Memoir

The sky reminded me of the watercolour paintings that my mother would make in her free time. It was a large splash of reds, oranges, and yellows that looked entirely careless, and yet blended in together perfectly all at the same time. Wispy clouds were strewn all over the sky like random brushstrokes on an open canvas, and in a way, that’s just what it was.

My gaze drifted down to the trees flying by in a blur, their colour scheme similar to the one above. Their leaves leisurely floated downward, exposing flimsy, skeletal things, whereas the evergreens stood proud and tall in the background.

“People are a lot like that, too,” my mother had once told me. “We all try to show off, be the one that stands out in a crowd, but once all of our colourful barriers come down, what’s left?”

My eyes scanned over the trees. Some had peeling bark, branches that had been cut off, or a whole part missing, probably from a lightning strike. “Something dead,” I said under my breath, the same response that I had given my mother when she had asked.

The car slowed down and came to a stop. I barely noticed the stop sign and the group of people crossing the street in front of us, as my attention was drawn to something else. A man emerged from his house, a rather impressive thing with a bright lawn. I quickly recognised him; I saw him every year, on one particular day. He was known for giving the best sweets on Halloween.

But instead of getting into his car and heading off to work as I had thought, he walked right down his driveway and over to the neighbouring house, one that would look average if not for the overgrown, yellowing garden and the broken window. The door swung open before the man even reached it and a girl that looked like she could be in my class ran out. She grasped onto the man’s hand and began gesturing wildly with her free one, telling some wild story from the looks of it. He laughed and led her to the sidewalk, before they both started down the street in the direction of the school.

Her shoes were falling apart and I could see her sockless feet poking out from the many holes. She was dressed as though she didn’t even notice the chilly September weather, in a sweatshirt that was so torn, it was one step away from being a tee. Multicoloured patches covered every inch of it, hinting that there were even more tears that I couldn’t see.

The same could be said for her jeans. They were in a much better condition than the rest of her clothes, but patches still resided here and there, and there were holes in the knees that didn’t look as though they had been purposefully made. I could see her thin, pale ankles as she skipped down the sidewalk, and it made me wonder just how long it had been since she had bought new clothes. She didn’t even have a backpack, despite it being the first day of school.

Even her hair was frizzy and unkempt; the blonde strands sticking up in every direction and making it look as though she had just gotten out of bed. I thought she looked like a ragdoll. I let out a snort of laughter and was too busy staring to hear my mother’s irked, “Dustin, don’t laugh. It’s rude,” and to wonder why she was with her neighbour and not her own mother.

After that, we reached the school fairly quickly. It wasn’t long before the bell rang and everyone piled into the building. The halls were crowded with people and there was barely enough room to move. I clutched my backpack close to my body so that it wouldn’t get knocked to the ground by someone, as I knew happened often.

I found my classroom quickly. It was English, so everyone instantly knew that our days this school year would always have a boring start. Students continued to file into the room up until the late bell rang, and a few even arrived after that. My friends joined me at the table I had taken near the window, and from the corner of my eye, I noticed the ragdoll-girl sitting at the back of the room.

My curiosity got the better of me and I twisted around in my seat to get a better look at her. She had her arms on the desk in front of her, and I noticed for the first time how cluttered with bracelets and things they were. Ribbons, threads, and rubber bands were among the things that covered every part of her arms.

As it was only the first day, the teacher didn’t have a lesson planned. Instead, he handed out planners and notebooks that he said we’d need, as well as sheets for the parents to sign. He stood at the front of the room after that, his own copy of the papers he had given us with him, and went over what was written. He paused in his explanation dozens of times to remind ragdoll-girl to listen to the school rules, to which she’d just nod and pick at her bracelets without looking up.

He had called her Audrey. She would sit in her seat, farthest from the front, and try to brush out the knots in her hair with her fingers. It didn’t take long for me to realise that in class, she was an entirely different person than the one I had seen with her neighbour. There was no happy-go-lucky chatter and no skip in her step when she walked out at the bell. Instead, she kept to herself and said nothing.

