Best Thing In Town

Next three weeks, no sight of him. No mention of him. No anything of him. Except thoughts, there were some thoughts of him from time to time. But other than that, his existence might as well be gone.

And then I saw him sitting in the cafeteria; somewhere I've never seen him before. And I am struck. I sit down at the nearest table in a trance, out of his direct eyesight, and watch him across the room. He is laughing and entertaining the entire table. His face is lighting up, wrinkles crinkling handsomely into his skin. Everyone around him laughs as he talks, his hands moving all through the air telling a story. And when he laughs, they all laugh more.

As I watch, I don't feel so myself anymore. I don't feel like I have a "self" anymore. I feel like air. I feel like the air his hands are moving through. That I am just floating around, surrounded by people as they move through me. Unseen.

He is beautiful as he looks down when he laughs, humility drowning him. I am so caught in him and everything he does. And I am terrified, but I don't look away.

I watch as his laugh becomes light and his smile fades. He is still looking down. And during the seconds before he brings his eyes up again to meet the rest of his admirers, he frowns. His features fall and he is frowning. That is when I myself fall. I am no longer air, but back into my own body. My head spins as if I am in the early stages of recovering from a hangover. My stomach tightens and my hands sweat. While I was thinking that I liked it much better feeling like air, he looks up. And looks at me. I cannot even examine his features before I have picked myself up and exited through the cafeteria doors.

My feet like lead drag me into the second bathroom stall. My back is leaned against the door and my stomach rises and falls slowly, heavily. For a second, I think that if it wasn't for the door holding me up, I would be lying on the bathroom floor. My eyes look at the fluorescent light above me. I notice that there are bugs trapped on the other side. Dead, of course. Trapped, nonetheless. If it weren't for the glass panel of the light serving as a gravesite for them, they too would be lying on the bathroom floor.

My eyes start to swell with tears. I cry, but I hardly notice. They are falling without any concern of whether I wish for them to or not.

I start thinking about Billie. I bring my hand up to my face and smile slightly to see if I have the same wrinkles he has when he smiles. My smile must not be big enough, I think, because all I feel is wet skin. My hand comes back down.

I fumble at the lock on the stall and walk to the sinks. As I am running water over my hands, a freshmen girl comes into the bathroom. She sees me, mascara stained and distant and immediately turns around, mumbling an apology. She seems ashamed, shy, and scared all at the same time in the small three seconds that I saw her. I frown and think to myself that she could have just come in, why was she so scared of me? Now she has to walk around the whole school to reach the next bathroom. She could have just come in and it would have been fine. She really shouldn't have been so frightened of me.

And then I feel my head and heart give a simutaneous single throb and I frown. I realize that I am that girl. I am just like that fourteen-year-old girl. Only one difference: she is scared of a tear stained girl she saw washing her hands in the women's restroom. I am scared of a devastatingly stunning boy I saw sit in front of my Indian-style at a party with a beer resting in his hand.

I look up into the mirror. I am ashamed, shy, and scared all at the same time.