She was Smiling

You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live. That’s what she told herself.

Three years ago in high school, I met a skinny, pale, blonde girl too shy to give me her name. Sunlit halls with rows of lockers along one side and she was the only one sitting there. The only one afraid of the light, yet basking in it all the same. As if she thought that the shafts of sun painting the hallway would somehow give her a new life, would “cure” her of her “disease”. Of course that was what it was. Why else would she skip classes, why else would she spend all of lunch in the bathroom, why else would the janitor have to break the lock on 238 to get her out.

Dark green eyes, though it was hard to tell through the film of tears blanketing her pupils, mingling with the blood running from her nose. A perfect mix, as if that was what it should always have been. Blood and tears swirling in perfect unison, pock marking her cratered cheeks until she wiped them away with shaking hands.

No one really saw her face. It was kept hidden by the sparkly pink notebook with rainbow glitter and unicorns flying across each page as if for her, it was an effort to be a girl, an effort to hold onto a lie. One would stare and wonder why she basked in the sunlit fragments, instead they punched her.

Two years ago I met a girl with pitch black hair, piercings through her nose, and a ripped leather jacket. Walking with an attitude was her life blood. It stopped the clenched fists hungry fort he taste of flesh. Cigarettes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or at least that’s how she put it. Now I wonder how hungry she really was. Only when she glanced up at the sun lit windows did I realize who she was. Broken gold.

I hated her. Hated her for giving up. Hated her for the cuts on her wrists, those small valleys of death she’d grown so fond of. Stone cold, face masked by too much mascara. A mask she didn’t realize she was wearing, didn’t realize how much it controlled her. She talked, lisped sentences so innocent it hurt the eyes. It felt wrong to have such a voice coming from those black lip stick painted lips. Why should she have to change? Why did she not only have to live, but please everyone else, change to fit what everyone thought she was. I guess it stopped the bullying, maybe that’s all she wanted in life. To stop the punches.

One year ago I met a girl with a simple white shirt and ripped jeans. Golden hair matching the color of the sunlit windows she’d looked up to all those years ago. Eyes that made you wonder why you ever beat on her. Like the green of summer staring up into your soul. No more shy girly girl pretender. No more non-conformist chain smoking scumbag. Just plain “I don’t care what you think.” Then I knew she’d won. The Ying Yang of blood and tears was gone, swept away by her daffodil hair, the cuts on her wrist had faded, the valleys of death sealed up by the hope that one more year would get her out of this hellish courtroom full of powdered wigs and those who could not speak, the ninety nine percent.

Cratered cheeks sealed by the passing of the blackest night. Eyes as full as the summer moon low in the sky, making way for the dawn. The mask was off. It made the pain easier to bare.

They couldn’t hurt her, they never could. She was a worthy soul, defeater of the beast desire. She had escaped the courtroom filled with dolls, marionettes, pretenders, something she once was. They were blinded by the stars in their hollow eyes, expectations so big they couldn’t possibly fail.

She had a name. She told me herself.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I like your hair.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Was that sarcasm?”

“I could ask the same question.”

“It wasn’t.”

“….Thank you.”

“What’s your name?”

Katrina.

1098 days bleed into each other. The crying sun forms a staircase to heaven no one can ever climb. An Ascension so wrong it kills. When we graduated they couldn’t believe it. That skinny blonde girl gets a stage? It was blasphemy, as if God had trodden on their “rights”.

She liked to tell stories. Sleepless nights spent lying on the couch telling me the story of the farmer and the hurricane. The best part; he survived. Where she went there was always a window to the heavens. A skylight filled with hopes and dreams where the clouds never blocked out the wills of the worthy and the sun stayed forever lucid. A golden sky.

She became a friend, then she became more. She liked the open hillside, the massive golden sun setting in the distance like a watery eye showering its golden shafts of hope for all eternity. She said it reminded her of how she go there, how she used to stare up through the glass windows and hope, pray, beg that the clouds wouldn’t cover up the light. Her light.

They never did.

You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live. That is what I told myself as we hiked the mountain trail. The sunset behind us cast an auburn glow across the valley, turning everything golden for just a few moments. Katrina hiked ahead of me, blonde hair glowing in the wavy light, eyes shining like dew on a misty spring morning. Pure gold. We reached the top. She looked at me and for the first time in three years I realized something.

She was smiling.