Every day was like that. We had four classes per day, and Audrey was in two of mine; English and math. Sometimes I caught her scurrying down the hallway at lunch, but I had no idea where she ran off to. My guess was that she had found herself some secluded corner or a stall in the washroom that no one used. They weren’t the best places to spend your lunch hour, but not once had I seen her in the cafeteria.

It made me wonder just why I was always looking for her. In class, I would glance her way every so often, and in the periods that I was alone, I would watch the hall through the small window by the door in case she walked by.

I’d stand off to the side and watch as the other kids stuck out their tongues at her. They would laugh and stick things in her hair, leave pins on her seat, and push past her in a seemingly accidental way that left her on the ground.

And when they called her names, she would smile. It wasn’t a happy smile that meant she took their words as a joke. This was something else, and I didn’t know what that something else was. I knew one thing though; there was something terribly off about it, something I didn’t like.

One day at lunch, I wandered away from my friends. They called after me and yet, I left them without an explanation. I found myself roaming the halls, which were still full of people but not as crowded as usual, and soon I made my way outside. The cold air instantly hit me like a tonne of bricks, and I was left wishing that I had grabbed my coat from my locker.

It was December now, and the ground was covered by a thick blanket of snow. I stepped in the footprints of people that had walked here earlier, like I had done many winters before as a child, going sledding with my father. I left behind the icicle-covered school and made my way toward the bleachers, where screaming students would sit at football games. Something was pulling me there, like a magnetic force.

I found Audrey there, sitting on the seat closest to the ground. Her clothes were soaked through but she didn’t seem to notice as she continued to trace shapes in the snow beside her. Her ungloved hands were red from cold, though it didn’t look like she cared.

I stopped walking a few steps away from her. She was facing the opposite way and hadn’t noticed me yet, and I didn’t know what possessed me to do it, but something made me sit in the snow beside her, the girl that all the other students would snicker at because she was different.

I’d admit that I thought that way as well, but since everyone did then surely it was okay? She never told anyone to stop, and if it was bothering her then she would have. Instead, she would pick and pull at the colourful bracelets covering her arm and smile at the ground.

“Where’s your lunch?” I asked her. My voice may as well have been the sound of a bomb going off, with the way it shattered the silence. She jumped in her seat and I wondered what it was that caused her to startle like a cat. She slowly turned to face me, her frizzy blonde hair framing her pale face. I noticed for the first time that her eyes were grey.

Grey; it was such a dead colour. It wasn’t the bright blue of a cloudless morning sky, the deep earthly green of a thriving forest, the smooth brown of liquid chocolate, or a mixture of the three. It was just cold, empty grey, and there was something about her eyes that reminded me of those glass ones of a doll. They were hollow. There was nothing behind them.

She stared at me. It was unnerving, but I couldn’t blame her. I probably would’ve done the same thing. She went through so much and no one ever really talked to her in a friendly way, and now here I was.

After a few more moments, she turned her frail, lanky form away and went back to drawing in the snow. “I’m not hungry,” she murmured in a voice lighter than air. The words were hard for me to catch, but they reached me nonetheless. I didn’t know what else to say, so I left it at that and didn’t reply. We sat there in silence until the bell rang, calling us back to class.

Audrey fascinated me. That was the only explanation I could think of. She didn’t speak to or look at anyone, except for me that one time, and that was something I was immensely proud of. Yet at the same time, she scared me. She reminded me of the decorations we’d hang up on Halloween. Her cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut yourself on and the bags under her eyes gave them a sunken, dreary look. Whenever she tried to move, her bones always seemed to creak like floorboards. With paper skin just barely covering her form, it left very little to the imagination. She was like the ghouls and skeletons from the horror movies, and her skin just as pale.

“Dude,” came a voice from behind me, and I turned to see a group of my friends approach me. They had pestered me into telling them where I had gone off to when I had abandoned them at lunch, and they all laughed when I told them about Audrey. “The thing is going home by itself for the first time since school started.”

“Is that so?” I answered him. My eyes involuntarily scanned the hallways, hoping to find her. She walked home with her neighbour every day, just like in the mornings, so I found it odd that she was going by herself now.

