Moody Meow

Liberal, lunatic lassie, with mood swings and foot-in-mouth syndrome

When You Aren’t Listening

Posted on | February 9, 2005 | No Comments

She twittered in my ear, but I couldn’t hear her over my own voice.

Maria, she called herself. A pale skeleton clothed in tissue paper skin, her hair shocked everyone with its blackness. Did someone stick her wispy bob in a bottle of ink, mistaking her for a pale pen? We all wore jackets back then, those of us that didn’t have the luxury of a parent-taxi to shuttle us to school. Ringo and Paul stared at you from her shoulders and the cover of of one of their albums beamed upon her back, blarinly bright against the black denim. She and I rode the same bus. We jammed to our individual walkmans, moving more with the music than the sway and swagger of the chilly bus. And when the doors opened at the back end of Wuerzburg American High School, we shuffled down the purple halls to our neighborly lockers.

Maria’s voice never raised above a whisper. It was as delicate as she; fragile and beautiful in a painful way. Her wrist, tangled in blue veins, did not look as if it had the strength to carry her ballerina fingertips. Her nails always shone. Mine usually bled.

We shared classes, and sat next to each other now and again, but I tried not to be her friend. I had the quiet jacket but a loud voice and a booming need to be welcomed in the atrium. Surrounded by dirty glass and apathetic teen wanderings, I knew it was the place to be. I couldn’t get there with Maria.

I lost her voice somewhere. She moved, riding a different bus. My locker ended up by the library while hers was near the principal’s office. Every now and again I could hear her stare in the lunchroom, but I ignored her inky gaze and turned to smile at my friends who couldn’t hear me over the sound of their own voice.

Category: Contemplation

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