Meeting You In the Sympathy Section of Hallmark

1.     The large boat’s not-quite love affair with the iceberg

            I’m too deep in the upper floor of the mall to know what time it is, or what the weather is like. There are no windows in these parts. But I’m in a Hallmark when I meet you for the first time. Although, I wouldn’t call it a meeting, so much as a momentary co-occupation of a public space. No, it wasn’t a meeting at all, because nothing was exchanged. 

2.     Apollo's chariot runs out of fuel

            I saw my friend crying in her boyfriend’s arms in the hallway after school. But this is not so accurate, because I’m -2.50 in one eye and -2.75 in the other. The truth is, I thought she was smiling.

I was following the route of Apollo's chariot, making a wide arc around the inside of the school as I traveled from the girls’ locker room to my school locker. When my friend was in sight, I was already onto the final turn, ready to plunge down the straightaway. The chariot had reached the last drops of its fuel reserves and was falling freely, approaching terminal velocity. Soon, my friend and her boyfriend were looking less like smears of jelly and more like real people. My friend’s face, which had once resembled a triad of bowling ball finger slots, regained the angular, birdlike quality with which I was familiar.

But it was then that I realized that my friend was not laughing, or even smiling. In fact, she was crying. Her tears were not the sparse, trickling kind, but the florid cheek-washing kind. It was difficult to look at, but gravity was pulling the chariot to the ground, to her. I saw her boyfriend’s veiny hand forming a sort of back brace on her green shirt. There was another person with them, a middle-aged woman with rusty hair—one of the school’s administrators who worked in the business office. I couldn’t tell what her relationship with my friend must’ve been. Perhaps she’d been passing by. She was standing there with one hand on my friend’s shoulder, the other patting her dichromatic pixie cut with freckled hands. She wore gold-rimmed glasses, but the frame was wire, just like her body appeared to be under her oversized clothes.

I slowed my walk to a hover.

            Behind the group was a girl I vaguely recognized from Chemistry, whom I’d only spoken to once before. She was also hovering, staring into her open locker with her blue backpack slung over one shoulder. She wasn’t taking anything out or putting anything in. I doubted she was even looking; her eyes were only fixed in the direction of the books stacked neatly on the metal shelf. Her hover looked a little ghostly, like she couldn't decide whether or not to exist in that moment, in that space. She turned to me as I approached, unblinking. In the next moment, she had my wrist in her hand, tugging me away from the wreckage.

3.     Counting backwards

            I sat cross-legged on the carpet in a secluded corner of the school library, watching the moody bindings of the Artemis Fowl books perform a sunset right there in front of me. I wasn’t sure what to make of what I’d just seen. Nothing in my life had ever dictated the rules for moments like these. Without a word, the girl from Chem set her bag down beside me and lowered herself tenderly with her good knee. I felt the blast of the heater from the vent at my back.