“Dustin, are you even listening?” a snap right in front of my face brought me back to reality and I realised that my thoughts had gone somewhere else. I looked back to the group in front of me and grinned sheepishly. “Like I said, you go that way, too. You should walk it home.”

I blinked, wondering if I had heard right. “What for?”

“Come on,” he insisted. There was a devilish smirk on his face and the glint in his eye told me that I probably shouldn’t listen. “It’s Friday; you walk home on Fridays anyway, so it’s not like you have to waste any of your time. Just go with it for a while, then grab her English essay and rip it up.”

“What?” the word came out sounding a lot more shocked than I’d intended it to. “Why should I do that?”

He rolled his eyes as though it were obvious. “That thing wouldn’t let me copy her. I mean, what’s her problem? Everyone lets me copy their papers. She doesn’t know what she’s up against.”

I watched him turn away and laugh with the others as they murmured things of agreement. Tonnes of thoughts ran through my mind. I wanted to tell him to just do that himself, or disagree with what he was saying, or even go as far as to tell him off for it, but as he turned back and asked if I’d do it, all that left through my lips was a quiet, “Yeah.”

After grabbing my things from my locker, I ran outside and down the street. I caught up with Audrey a few roads away from the school, and by the time I did, I was gasping for breath. She slowed her walking but didn’t stop and barely cast me a glance.

“So,” I forced out, trying to make conversation. For some reason each word felt like a stab in my chest. “Why are you walking by yourself today? You’re usually with your neighbour.”

Audrey was quiet, and just when I thought she wasn’t going to reply, she did. “He had a meeting to go to today.”

“Ah,” I said. I could already see Audrey’s house at the end of the street. She lived closer to the school than I did. I bit my lip. I didn’t want her family to notice, so it was now or never. Before I even knew what I was doing, I snatched the papers out of her bony hand and tore them apart, the staple holding them together landing somewhere on the ground.

She spun around to face me with wide, horror-filled eyes. There was a pleading look in them as her gaze flew from my face, to the essay in my hand, and back again. I knew that look, and I hated it. “Don’t,” it said. “Please.”

Something in my chest ached again. I ignored it, and, with both hands, tore the paper slowly in half, Audrey’s eyes widening further as the rip spread. In mere seconds, the papers were torn completely. I put them back together and did it again and again. It felt as though it was my heart that I was tearing to pieces at that moment. By the time I was finished, there was nothing left but a pile of shredded scraps in my hands, which I let drift down to the ground in a rain-like shower and get lost in the snow.

Audrey didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. The hurt in her eyes said enough. I imagined what must be going through her head, and how betrayed she surely felt. I was as far as could be from a friend to her, but it was probably all she’d ever known. We’d only spoken one time, if that pathetic meeting even counted, but at least I never did anything like this before.

And as her eyes met mine, I saw more colour in them than I ever would have thought possible. Her eyes were a mixture of lights and darks, different shades and tints that I couldn’t even name. They were eyes that I could drown in, dark around the pupil and brightening further out. The almost silvery specks that were flecked throughout her eyes matched the ivy dust sky above.

The way that she wasn’t angry and didn’t yell at me for tearing apart her essay unleashed some sort of emotion within me. Something in me snapped, and suddenly I was the one who was angry. I was seeing red, and I didn’t even know why that was.

Stupid girl. Why don’t you stand up for yourself? Can’t you see that they’re walking all over you?

I grabbed hold of her shoulders then, and shoved her down into the snow bank behind her. She gasped as she was hit by cold and only continued to stare up at me. “Why?” she seemed to ask, even though she didn’t say anything. I was glad that the question had gone unsaid, because I wasn’t sure if I could give a solid answer.

Everything was a blur. I felt like I was underwater and tears pricked at my eyes. My eyebrows furrowed and yet I still managed to smile. I had learnt the smile from Audrey. The broken, twisted smile that was in no way happy.

