~This is something that I had written a while ago, then finally picked up and polished it off a bit. Please tell me what you think!~
The good thing about the back of the school is that no one ever goes there. It’s one of those things that most people don’t realize until the day that they decide to venture there in order to take a good breath before plunging back into school life. I’m one of those people.
After the bell released us from class, I dodged a group of kids who had their arms slung about one another, narrowly brushing the wall in the process. The kids didn’t turn a hair as they passed, as if I was just another brick. I sighed, but it had only been the first day, and I had not had much time to chat with others.
Being the new kid is never easy, especially in a sleepy little community in which all the kids have known each other since preschool. Trying to immerse yourself in a school where every single kid knows each other like the back of his hand is really hard. I definitely needed the breather.
As I turned the corner to the little concrete walkway that was my favorite haunt since the start of term, I realized that the spot was not only my favorite.
A girl perched on the concrete curb, staring blankly ahead of her with bright eyes. Her legs were tucked up to her chest in the tight grasp of her thin arms. She wasn’t even moving a muscle - not even rocking back and forth or anything - just sitting as perfectly still as a statue. The only movement about her was the fluttering of her hair. The long, dark strands flew in the crisp autumn wind like a ribbon, flying in the wind.
There was something about her - something mysterious about the dark, immobile figure - that made me approach her. Unlike the others, she was not surrounded by a wall of friends I could not penetrate, but rather by the stillness within which she held herself.
“Hi, sorry for intruding.” I said quietly.
She glanced up with a brief flicker of huge, dark eyes that seemed to lack pupils. Then she looked straight ahead, returning once more to her picture-state.
A moment or two passed, and I shifted from one foot to another, hefting my backpack once or twice.
Finally, she straightened her legs, opening up her tightly wound body.
“It’s okay.”
I felt like I had been hit by a sledgehammer. Somewhere, in the foggy depths of my mind I heard her voice. The familiar sense was gone immediately as the winds carried away her words, making me doubt if I had heard it at all.
Smiling uncertainly at her expressionless face, I sat down, dumping my bag down unceremoniously.
“I’m Aidan, Aidan Greevers. You?”
She bent her legs and folded her arms over her bent knees, closing herself off again. I waited for her to speak, and the silence stretched like bubble gum.
“Austin Greeves.”
“Wow, your name is a lot like mine,” I said without really thinking.
Looking at her profile from the side, I realized where I had seen her before. She was the silent girl who always sat next to me in all my classes. It was the last name thing that teachers always had to use.
“Sorry, I just remembered you. “
“It’s okay. Most people wouldn’t.”
Her voice was halting and quiet, and she paused for long moments before she spoke. It was almost as if she was afraid to talk.
“I really should go now,” Austin said, getting up.
I watched her go, her hair swaying as she walked quietly around the side of the building, making no more noise than a leaf skittering in the wind. In a second, she was gone, leaving no trace behind.
I had planned on staying behind the building for awhile, but I didn’t really feel like it anymore. Instead, I went back around the corner to find the school deserted, except for my lone red bicycle standing by itself on the rack.
The lock refused to open. It had always been rather annoying, and today, it just wouldn’t come undone. I gave up and walked home.
I let myself in the door and fixed myself a microwave dinner. My dad was always at work, and my mom couldn’t cook for her life.
Despite myself I had trouble keeping my thoughts off of Austin. The picture-girl was came back to me. Maybe it was because I liked to talk, but I found her strange hesitation curious. It didn’t seem to be shyness, but rather
Why is she so afraid to say things? Or is it something else?
My thoughts ended rather abruptly when I burned my tongue on the hot gravy that I had just heated up. My eyes watered, and I forgot all about Austin and her still world.
I slipped into my seat in the class, noting Austin’s absence. I wondered idly about her phobia, more than I should have, at least. I had just joined a new school community; I didn’t have time to worry about such things.
Austin slipped into her seat right before the bell rang.
“Hey! How-” I said, but then the teacher started talking.
Austin was either not going to talk to me or was completely ignoring me. I faintly considered the possibility that she was deaf, but I had already talked with her the day before.
“Mr. Greevers! Stop talking to her and listen up!” Our teacher snapped. I gave up trying to speak to her.
At lunch, I sat down next to a group of guys who politely scooted over for me. Soon enough, I was chatting away, one of them.
