Short story.

Written by: Meli.

Status: Finished, but is still subject to edits.

Summary: A boy tells of his first and only love, and the complicated, sweet story of how that love came to be.

Excerpt: "She’s considered the crazy one. It isn’t nice, and it isn’t really true, but that’s how it is. I admit, if I didn’t know the truth I would call her crazy too."

Author's comments: (4-14-09) Yeah, it's iffy at some parts, but everyone says that it's a decent piece. Enjoy!

She’s considered the crazy one. It isn’t nice, and it isn’t really true, but that’s how it is. I admit, if I didn’t know the truth I would call her crazy too.

Her habit of cloud watching started it all. I don’t think I know her well enough to say what attracted her to cloud watching, but I’m guessing it was because of her father. He passed away when she was younger. I guess she feels closer to him when she’s watching the sky. Personally, I think cloud watching is a pointless activity. If not pointless, very very boring. But I liked her enough to watch with her. Not with her as in sitting next to her. I was with her from a distance.

I guess now you’re wondering why I’m the one telling the story and not her. The thing is, if she were to tell it, it would just be something else people could use to call her crazy. I have no intention of doing so. I love her too much to do so.

Now, I bet that’s created some questions in your mind. What’s my relationship to her? Truth is, I don’t really have one. And don’t you call me a stalker. I’m not. Or, maybe I was. I was a stalker with good intentions who was too shy to actually confront my target.

But I’ve gone off track. Let’s get back to the cloud watching, shall we?

It was spring. Sunny. One of those no-sweater-necessary-fly-your-kite days. We were at the neighborhood park. She on top of the hill, I on the bottom, lying behind a leafy bush. Our bodies were parallel, thirty feet apart and one elevated higher than the other.

Let me make a note here. She didn’t know I was watching her. No one else knew either. Only me. And a couple of squirrels.

We were there for maybe twenty five minutes. She’d been humming just loudly enough for me to hear. Not loud enough for me to actually hear the tune. It might’ve been My Girl. Or Moon River. I wasn’t sure. I still am not sure. I’d strained to hear the tune that was so close to me, yet so far away. And then, the humming stopped. I didn’t notice the silence until a couple of seconds later, when it was broken. A high pitched squeal. I’d straightened to my knees and looked over. She was on her feet, looking up, hair blowing back a bit behind her. Mouth slightly open. I looked up to see what she was so surprised by, and nearly fell over onto my back again.

Words.

Words that were white and fluffy and stood out against the blue sky.

Now, you’ve heard of invisible ink, and the classic message in a bottle and secret codes and things like that. But words in the clouds? Not so much. Whomever had created the message wasn’t the best speller, either. Which was unfortunate, because it got rid of any chances that nature had put together this phenomenon.

I didn’t really notice the mistakes the first time I looked at the message. I was too baffled to care. So was she. I could tell because the next thing she did was run down the hill asking every person she ran into if they could see the message. I wasn’t close enough to hear, but I had a tacit understanding from her frantic gestures at the sky. Ever time she pointed, the person she was questioning looked. And every time the person looked, they shook their head, confused. And after every shake of the head, they would turn and watch her run towards the next nearest person, wondering who the heck she was. That’s how the crazy thing started. See, news travels fast in our neighborhood. The neighbors have a yelled conversation from the front porch, while the teenagers eavesdrop from the upstairs window. Me, I preferred watching her.

She lived near me for a while. Maybe a couple of houses down. Of course, after the rumors started she spent less and less time outside, and more time inside, doing who knows what. Yes, I don’t know what she was doing. I wasn’t that much of a stalker.

When she was old enough, she left. No one really cared about her. Or her absence. Except, that is, for me.

When I saw the first few people shake their head, it surprised me. I could see the message. I glanced up at the sky at the same time as the 7th person she asked. It seemed to blur slightly when they looked up and sharpened when they looked away.

It was hard to decipher at first with the constant blurring and sharpening of the message. Not to mention they were written in clouds. and had spelling mistakes. But I figured it out eventually.

“You aren’t alone. You are never alone.”

I can see why this startled her so much. First of all, it’s a way to say “I’m watching you” without actually seeming like a stalker. And second, she was a solitary person. I’d always thought that that’s just how she was. I could relate to her. I preferred solitude to society. Although I’m not sure if you could consider someone who doesn’t know you’re spending time with them company. But now, after reading the message, I began to see that the message was really meant for her.

