A Stranger's Shoulder

She had long brown hair that ran like a rippling river down her back as she moved. She had long lashes and brown eyes, the type that looked like melted chocolate. Her pert nose was settled above full cherry lips with a stubborn little chin. She looked to be maybe sixteen years old, same as Nick, and she was pretty. She wasn’t outstandingly beautiful, but her face had a way of capturing attention.
         
She’s losing it, Nick thought as he forked more rice into his mouth. His eyes switching from his plate to the girl that sat at a table on the other side of the restaurant. Nick had been discreetly spying on her for the past five minutes. She had shared a few tense words with her father, none of which Nick could hear on account of the strident noise in the restaurant, but the expressions that flitted across her face told it all. At first there had been shock, then anger, and then her chocolate eyes had looked defeated as she swung her gaze to escape out the window. Her father, a big man with piercing blue eyes and at the present a stony face, didn’t look at his daughter but rather bent the full force of his attention to his chicken. He stabbed at it mercilessly, cut his strips hastily and then jerked them into his mouth. He chewed with his powerful jaw, but he didn’t really taste the flavor and he wasn’t really looking at his plate.
         
The girl with the hair like a brown river hadn’t moved; her chocolate eyes never strayed from that distant figure only she could see that lay outside the window. Her cherry lips were drawn into a tight line and Nick knew that the battle she was fighting inside herself was losing. Her composure was slipping out of her fingers like water. She was so desperately trying to hold it together, so desperately trying to plug the holes so the water would stay cupped in her hands, but it was beyond her. The argument still stung like a raw wound just recently received, and sitting next to the cause of that argument was like pouring salt on it. Nick was just waiting for the first salty tear to fall, the one that would initiate the flood works.
         
“Nick?” called a voice beside him.

Nick pulled his gaze away from the girl to glance at his mother. She was sitting beside him, her fork and knife paused in mid-motion in her hands, as she gazed at her son with a touch of concern. “Yeah, mom?” Nick inquired.
         
“Are you okay? You haven’t been listening to a word your sister or I have been saying.”
         
Nick apologized; it was true, after all. For the past five minutes he had been waiting for the girl to blow like a time-bomb, his attention being like tunnel vision. Tick, tick, tick.
         
“…to tell me how it was,” finished Nick’s sister, Lora.
         
“Oh…yeah,” Nick answered lamely. He just couldn’t keep his eyes off the girl. Her body was so stiff, so rigged with tension; it was only her force of will that kept the flood works from spilling down her cheeks. 
         
And then it happened: that first tear, unwanted but anticipated, walked slowly down her cheek.
         
The girl shot off the chair like a rocket, simultaneously brushing the tear away with a rough stroke. She mumbled something to her father and then dashed off to the exit. She disappeared around the corner. The father stabbed more furiously at his chicken like the thing was still alive and he needed to kill it before eating it. He wasn’t going to go after his daughter. Maybe he didn’t see the tears, or maybe he didn’t want to.
         
Nick never knew why he got up from the table. It was like his feet were guiding him. He ignored his mother, who called out to ask him where he was going. He only saw the exit doors, and his thoughts were solely on getting through them. The doors would lead him to her.
         
It was eight o’clock at night, so when the door was pushed open the light poured out like a caged live thing to intrude upon the darkness. The door closed behind Nick and the light was caged once again, the cacophony of the restaurant effectively barred as well. The dark sky was illuminated by a full moon and its sparkling companions, the stars. The trees swayed as if dancing to music, music that was orchestrated by the wind. Bugs chirped in the damp air that clung like a snug blanket and surrounded Nick with warmth. His eyes strained into the darkness.
         
There she was! She was standing alone against the world, her arms crossed tightly, her back rigid and her head tilted back as her eyes roamed the stars as if searching for answers.

Nick walked towards her, suddenly realizing how awkward this would be. He had just acted, not giving thought to the strange encounter that would likely take place.

