My slow self-revelation started on the first day of my junior year in high school, in the hallway, next to the green metal lockers. I casually watched her over my friends' shoulders while she was opening her locker. She was new to the school and I had suspected she was a transfer student. She carried that certain meloncholy that hinted she had moved and started over many times.
Everyday for a few months I saw her at her locker alone, and each of those days I wanted to say something. But I was no good at simple pleasantry and hopeless at meaningful conversation, so I avoided saying anything to her until a day before Thanksgiving when I finally approached her and blurted out something along the line of: "So are you gonna eat a turkey?"
I knew instantly I had just inserted my All-Star Converse into my mouth and had prepared to walk away and maybe go kill myself in the boys room. But she laughed and said "only if there's enough gravy."
That was the first time I ever saw Lilly speak and probably even the first time I saw her smile. It was a comfortably contained but natural smile, and I liked it so much that my heart swelled for a moment.
That morning I walked her to her class, telling her it was on the way to mine, which of course wasn't (my next class was actually on the opposite side of the school) and I was tardy by three minutes. I remember saying to myself that it was the best three-minute tardiness of my high school career.
As time passed I learned that Lilly was a vegetarian but not an animal right activist. She wrote poetry and sketched pictures in a composition book that she was rarely without, but into which no other eyes have fallen. By Christmas we were close friends, enough that she actually test-tasted bites of steak (yes, meat) from my fork and letting me read certain passages in her composition book, and asking for my thoughts on pictures she had sketched.
She had strong opinions about the world and life in general but also the willingness to retract them, even unpredictably at times, and she was self-contradicting in a proud sort of way. I wasn't used to knowing someone so worldly at that age, and Lilly, although quiet, had a depth that shamed most popular girls in school. But I admired her most for her modesty in her beauty. Her cheeks were prominent and low enough to nicely frame her impossibly symmetrical smile. Her eyes were a deep hazel, an eternal window to her Egyptian and Irish ancestry. Her face was free from makeup, possessing a natural, classic beauty; she once said that makeup should be reserved for halloween, and then quickly changed the topic because aesthetics bored her.
I was fascinated by her.
Around New Year she wore my leather jacket (yes, leather) for three days and to me that was a good indication we might be more than friends. But when she handed the jacket back I didn't say anything but tried to figure out what else I owned that she could wear which would clearly define we were a couple. Of course, I didn't have a ring then, and underwear wouldn't do, so we stopped at the jacket for the time being.
One warm spring evening, while walking back from a friend's house where we had shared a couple of joints, Lilly and I cut across the golf course, against which her parent's home was nestled. While walking past hole number 7 the sprinklers came on and we ran and laughed and then fell in the wet grass, and it was so cool that we just lied there in the mist and stared up at the full moon, close to each other but not touching each other.
We talked, even though my head still swirled from the pot and the adrenalin. Lilly would say something and then I would say something and this went back and forth without pause, no empty spaces except for the few blades of grass between us. Then eventually she talked mostly. I just stared at the moon and listened and listened. The sprinklers in the distance chirped off. I could have listened to her all night.
She had been an army brat and moved frequently throughout her life. In 17 years she had moved over a dozen times. She did not remember half the places she lived and didn't seem to care.
While lying in the cool wet grass, with our breaths returned to normal and feeling that the world is small around us, she said, "For the first time, I want to live in one place... know one person forever."
Although I knew her comment deserved a response, I offered none. Not even something clever. Eventually we got up and I walked her home and then I went home. For several weeks everything was normal but we eventually spoke less.
And then she started meeting and spending more time with other boys, and less with me. I didn't say anything and pretended that I got along with these boys but secretly wished they'd leave us alone, maybe transfer to a different school or move to a different planet altogether.
Of course I couldn't sleep much at night because my heart was slowly breaking at the thought of her giving other boys the attention that was once mine. In time she didn't talk much to me anymore and one day after school I even saw her showing another guy her composition book. By Easter she had been going to lunch with several boys and probably shared meat off of their forks, too, and God knew what else. I envisioned all kinds of things in my head and it bothered me to the point that after Easter I decided to quit talking to her altogether. In my head I was delivering punishment.
One day at the lockers, she asked me what was wrong and I said nothing and to leave it alone. Then I stood there and waited for her to apologize and beg for my forgiveness and to tell me that she'll give me all of her attention again, as long as we would speak again. Instead she said I was like a deaf, dumb and mute child. I asked what the hell that was supposed to mean and she said I'm incapable of expressing my feelings, much less reciprocating them. Then she said a few choice things that neatly summed me up as a great dissapointment, and then she walked away.
As she walked away I tried really hard to convince myself that she was delusional, but every word that fell from her lips was the truth from which I could not walk away. So there I stood, in pain and remorse, holding the best gift anyone can receive: Opened eyes.
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