Spark's Fly

Chapter 5

The rest of the month flies by as work picks up.

Jisoo is amazing as she keeps up with it all, being able to adapt to any and every situation. She does have trouble with one of the photographers and when she looks like a lamb at the slaughter I step in to help my friend.

Friend.

We haven’t used the word since our first meeting but the more and more time we spend together the more I find myself associating the word to her. I feel like I’ve known her forever. Though there’s still a lot I don’t know about her, there is a lot we have in common. We both love animals, we both have eclectic souls, liking to collect polaroid’s and memories. The only other people who are so similar were raised in the same house as me. And Jisoo  is like a sister to me. And yet…she’s closer to me than a sister.

One morning we both show up wearing the exact same outfit. It’s eerie and yet I find my pulse quickening as she laughs at the wardrobe mishap.

“What do they say about doppelgangers?”

That you die soon after you see yours. But I feel most alive when I’m with her.

The more time we spend together the more I notice. Little ticks, like the opposite hand hair brush. Or how when she’s really laughing, not polite laughing, that she almost falls over.

Jisoo has a boyfriend, though she hasn’t said much about him. I wonder if he notices things like that. Like how she only does the opposite hand thing when her mind is elsewhere.

Does he know that she finds sea urchins freaky and doesn’t want to go to the beach for fear of finding one? Or that she’s easily startled, but loves surprises. The good kind.

He has to know all this; her face is an open book. It doesn’t hide anything; not when she’s displeased, and especially not when she’s happy. And yet, sometimes it feels like there is something hidden just beneath the surface. Her face might reveal all her emotions, but it is her writing which exposes her heart.

Does she ever sing to him?

She has yet to sing to me but middle of our second month together I finally talked her into teaching me guitar. It’s only after I purchase the instrument and show it to her that she finally agrees. I can tell by the way her eyes light up on seeing it, and the gentle way she caresses it, that she’s entranced.

“I bought it just so you could teach me. Are you really going to make me return this?”

After she shows me a few notes she has me reproduce the hand positions on the fret board. When I struggle with one she comes around behind me to help me adjust my fingering. As her arm touches mine I feel my body tense, a reaction I’ve never had with another person’s presence. I feel her breath on my ear as she instructs me but all I can hear is my pounding heart.

“Can you finger it?”

My skin feels cold as she moves away.

Moving around in front of me, she gives me a raised brow, “What?”

“Can you do that thing where your fingers pull the strings individually?”

“You mean this?”

She picks up her guitar as she begins to pick at each of the strings with an individual finger.

“Wow, you are amazing. Can you play me something you wrote?” She starts to set her guitar aside as I put on my widest smile, “Please.”

She lets out a slow sigh before bringing the guitar back in front of her.

“I wrote this a long time ago. It’s rough.”

Slowly the melody begins as she starts to sing in a low sad voice, “I tried to take the road less traveled by, but nothing seems to work the first few times.” There’s a pause then the beat quickens as the melancholy melody continues, “So how can I ever try to be better? Nobody ever lets me in and I can still see you. This ain’t the best view on the outside looking in. And I’ve been a lot of lonely places I’ve never been on the outside…” she plays a few bars then sings, “You saw me there, but never knew that I would give it all up to be a part of this, a part of you. You could have helped if you had wanted to, but no on notices until it’s too late to do anything.”