My mother had always said that there were two kinds of people in this world: those who blabbed nonstop, and those who never talked at all. I fit into the first category, but I knew enough to keep my mouth clamped shut whenever Ms. Sanders didn’t have her coffee in the morning. My father on the other hand, maintained there were three kinds of people: those who drew others to them, those who hanged on to those who were famous, and those who were perfectly content to just hand out by themselves. My mother always said that I was the first. I was a charismatic child who just could not keep his mouth shut for more than six minutes.
“Hey, what do you know about Austin Greeves?” I asked my new buddies.
“Who? Oh, you mean that one. If you’re thinking of asking her out or something, forget it,” Dylan said with distaste. “She used to be quite popular you know. Then suddenly, she stopped talking. She won’t even answer the teachers sometimes.”
“Yeah, and all her friends and admirers kept trying to talk to her, but she just completely secluded herself,” another kid said with a laugh. “There was a rumor going around that she said something about doing things with her voice. She needs to be locked up in an asylum.”
Walking back from the bathroom, I saw a dark head of hair moving down the hall with a stack of paper.
“Hey, Austin!” I called down the hall. There wasn’t anyone around, so she had to acknowledge me, at the very least. She nodded her head by way of salutation.
“Some kids were saying at lunch, that you…that you…your voice.”
I knew it was terribly impolite to ask, and I had no idea how to phrase it, but I had to know.
“I- I just want to help.”
For a second she just stared at me, and then her mouth opened, as if by reflex.
“I do… No, my voice does…” She struggled for a second, then her eyes hardened. “Things happen.”
She snapped her mouth shut as if catching herself. Her footsteps sped up. I didn’t let her get away.
“What sort of things?”
There was a long pause.
“The truth,” she muttered.
“What?”
Confused, I put out a hand to stop her, and looked straight into her deep, dark eyes. Again, a sudden wave of familiarity swept over me. For the first time, she looked back into my eyes. She seemed to pause, trembling.
Her mouth opened, then shut, then her voice came out.
“I say things. Things that change other things to become true.”
Disbelief washed over me, and I opened my mouth.
Austin’s eyes flickered. She practically ran down the hall and left me standing there.
Sitting up in bed, I saw Austin flit before my eyes again. I had dreamed of our strange encounter again.
I puzzled over a possible explanation.
It was almost time for the last class of the day, where I was yet again sitting next to Austin. This time we were seated alphabetically by first name. That had us sitting together five classes out of six.
“If you write, does anything happen?” I passed her a note that she completely ignored. It fell to the ground.
“Mr. Greevers, you seem very insistent to go to the principal’s office,” said our teacher in a voice that crackled with irritation. “Go. Now.” She pointed at the door.
When I returned, I found a stack of neat notes on my desk. Near the top of the first paper was a two little letters: “No.”
I took that as encouragement.
After school ended and I finally found my locker, I hurried out back to see Austin. She was sitting in the same spot again, in the same position; it was if I was looking at a familiar photo.
“Hey!” I called out, huffing to a stop.
She was sitting there all by herself again. She ignored me.
“I want to talk to you about what happens when you talk,” I said.
She was quiet for a long time, not moving a bit.
“Austin?”
“Look,” she said finally, standing up. Her cheeks were red and there was thinly veiled irritation in her voice. “I don’t know who you are, or what you think you’re doing, but this is my problem. Why don’t you just-”
Her hand flew to her mouth in the middle of her tirade. Her hair whipped me across the face as she spun and made to run.
“Hey, don’t go!” I grabbed her arm.
She stopped moving and stood stock still. Under the curtain of her hair, I saw her lips pressed tightly together in a hard white line.
“Why don’t you talk?”
“Let go of my arm, Aidan.” Austin said quietly.
A strange compulsion came over me and I let go.
Why’d I do that?
“You did what I told you to do,” she said just as quietly. Her voice was full of grief and there was a terrible self-hatred in her voice.
“It happens. Even if it’s the past, always.”
“What?”
“You don’t believe me, do you?” she said bitterly. “I could just as easily tell you to believe me.”
“Prove it.”
She stared at me with wide eyes.
“I don’t think you’re crazy, so prove it.” I said quietly.
The silence stretched till it was as thin as a hair.
