As Long As You're Mine

Finding You

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That same blue plastic chair.

She probably sat in that chair a million times. But she didn't care about that. She cared about the chair next to it. More, the person sitting in it.

The school corridors were narrow small, the walls a cream white colour. The walls were lined with tall lockers, coloured beige and tattooed with graffiti over the years. Outside one of the rooms were three plastic blue chairs. They were used for waiting for your appointment with the school councillor.

He always sat in the middle chair. He never fully tucked in his shirt. The left side was always tucked out. His socks were also never rolled up, always hanging at his ankles. He sat and scrolled on his phone whenever he waited, often smiling like the idiot he is, forming a tear shaped dent on his cheek. Until Andrea came.

"Hi Zach."

Always that. Nothing else. Not a 'How are you doing' or, 'How was the soccer match'. Nope. Just 'hi Zach'. And he would always say 'Hi' back. That's it. His thumb will go back to the rightful place on his phone.

That was enough for her.

***

The day after her suspension was over, she was sitting in seat in her class. Some random teacher was talking, explaining about the calculations he had just wrote on the board. When did letters get into math? The teacher was short, his salt and pepper hair cut military short. He wore a weird rainbow mandala shirt with a pair of beige shorts. His main selling point were his thick orange glasses that stood out from everything. He spoke in a heavy French accent. The room smelt like a boiled egg left on a counter for 6 days. The mid days in summer were wretched. Every variable in the class was normal. But it didn't feel right.

She sat next to Sophie. Her hand was sketching something... something in her book, probably a smiley face or an eye. Typical Sophie. On her other side was some other girl was busily whispering into another girl's ear. The other girl murmured something back in return. The girl next to Andrea made a sound like a whistle blowing on a pressure cooker, dropped her head onto the desk and buried herself in her arms to stop laughing. All that you could see was her hair, separated in many tight and small black braids.

The teacher turned around from the whiteboard to see after he heard her chuckling, placing the pen gingerly on the table. He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrow.

"Miss Smith. Care to share the joke to the class? We love jokes. If you tell us, we could laugh as well."

She lifted her head up, once she heard the teacher, trying not to laugh.

"Sorry, sir." She laughed again, "I'm listening."

She was pretty. Her eyelashes long and curled up and her lips plump. She wore a thin layer of makeup, the type where boys think they are wearing nothing, but makes you look a hundred times better. She'd just broken up with some tall blue eyed blonde 2 weeks ago, when they were the couple of the month.

Andrea vowed that if she were ever that pretty, she wouldn't change boyfriends every 2 months. She didn't understand it. They would talk and talk about their crush and when they finally get together, they would treat them the worst ever possible and break up with them. Another two months, they turn into feminists and then it goes in a cycle again.

Just while the teacher got to explaining what 'X' meant, after a not so clever comment about not being able to find someone's ex from a blonde boy in the front, Mrs Panzers knocked on the door. She was dressed in complete sage green, and her hat placed delicately on the top of her scalp. At her heel was a tall and stout Indian man, who looked about 50, who waved. His smile was warm, standing out from the coldness of Mrs Panzers' glare, like a hot chocolate on a cold winter's day. Mrs Panzers cleared her throat and moved her glare at the teacher.

"May I steal... young Andrea Gonzales?" she spat.

The class erupted with 'ooohs' until Mrs Panzers scowled at them. They fell pin drop silent. The teacher nodded and told Andrea to pack up. With a sigh, she obeys. Of course, the day after her suspension is finished, she is called to the principal.

The three of them walked out of the classroom, towards the administration block. Mrs Panzers broke the silence.

"Andrea. Do you know why you are here?"

Andrea looked up at her and mutely shock her head.

"Perhaps, Mr Nayar would be more suited to explain. I am no longer needed here."

She turned herself away and stalked off, to go do who-knows-what. Mr Nayar and Andrea was left alone.

"I'm Mr Nayar." He explained, "I'm one of the school's guidance officers. I've heard that you would be just suited for an appointment with me every Wednesday. Don't worry! I'm sure we'll have lots of fun."

Andrea mumbled something like 'okay'. What else do you say? He'd just politely told her that she needs psychiatric help. Oh, well.

***

Every Tuesday, she would mope to the school councillor room. The meetings with Mr Nayar were quite boring. They'd do random activities, and, in the end, he would explain how that correlates to people's mental health. Sometimes he'd ask deep questions to her, and she'd answer as simply as possible. Once he had brought a small box of hand stitched fabric hearts, stuffed with cotton and some had buttons sewed on. He asked her to pick one. She reached her hand in and pulled out a black heart with multiple rainbow buds sewed randomly around it. He then turned to her.

"What does that mean?" Mr Nayar asked.

"Umm."

Mr Nayar chuckled. "It's a heart. Hearts mean love. This is meant to symbolise love and to remind you that people love you. Always."

"Ok." She replied.

The meetings were always simple like that, until a late afternoon on a hot summer day. She was placed on the rightmost of the three chairs, lost into the blue rays of her phone. Usually, it was a couple minutes of solitary doomscrolling until she was called inside. This day was different. She felt the heat of someone's body as the space next to her was filled up. She tilted her head up see. She caught his eyes, warm and pure as he curled his mouth to the right. A dent formed on the top of his right cheek.

"Hi!"

That was it.

Suddenly, these appointments were the only thing that motivated her. Suddenly, she was talking to Mr Nayar with all the enthusiasm in the world. Suddenly she her face turned wrong whenever she saw Zach.

It seemed like the change happened overnight.

It seemed like she was glowing. It seemed like she finally started talking. It seemed like she finally started smiling. It seemed like she was finally Andrea.

It seemed like it impacted everyone. Andrea's mother, Esperanza, picked the broken smithereens of her life back together. She'd bid goodbye to alcohol and welcomed Andrea and the simplicity of the beauty of life with warm welcoming hands and a smile. Sophie's radiant self shone brighter than ever before, smiling wider than ever and filling the air with her laughs more frequently.

A funny thing about life is that it can change so quickly, indeed. It's also funny how simple the reason may be.

The people who you love.