But then Nick caught a glimpse of her face in the white moonlight: it was still dry. She was still valiantly trying to hold onto her composure, to her independent code that labeled sobbing as a frilly, delicate thing that only caused embarrassment and no solutions.

Walking those last ten steps that separated them, Nick stood at her back. She was so intent on gazing at those stars that she hadn’t heard him approach. Nick settled a hand on her shoulder to get her attention; with a start she swung around, her long brown hair floating around her and then cascading like waves down her back to be still once more. Green eyes met chocolate brown ones. Compassionate eyes met defiant ones. “Are you okay?” Nick asked softly into the night.

Three little words. Three little words that, individually, mean virtually nothing; but when put together and voiced in such a situation as this, it could mean so much.

The girl with the chocolate eyes spoke with such an emotion-filled voice, it made her words sound thick as molasses. “Yes, of course.” But on that last word her voice broke, and with it the dam that held all the water in. Tears flowed freely and alarmingly fast from her chocolate eyes and tumbled to the ground.

They were close together, maybe only a foot apart, and Nick watched her head fall and gently rest on his shoulder. This simple gesture nearly broke his heart. Nick was so stunned that he stood there as if carved in stone as the girl’s tears soaked his sleeve. When the girl’s shoulders started to shake from stubbornly holding in the sobs, Nick hesitantly brought his arms around her slender frame and drew her closer. The sobs finally escaped: a harsh, sharp noise inundated with grief that had been bottled for too long.

Nick never knew how long he held the girl who sobbed so brokenly for a reason unknown to him. Time became nonexistent: a minute was an hour and a day was a second. But in those few moments, luminous thoughts of such stunning clarity and simple brilliancy awakened in Nick’s mind.

In every person there is a need to be comforted and a need to comfort. In every person there is a need to be helped and a need to help. When two people meet, one the needing and the other the provider, what is created is a bond that is remarkably strong considering its lifespan, the type of bond only created among humans, even if they are strangers.

This was what it meant to be human.

Humans are so unique because of the fact that they care. They care not only for their friends, their family, and themselves; they care about everybody and anybody. They care about the whole human race, with the different ethnicities and the different looks and the different intellects and the different languages. Doesn’t this explain why a man would make donations to charity? Doesn’t this explain why a woman would adopt a child that wasn’t even hers? Doesn’t this explain why a child would hold the door open for a person on crutches?

People understand that they are only one brush stroke of the entire masterpiece. Alone, they are nothing; together they are everything. We are all a part of a whole.

This was what it meant to be human. To be human, it meant that you cared. Denying someone who needed help, denying someone who needed comfort, would be like denying the humanity that is one’s right.

All this was revealed to Nick in that one moment in time as he looked at the bright blots called stars in a black panorama of sky, holding a crying stranger with chocolate eyes and brown hair like a river.

“Rio?” called someone from around the restaurant. “Rio!”

The girl that was crying on a stranger’s shoulder raised her head. She had quieted in those last few moments, her sobs gone and her cheeks dry, like how the earth was after cleansing rain. Her eyes still glistened, a tell-tale sign of her weeping. But in her wobbly smile she gave to Nick there was a hint of relief, an intimation of liberation. From what, Nick had no clue.

Gratitude that shown as brightly as the stars was present in her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered in a small voice laced with the deepest sincerity. The words hung in the silent air, the wind had curiously stopped as if unwilling to snatch the words. Then she disappeared into the night to answer the one that was calling her, turning around a corner and therefore vanishing from Nick’s view. From his life.

Nick stood there for a few minutes more, looking at those bright stars and the bright moon and the black sky that crowded in on them. He stood there with the wind orchestrating its symphony and a sleeve that was still wet from a stranger’s tears.

And the boy that became a young man made promises to himself, promises of fulfilling golden dreams and starting silver hopes. Promises to be there when someone needed it, promises to never ignore a cry for help.

Promises to change the world. For the better.

Nick turned on his heel to walk back into the caged light of the restaurant.