She laughed at that. The sound rang in my ears. It was haunting, and I was sure that I’d never forget it. It continued to bounce around in my head, echoing and reverberating long after she had stopped and pulled herself to her feet, brushing the snow off of her soaked clothes.

“I’d better go now,” she said, looking in the direction of her house with tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Already?” I asked, my voice cracking. Everything felt surreal, like a dream. I wondered if this was what it was like to be crazy. We sure lived in a mad, mad world.

“Yes,” Audrey nodded. “I’m already late. My parents will be really angry.”

She nodded as a sort of farewell and continued on her way down the sidewalk, clutching at herself as though that would make the cold go away. I left her alone and took the long way home. I couldn’t stand to be near her after what had just happened.

Christmas break flew by and before I knew it, the time to go back to school had come again. I looked for Audrey in English class, but I didn’t see her, and when I went to my last class of the day, math, that I also shared with her, she wasn’t there either.

I decided that she had gotten sick. It was winter after all; the flu virus was flying around and Audrey was sick often enough as it was. I thought nothing of it. This wasn’t any different from the other times she hadn’t come to school.

Something that I realised was that thinking about her was dangerous. I would end up staring into space, and the teachers or my friends would question what was on my mind. I did my best to forget about her, wipe every memory of her existence from my mind. I started to distract myself by writing in my English notebook. I didn’t have the patience nor the creativity to write a story, so I stuck with poems and song lyrics.

The time for exams came before I knew it, and after a grueling four days to complete them, we were back with our regular classes. The schedules had changed, replacing the four periods I knew so well with four more. I knew I only had one class with Audrey now, and that was due to the science teacher reading her name out from the attendance.

“Pick a partner for this project,” that same teacher said one day. My eyes roamed the class for Audrey, but nothing came up in my search. I was left wondering if she ever came back to school after that day that I tore up her essay. I didn’t see her, but then again, I didn’t look either. I didn’t even know how long it had been since I’d last seen her.

And then one day, I found myself staring at the sky. The cotton candy clouds seemed to be aflame, with the way that they were outlined in such a bright, glowing red. A crimson disc of a sun hid behind them, taking its time to set and setting fire to the sky.

The dead and barren trees were budding, tiny green dots that would soon be leaves covering their branches. The ground was wet, covered in dirty, melting snow, and yet even that failed to deter the mood of the warm March afternoon.

School had ended some time ago, and I spent the rest of the day running around town with my mother. Our errands had taken longer than I had thought they would, and by the time we were on our way home again, it was nearly nighttime.

The car slowed to a stop in front of a red light. I let out a sigh, wishing we were just home already, and let my gaze wander out the window. I noticed something familiar, and saw a man I recognised heading into our town’s cemetery with a bouquet of colourful flowers in his hand.

It was Audrey’s neighbour, I quickly realised. I hadn’t seen him for a long time, but I instantly knew that it was him. I watched as he kneeled down beside a still relatively new-looking marble gravestone, setting the flowers at its base.

I couldn’t tell if he was crying or speaking, but he continued to sit there, in front of the grave, even long after we’d driven away. My eyes remained on the window, though I was no longer paying attention to what was outside. I’d hardly even noticed that we had begun driving again. A pained, pathetic-sounding whimper escaped me, but I was too busy thinking of Audrey’s shining, grey eyes to hear my mother’s concerned, “Dustin, what’s wrong? Are you crying?”

Somehow, I didn’t have to go and see for myself to know who it was that was marked by that black, marble grave. A part of me already knew. But among all of the regrets that I had, one of them stood out the most, and it was that I had forgotten to tell her that I had seen fifty shades, when everyone else saw only one.

And I didn’t only mean the colours in her eyes, though that was a large part of it. I meant her in general. She was the weird kid, and that role by itself wasn’t weird at all. Every school had one, and she was ours. What really stuck out to me was the fact that that was all she was to the other students. I had seen her for something else, and even though that something was broken in the worst way that I could think of, it was still there.

Though it really made me wonder what sort of family she had come from. After all, they hadn’t even bothered to remove her name from the school’s attendance. The rest, I suppose, was left to the imagination.