Hey. It took me a while to write this and I hope you like it.
She is staring out at the people.
She’s watching these students and classmates at lunch break. The energy that they have vibrates through her and she smiles a little. She loves watching their happiness. Although, sometimes she wished that the tables would turn and she would be the one happy.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees someone coming closer to her. She turns her head and sees this boy. One of her classmates. He doesn’t seem to notice what’s going on around him. As he walks by, he takes a glance at her and he slows down. She looks away not wanting to make eye contact. He comes closer and stands in front of her.
“Hey,” he says with a little wave.
“Hey,” she replies.
He sits down on the bench across her. “Whatcha doin all the way over here, Riley? Why aren’t you sitting with them?” He jerks his thumb in the direction of a bunch of girls in their age group.
“I like sitting here on my own,” she says monotonously. “If you’re here to make fun of me, leave. And if you’re here because I look lonely, care about your own business. Boys like you get on my nerves.”
He frowns. “Nope. Nope. And nope. I may be a boy, but I think differently to the people you are referring to.”
“Okay then. Look over there,” She leans forward and points at the guys far from where they are sitting, “see them?”
“Yeah? Why?”
“Well, you are one of them. So why don’t you go and join them, Matt.” She sat back and waited for him to leave.
He looked at them considerately, then looked back at her. He smiles at her and stays put.
“GET OUT OF HERE, YOU DISGRACE OF HUMANITY!”
They simultaneously turned their heads toward the source of that shout. It turned out to be this tall girl, with a bunch of other girls, yelling at another girl, all in the grades lower than Riley. The girl stares at them, shattered.
“You are such a freak! Did you really think that you were cool enough to be us? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, LOSER?”
The girl starts tearing. CRACK. Riley wants to stop this. She really wants to stop this. But she’s caught in fear and all she can do is stare at them. CRACK. The girl backs away from them, heartbroken, and runs away.
“Yeah! Run away, crybaby! Don’t you dare mess with us.”
And she’s gone.
Riley turns back to look at him, “Could you go? Please, I want to be left alone.”
He doesn’t. Unsure what to do, she gets up and leaves instead.
She walks away and heads towards another empty bench far ahead but then Matt calls out for her to slow down.
“What do you want?” she asks irritated.
He looks at her and he must have seen her facial expression because he frowns. She can see that he wants to say something but is unsure if he should.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Are you okay?”
“Maybe, I’m not. But I don’t need you. Okay?”
His head drops. And now she feels bad.
He reaches out and places his right hand on her shoulder.
In total confusion, she doesn’t move. He looks at her as if he’s looking for something.
“Wha…What are you doing?” she asks.
“You’re hurt and we both know it. What if I told you that I want to know what’s wrong?”
She gently shrugs his hand off her shoulder and steps back. “Look that is nice of you but I need to go, okay?”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” She turns around and walks away, this time, he doesn’t follow. As he watches her leave, he feels a slight sting in his right hand. When he holds up his hand, he sees a small cut on his palm.
Later that day, the last lesson is not one of Matt’s favorite so while the teacher droned on and on, his mind was elsewhere. He was thinking about his encounter earlier with Riley. Even though he wasn’t close to her, something about the way she was acting affected him mentally. He could still feel the cut on his palm, even though she wore nothing sharp on her shoulder.
He can see how she felt. The way the girls were behaving affected her, hurt her. That’s not right. And he can understand, they were really mean to that girl.
Riley’s face. Her eyes. They looked shattered too. He wished that he never saw that expression on her. He wished that she never had to have it. He wished nothing would ever hurt her like that again. It wouldn’t be fair.
But this sort of thing is impossible. You can’t stop the things that weren’t even your business. Like her. She is none of his business. But he doesn’t want to see her upset. She’s probably still upset right now, at this moment.
He wants to do something for her. He wants to cheer her up.
The bell rings for the last time of the school day. She packs her books back into her bag and, along with everyone else, leaves the classroom. As everyone heads towards the buses, she walks instead to her locker taking as long as she wants. She never takes the bus, she prefers to walk home.
She checks inside her locker and takes out some of her books in the locker and put them in her bag.
She senses that someone is walking down the empty hall, but she doesn’t want to look up only to awkwardly look into someone’s eyes. She continues to check through her books to make sure she doesn’t forget anything.
It seems like the person is slowing down near her. And now they stand next to her. She steps back and sees Matt.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi. Is there something you want, need, what?”
He takes something out of his pocket and she sees that it’s a small folded orange post-it note. He hands it to her.
She looks at him curiously and then unfolds it. On it it says:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
This is not about me,
It is about you,
Don’t take this the wrong way,
But I really do,
Believe out of everything,
Happiness really suits you.
She looks up at him. He smiles sheepishly.
“I’m not really good at poems, but I was hoping that it would cheer you up. By the way, did it?”
“Yeah, sort of.” She smiles out of gratitude.
“Can you, please, tell me what happened? I promise I won’t judge you, I swear you can trust me.”
She looks at him considerately. It’s been a while since someone actually showed concern for her well-being. And the fact that he thought of writing a poem to her shows that he cares. Oh well, if she tells him and he laughs at her, it’s not the end of the world. She will just avoid him like how she avoids everyone else.
“Okay.”
He raises his brows, clearly surprised.
“Um. It’s just that I’m really kind of sensitive. And I really don’t like it when people yell and hurt each other for no proper reason and stuff.”
“Oh.” Is all he says.
“Yeah.” She just shared one of her deepest feelings and “oh” is all she gets. She looks at him to see what he isn’t saying.
He is looking at her. “Have you tried to not care?”
