the stars & i

the stars & i - chapter one

I'd known you for a year before we spoke. You caught the same bus as me, you, with your fancy all-girl's school uniform, white and blue, with that straw hat and ribbons in your hair. You weren't pretty or beautiful, you didn't stand out, at first. It was in the way you hummed under your breathe, seemed to dance as you walked, the way you tilted your head when you looked up at the sky. These small mannerisms I collected and noticed, forgot about, as they were fleeting and irrelevant to me then, just a simple curiosity. We saw each other at the bus stop every morning, never speaking, rarely sharing polite smiles. Occasionally I'd see you in the afternoon, and we'd just kind of look at each other, nodding, but mostly we just looked away.

There was a Monday a couple of terms ago, when you opened your mouth and it seemed as if you were going to talk. But you didn't, and I'm glad you didn't, I'm glad because I was going through The Bad Time then, and I'd only just push you away. And then whatever this was would fizzle into nothing with naught but a whisper. 

But rain or shine, I was there. And so were you. In different uniforms, summer and winter, I was there. In times when I spoke to no one, when even Elise couldn't get a smile out of me, I was there. I was there, at that bus stop, drumming my fingers against the metal bench, looking out at the empty street, watching strangers who passed me by, living vividly, in a way I knew not of. 

You were there, too. Sometimes your ribbons seemed to sag, like they had given up, but there was almost always a constant smile on your features, an arch to your eyebrows. You seemed so proud of this neat, shining uniform that you wore.

What was most important, however, was that you were one of the few people I saw during The Bad Time. I went to school, then, but my classmates seemed to become one, to just be one person, and I didn't see that person, I didn't see any of them. It was you I saw, this stranger, it was you and it was my sister and it was Ivy and that was it. 

I don't remember the first time I realised that there was a girl who went to the same bus stop as me, and I don't remember the first time when you stopped becoming this girl, this stranger and became You.

I also don't remember when you stopped becoming You and became April, and I know that one day April will become her, and her will become she, and once more you will become this girl, and maybe I'll talk about you to my grandkids or whatever, maybe I'll talk about you in my memoir or to the nurse at my nursing home. Maybe I'll think about you when I'm older with a fond smile, remembering the girl who changed everything, remembering the girl who left, and what remained of me and us and this, and this person that I had become. 

I hate that one day this will be a story, and then this will be less than this, this won't be anything, everyone will forget about you and everyone will forget about me and everyone will forget about this world, this society, apart from the few souls who stand out, who do something spectacular.

I hate that one day, they will forget about how much I fucking loved you, how much I loved you, and maybe I'm a fool, or deluded, maybe I'm just a teenager, and this is just angst. But it felt like love, it feels like love.

But all I remember is, when we met, it was raining. It seemed like the world was on it's last legs, like that movie that Elise made me see once. I don't remember much except there was a girl with red lips and the sort of voice that dripped honey-like, all fake and sugary, but intoxicating, nevertheless. Your lips were in a straight line, that day. You kept looking at me from out of the corner of your eye, under that big yellow umbrella. I was shivering, in a stupid blazer that had once seemed cool to wear, but clung to me then. You walked over to me, in your mary-jane shoes, wearing that friendly smile I used to hate but now have begun to miss.

You walked over to me, with a smile hanging on your lips and gave me a small patch of yellow in a world that was just blue. 

You did it without thinking, without knowing why. And I stood there, as this kind girl shared with me a small drop of comfort. I stood there, with a goddamn frown on my features, thinking about how awful and depressing the world was, as you showed me how wonderful it was. 

You offered me your hand, and said: "Hi."

Nervously, I filled the spaces between your fingers with mine.

"Hi. Thanks. Sorry." I said, these words strung together, vivid and bright and then not there at all.

"No problem." You said, tilting your head slightly like I was an animal in a zoo, an object in a shop. Your wide eyes full of curiosity and nothing else. "I'm April."

"Leo." I said, without the I'm or I am. I think you liked that, that I didn't say it was nice to meet you, because you smiled.

"Like the-" You began to say. But I interrupted. 

"Month, star sign. I know."

You shook your head, "No. Like Leo Tolstoy."

I scrunched up my face, I didn't know who this other Leo was, and I didn't like the sound of him, either. "Who?"

"Russian Writer. Died in 1910." You said this simply, without the showy-offy way that other people did, with their tiny smirks and sympathetic stares. You didn't make me feel stupid, April.

But all I said was, "Oh."

That O H stretched between us for a minute or two, making the sudden awkward and seemingly unbridgeable gap between us grow and strengthen, all walls that had been briefly knocked down were rebuilt to be higher, better, stronger.

I realised I was still holding your hand and I dropped it. You looked at me for one long moment, and then back at the empty street before us, and then back at me.

"Leo." You said, like we were already friends.

"April." I said, simply because I could.

"Like the month, yeah." You said, and just like that, we already had an inside joke. You shuffled a little closer to me, and I resisted the urge to smile. 

"I don't know anyone famous called April." I said, almost apologetically.

You shrugged, you didn't mind. "It's okay. I quite like being a not-so-famous April."

I didn't know what to say. Isn't everyone supposed to want to be famous? Doesn't everyone want to be immortalised in fiction, in pictures, forever on the lips of strangers -- to be adored by the masses, to never fade into obscurity?

"Okay." I said, being stupid, because what was I supposed to say? What is the right thing to say, when you meet such a friendly, happy, girl who offers you a warm patch on a rainy day, and then proceeds to talk about how she welcomes oblivion ?

"Would you like," You said. "To go do something with me?"

And that's how it begun.

It begun with a smile, and it ended with a smile, but the whole thing in between is so much more important than the beginning and the end, unlike other stories. The middle was bitter and sweet and tentative and childish and kind and so overwhelmingly delightful. The middle was the best part, the middle was how we met, really how we met, how we fell in love and how we kissed and how I lost you, how I lost you and how I willingly let you go.