White Blank Page

It all started with this girl. She wasn’t extraordinary, but she wasn’t ordinary either. She was the kind of girl who dragged you out of your dorm at two in the morning to dance barefoot in your pajama s in the rain. She was the kind of girl who came out of nowhere and said she liked your shirt and waved off your thanks with a smile. She was the kind of girl whose silence spoke volumes and her words held even more.

It was…3ish, I want to say, on a Tuesday afternoon. I was coming out of the library, foolish enough not to bring my own printer and avoid the ever-rising price of ink. I was thinking, consumed by thoughts of nothing as I recall, or maybe it was something complex. It has been a long time; I no longer remember such things. Day to day thoughts, the color of the shirt I was wearing, the way the leaves on the oak tree seemed to whisper to me in Brahms. It is beyond me, trivial details such as these. Although, one thinks they would remember all things small on a day like that.

She came out of nowhere as I had said. All vanilla and cream. I imagine her blond, but I know she wasn’t. Brunette perhaps or maybe a combination of the two.

‘Your hair is very flippy.’

I heard it then and I hear it now, even as I remember. She spoke in harps. It was though her voice shimmered through the air until it hit your drums and wiggled its way inside your brain, pulsing with the rhythm that supposedly belonged exclusively to angels. How had she stolen it?

‘Thanks, yours is----‘

What had I said? What had it been? Was it straight, pin-like, in the way that you just knew before you even had the chance to touch, that it would feel like silk? No, it wouldn’t have suited her, she was too free, but in that same freedom she wasn’t free enough. You could tell by the way it burned in her eyes.

Her eyes, at least, I remember clearly. You cannot forget when eyes that are so crystalline blue, magnetize to yours. They reminded me of boats and sails and fish with lights in front of them. Just keep swimming. And I wanted to. I could have swum to the horizon in those eyes.

‘I’m Cecily, by the way,’

The harps again, leaving me almost in a hypnotic stupor.

‘Lynch,’

Had I been gruff? Or maybe, too stoic? Blush ran through her cheeks like cheap watercolour, staining and yet still washable with a bleach pen. But this was one of those spatters I’d rather not allow to leak away. It was one of her best looks.

Was it at that moment?

‘I’m sorry if I bothered you,’

An apology unbidden, from somewhere in her mind, where it all made sense. This line, how many times have I heard it? I have lost track. That is certain, even if it is the only thing that is.

Her shirt was gray. Or grey. The difference between the two is still so unclear to me, muddled like the murk of pond water, grey in its own right, with the filth of modern life. Were there words? There might have been, or some sort of pattern. Lace? Stripes? Does a shirt normally have spots or has the dementia fully rotted my brain like a gutted fish, its mouth and eyes still open, starved for the air that impossibly exists underwater?

‘You didn’t, I was just taking my essay back to my room.’

I smiled. She did too.

‘Which dorm are you in?’

Ah, another detail escapes me. A year of my life, torn out of a book, its crude edge-leavings pushing sparks behind my eyes. She walked with me, leaving me outside the brick building. How did I let her go at that time? She had been like a satin ribbon in those days, so eager to slip right through your fingers, into the air-conditioning vent that you always forgot that you were standing over whenever you lost things. A blue satin ribbon, so that it would match her eyes.

Days.

She almost passed right by me. Her eyes caught me, kidnapping from the blues-laced music high that I rode.

‘Cecily,’

The swish of a dress.

‘Lynch! Hey,’

What color was the dress?

‘Where are you headed?’

What was behind her eyes? I could sense it that day. I’ve only been able to feel it once since then.

‘I was going to grab some lunch before class,’

What was the sense of loss?

‘Mind if I join you?’

That smile again. And in that instant, the sense of loss disappeared.

‘Not at all,’

Her class was only an hour. I came back, waited outside the building. I remember more of this day, I think, because she wore a dress. And in some ways, that is all I can remember.

A routine began, a sparse pattern, littered with mistakes. I cannot remember everything that was said. The way her lips moved stuck to my mind like hot glue, burned but outlasting any other adhesive, proven by all the things that escape me. Memories that I thought I once possessed haunted me, biting through my dreams like termites, hell bent on the destruction of the fragile house where I lived in isolation.

Two thousand? Three? It was a relatively small number, made large by the swirl of faces you missed because of schedules that didn’t coincide. The possibility that I might have lost her, never met her in that ongoing mesh of people, scares me. In that moment, my grip on her tightened and she did not feel.