Actually, it might’ve been meant for others also. Such as myself. How come the message didn’t blur when I set eyes on it? Perhaps it was because of my solitude. Mine and hers. If I’d gone up to her and said that I could see it too, maybe things would be different. I wouldn’t be living in an empty house, alone. I wouldn’t be reflecting on this story years later, alone. Maybe I’d be with her.

But I didn’t go up to her. My stupid taciturn self said it was out of the question. I stayed by my bush until she’d reached the park exit. It was only then that I realized she was leaving. So I scrambled to my feet and followed her, wherever she was going.

She walked on the main road for a while, casting glances at the sky every so often. But not very often, because leafy trees covered her view of the sky. I wasn’t at all sure where she was going, but she seemed to. I kept on following her, looking upwards almost as many times as she was.

It might’ve been my imagination, but she seemed to cast looks behind her a lot. Maybe her actions were just out of confusion. I certainly would be, if I weren’t more distorted by my feelings for her. Or, she could’ve thought I was an actual stalker. I had been following her for a while. I didn’t think I looked suspicious, and I was pretty sure she hadn’t seen me in the park that day. It was basically as if she were watching me too.

I consider myself not worth watching, though. Even now, I’m not extremely handsome, or have a six-pack or anything that’s supposed to attract girls. I’ve had my share of girlfriends, but not one of them really had an affect on me like she did. Put simply, she was worth watching. She was worth following on a sunny spring day.

We’d been walking for some time, and somehow in the space of 15 minutes we had managed to travel to a part of town that I hadn’t really been to, even though I’d lived in the neighborhood my whole life. We’d gone to field trips to the museum, back when we were 4th graders. The two of us were in the same class, and partners.

I won’t bore you with the specific details of the project, but it forced her to come to my house after school for a week. That was the start of our friendship. Both of us weren’t the talking type in class, so when she came over the first time, talking animatedly about her ideas, I was stunned. The amount of words I heard from her that week was more than I’d heard her say in a full school year.

Her chattiness didn’t motivate me to talk much, but I did do my share of the project. Every afternoon, we would walk home, and sit down at my dining room table. She’d make a suggestion, and I would nod or shake my head in answer. Most of the questions were answerable by “yes” or “no”. The work that was done after she had gone home was a lot more productive, because I wasn’t distracted by her sudden chattiness. I came up with a cool pulley system that carried two buckets up and down simultaneously. She was thrilled the first time I demonstrated it for her. Maybe more than she should’ve been. She’d let out a squeal of excitement and hugged me for a couple seconds. It confused me. What had I done that was worthy of a hug?

After the project, the two of us didn’t talk to each other much. If ever, it was just a couple of words in passing. I was too confused to do anything else.

It was in 6th grade that our friendship was rekindled. That was the year when bullying in the schoolyard became a common sport. She was a victim. I was a bystander.

But I was a nice bystander. One time, she’d been forced to give up her lunch money and was sitting on a bench, sad and alone. All I saw was solitude, and I knew how that felt. So I walked up and gave her half of my sandwich. She’d looked up, and, smiling gratefully, moved over a bit so I could sit. We ate my lunch in silence, but I could feel her gratitude towards me.

After that, eating lunch together became a sort of tradition. We never talked during those lunches. That’s part of the reason I don’t know much about her. We never really talked. However, I could tell that she considered me to be a friend. I was happy about that.

My crush started here.

I followed her for another five minutes, during which she had led me through a black iron gate and onto a secluded path off of an alleyway. She seemed to have a destination in mind, but I didn’t have a clue where we were going. All I could do was follow her and assume she knew what she was doing.

It would take far too long to describe the journey to our destination, so let’s skip ahead a little.

The building.

The building rose from a thicket of trees. It was pretty tall, but you wouldn’t be able to see it from a distance. It was built sort of like a pyramid for six layers or so , with each layer being a bit smaller than the one below it. The rest was a constant width. As we got closer I saw a dark green vine sneakily climbing up the side of the building. The base was caked with mud.

It seemed like a fairly new building, no more than ten years old, and from her slightly more relaxed state I could tell that she had been here before. Maybe multiple times. I’d never seen her come this way, though. Maybe it was before I’d started watching her.

