Bah.
---
She ignored me in school, and all the other girls ignored her. By the sixth grade, she had cut all her wispy hair off until it was a dustrag mess on top of her head, and she wore sneakers caked with mud to the boys’ softball games. I never watched her play, but I heard she left each game with bits of grass all over the front of her slacks and weeds in her hair.
The other girls chewed gum in front of the bathroom mirrors and the morning while she flung checkers off the arms of chairs in the classroom; the boys laughed and watched, and I observed indignantly. After the babysitting fiasco several years before, I had begun to think of her as a wicked creature, almost supernatural, who behaved more like a monkey than a human being. Still, my eye always strayed to her figure bounding across the schoolyard, sitting cross-legged in chairs in the classroom, and sending me a mutual indignant look.
She took the same streets home as I did, though she always walked ahead of me and kept her face pointed to the crumbling mud on her shoelaces. The other girls took different routes, and I didn’t walk with anyone, my thoughts cradled close to myself where no others could disturb them. Though her presence disturbed me, wavering in and out ahead of me on the sidewalk, her backpack slung over one shoulder, unzipped with a chaos of paperwork rustling inside.
It was a cold day in spring, thin green caterpillar sprouts wriggling on tree branches, when I decided to quicken my pace just enough to trail close behind her. Curiosity drove me to do it, after having stared at the back of her head every weekday on this walk home, and I was masochistically intrigued by her ever since she gave me my first bloody nose. When my footfalls reached her ears she repositioned herself, her ratty, fraying backpack equipped as a weapon as she let it fall into her hands.
“Ryan, you creeper,” she announced, continuing to walk but her face narrowed in on my careful approach. I drew in closer, egged on by her scowl.
“Can’t I walk with you? We’re going to the same place. And I see you all the time. Can’t we walk together?” My voice sounded too soft, my tone kowtowing to her abrasiveness. She looked at me like I was still seven years old with snot running down my lip.
“I guess.” She looked back down to her untied sneakers, her chapped lips pursed. Memories of a freshly broken heart echoed in my head, as well as the iron taste of blood on my lips, and I felt hopelessly endeared to this creature, with her dirty face and hands.
“Why are you so weird? You’re always lookin’ at me, don’t you have something better to do then lookin’ at other people, you weirdo?” she asked me quickly, seeming unsettled by my presence. I didn’t quite understand her and I tried to keep my eyes on the trees and lawns around me, suddenly afraid to turn to her.
“I’m not always lookin’ at you, I just look around and sometimes I look at you,” I explained, but this line of commonsense only produced a huff out of her. I continued on, at the time not familiar with the concept of digging yourself a hole. “What’s your problem anyway?”
She turned to me, a pale red blooming on her cheeks, and I began to fear for my life, wondering why I had decided to interact with such a dangerous creature. She wiped at her cheek, a line of dirt smearing under her eye, and she was about to open her thin lips and wide mouth and say something terrible, her hand in the air making me shrink away, when a rip sounded like cymbal clash in the air all around us.
Unable to bear the jostling collection of schoolbooks any longer, the seams of Luisa’s backpack snapped on one side in one startling second. The books slapped solidly on the pavement, a hiss of papers sliding in all directions. She dropped abruptly to her knees in response, her hands instinctively clawing at the paperwork and her cheeks now a much more brilliant purplish red than they had been before.
I squatted down beside her and took a handful of paper, cautious as she watched me with a brew of anger and embarrassment passing over her face. Tears collected in her dark lashes and she hid a trembling lip, frustration blossoming from all her jerky movements.
“It was old,” she said in a flat tone.
“I know,” I replied, picking up several workbooks as I watched her cautiously. It made me nervous, to see her upset move from me to the simplicity of a clumsy seam. Her tumultuous nature backfired on herself, and she suddenly seemed lost, stressed out. There were too many books for her to carry, so I kept the ones I picked up. She didn’t say anything to me when she started walking again, and I followed beside her, stuck helping her out with her backpack flapping open like the lips of someone fresh out of the dentist.
“I have an old backpack from last year, I can give it to you tomorrow morning,” I offered as we walked, the paperwork rustling as a breeze rolled by us.
She didn’t remove her doleful expression from the loose paperwork in her hands, pointedly ignoring my presence near her. Not frightened by her as I had been, having seen the hint of something pitiable in her face, I brought myself closer.