“Tomorrow, when the bell rings at the end of math, the fire alarm will go off. All the teachers will dance on their desks on the hour. The clocks broke today, and the janitor went home sick a week ago and still hasn’t come back. At 2:30 the bells are going to ring early and the kids are going to sing “Happy Birthday” at the top of their lungs. Happy?”
She let it all out in one breath, then turned and ran.
I couldn’t tell whether or not she had just told me to be happy, but I was happy none-the-less.
If what she says is true, I’ll get to figure out the mystery and have a very amusing day tomorrow.
To make a long story short, Austin wasn’t wrong once. I fell out of my seat laughing a bunch of times, but I still found myself singing “Happy Birthday” really loudly. I even vaguely remembered that I had seen the janitor yesterday, but everyone I asked told me that he’d been gone for a week.
That’s creepy, she can even manipulate the past.
“Hey Austin! That was really cool, what you did!” I told her when I ran into her going out of school early.
“No. You call a horrible thing like that cool?” Her dark eyes were hurt, and her mouth was twisted bitterly. “All the things that you could do…”
“Like what?”
Austin shut her eyes and tried to lose me in the crowd. I already knew where she was going though. There, I confronted her once again.
This time, the picture had changed. Austin still sat on the step, but a single tear was working its way down her cheek, and her frame was shaking. She stood when she saw me, but didn’t try to push past me.
“You’ve done some of them, right? Is that why you hate yourself so much?”
Her head folded forward, shielding her face with a dark curtain of hair. A tear splattered on the ground, forming a splotch on the ground - a splotch that grew larger as it merged with other splotches.
“Just-”
She stopped, unwilling to use her curse against me. I saw her shift her weight, and instinctively grabbed her arm before she could flee.
Austin pushed back against my chest, trying to pull away. But after a moment, the force disappeared as she gave up.
She was bent over now, her hands still holding me away, but her tears flowing off her face. Her voice flowed out, as if from a broken dam. They ran over each other, interwoven with gasps, making some of it incoherent.
“I didn’t know. I… My older brother… gone.” Austin’s tears were wetting the pavement. “I told him that he shouldn’t have been born. Now he’s gone. He-” She choked off her words. “I couldn’t undo it.”
Something twinged in my heart, and its beat grew faster. Gently, I touched her head.
It was weird; it wasn’t me. I didn’t comfort crying girls behind a school.
“You’re afraid. You’re afraid that you’ll do it again.”
“How could a normal person like you understand? Every time I see your face it reminds me. Why did you have to look like him?”
My heart skipped a beat as she weakly pounded a fist on my chest.
Her brother looked like…me?
“The past is the past, you have to move on.” I told her harshly, grabbing her wrists and pulling her up. “Look at me, I’m not your brother, even if I look like him.”
She kept her eyes shut.
“Even though I’m not your brother, I forgive you for what you did. He probably forgives you too. Now all you need to do is forgive yourself.”
Her eyes opened wide and stared at my face. Her dark eyes wavered, and my heart seemed to skip a beat again. Her mouth open, but she clamped it shut, yet again.
I hated seeing her face red and puffy. I hated seeming her lips clenched firmly shut all the time. I hated the haunted look to her eyes.
“I-”
I didn’t even think about it. I sealed her lips with a kiss.
Her face was frozen again when I pulled back, but her mouth was open in a little “o”.
“Don’t say that. If you do, you’ll never be able to. Just believe in yourself and your brother, everything will be all right again. It’ll be different, but alright. I’ll help you.”
“Why didn’t you leave me alone?” she whispered finally.
“I-” I fished around. “I don’t know.”
For the first time, I really noted how smooth her pale skin was, especially in contrast to her long, dark hair. My heart beat a bit faster as I looked into her deep eyes.
She flushed, and I did well, as I realized what I had done.
“Brother, help me. I asked him that,” Austin said quietly. “It’s my fault you appeared.”
“And now it is,” I said dryly. “Do you feel better now?”
“Much better,” she said.
I stared as a sweet, light laugh filled the air.
“What?” she asked defensively.
“You laughed!” I laughed with happiness. “That’s the first time I ever heard you laugh!”
She smiled shyly.
Her tear-stained, smiling face: a new photo. No, not a photo, a person.