She slept over one night. Locked out of her room, a jaunt to midnight coffee turned as bitter as the drink she sipped, complete with a Stalin foam mustache.

It might have been then.

It had been a long night.

‘When I was little, I want to say eight; I saw it for the first time. My father’s open hand across my mother’s cheek. I then understood the purples, yellows and greens. My mother had always been a strong woman and colorful, in more ways than one.’

Her voice was harsh, broken glass grinding itself into floorboards, impossible to find.

‘I never once saw her cry. Was it for me? Or was it to show him that he no longer owned her like he once did? I’ve never asked, but I guess I should have.’

Her hands shook.

‘She loved him. I knew she loved him. She would never stop, no matter what he did to her, and he never stopped either.’

Her eyes glazed over, storm clouds on the water, blue turned to ice. Was it wrong of me to want to skate over that frozen expanse, hoping that somehow, it might crack beneath my weight?

‘I was sixteen. My brother, Alex, was nine. I had gotten home first. The house was silent. I knew. I just knew. I walked into the kitchen. He was sitting at the table, beer in hand. He looked thirty years older. I said nothing and his silence matched mine. I could tell from his eyes, she wasn’t the only one who had died.’

I do not remember what I said. How does one respond?

‘Thankfully, the ambulance had arrived before Alex got home. The monster already in silver bracelets. I didn’t let Alex see the blood. I still have my shoes, stained red.’

I remember now, her hair was a soft brown, hot chocolate with a little too much milk. It rolled over her shoulders, slightly curling. I reached out. I remember how it felt, how it glided over finger pads like water over rocks.

It was then.

I couldn’t stop. I wanted to extend my fingers, hold her. I wanted to tell her the clichéd line that it would all be okay. She wouldn’t hear me. She wouldn’t feel my touch.

We were separated by a wall of glass, a precautionary measure to keep her from being hurt more than she already was. It was bulletproof. You could tell just by the feel. I wonder, if I had exhaled and written to her, would she have seen it?

She fell asleep soon after that, curled up on my bed, cocooned in blankets, a misshapen butterfly that couldn’t break free. It was dark, but I still saw it. The single tear, glimmered down her cheek crawling to a stop to etch and fade into her skin. That is the only weakness she has ever shown.

I could never forget that tear.

When I woke, she was gone.

More days.

I am not sure how much time passed before we talked of life again. Her life taboo, in mine nothing was off limits. She knew everything and yet I knew so little. A deranged string between a student and teacher, unwilling to give away knowledge like candy, demanding it be earned. What little I received, I was grateful for.

It was a sick game we played.

Alex now lives in England with their aunt.

Her favorite color is grey.

When she was five, she broke her arm, falling off a swing.

She doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life.

She was everything to me. Everything in the way that every word was cataloged in my head for future reference, every smile photographed and stored away for my own personal collection, every turn filmed in black and white, scratches on the film, no sound. There was never sound.

Call it love, which should be the generic term.

Why can’t I remember the day she showed me her notebook? Frantic scribbles? Perfect lines? That memory is so important, there was something important written. A date? A time? It’s so clouded.

Why can’t I see?

She was going to see Alex over our winter break. One of the only times she could see him, transatlantic wanderings made bothersome by airfares and anxiety. Should I have asked to accompany her?

She would have said no.

I drove her to the airport, though. An evening flight, so she could sleep away her fears along with the hours. I didn’t want to release her hand at security. I didn’t want to let her go.

She kissed me then. Feathers brushing across my lips like electric shock, the kind induced by sticking the fork in the socket because your mother told you not to. I shouldn’t have let her leave my lips.

That is all I can remember.

There are several years missing from my memory.

I found a photograph album in my closet. She was in it. I don’t remember ever taking pictures with film that had to be developed. Disposable camera quality captured seconds that I do not remember, eaten away by the ants that pervade my kitchen.

On the last page was a newspaper clipping. Faded, aged, dipped in tea and set on the windowsill to dry, its edges taken to with a lighter as though dug up on a deserted island where x marks the spot.

This was a treasure I hadn’t wanted to find.

I can see it in my mind. In black and white, film stripping where it’s been damaged, no sound. It goes down you see, the plane. And I watch her through one of the windows; she’s asleep, lost in her headphones when the plane starts to dip. It touches the water and she opens her eyes. She is staring right at me, through the pane of glass she always kept.

She is not afraid, she never was.

My blue satin ribbon, slipped through the cracks in the air-conditioning vent, lost to me forever.