Light

I watched her from afar, hiding behind a tree so that she wouldn’t see me. She bent down to pick dandelions and daisies and proceeded to sit on the curb she was previously balancing on to tie them together with a piece of grass, making a bouquet of weed-flowers. Her green-blue eyes focused on the flowers she was picking.

The other day I tapped her on the shoulder to ask for a pencil, since I had somehow forgotten my entire backpack at home. When she turned around, her eyes were so striking my mouth had gone dry. They seemed to be a mix of green, blue, and brown, swirling together. I would imagine the earth looks similar from the perspective of the moon. She had given me a reassuring smile, a knowing smile, and handed me a mechanical pencil, a black pen, and pink pen, as if I had a choice of which writing tool to use. We always had to use a pencil. I glanced over her shoulder and noticed she was answering every quiz question with a different color. Why did Mrs. Shire still give her A’s on every assignment?

I zoned back in, as she stood abruptly from the curb, looking right in my direction. God, I hoped this tree was sufficient protection from her piercing eyes, but she wasn’t looking at me at all. Right next to me on the sidewalk was a dog. A dog that had no collar, and looked as though it hadn’t eaten in at least a week or two. She began walking slowly towards me. Well not me, and my heart ached the smallest bit as she kept her eyes focused on the dog the entire time. She kneeled down on the sidewalk about six feet away from the dog with her palms open to the sky. ‘There’s no way this would work,’ I thought, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of this looming interaction. The dog backed up a couple of paces, but then began slowly, cautiously, making its way toward the girl, and I noticed she had tucked a few flowers into the long braid she had twisted her hair into that day.  My nose tickled. I forgot I was allergic to flowers. My sneeze felt louder than usual, and sounded as though it ruptured my insides. She kept eye contact with the dog, sitting on her knees, with the palms of her hands still held steady to the sky.

I admired her steadfastness, and how even though the reaction of my body against the pollen in the air startled the dog, it did not startle her, which seemed to both surprise and comfort the animal. It started toward her again and I kept completely still, observing what was happening between the two of them. It crawled into her arms, immediately feeling a sense of safety and security, and my mind wondered what it would be like to be held by her like that. As a parent holds, or should hold, their child to protect them from whatever harm they may experience. She never once looked up at me, but I saw her several times that week walking the puppy in the neighborhood, looking healthier than ever, wagging its tail with a sense of freedom.

I began to see her everywhere doing the strangest things. Saving ladybug after ladybug from the girl’s bathroom infestation, as though the other girls’ shrieks would summon her to the rescue— but not for the girls.  Another time I saw her outside during our study block sitting crisscross in the middle of the field next to the school with her eyes closed, the wind blowing her hair around her face. She looked so magical just sitting there, I paused to watch her for a bit, but soon realized my friends had walked on without even noticing, so I ran to catch up with them. She would stop and help the kid who tripped on the way in the door in the morning, or bring an extra donut for our teacher, somehow knowing that same teacher’s car broke down the day before. She observed everything, and everyone, and cared about it all. I couldn’t stop watching her. I had never seen anything like her— or maybe I had just never noticed.

One day I found myself pretending to read in the bleachers after school, knowing my parents wouldn’t get home until late, watching her collect the trash from the soccer match the night before in a big, black trash bag. I turned back to my book, not focused on what I was reading, having to reread multiple paragraphs multiple times.

“What book are you reading?” I almost jumped out of my skin. I looked up to see the girl standing over me, my heartbeat so fast it felt like I had almost forgotten she was a real, living, human being.

“What?” I asked even though I knew very well what she had said. I just needed a minute to catch my breath and process that the girl I had been watching for weeks was standing right next to me, speaking to me.

She pointed at my book. “What are you reading?” She didn’t sound annoyed that I had asked her to repeat herself, she simply repeated the question in the same, calm voice she had used when she asked the first time.

“Oh,” I turned the cover towards her. “Ready Player One, good choice,” she said. I nodded my head. If only my tongue wasn’t stuck to the roof of my mouth I could have looked much less like an idiot.

“I hope the world never turns out that way, with no one caring about nature and with everyone hooked on a screen.” The realization hit me that I had never seen her with a cellphone, which was odd since I had been keeping my eye on her, and people our age were always on their phones.

“Yeah, me too.” She stood there, waiting for me to say something more. “Why do you do the things that you do?”

A slight smile crept on her face. “I’ve noticed you’ve been watching me. Following me, in some sense.” A slight redness crept onto mine and I shrugged my shoulders. Of course she had noticed, she notices everything and everyone, always observing. “But that being said, I’m not quite sure what you mean. I just do what seems like the most positive decision in the moment. For the universe around me.” I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that because all of her words made sense, as though she did what everyone does, or should do, at least.

