Laura

Part I

I first met Laura in the winter of my sixteenth year. The leaves had long fallen from the trees, and the air carried a frost that was broken with the slightest quiver of a breath. A thin film of snow had covered the browning grass, something that hadn't happened in my small town for a long time, and something that would cease to happen for another thirty years. The unexpected fall of snow in the early months of winter left many families unprepared for the weeks of hibernation and many cups of hot tea. This meant that on the frosty Saturday morning when families found themselves with a windscreen covered in a layer of unwavering ice, the local mall and department store alike was filled to the brim with expectant shoppers. This also happened to be the very event my family had dragged me from the warm covers of bed to attend. The shelves were stripped bare in mere hours, families prepping themselves for a long icy winter, and according to many trusted weather channels, 'many more long, icy winters to come.' This, a common occurrence with news channels, was incorrect. But this did not stop the average shopper from filing in to line after line only to pay hundreds of dollars for clothes that, after being worn one crisp afternoon, would cease to see the light of day at the back of a stuffy wardrobe under a pile of 'Girlfriend' magazines. I, on the other hand, did not follow this trend; finding myself slumped over in a chair store after store with the common line up of husbands and fathers who had given up on holding bags and craved a break. The current store, a small boutique in the west-end of town with a horrible line-up of snooty, french cashier women and horribly overpriced clothing items had a particularly bad seating arrangement. The red leather love-seats only emphasized the under-lying tackiness and fake accents of the store, while making you beg that your mother/sister/wife would just choose one article of clothing so you could escape sitting next to the overweight man in his forties that had a tendency to rub his shoulder against yours. Luckily, the gods must have spared me this day, as the current cast of characters that sat uncomfortably close to me was wearing thin, taking a seat with an exasperated sigh only to be pulled out of the chair again by a pretty young thing who could only be described as a 'gold-digger.' The last one in the line-up however took me by surprise, a petite, fragile-looking girl with a collection of thin, matted hair that sat awkwardly on her head. Eyes are often described as windows to the soul, but her two black holes swimming in a sea of blue were closed, blinds drawn and boarded over. It took me a while to notice the tubes that ran from her nose, and to a machine that sat against her side, the one that wasn't facing me. She sat with her back straight, something uncommon in these boutiques, as men often sat hunched over, with their elbows pressed against their knees, wishing that just once they could go home early to watch the game. She look at me and smiled, the sweet smile that lit up the room, even if it seemed to be laced with a poisonous sadness. I smiled back, turning my head away so it didn't look like I was staring at the machine that was obviously a prime conversation starter. I felt a soft hand on my shoulder when I turned away, it felt cold and soft, like a damp sponge; something that would have felt almost uncomfortable if it had come from anyone but her. 'My name is Laura,' she smiled when I turned back around, the seat pushing us closer together, her breath brushing against my neck and the tubes twitching every time she moved.  'Nick,' I breathed back, barely audible over the voices that echoed through the store and the occasional pang of the change tray at the register. Her cold hand had dropped to mine now, sitting promptly against my intertwined fingers that lay on my lap. As she talked, the nubs in her nose moved, and though she was probably talking about something wildly interesting, my attention was fixed on the tubes that ran in to the opening of her nostrils. The skin on her face was the same pale white, all of her veins visible through the skin like it was transparent. Even though her hair was messy, and it looked like it was thinning; and her skin seemed that it was ready to flake away from her muscle, she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, and that I would ever see until the final breath that I took. A deep red flushed over her cheeks when I drew my hands away from underneath hers and her hand lightly brushed my thigh, and when she spoke again the colour in her cheeks faded, making her seem whiter than before in comparison. She nudged her face towards mine, and I noticed her waiting for a response from me. 'W-what was that?' I asked, my eyes locking with hers and her face dropped when she noticed I hadn't been listening. 'The bracelet,' she said, moving her pale hand back over to my wrist where a series of multicoloured beads sat. This amount of contact would have been awkward if she weren't such a beautiful girl. 'My sister, Kate, is battling thyroid,' I smiled, but I knew that she could tell the solemn look that I had attained. 'Lung,' she said bluntly, rapping her fingers against the side of her machine, and stifling a laugh. 'One of the, uh, every surgery has a bead thing.' I had suddenly become extremely awkward, talking about my sister who was so close to my heart to this girl who I knew nothing about. At that moment my mother was at my side, asking questions with the speed of a drill and pulling me away from the intimately close conversation I was having with Laura. 'When can I see you again?' I called back, feeling like a Shakespearean protagonist being pulled away from my mother with a bone breaking claw latched around my arm. 'I spend a lot of time at Rain's?' she called back, her voice quivering at the end to make it sound like she was asking a question. Before I could process what was happening I was strapped in to the car, my face plastered with a goofy smile on the whole ride home.