She Still Waits

They say she still walks around school, hoping he will come.

Sinoë was the new arts teacher. They say she was a gifted painter, and a lover of life. Her clothes were simple, her image careless. She wasn’t the type of woman to which man would stop and stare. She was the invisible one, the one that loves, but keeps her heart close so that no one – but her – sees what’s in it.

And did she love?

They say she did. They say she loved another teacher, his name was Jared, and he was everything she wasn’t. He was the man all women’s loved, and man’s either admired or hated him. Sinoë loved him with all her heart, and she had loved him for a long time.

Legend says they were best friends until he was fifteen, then he changed, he became popular. She was laughed at, and left behind.

Soon she moved to another town, and he forgot her like she ever existed. She kept his picture, the one they had taken together. She kept his picture hoping one day she’d see him again, changed, into the boy he once was.

Of course she saw him again, that’s how it usually is. She saw him as her colleague when she went to teach arts. He had changed, not into the boy, but to a better man, and she was happy. But he didn’t recognize her.

“The only thing I regret in my life is to had let my best friend, the only one I ever had, go away.” He had said to her once. Her heart didn’t broke, and she wasn’t sad, she had been important to him; she only needed to help him remember again.

As months went by their friendship grew, Sinoë learned to love the new man Jared was, and he fell in love for the first time in his life.

But something went terribly wrong; Sinoë found out she had a cancer, and it was so spread out in her body that there was little chances she would be healed. But she had faith, so she went away, not telling Jared where or why, not letting him say something ‘really important’ as he had say it. She promised she would return, and would tell him a secret then, and he could tell her his.

She left for a treatment, but in vain. It didn’t work, if anything it only had made her weaker. And so she returned, weak, barely standing, so fragile…

But Sinoë asked him to meet her at the school’s terrace, in the gym’s building. She went and waited.

She waited until her bones were too weak for her to stand. She waited even when the snow started to fall. She waited until the winter cold froze her to the soul. And even trembling and with purple numb lips…

She waited.

He was late. So many things had happen that he could not be there on time.

His family was too stressed up.

His ex-girlfriend so dumb that couldn’t understand a ‘no’, not even after a year after they’d broke up. She didn’t understand the sentence: ‘I love someone else.’

And he was late.

Late to meet the woman he loved the most. He was late, but he was there…

Only he was…too late.

Snow covered the school’s ground with a peaceful white. And she was there, an angel lying there on the terrace, sleeping peacefully. And she was too white to be dreaming, too thin to be healthy. She was too peaceful to be sleeping a normal sleep.

And he was too late. She wouldn’t wake up again.

He kneeled next to her, silent tears falling down his face.

Too white, too peaceful, so still…

She was holding something in her cold hands, and gently he released it. A photograph and he knew it. He was in it, and so was she. Not as a man with his girlfriend; as a kid with his best friend. And now he recognizes her, one again…too late.

On that cold winter night, with his angel sleeping peacefully among the snow…he wished he hadn’t wait for her to come back to say to her…’I love you.’ And he cried for all the lost opportunities.

And he kissed her.

Cold, dead lips on his warm, loving ones.

Later he buried her.

When her family asked who he was, his only answer was…

“The man that loved her, and let her down.”

He could have told them he was the reason she had died. He could have told them he was the kid that had come so many times to their house. He could have said that when he had the chance to make her happy, he only made her more miserable; he could have said it all, and it would all be true.

But he didn’t.

He walked away; he knew that he had just lost the only chance to ever be happy. He begged the school to make a statue to her honor, and he spent all his money so it would be perfect. She deserved it.

He left, the memories were too painful.

Her spirit stayed, once again waiting and hoping someday he would be strong enough to come back…to her.

And she stills waits. She still hopes. She will not leave the place where she died, so that he would know where to find her.

She still waits.