That time I got rejected three times on the same day!

Chapter 5

She was a beauty almost beyond words. If I had to draw a comparison to a well known actress, I would have said she looked very much like an exotic Kiera Knightley. She had the same sharp features and strong, almost masculine, jaw-line. Her dark hair was straight and short, a bob cut, I think they called it. She didn't wear make-up like the other girls in her grade, and I liked that. Her natural beauty was too superb to be ruined by shades of blue, green, and red. She was tall for her age, a few centimetres taller than me, and graceful. When she walked she carried herself over the ground, rather than letting gravity pull her along. It had taken me over a month to learn her name, Nerissa, but she liked to be called Neris. I did a search on the internet and found out Nerissa was a name of Italian origin which meant "black-haired". I thought it was an apt name... until I read her nickname backwards. Siren: a creature from Greek mythology that lured sailors onto rocky shores with their enchanting music. She had enchanted me, and I didn't care for the consequences. If it meant dashing my ship against the rocks and sinking to the bottom of the dark ocean, I would gladly do it just to be with her.

I had never spoken to her. I couldn't. I would die of a heart attack. Instead I just watched her from a distance, in some vain hope that she would notice me. I think deep down I knew that this strategy was fundamentally flawed, but psychologically and physiologically I just wasn't prepared to approach her. I was only 12, but I had had girlfriends before. Nothing sexual, that was gross, but holding hands, spending time together, and kissing, was all accomplished before my 8th birthday. People around me often talked about love, my parents, people on the TV, in movies, but they talked about it like it was an amazing thing. What I was feeling now was not amazing, it was painful; watching her from a distance, being unable to approach, being unable to talk to her.

She was walking away from me now, toward the northern gate, her black backpack sneering at me, laughing at my lack of courage. I had memorized most of her outfits and the clothes she wore. I didn't know much about fashion, but I always thought the things she had on were always well matched. Blue denim jeans and simple close fitting blouses; dark red sweater, cream sweater, blue sweater; or, like today, a black blouse and khaki denim pants. There was elegance there, poetry of colour. On the playground or in her classroom I could always pick her out of the crowd. The gaudy yellows and reds of the other kids were filtered out by her radiance. When she was there, everything around me was so much less annoying and I could switch off, think of nothing at all, except her. I guess this was another thing that drew me to her. When I was near her my mind was almost blank. When I was away from her my mind would always drift back to a cacophony of thoughts and ideas.

She was a drug, my drug, my addiction. We had just covered drugs in social science. Some parents complained about it. 'Children shouldn't be learning about these things,' they said. They are probably the same parents who don't talk about sex and put their children in little plastic hamster balls. I liked learning about the adult world. It scared and fascinated me at the same time. I wanted to grow up fast, go to university, and make a career for myself. When I was five I wanted to be a policeman, then a fireman, but these were the naive dreams of a kid. I had done some research on the highest paying jobs across multiple industries and learned that public servants (like police and firemen) didn't make a lot of money at all. I wanted to be rich. Not filthy rich, like Bill Gates, but comfortably rich. According to my research the highest paying job, on average, was a stockbroker. I didn't really know what a stockbroker was, but I did know they bought and sold stuff, and that was good enough for me. The only issue was, a stockbroker needed to be good at mathematics, which I certainly wasn't. I couldn't read analogue clocks and had failed all my maths exams since starting school in Australia. I didn't understand proportionality, sets, and wasn't very good at doing calculations in my head. Mathematics just didn't make much sense to me at all.

Neris was out of sight, past the gate. I let out a sigh of relief. The pain in my chest was slowly subsiding. The other mini-coaches were arriving and more kids started to spill out onto the narrow side-walk which surrounded the school. It was now almost 8:45am. The school bell, not a real bell, just an electronic chime, had still not rung. Kids were still milling about, talking with their friends, getting ready to start a new day. It was about time for me to head to my own class. I usually waited for Neris to get far enough ahead so that there was enough distance between us. If I hung around her too much she would probably get suspicious, especially if I followed her in from the north gate every day. From behind one of the mini-coaches I heard the screech of tyres followed by an angry voice. A car was hooting. I started forward to get a better look, when a teacher appeared dragging a kid by his collar. It was Mr.Williams, my mathematics teacher, and the teacher on duty at the north gate.