Enough For You

~ v: one ~

~ v: one ~

victor's pov ~

                      Everybody knew that Cielle was different.

It was hard to believe, but she was the only Asian in Hilson High. You could spot her black hair immediately, even if it was just a speck of it in a crowd. You would know when it was her speaking, because she had this slight accent nobody could master to copy, but it didn't really bother her when people would make fun of it behind her back. You would immediately recognize her eating alone out in the yard at the back of the school building underneath our Apple Tree, because everything was quiet and the only thing you would be able to hear would be the loud buzz of the students chattering away in the cafeteria right across.

Cielle was pretty. And perhaps I didn't really have the right to say this, since she was probably the first and only Asian I had seen and encountered before, but she was anyways. She had long, silky black hair that she always let it to flow down her black, she had, obviously, smaller eyes than the others, but that didn't seem to be a disadvantage because it just made her look even more elegant whenever her eyes hovered across the white board during lessons. Her skin was pale and her body was small, but she still stood out in a crowd. Her clothes were a mixed jumble of shorts and jumpers and sneakers, but nobody seemed to complain every single day she appeared with another new combination of hers. And her face, with her mouth, nose, eyes, eyebrows, ears all combined, was something great to look at. She would express so many different facial expressions, but her face would remain neutral. From time to time, she would let a small smile fall into place, or a small frown or a scowl, but that was all.

The problem was, nobody really knew her. Sure, some had been partnered up with her, had to share some words, had to work together, and found out that she wasn't as bad as she seemed to be, but that had been all. As soon as it was over, she would disappear into specks of dust and before you knew it, she would be all alone again. In my assumption, I knew that she was somehow trying to not stand out, or perhaps trying not to make any acquaintances. I was unaware of what she was so afraid of, but nobody ever really had the chance of being by her side for more than a day.

Also, there were rumours going around. Not bad ones, not those that left a shameful aura around and people giggling as they eyed her, but those that seemed to confuse everybody even more. Some would say that she was rude, cold and absolutely idiotic. They were just trying to be nice, trying to get her into the group, but she'd declined quite rudely. Some would say that they had heard her crying from time to time in the girls' bathroom, but nobody really had the guts to knock on the door and ask her if she was okay. Some would say that they saw her talking to another boy, a taller, much more bigger one, who seemed to intimidate her as they talked in hushed tones when they thought nobody would be hovering around the hallway anymore. Some would say that she was just trying to be "mysterious" and attract attention towards herself so that she could be well-known, but that was probably impossible. 

But those were all just rumours. We had no idea if they were false, or true, but we felt the urge to feed ourselves with them because we were nosy. We wanted to know her not only as a classmate. We wanted to know what her favorite color was, what she did when she was bored, if she had any siblings and so on. We wanted somebody to at least be a friend, even if it would be just for a minute.

However, as I sat there in Biology class, two back and one to the left away from Cielle, with tight skinny jeans, black leather boots, a big grey sweater weighing her down, I figured that there wasn't really anything that anybody of us could do. Just at looking how focused she was despite the boredom of Dr. Hans' class, with her legs stretched out beneath her desk, her posture straight and one pressed against her notebook and the other furiously scribbling down notes, while her head bobbed up and down as her eyes looked up and snapped right back down to watch her write, I knew that she would rather be lectured for hours than interact with anyone without the teacher's permission. It was fascinating to see her so into this, although practically none of us had the decency to look interested even so.