“It’s just a backpack; you don’t have to be all mopey now. Won’t you just smile a little?”
“What do you know about anything?” She held her books to her chest and looked perturbed. Yet it took just a moment, the swishing sound of her tattered backpack swaying off her shoulder filling the silence and bringing the smallest upturning of her lips, the faint sign of a dimple appearing on one cheek amongst the flurry of freckles.
We walked to her front door, her homework in handfuls between us. This was my first time entering house, despite our years of being neighbors; our mothers were the type to meet at local events and restaurants, straying from the home as much as possible. She shimmied a house key out of her front pocket, shooting me an apprehensive look before fussing with the lock. The shambles of her front hallway opened up to us, the door to a living room wide open. Unmarked boxes littered the walkway, tattered bits of fabric and tolls conglomerated into bulky piles. Inside the living room, an older man leaned forward on a recliner, his hands hanging between his knees and a cigarette sitting heavy on his bottom lip. White hair crashed in frenzied waves around his balding head, and his scrunched up eyes turned from the blaring television to the two of us standing in the hallway.
“Will you close the damn door?” he shouted, taking the cigarette out of his mouth, his face folded over and collapsed in the manner of someone ten years older than he was. I was afraid to move, any motion threatening to draw more attention to myself. But he noticed me anyway. “Who’s the kid?”
“My backpack broke.” Luisa’s voice was demure, retiring, the opposite of everything it was a half hour before. She held up her handful of books and papers, and he turned away without another moment’s care, though she had not answered his question.
“Jesus,” he muttered, barely audible over the blasting voice of the television talk show host. “Your mom’s coming home late again, so get some things done.”
His back to us, we no longer existed in his world and we were free to roam. Luisa gestured with her chin for me to follow and we stepped into her kitchen. The tiny room was consumed with dirty dishes, stacked up and piled into cubist constructions on the counters, a strap of flypaper dangling above the faucet with its share of trappings on it. She had me set her books down on the table, and she immediately turned away from me.
“I have chores to do.” With her turned from me, consumed by her own responsibilities, I felt awkward in her house, the atmosphere foreign to me. I backed myself up until I was at the front door again, and with a lingering look at the absent man in the living room and the busy kitchen, I walked two houses over to home.
She was waiting for me the next morning on the walk to school. Standing on the sidewalk in front of her house, she gave me the small smile I saw the day before, with the pinprick of a dimple on her one cheek. I handed her my old backpack, holding it open for her as she placed each book and folder inside carefully.
She met me in front of her house every morning from that point on, and we walked to and from school, side by side. It was strange to begin with, my original confession of love having forged a rocky beginning to our acquaintanceship, but we walked the same route and we grew used to each other.
---
I grew familiar with her smile over time, and I could conjure it up in my mind so easily now, coming out of the haze of ruminating the past. I parked my car at a Sunoco, the combination of the sun and memories of a time too long ago making my head ache. I paid for gas and purchased a coffee, climbing back into my car not feeling any better than I did ten minutes before.
Memories of Luisa plagued me. There was her toothy smile as she laughed at me. I felt like this wasn't so distant a recollection, when in reality her cheap backpack had ripped more that fifteen years ago.
It was too late to be thinking about her anyway. I hadn’t seen her since graduation. She clung to me then, her cheek pressed warm into my shoulder. I shook my head, clearing the image from my mind; I would try to start thinking about something else and then—
I’m in front of her house again, and she’s climbing into her new Buick, saying, “We don’t have to walk anymore! Maybe I’ll have to actually start calling you to talk.”
I had reopened a department in my mind, and my thoughts were driven to explore these dusty memories. What would Rachel say about this, my sudden fascination with a girl from my childhood? Was this part of my unrealistic view on life that made her pull her hair and stamp her feet? My thoughts suddenly too much for me, I sighed loudly, dropping my hand too much and spilling coffee on my knee.
“Shit.” There were no napkins in my car, and I daubed at my slacks with the sleeve of my jacket, the effort entirely ineffective. Giving up, I turn the key in the ignition, letting my memories consume me once again. Though now Rachel was on my mind, my most recent failure when it came to bumbling confessions of love.
. Maybe the last one can be changed to "as"? Pay attention to this as you go along, dear! In some places you had a slight "and" overload xD. 
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