My friend knew. She knew what she was doing to herself. She was thinking about it all along. She knew nothing was going to go wrong.
Or so she thought.
Everything started in that classroom, in that typical classroom set-up of young men and women. She was new and didn’t know what to do. Out of all the things she had in mind, she decided to pick her ‘classroom inspiration.’ It wouldn’t hurt her, since it was just picking a random guy from her class. She looked around, but none of the guys in her class passed the ‘first impression’ test. She shrugged off the idea of finding this classroom inspiration, saying it was foolish anyway.
Days and weeks passed, and she got to know the faces in her class. She made new friends, male and female. She knew how to deal with them. However, she knew somewhere in her that they didn’t know how to deal with her. Or even want to deal with her. She ignored the feeling anyway, because out of all the personalities she met, one stood out.
We will call him Dylan. He was her seatmate at a few classes.
Recalling just made her heart ache even more, as I can see from her face.
It began in history class. The class was waiting on their professor’s arrival. She was seated at the end of the row, near the aisle of the classroom. She was bored and could not talk to those around her, especially with the new seating arrangement. It was all too awkward to talk to those around her. She just stared at the glass windows and let the air conditioning cool her head off.
He broke the ice. He caught a glance of her pouted, bored face with no obvious means of technological entertainment. He then pulled out the black earphone from his right ear, and put it on her left ear.
The unexpected feeling of having a foreign finger in her ear made her look at the direction where the finger came from. But she instantly recognized the song that flowed out from the earpiece: Maroon 5’s Just a Feeling. She loved the song, but she reflexively pulled out the earphone from her ear and returned it to her seatmate. She said her thanks to him and went back to staring off into space. A small talk followed (she couldn’t remember who initiated that talk) after that. It was nothing much but a chat on whom they were and who they are. Their chat was cut off when the professor arrived, but their chitchat moved along with the class discussion. The then class ended like any other class. She headed out of the room and decided that he would be her ‘classroom inspiration’.
She really enjoyed Dylan’s company, in whatever situation: during class, whenever they were seatmates, meeting along the way, eating out together with their peers, and whenever else they were together.
Then the idea struck her. She was falling for him. And being just the inspiration was getting out of hand. But she didn’t know if he felt the same way.
There were times of sudden intimacy, mostly inside the classroom. As they were accustomed seatmates, they would help each other in times of “need”.
He was on the professor’s hot seat, being asked a question he seemed to have forgotten the answer. Dylan gave her the look that was asking for her help. She picked up on his stare and whined on him, saying that he was the one who easily answered the question during their little review session before class. He picked up on her hint and was able to give the right answer in the allotted time. Dylan was so elated to have answered the question that when he sat down, he suddenly hugged her.
If she recalls correctly, Dylan was the first non-relative male who has done that to her: hug her.
It appalled her of course. But she shrugged off the feeling later. She wasn’t getting into the crazy idea that Dylan was falling for her. Because she felt, sooner or later, that something was coming.
Another followed. They were waiting on a professor again. At least this time, she wouldn’t be bored because she had her little piece of entertainment called the music player, and together with it was a pair of newly bought earphones. Her earphones were the type with the other earphone having a longer cord. As much as her technological knowledge would go, she saw the unequal length of the cords irrelevant. But she became smarter, in a technological sense, after what Dylan did.
As he noticed her new earphones, he remarked that she was putting it on the wrong way. He immediately asked for the earpiece with the longer cord. She put it up. He then reached for the earpiece, going from her left side to her right, and putting the earphone on her left ear.
She learned, and at the same time, felt humiliated. Only this time, it was all right getting humiliated, because this little moment was between the two of them, and learning from him was worth the while.
Kilig can’t really be translated, can it?
Other similar moments followed: texting, walking home together, sharing opinions, and joking around. She knew she was captivated with him, but still couldn’t say a word about it to him. And surprisingly, it was okay for her.
Things are better off this way, she’d say.
And she was right, after another story.
