The Dust of Everyday Life

The weather set fire to the air, and to us. Restless, we couldn't sit still in classes anymore. Especially the seniors; we were done in one week, we were outta here.

Jessie got into Yale, I heard. And Patrick is going to Emory. Taylor didn't get into Harvard, like we all thought he would. He's going to Ohio State, full scholarship. I heard he had a panic attack when he got the rejection letter.

I looked down at my half-assed calculus notes and wondered what it was like to be successful and motivated.

University of Iowa, that's where I was going. She had higher standards for herself; she wanted to go to Yale. "Northwestern, maybe," she said modestly. "But my reach is Yale."

Her grade point average was stellar, and everyone believed in her but her. She looked in the mirror and saw sub-par where we saw amazing. Or maybe I was the only one who saw that. I just don't know how someone couldn't see it. She couldn't be more obviously wonderful if I took a marker and wrote "Perfect" across her forehead.

I liked to make fun of her and joke around with her that she wouldn't get into Yale. But I know she would. What school in their right mind would reject her?

"When I get in, I'm going to take my acceptance letter and make copies of it. I'll plaster them all over your house," she joked with a fake confidence. I knew she didn't believe that she would get that letter, and even if she did, she would never brag about it. She was modest, and that made her all the more interesting; she wouldn't talk about herself, so I had to dig for information, mine for diamond facts.

"I'll be in a dorm," I replied, smirking.

Her face fell, and she shrugged. "I'll find you."

I knew she wasn't serious. Everyday of my life, I wish she was.

The last day of school crept up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. It was a Friday, and I was unprepared.

She was wearing a red dress, and she was easy to spot in a crowd. My eyes anchored onto her and I followed her current, letting her take the corner of my vision to far away places. This was the last day I would ever see her.

Our class came, and I sat next to her. She was distant. Not the cold type of distant, just the contemplative type. I let her contemplate until she was ready to speak, and so she did.

"College man," she said, turning her body to face me in her chair. Her face seemed easy, shining. How could she be happy when she was slipping through my fingers like snowflakes I couldn't catch?

"I know," I said, cracking a fabricated grin. It was easy to pretend around her. Or anyone else for that matter.

"Are you going to come back and visit?" she asked.

And with those words, I felt coveted. I nodded, trying to communicate with my eyes what I couldn't with my tongue. "If I have the time."

We made some hollow jokes, and laughed a few filtered laughs. Maybe it didn't go like that, really, but that's what it seemed like to me.

I left it in her bag. A note for her in prose.

I left the school and she left my welcomed thoughts, creeping into the unwelcome and the painful. I would only see her face at night when everything was dark, and I was feeling despondent. I don't like to admit it, but I would sometimes hold my own hand and pretend it was her. I'd wake up and it would be dead cold in the middle of July.

Moving to college brought the heat back. The dorms were busy, and the campus was alive. Everything was brimming with movement, and my mind was ready to be filled with facts about things that weren't her.

I didn't want to know that she used to be afraid of butterflies.

Or that she drinks her coffee black.

Or even that she never steps on cracks in the sidewalk when she can avoid it.

Unfortunately, those were the best things I ever learned.