’ he said

Her eager eyes waited. His palms were sweaty. It had to have been a warm day, he thought. There had to have been a reason for his perspiration. But it was a typical December day, cold and dry. 

‘I wanted to ask you,’ he said, biting his lip for a second and looking towards the ceiling, ‘if we had any Maths homework for tomorrow?’

‘Maths homework?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think I forgot to take it down.’

His hands and face were now dripping with sweat. It would have been easier to ask her out, he thought. He would have felt better. He had always been uncomfortable around girls, and they could tell.

As he walked away he heard the girl talking. He was almost certain she was talking about him. ‘Yeah, he is kind of cute,’ he thought he heard her say, ‘but I’m pretty sure he’s gay.’ Each of her words flew like a carrier pigeon and perched beside his eardrums. The pigeons whispered the words softer and softer each time, right into his brain, until they were impossible to forget. Sculpted onto the tablets of his mind.

He looked at the girl as she dragged her feet down the platform. Her hair was tied in a ponytail and wagged as she walked. She blew air up towards her nose and rolled her eyes as she approached the boy. For a moment his stomach began to flutter. She had come to see him. They would talk and laugh about how awkward they were in school and how it was so much better these days. No homework to distract them. She waved at him, her hand close to the side of her face. He smiled without showing his teeth. And then she put her head down and brushed past him. He turned in time to see her hug a girl he recognised from school. A girl he knew to be her best friend.

He walked away and re-adjusted the earphones of his music player. A band played out one of the songs of his childhood and he used his left hand to copy the chords as they were played. He pressed the tips of his fingers hard into the back of his right hand and the bones clicked with discomfort. It could have been their song. He could have played it for her as they sat in the park. But she may not have liked it, and he may have begun to dislike her for her lack of interest. In the end the girl would remain forever untainted in his memory. The girl of his dreams and that is the way it was going to stay.