In 7th grade our lives were different. The pressure to go out with one another rose like hot air on a summer day. We spent so little time together, so I didn’t feel the need to ask her out. I felt that whatever we had at the moment was enough.

We still ate lunch together. But instead of eating on a park bench away from the rest of the class, it was in a crowded cafeteria with millions of eyes watching. Judging. I could hear their whispers in the hallway. Apparently, we caused a lot of controversy.

It wasn’t as if anything was happening between us. But the fact that two people of opposite genders could eat together and not go out was beyond them. She was asked about it. Constantly. But she didn’t say anything. She didn’t feel the need to go out either.

No one came to me, though. They all knew I was a taciturn person. Their chances of getting information were higher if they bugged her about it. I was sort of relieved that they didn’t ask me about it, because there wouldn’t be any chance of me letting something slip. No chance of me ruining whatever we had.

If, in fact, we had anything.

The building grew bigger with every step we took. We were soon close enough to see the brown double doors at the base of the building. I had to slow down my pace a lot to make sure she wouldn’t hear me following her. By the time I had gone through the front doors she had gone. I found myself inside a wood-walled room with an empty desk in the corner. There were three hallways leading out of the room, and I was sure she had disappeared down one of them. The question was, which one?

All through high school our time together was limited. Our only class together sophomore year was math, and there aren’t any partner activities in class. The professor we had that year wasn’t the nicest guy, either. We’d all heard rumors freshman year that he sexually harassed the girls in his classes. Of course, this was all coming from untrustworthy gossipers who passed on information whether it was true or not.

So it surprised all of us when he started to make the moves on this one girl in class. She’d gone to the same elementary school as me, disappeared all during middle school, and reappeared as the brunette whom every guy wanted to date. Apparently, so did our teacher.

It was creepy. Nothing more than awkward conversation, but we all thought we understood what was happening. Afterwards, the girl switched out of class out of caution and eventually left the school altogether. No one really heard from her after that. We all considered switching out of class also. But, none of us did. There wasn’t any reason to do so, no real incident to report to the school.

A couple of months went by. Nothing changed. We all started to think that it was a one time thing, that our teacher really did want the best for us. The event was forgotten.

He’d asked her to stay behind in class. We had lunch next period, and I was thinking about our traditional lunch together. So I left the classroom and got my lunch. I stayed by my locker for a while, waiting for her to come out. A glance at my watch. Five minutes. Still nothing. Wait some more. Tick, tock.

Finally, I decided to peek into the classroom, to see if they were finished talking. Walking down the hallway. Voices. Approaching the door. Yelling. Classroom door handle in my hand. Pleading. I opened the door to see him, face red, fists clenched. She was almost against the wall, backing away as far from him as she could. He hadn’t seen me come in, but she had. I remember her face. A mixture of relief and anxiety. My voice added to the noise already being generated, but I projected it into the hallway. Multiple teachers and the assistant principal hurried over to the classroom, and our former math teacher was escorted out of the building. I escorted her to the lunch room.

That lunch was as silent as the rest of them. Actually, it was more silent than usual. We would at least make some conversation in the thirty minutes we were given to eat. But not that lunch. Not a word was exchanged between me and her.

I got the feeling that she was grateful to me. Again. This was the second time I had helped her out of a rough patch, although this incident was much, much worse. She never thanked me verbally for those. But I knew. Still, it would’ve been nice to hear it from her.

Eventually, word got out that she was with our teacher when he showed his potential to physically abuse students. Girls interrupted our quiet lunch to interrogate her. I sat idly by as she was asked question after question. No one bothered to talk to me, her savior. Ask about my important role. They only wanted to know what he had done to her. Which, in truth, was absolutely nothing. It had been close. If I had waited a bit longer, he might have actually hurt her.

I couldn’t tell at first, but I soon realized that she was happy. Suddenly, all this attention was forced on her. She took it and made it her own. A couple of girls were added to our table. And then three more. And then two others came to sit with us. And so on, until our table, which once sat two people content with each other’s company, became crowded and overflowing with chattiness and laughter.

I was pushed out. Alone. And I would remain so for many years afterwards.

