Broken Charm

Charm never settled for anything.

This may seem odd to serve as the introductory sentence, but nevertheless, it is a fact. Charm never did settle for anything. Among all her oddities, this would be the most distinctive thing about her.

She was strikingly beautiful, astonishingly audacious yet irresolute to a great extent. She was incredibly indecisive, but when she finally makes a choice, she states it with much conviction like she has never been sure about anything her entire life. And she wasn’t. She never was. Her option never remained constant.

Take the color of her hair for example, something she could never decide on.  One moment, she’d say it was blonde, and then insist it was brown the next. It was same as that of caramel, I would say, so it was neither blonde nor brown, or both blonde and brown. But she would always pick just one, but never stuck with it.

She never picked just one hairstyle too. She’d have her hair up on Mondays and down on Tuesdays, curled on Wednesdays, styled into a bun during Thursdays and not combed on Fridays. Then the next week, she’d have it down on Mondays, and so on. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d go bald one day. But then again, it wouldn’t grow back immediately, and she’d have to keep it that way. And well, Charm never kept it only one way, did she?

Like when she watched a movie and after an hour of deciding, she’d point one poster and would confidently declare, “This.” It was a good thing I made it a habit to come to the cinemas several hours earlier before showings, so we wouldn’t have to rush in the middle of the movie. Then after the credits came rolling, she’d complain about how much it sucks and how a documentary about sloths would be better and worth watching instead of the bullshit excuse of a movie. Then we’d again watch another movie, one she claimed she had watched the trailers and appealed to her as one hell of a movie. But when it came to an end, she’d again give glory to sloths, and would go on a very detailed explanation of their significance. And this happened more times than I could count, until I learned the hard way to never bring her to cinemas and just buy the DVDs after the release.

There are more marginal things she didn’t have a permanent say in. Like her political views, a shake flavour, the color of her cotton candy, her pillow covers, or whether she’d have her coffee black or with sugar.

She couldn’t settle on one thing—on anything, and I never knew why. Was she afraid of commitment? Or did the essence of permanence bore her? The latter would be more like Charm, the Charm I knew.

But then I thought: did I really know Charm?

I thought I did. I had always been her confidante. She would consult me about everything, and tell me all sorts of things that she never told anyone. She told me I was special. She told me I was different, a good kind of different. And I believed her.

I had denied it, even to myself, but there was something about her I badly wanted to figure out.

There was something about her eyes, her eyes that would seem like hot chocolate, except that they weren’t always warm. Sometimes, they were cold and empty. But I thought it was just me. There was something about the way she looks at people, like she was there but they weren’t. Or they were there but she wasn’t. It was as if the two can’t co-exist. It was either the former or the latter.

There was something about her smiles. There was something about how it was never fake, but never truly genuine. There was something about the way she laughed. There was something about her laugh that made everyone around her happy, happier than her, happier than she ever was.

There was something about something about the way she talked, the way she walked, the way her presence affected people, the way her presence affected me.

But I never questioned her, not even once. Because I thought my eyes were playing a trick on me. Because those, those weren’t like Charm. At least, not the Charm I knew.

The Charm I knew was a sweet thing, with eyes like hot chocolate and hair the color of caramel. The Charm I knew had lovely smiles, and laughed like she didn’t carry any weight on her back. She looked at people and past through them, but she never tried to read them, nor did she try to hide from them. The Charm I knew would face anything, anyone, head on. She was completely bizarre, but in a Charm kind of way. That was the Charm that everybody knew. That was the Charm I thought I knew. Charm was someone way beyond my reach. She was an escapade, but she miraculously let me tag along.

Because she told me I was special. She told me I was different, a good kind of different. And I very stupidly believed her.

One instant, I was with the Charm I thought I knew, and the next, she was gone.

There were only two things I was certain of.

I was lost.

And she was broken.

--

“I love you.” This was not the first time I said that to her, and she reciprocated it every single time. She did love me, but not the same way as I did. I wanted to tell her that I meant it in the way she didn’t, and what I felt for her was beyond friendship. I didn’t see her as a friend, because friends don’t get stuck in your mind for long nights, and they definitely do not take your breath away and render you speechless. But she had caramel-colored hair and chocolate brown eyes, and I had dull black hair and equally monotonous gray eyes. She was a roller coaster ride and I was just a passenger. No matter how I put it, she could never love me back. So I kept my mouth shut.

But this time, she didn’t reciprocate. She didn’t smile. She just locked her gaze into mine with a blank look on her face. And then, words drifted from her rose petal lips, words that made me freeze in place, words that made my world stop.

“I killed someone.”

And words that made me rethink who Charm really was, and how different she was from the image I had of her.