“Do you have a phone?” This time she laughs out loud and proceeds to pull a flip phone out of her pocket that had a little screen and a keypad on it.

“I know it’s not a typical smartphone, but I think it’s smarter to have this than any other option out there.” There was a moment of silence, yet she didn’t seem to feel awkward. She took a step forward, “Was that you asking for my number? Because if you want it, you can just ask outright. Being open, honest, and straightforward is sometimes the best way to live your life.” I nodded my head, opened my contacts on my phone and handed it over to her. I watched as she plugged in her name and the ten digits of her phone number. I wasn’t quite sure how to feel, it all happened so fast. “My phone only calls, so don’t try to text me. I’m going to go finish cleaning, it was nice to finally meet you.” She smiled, dimples pressing deep into her cheeks, and ran back into the field, and for the first time that day I noticed she wasn’t wearing any shoes.

I called her every day for three weeks. We talked late into the night, but every morning I didn’t feel tired; I was excited to get up, drive to school, and see her. After week two, I asked her if she wanted to go on a date and she simply nodded her head, took my hand, and walked out of the school building. She walked me all the way to the grocery store, bought a cake, and tipped the cashier who checked us out. I had never seen someone tip a cashier at a grocery store, and apparently neither had the cashier. We walked all the way to the lake on the edge of the city, somewhere I had never been before but wasn’t sure why. It was breath-taking. We ate the cake straight from the container with two plastic forks she pulled out of the pocket she had in her dress. I didn’t know dresses had pockets, and after commenting on this, she grinned wide, as though I had said she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Not that I wasn’t thinking that.

We stayed by the water, talking for hours, until the sun eventually went down. “Since the sun is resting, so should we, probably.” I had never heard someone speak the way she did about the world. She thought of the world as alive, every aspect growing and changing and existing for a purpose outside of her knowledge. She cared about everything and everyone, noticing when an ant had gotten a hold of a morsel of cake to take back to his family, or when a squirrel was crouching nearby watching she threw him some almonds from a bag she just happened to have in her tote bag.

I held her hand walking home, just interlocked our fingers naturally, and the spark of our touch made me not want to have any distance between her and I ever again. I walked her to her doorstep, even though she told me I didn’t have to, and her house looked just as she did. Colorful windchimes hung on the wrap-around porch, too many windows to count (“to let the light flood in” she told me, blushing), with pink shutters on the outside. It was small, homey, but welcoming, inviting, and beautiful. Just as she was. Her mailbox was painted yellow with seven handprints and two paw prints in different colors down the post (“one for each of us” – she seemed proud of this one). As she stood in front of me, I felt my heart pounding in my chest, as though it was the south pole of a magnet, being drawn to its north opposite but not quite being able to touch it. “Your eyes are like the earth.” I told her. She sighed, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed me. It felt as though I was hooked up to an oxygen tank for the first time in my life— I could finally breathe.

People began to notice that we were going out. How could they not? She would kiss me by her locker, in the stairwell, and outside. In places where I knew if a teacher saw, we would most likely get in trouble. I didn’t care, though, because as long as I was with her, holding her hand, I knew that my fast-tracked brain would slow down and realize that everything was actually, okay. I tried to be everything to her, as she was to me. She was gravity, holding me grounded to this earth; she was the sun, lighting up my life, shining warmth into dark corners that had never been exposed before.

People began to notice that we were going out just as quickly as I began to notice that I wasn’t enough for her. She observed everything and she cared deeply for those around her. The people, the animals, the plants – no living thing went unloved. Besides her, though, I thought. I couldn’t love her the way she deserved. I gave her gifts, even though she told me she didn’t need anything. I took her out for food, which was a harder thing since she was a vegetarian and insisted, I be one as well, for ethical reasons. I complied with all of her mantras, her “no secrets” rule that always slightly bothered me, but I couldn’t keep up with her. She was like a sunflower, a beam of light that anyone could see from afar, dropping her seeds so that others could grow as well, pointing her face toward the sun, radiating pure gold. I felt more like an oak tree, growing slowly, but steadily gaining strength, wisdom, and knowledge. I grew more for myself, though, she told me, and that was okay.

We dated for two years. Most of that time was spent outdoors, her teaching me details about nature that I could never have imagined or me simply watching her reflect the sun in the way she danced her way through life. We never worked, as she was a beam of light and I was a simple drop of dew, reflecting the glow of her being— the way the moon reflects the sun. I never stopped thinking about her, even after we graduated, went to college, and started our own lives. There was no way I would ever see her again, and yet I would see her everywhere. In the trees, the flowers, the bugs, the sun. Especially the sun. The experience – being chosen, loved, watered, and nurtured by one who would never stop – affected me in a way I could have never imagined. I was a better person because of who she was.