Reasons to Live - a collection of flash fiction stories

She

She sat at her desk tucking the edges of her skirt under her knees. A quiet sort; she always smiled when someone spoke to her, and her eyes often lit up like stars in an otherwise dark sky. 

Even during the most boring of lessons, I could not help but be enchanted whenever she was there. Two rows over to the left, three seats up. She rarely sat facing the professor, rather half-way slanted so I always could see her face. Some days I would try and count the freckles on her shoulders. I'd strain my eyes so badly that when it was finally time to go she would find me rubbing my eyeballs out.

"Max?" Sometimes she'd put her hand on my shoulder and ask me if I was OK, no one else ever did that. Everyone else here thought I was a bit odd, but not her. When all the others left, she knelt down next to me. The tips of her fingers would linger millimeters from the tattoos covering my whole arm as if she was afraid the ink was still wet and she might smear them.

"Max, will you tell me why?" Her voice reminded me of summer rain long ago when I was just a kid and didn't care about anything but catching tadpoles, gentle, soothing, peaceful. In the pandemonium of my thoughts, she calmed down every beast. Every demon knelt down to her and shield their eyes away when she tugged at the hem of her skirt.

This close my eyes would wander to those tiny freckles dotting her pale skin, then up to her lips which never frowned, except when she was close to me and there was no wall of protection from her classmates and friends. I wanted to tell her of how many I counted today. That it was twelve more than I had counted yesterday, but silence prevailed. 

All those childish summers came and met me in the calm of her face, in the cornflower blue of her eyes, in the flowery scent behind her ears. She placed the tips of her fingers, finally, on the ink and saw that it had already dried. 

© Christine Bottas. All rights reserved 2015-2017.