I wandered around the main lobby for a bit, looking anxiously around at everything. I checked all around me in case she decided to wander back into view. Which she soon did. She came out of a door on the far side of the room and I rushed behind a chair, hoping that she hadn’t seen me. She approached the man at the front desk, ranting, her lips and arms moving, her hand pointing at the door closest to me. The man shook his head a couple times, and tried to speak during the breaths that she took. As she continued talking, the expression on his face became less stern. He seemed to be thinking about what she was saying. Finally, he ducked down behind his desk. I couldn’t see what he was doing, so I looked at her. She shifted her feet multiple times and was very anxious looking. When he emerged he held a green laminated card with some black letters on it. He took a hole puncher, made three holes, and gave the card to her. She thanked him, and walked briskly through the door. I crouched at my hiding place awkwardly for a second or two, and, just after the door swung shut, I scrambled to my feet and followed her.

The next year of my life was spent sneaking glances at her from across crowded rooms. Watching her chat away with her friends on the other side of the cafeteria. Watching her chew on a pencil as she pondered over a problem on the other side of the classroom. Watching her shoot a basketball into the hoop on the other side on the gym. Watching her on the opposite side of the hallway as I collected my books from locker 37. Always watching.

It was strange. She was always there, near me. But she was always as far as possible from me as she could be. My teachers always assigned us seats that had us at least two meters away from each other. Her lunch table was now the one in the very back, in the left corner of the room. She had gym at the same time that I did, but she was always in the other class.

I don’t think it was on purpose. None of it was on purpose. It was a giant coincidence. It had to be. All of them putting me so close to her, and yet she would never see me. She was distracting, wonderful, secretive, sometimes insanely loud. All of these qualities were picked up from the time that I spent watching her. All the classes that her and I had together, in the same room, within a few feet of each other, and she would never notice me.

Yes, the whole thing confused me. At times, it was just totally ridiculous. How could it be that every single one of my teachers would take it onto themselves to keep me away from her? I was never in the same group as her when we did group activities. I was never asked to do anything with her. No special projects, no school community work, nothing. So I tried to take every single advantage that I could of being near her.

For a while, I stuck to walking past her locker a lot. It was at the other end of the hallway, on the opposite wall from me, next to the school bulletin board. It was very convenient. Whenever I walked past it, I’d turn my head towards the board, as if I were looking at it. The first time I glanced at it while walking by, I didn’t pay much attention to the locker number. But the next time I walked past, I saw it. And automatically remembered it.

Number 73. The complete opposite of mine.

I waited a couple of seconds after the door had swung closed before following her. I don’t know what I was expecting to see on the other side of that door, but what I did see completely took me by surprise.

It was white. Everything, pure white. The lights reflecting off of the tiled floor blinded me as I staggered from a dark, gloomy lobby into a bright, glowing hallway. The doors blended into the walls, as they were the same exact shade of white paint. I started to worry that if she had disappeared behind one of those doors, I would probably never find out where she was going, seeing as how I’d almost lost her before. Luckily, I could still hear her footsteps echoing off of the gleaming walls and hurried to catch up to her.

It was a while before I realized that it would be impossible for me to hide if she happened to look behind her. But by the time that I had thought of that possibility, she had already gone through another set of doors. We were running through the hallways, bursting through set after set after set of doors, and I questioned the size of the building. From the outside it had seemed quite small. However, upon exploring the inside, it was actually quite large.

She sprinted around a corner and I heard her burst through one last set of doors. Peeking around the wall, I saw that this set had windows. She had stopped just after she had stepped through the doorway and let the doors swing shut behind her. She stood there for a minute, catching her breath and looking around, before she strode to the right and out of sight with a contented air.

I considered not following her, wondering if it really was worth invading her privacy to see what was behind these mysterious doors. But I’d watched her long enough that it made me want to know everything about her. So I strode to the door and opened it in one breath.

It surprised me, that locker thing. Was it a sign? A sign that I was totally wasting my time obsessing over this girl? This girl, who had cared for me, who had wasted time doing absolutely nothing with me, who had now abandoned me.

However, I eventually ignored my doubts and continued to obsess. Continued to walk past her locker. Continued to watch her out of the corner of my eye. She might have abandoned me, but I wouldn’t do the same. If we truly were friends, even now, after she had left me, I would continue to care for her. Because if there were ever a time when she needed a true friend, one who wasn’t a gossipy talking bird like the friends she had now, I would be there for her.

