Perspectives

9. Auburn

I was walking and I saw her.  The gifted one.  I saw her.  As I walked, I came across her window.  Her name is Hero.  It is ironic that she should be named that because she could be our hero.  My hero.  The world's hero.  She doesn't know that she has magical abilities beyond what she deemed possible.  She thinks her gift is just intelligence but it is so much more.  Miles more.  Worlds more.  I wonder what she would say to the idea that she could know anything and everything that went on in the world.

I apologize.  I don't believe I have fully introduced myself.  I am Auburn.  I have come to be known as the girl who knows all or simply shortened to her by the adolescent minds of any human being that lets it's life in the clutches of the world.  My magical abilities, that stretch far beyond many people's concept of worldly possible, are not used unless they are necessary.  I haven't used any of my powers in millions of years.  I travel the world under the shade of the rain.  Wherever the rain is, is where I am.  I haven't seen the sunshine since before this life.  

I know everything.  For anyone who believes this to be impossible, I want you to know that it is possible.  I have tattoos up the side of my face.  They stem from my left eye and spread out from that.  Upwards, they trace all the way to the middle of my forehead and downwards, they trace to my cheek.  The black twisting ancient pattern has been there for as long as I can remember.  

The girl was standing by the boy.  Her blond hair being whipped around in the wind.  He stood across from her his eyes looking upset.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I can't do it."

"But please," she said, "I can be what you need."

"No you can't," he said.

"i'm not good enough for you?" she asked reaching out to grab his hand.  He moved it away before she could get it.  

"Sorry."  She walked away from him looking like she was dead.  I follow her, ducking in and out of shadows.  She walks home.  When she walks into her apartment, I ducked into a shadow.  I scampered up the wall and rested my foot in a convenient space where a brick was missing so I could look into her window.  

She walked in and closed the bedroom door.  Leaning up against it, she slid down so she could sit.  As she sat there, back against the door, she began to softly cry covering her face with her hands.  Her body was engulfed in his giant sweatshirt he had put on her earlier that night.  She gained strength and stood.  She walked to the mirror and lifted her sweatshirt up.  Looking at her stomach, she began to cry more.  Suddenly, the stomach that had never mattered to her before was the deciding factor of her beauty.  She lost confidence then.  The confidence she had spent seventeen years building.  She pulled a razorblade from her desk.  

i tightened my hold on her windowsill.  She gently lay the blade into her skin.  She ran it down her stomach in a smooth diagonal line.  A thin red line appeared where she had dragged her blade.  The line gradually got thicker and I watched blood flow from the deep cut.  Due to her state, she didn't react to the pain. She lifted it and completed the X by another smooth slide of the blade.  She cut her wrists all the way up both sides of both arms.  She cut her thighs through her thick jeans and proceeded to cut thinly in the collar bone area near her neck.  She dropped the razor blade out of her weak hands and staggered to the window.  I skittered quickly to the other window.  She opened it and sat down on the sill.  She leaned backwards and fell.  

I closed my eyes.  I heard the gentle thud on the floor from where she fell.  Does anyone besides me know what it is like to have to know what it is like to see someone kill themselves?  It is already bad enough that people do that to themselves, but I can't do anything to stop it.  It is out of my place to interfere.  I looked back into her window to see the pools of blood all over her floor.  I saw a glimmer of silver amongst all of the red.  I slid through her window and grabbed the small shiny object.  I went to her closet to take something to wear.  I grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt.  i changed out of my dress and into that.  I took a sweatshirt and left my flats in her closet for a pair of black Vans.  I climbed out the window with the girl's razor blade and slid down the wall landing on the floor just right.  I didn't turn to see the dead girl.  Instead, I ran.  With my intense speed, I ran from there and didn't want to ever come back.

The rain beat down on my face.  Down on the building I left.  Down on the girl's bloody body lying in the middle of the street.  Everybody would think it was just because of the boy.  They'd think she left just because the boy didn't like who she was.  They'd call her weak.  They'd say that she wasn't a strong girl.  But nobody knew her whole story.  There was so much more that contributed to this girl's life or lack of.  I knew.  Only I knew because she wouldn't tell anyone.  I knew everything that this girl had gone through and actually, she is very strong because she didn't break until now.  The life of a teenage girl is like a glass vase.  It can crack a million times, but after enough cracks, one poke will cause it to break altogether.  

This girl didn't break until this boy had pushed her a little bit.  Her life had broken and was now gone.  Bless you, young girl.  God bless you.