CRACK. “You are so insensitive!” she zips her bag shut.
He panics, “I’m sorry. I am so sorry. Wait.”
“What?!” she says, irritated.
He just grabs her and brings her into a hug.
She is so confused. But it feels comforting. They stay like that for a couple of seconds and then slowly he backs away. Cutting the hug short.
“I am so sorry. I didn’t think it through. I wasn’t trying to…you know…”
“It’s okay- Oh my gosh! You’re bleeding!”
“What? Where?” He looks down and see’s a scrape on the inside of his arm through his long sleeves.
“How is that… How is that possible?” she asks herself, no longer focusing on him. She starts to pace.
Confused, he asks “What do you mean?”
“I can’t physically cut someone,” she’s talking to herself, forgetting that he’s there. She’s walking in circles around him.
Even though he is confused and she is right, there was something more to what she said that she is not saying.
“What’s going on?”
She replies quickly, “Nothing.”
“No. That’s not it. Trust me, tell me the truth.”
“Okay. Fine. Okay.” She stops and takes a deep breath. “I am… made. Of. Glass.” And she waits for him to react as if she said something stupid or call her crazy.
He takes a moment to let it sink in and then instead of looking at her, he looks at his scraped arm. Then he looks at his cut on his palm and brushes a finger over it.
When he looks at her, he can see it. Like a filter being taken off and he can see what has been underneath. Underneath her skin was glass, but there is so many… cracks. So many small pieces.
“I can see it. I can see your…cracks. How did they happen?”
Slowly she says, “I’m very sensitive and every time I get upset, I… shatter a little.”
He reaches out slowly, expecting her to draw back but she doesn’t. He carefully takes her hand in his and brushes his finger over it. He cuts his finger in the process.
“Oh my gosh! Okay, I’m sorry. Don’t touch me.” She takes her hand back from him.
“It’s okay. I’m sort of sensitive too.” He folds back his sleeves up to his elbows and exposes his arm.
She stares at them but sees nothing.
“Betrayal. People saying that they’ll be there for me, but they don’t. And anger. Hatred aimed at the innocents. Ones who never wanted to be in those situations. That’s me. Backstabbings. Wounds from being mistreated. That’s me.” He says staring deep on her eyes.
Through his eyes, she can see his pain. And slowly she can see his scars. On his arms, he bears all these scars, days-old wounds and now the new wound he received from her. She looks up at him and CRACK.
He hears the sound and sees with his own eyes cracks forming on her face. In horror he watches, believing that her head will shatter completely and fall off. But it stops and her head is still intact.
“What?! Are you okay?” he panics.
“Yeah. It happens, it’s normal.”
“Normal?! I thought your head was going to fall off!”
“Hey, relax. I mean it.”
“Sorry.” He stops freaking out and just takes a pause. “How are okay with this?”
“I’m not.”
“Then?”
“I’m just used it. But that doesn’t mean that I like it. And there is nothing I can do about that. The world is cold and I hate it.”
“I thought so too. But that is not true.”
“What do you mean?” She looks at him confused. “Look, I’m kind of late. I gotta go.” She closes her locker and drapes her bag on her shoulders.
“Can I walk you home then?”
“You sure? Don’t you want to take the bus?”
“It’s gone and my house isn’t so far, so I don’t mind.”
“Okay.”
They walk through the back door and start heading down the stairs which leads to the school’s exit. When they get to the parking lot, they start walking towards her house.
“Back to what I was saying, the world isn’t that cold. Only a person who sees the negatives in this world would say that.”
“Well this world never gave me something positive, so how can I say otherwise?”
“It doesn’t work the way you think it does. If you give it something positive, it’ll give you something positive back.”
“Ugghhh. Nevermind, I don’t even want to know.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s hopeless.” What she really wants to say is that she’s hopeless.
“It’s not. Why would you think that?”
She doesn’t respond.
Registering her silence, he continues on, “Okay. It’s just when you bear a lot of scars it is not seen as pain but seen as consequences. Yes, I did suffer a lot of pain but because of it, I became stronger. I learned how not to step in the same situation again and how to get out of it too. After a long while, I stopped seeing my scars as a tally of how much I’m hated but as experiences where no matter how tough the situation was I managed to get out of it.”
“How… how did you do it?”
A moment of pause as he thought. “I don’t know. I just… looked at my scars. And I told myself that they were just rewards for every battle I fought against. They once were cuts, bleeding as much as they had to, then slowly they scabbed. When you give them time, they heal. And that pain which I felt is no more than a memory. And I am no longer scared. Because I know that everything heals with time. No matter how bad it is.”
They walk on in silence until they reach her house.
“Thank you for walking me home.”
“I’d give you hug but… not my place to. Handshake?”
“Can’t. I might hurt you.”
“I don’t care, it’s not really that bad.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
They reach out and shake hands.
She can feel his warmth seeping into her hand, “Is it hurting you, Matt?”
“Can’t feel a thing.”
“You’re so sweet.”
“You are too.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you care. You care for people even when they’re not asking for it. And you are so kind. It’s beautiful. And so are you.”
They smile at each other even while still shaking each other’s hands.
“Well, I gotta go.” He says.
“Bye, Matt.”
“Have a nice day, Riley.”
She turns away and gets in her house. She closes the door and runs towards the window.
As he is walking away, she watches him. She can still feel the warmth of his touch. She looks at her right hand and is shocked. Some of her cracks are no longer there.
She smiles and whispers to herself, “Time can heal and so can his heart.”
Sorry, if you weren’t expecting it to be this long.
Jar Of Dark Stars 