The room was spectacular. It was a high ceilinged room with a magnificent skylight. A gray barrier stood in front of me, blocking access to the area beyond. The walls of the room were rectangular, and if you were to look up the walls from floor to ceiling, every so often the width of the ceiling would decrease. From this, I could tell that we were at the very point of the squarish pyramid. The grey barriers in front of me were rounded, and I couldn’t see any way through them. They weren’t extremely high, and I could see that there was something beyond those walls, but they weren’t low enough that I could climb over them. I walked around the perimeter of the wall for a bit, expecting to find a gap, but I didn’t find one. Instead, there were doors. Doors, doors, and more doors. I entered one of them, only to walk into a similarly spaced area with the same walls in the same shade of grey. I had walked around the perimeter of that wall a bit and entered another door in the wall. I found myself in yet another similarly spaced area with rounded grey walls. I expect that if you looked at the room from a bird’s point of view it would have looked something like a target, or a circular maze without gaps.

I wasn’t sure where in the maze she was, but I was pretty sure that she knew her way around. However, I had no idea where I was. After a while, I just sat down against the wall and waited for someone to find me.

I secretly hoped that she would be the one to find me. It would force me to tell her why I was here, why I had hidden from her. It would force me to tell her everything, everything from the beginning. Just as I’m doing now.

But of course, no one found me. I was undoubtedly always going to be alone.

Eventually, passing her locker multiple times during the school day wasn’t enough for me. I should have felt content with being in the same room as her. Should have felt content with hearing her voice every time a teacher called on her. But for some reason, I wasn’t. I felt the need to see her all the time, to be in her presence around the clock. So I started to follow her as she walked home from school. It wasn’t suspicious, because I lived just a couple of houses down. But I walked slower than usual, and I tended to hide whenever she happened to glance behind her.

I’m not sure why I hid. I had no reason to hide. It was just that every time I sensed that she was going to look at me, I got nervous and confused. So, my first instinct was to hide. Terrible of me, but that’s what I did.

Watching her became my habit. I started getting up earlier so that I could leave for school at the same time that she did. I got a membership at the gym that she had been attending for months. I went to the mall and followed her into clothing stores, even if the place sold merchandise solely for girls. But I didn’t care. If I couldn’t be with her with everyone knowing it, I would be with her secretly.

And so all of those things, my habit, my hope, contributed to my every day agenda. I know about this event, the one that determined her status in the community, because of my deep love for her. It was my love that drove me to find out every single detail of her day, that made me want to know everything about her. She was the only reason I should keep on living, and I just had to be with her all of the time.

I sat against the wall, staring up at the ceiling, waiting. Wondering. Why have so many walls? If my hypothesis of the layout of the room was correct, then something lay in the middle of the room. Something important and significant. Just like the end of a maze. But what was it?

I was buried so deeply in my thoughts that I didn’t notice that the ceiling had started to shift. Startled, I slouched against the wall and gazed at the portions of the sky that were now being revealed. Above me, pieces of glass retracted, the point of the pyramid shrunk in on itself, and the square sides opened like a flowers petals. If you were looking at the building from the outside, the smallest cube on the top would look like an open cardboard box, its four flaps pushed down to a 45 degree angle.

My attention was drawn to the walls beyond me. A platform with a piece of white machinery was slowly becoming visible in the middle of the room. The white machine’s basic shape was a cone with the pointed end cut off. A series of buttons and black plastic pieces were scattered along the sides, and the end where the point of the cone would be was black and translucent.

As the platform rose higher, it rotated clockwise and she came into view. I watched as she calmly removed the green laminated card from a slot in the machine, and looked up at the open roof. It was clear that she had done this before. I stared as the platform rotated and rose higher, until the top of the machine was just level with the roof of the building. The ceiling stopped opening. The platform stopped as well. Her back was to me as she pushed a series of buttons on the underside of the machine. A red light flashed, and a slender black cylinder slid out of the machine, almost at her eye level.

I hadn’t noticed it before, as I was too distracted by her sudden reappearance, but there were some keypads and pedals scattered artistically around the surface of the platform. They were arranged neatly at her feet, and she stepped on one of them. A small device that looked a bit like a typewriter hissed up, and she pressed a series of keys. The ceiling of the building continued to open, as it had been before, but at a faster rate. I watched in awe as, one by one, the levels of the building split as the first one had earlier.

