A Little Friend

Chapter One

I had known Harriet for longer than she could remember. Yet, even today I can clearly recollect the moment I first saw her. She was just a child, and so were I.

What grabbed my attention in the beginning were her glassy, sad eyes. She was sitting alone in class, with no intention of being there, like a shadow. The other kids were chatting, laughing and playing with each other, while Harriet was hidden in a corner where the sun couldn't reach. I came close to her, as I felt a strong, unspoken connection between the two of us and I sat down on the empty chair next to hers. Until then, she hadn't noticed me either.

She looked at me shyly. Her eyes were sorrowful, but I could see a sparkle in them for a moment. She did not say anything, yet her eyebrows raised suddenly, in disbelief. Her mouth didn't move at all; her thin, pretty lips were covering her healthy, sharp teeth and her freckled nose was unconsciously trying to sense possible threats.

She kept her hands on the desk, but she held tight on her pen. To me, she seemed to say "I won't hurt you, as long as you don't hurt me". To this, I responded by placing my hand gently over Harriet's, in an attempt of reassuring her that I was there to help, not to pain her. She gave me a genuine smile, that I considered back then, the beginning of a long-lasting friendship.

Harriet was blonde with green eyes. Her facial features were complementing each other so nicely, that I was wondering why she was so upset about. She was the classic stereotype of a beautiful girl, embodying youth in a nymph-like manner. Her clothes were not only clean, but looked pricey, too. Elegant, gold earrings were framing her round face and she had a matching necklace hanging around her neck.

My mind couldn't comprehend such thing. Harriet seemed to had had it all. Grace, wealth and parents who were gifting her expensive clothes and jewelry. More than anything, she seemed to be loved; something I could have only dreamed of. In truth, I was everything Harriet wasn't. Or,she was everything I was not. I had dark hair, brown eyes and a paper pale skin. My appearance was so dull that I seemed to have been written by a novice writer. I felt like I was drawn by the clumsy hands of a child.

Despite our notable distinctions, Harriet and I stayed friends since the outset. Something unique had brought us together, something we wouldn't let go of without a fight. In the beginning, Harriet liked to keep her concerns private. She wouldn't speak to me about serious matters and I did not dare to ever ask. Instead, she was eagerly expressing her love for art; she was a painter herself. She took very much pleasure in landscape painting, but was not a master at drawing portraits, as she stated herself.

Looking back, it might have seemed that not only Harriet, but I, too, was a little secretive. I do not remember speaking too much about myself, and Harriet never manifested interest in hearing about her companion. Oddly enough, the way things were those days felt natural to me. I was more of a listener, nonetheless. Our bond had grown so strong over time, that I could easily understand her words. Before too long, I could hear her thoughts. And eventually, I could feel what her heart felt. I knew that she needed me more than I needed her, so I decided to stay. In a sense, I was growing through Harriet, too.

Even though she never spoke about her parents, she would very often bring me to her place. Most of the times, her home was empty of other living souls, letting us be free of any form of restrictions and rules. From the outside, the house was imposing and fancy and it struck me with a certain familiarity I couldn't put my finger on. Inside, the many rooms with the same door felt like an unescapable labyrinth to a young mind like mine. The house had big windows, through which the light could only try to break, as they were all covered by mauve floor-length curtains. Harriet explained to me that this was how her mom liked it. The walls were painted in pale colors and the hallways seemed so long to me that I couldn't see their ending. On my first visit there, I noticed few pictures on the walls. They were portraying Harriet and her father, I assumed. There was no sign of a maternal figure.

I was astonished by the grace of what was surrounding me. I had stepped in a veritable mansion, with rosewood furniture and crystal chandeliers hanging in each room of the house, something I could have only imagined. I was so curious of examining every room of Harriet's house, every corner of it, every little thing about it and showed genuine interest in doing so. Despite my eagerness to explore her castle, Harriet didn't even consider giving me a tour of the place. At first, I thought she didn't want to brag about it. She was always very contained when speaking about personal dealings. It wasn't until years later that I realized she didn't enjoy being there at all.

As Harriet decided herself, we would spend most of our time there in her bedroom. Similar to the rest of the house, her room was large and decorated with all kinds of lavish furniture and objects. She kept her private space tidy, but there was something chaotic about it. At a glance, I thought it was her paintings. They were left all over the place – on her bed, on the floor and some of them were even hanged in frames on the walls.

Watching Harriet's art was disturbing. She was a talented young woman, but there was much more behind her genius. All of her paintings depicted night-time scenarios, mostly dead, empty lands, where the sun had been far gone and the moon took over. It felt like Harriet didn't only deny the existence of light in her life, but completely banished it. I felt like she was stuck somewhere in time and involuntarily was painting her own life on paper. 

The strangest element of Harriet's artwork was a recurring shadow-like figure she added to each painting. From what I could tell back then, it seemed to be a woman's shadow, a woman's ghost. Even if Harriet drew her so she could be hardly visible to the human eye, it only took me a peek to observe her. She was nothing but a silhouette, lost in the distance. No face attached to it, no clear shape.

The enigma behind that shadow has haunted me for a long time. I was struggling so hard to decipher who that intriguing woman was, what Harriet meant by including her in all of her paintings. Before I knew, it became evident that I was not to unravel the truth without Harriet's complicity.

You see, Harriet was not silent anymore; but she would only speak about things that did not touch her heart. The ones that did, she would never mention them. Her art, for instance, she could spend hours talking about it uninterruptedly. The shadows, she acted like they didn't exist. She acted as if it wasn't her who had painted them.

Gradually, I devoted my time thinking about that mysterious woman; even when I was not with Harriet, the shadow would not disappear. She was, now, a part of me, whether I had accepted her in or not. I remember I was so committed to her story, that she wouldn't leave my mind even when I was asleep. I started dreaming about her, and the dreams soon turned into nightmares. Every time I would close my eyes, she would be somewhere there, watching me from a distance. I felt, back then, that she was as curious about me, as I was about her.