She was sitting beside him in class, once again waiting for that punctual professor. She found herself doing nothing. And so, she looked around for something to do. She saw his smartphone on his desk. She asked Dylan if she could borrow it for a moment. He replied with an easy yes, since he was busy with his cellphone and he was off to the men’s washroom.
She pressed the lonesome button of his smartphone and saw his wallpaper.
I shouldn’t have let my curiosity get the best of me, she regretfully said.
It was him, sitting together with a girl on some sidewalk she wasn’t familiar of. The girl in the photo was a total stranger to her. When he came back, she asked him who she was. He replied as if it was nothing, like a shrug, saying “MU.”
Deep inside her, something seemed to have been broken to a hundred pieces. But she could not bring herself to show a hint of sadness to him. So she just teased him instead, saying he was lucky enough to find a girl.
After that incident, she decided to distance herself from Dylan.
I have no chance with guys like that, she said. Besides, I’m not his type anyway. I’m not as pretty as the girl in his wallpaper.
She knew she was just kidding herself at the beginning. She just couldn’t bring herself to distance herself from him. But she had to. And it was worth the foundation they’ve built so far.
Right, foundation, she snorted, as if a terrible joke’s been said. A foundation of nothing but friendship, that is!
She never knew about his perspective all throughout this time of this infatuation. All that mattered to her was what she knew, what she thought, what she heard; what was hers. Each and every idea just contributed, or rather, convinced her more that she was not really meant for him.
So the days and weeks passed. And a new girl has taken over. She wasn’t the one in his smartphone’s wallpaper. It was a fellow schoolmate. They were laughing, telling stories and many more. She wasn’t completely jealous; she just wished that that was her, instead of the new girl. But things wouldn’t be the same, now that she’s perfectly distanced herself from Dylan.
They’d still walk home together, talk and joke at some point. But the way they did so wasn’t just the same for her. It seems Dylan got on the distancing thing as well. Silences immediately followed in the short span of conversations, or chats, rather. They didn’t say a word or two when they passed each other. Sitting beside one another at classes felt more awkward by the minute.
I just couldn’t, she said. Although distancing myself from him made me guilty.
She wanted to cry during that incident, in the washroom. The door was wide open, and so the washroom mirror got the reflection of what was outside. And of all the things she’d see, after washing her hands, it was him, together with his best friend. At that moment she looked up after washing her hands, she felt their eyes strongly meet in the mirror. Yet the moment was too quick; he and his buddy went into the male washroom. She quickly looked down on her hands, still wet from the running water. She clenched her hands in resentment and regret. She reprimanded herself on what she’s done; she shouldn’t have made him her inspiration in the first place. It was wrong. It was a very bad distraction for her. She stopped her tears from breaking out, because someone might see them. She just then hastily wet her eyes with tap water and sped out of the washroom. On her way out, she saw in the corner of her eye, that he was looking at her. But she quickly averted her eyes after that, and dried her eyes on her way back to the classroom. The rest of the day continued as if nothing happened.
She thought it would end there, but she was awfully mistaken.
By that time, they were pretty much distanced already. Seats have changed and things were simply different. But she caught him, several times, glancing at her. She actually lost count on how many times it happened. Or she thought it happened. She couldn’t believe it. He, was looking at her? It was incredulous and preposterous. Even her friends told her that they noticed him looking in her direction.
I knew there was more to that. But she couldn’t bring herself to continue.
I asked her if she still had feelings for him, as of the moment, and despite of what she knew.
“I don’t know… I don’t know!” she burst out in tears. She looked awfully terrible. “You tell me!”
I was speechless; I couldn’t say anything to her.
You see, the problem is, I was facing a mirror.
~
This short story was bravely entered in Gawad Ustetika 2011. Unfortunately as well, this story did not make anywhere. Still, I am proud that I have written such a story. If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to put them on the comment box down after the whole text. Thank you so much for taking time to read my work.
© MBBC 2012
What's In My Mind... 