The platform hadn’t moved, but she was now up much higher than the buildings walls. Her hair blew back in the wind, just as it had on the hill, and she gazed up at the words that had surprised her so. It was as if they had followed her here, to this very spot, as they hovered directly above the building.

She leaned over the black cylinder, and put her eye to the top, as if she were using a telescope. Was that what this machine was? A telescope? A telescope meant for use during daylight hours? Afterwards, she pressed a series of buttons on the side of the machine, and looked up, waiting. Nothing changed. She tried another combination of buttons. Still nothing happened. Frantically, she tried combination after combination, with no success. I didn’t even know what her goal was. And then, one last combination. She looked through the black cylinder again, in a slightly less flustered manner. Had she succeeded in her quest? Had she found what she was looking for?

Apparently not. Her observations weren’t enough. Whatever she was searching for, she could not find. Frustrated, she turned away from the machine, towards me. She stood there for a couple of seconds, her eyes closed, taking deep breaths. Then she looked skyward. Her mouth moved. She was mouthing something.

“You spelled the words wrong.”

I smiled. And then looked up myself.

They had disappeared.

Only to be replaced with a laughing face.

That was it, then. She knew where the words were coming from. She knew how to communicate with the ones who had written them. This proved it.

I should have been more freaked out than I was. I mean, this girl, this absolutely amazingly wonderful girl whom I’ve obsessed over since I was a kid, was standing in front of me as she whispered to some unknown beings in the sky. This girl, who cherished company, who has been alone for practically her whole life, who talks to the sky. Sky talker. I should have immediately thought she was crazy and gotten the hell out of there.

But I didn’t look at it like that. As she was looking up, on the platform, and I watched her from below, I saw an absolutely amazingly wonderful girl whom I’ve obsessed over since I was a kid, whose secrets will forever be unknown to me. I didn’t know anything about her, even though we had been close to each other for a very long time. I was all right with being alone, at the moment. She wasn’t. She had to be accepted by others in order for her to be happy. I thought of all of these, and many more. And as she looked back down at her feet and turned away from me, I got up and left.

I’m not exactly sure how people found out, but within the next week word got out that she had been to a strange building in the middle of nowhere. Her so-called friends pestered her and spread around what they got out of her. Teachers asked her if she was all right, and told her that if she ever needed anything, she could come to them. The principal had multiple chats with her and her parents after school. People were worried about her, thought her to be a drug addict who had to go to an institute to help her get off of them, or a girl who attended a “special” weekend school. They thought of her as crazy, but for all the wrong reasons. Crazy beautiful, maybe. But she was certainly not crazy in the negative way that they all had in their brains.

It was then that I realized that I couldn’t stay away from her. I was the only one who truly understood her. She was just a person, a person who was lonely and just wanted to be accepted by others. A person who was exactly the same as me.

When I think about it now, I don’t really want to know what her relationship to the building was. I know that she was lonely, no matter how much she tried to hide it throughout her life. Her friendships with most of the girls she had sat with at lunch were badly constructed. They were hastily sewed together, and she used them as a quick fix to her loneliness. And then, at the first opportunity, they ripped the seams of their friendship apart. How cruel.

Her leaving was really all their fault. It was their fault I was torn away from the love of my life. Their fault that she would never get to know me, and see me the way I saw her.

If I were her, I would have left also. To learn that none of the people who you care for truly know you and care about you also. To learn that your friends are traitors who love a good story more than they love you. To learn that everyone in the neighborhood, everyone you’ve known your whole life, those who always were there, didn’t trust you.

But that was years ago. I’ve gotten over her leaving.

I was naive and stupid back then. Of course I didn’t know anything about her. I never made an effort to get to know her, even though I had many opportunities where I could have tried. All of those times where I felt like we were being separated on purpose were imaginary. I had created that invisible border between us.

She comes back every year to visit her father’s grave. She always comes back at the same time, during the same week. She stays in the towns only motel, and checks in for three days and two nights. That time is today. I’ve marked it on my calendar.

Maybe I’ll go to the graveyard and pay my respects to my deceased grandparents. Maybe I’ll pass her while she stands over her fathers tombstone. Maybe I’ll strike up the conversation I should have started years ago. Invite her to coffee.

Maybe today I won’t be alone.