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"Timeless..."

Hi this is a story that I wrote for my english coursewrk. Any feedback is appreciated.



I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
But that was just a dream…
--R.E.M. “Losing My Religion”

She is timeless today: She has forgotten her watch.

It's all right because she has a spare—a clip-watch on her purse. But she knows the clean strip around her wrist will bother her if she thinks about it. Importantly, she did not forget her journal; it is safe in her purse with her favorite pen, and the purse is bouncing reassuringly on her hip. She probably won't use it today, since she and her younger sister Becky are just walking around the mall—but she feels naked without it. It's risky not to bring the journal. She imagines if she didn't have paper or a pen, running into the nearest store: The girl looks up lazily from the counter, Can I help you? She says, Um, Can I borrow a pen? And do you have a scrap of paper? I had a sudden thought and I'm going to be famous someday so I thought I should write it down. You can have my autograph if you want.

But she has her journal and she even has her sister, which adds up to a lot on a weekend home from college. Tangent to the noise of Becky's rollicking social commentary, she thinks of homework and how much she has procrastinated and that she will be tired after church again. She knows she will have to get some serious caffeine tomorrow night to keep her awake for the hour-drive back to school. But Becky is wired today, and the social commentary interrupts in loud, high frequencies. They are both bargain-shopping for fall clothes. Becky is shopping for a man, as she always is. There are boys who look at Becky when she walks past, but she's looking for a good boy, a rich, kind boy who will want lots of children.

"Ooh, Maria," says Becky. "Look at that one. Three o'clock blue shirt blond hair."

"Nice," Maria says. She's absolutely sure Becky will marry someone who is gorgeous and successful. And kind. And flexible. And tolerant. He will be looking for a stay-at-home-mom/hot babe combo platter, which is Becky—who just now swings her dark hair around to get it out of her face; her lips are pooched a little, her eyebrows raised… She's definitely in hunting mode.

Maria wishes this particular day would not end, even though shopping wears her out brutally. She is much more at ease with this supermodel of a sister than the hundreds of normal people at school. She tries to look them all in the eyes, but she's always too aware of her pale face and hair and waist and small bony hands and all the awkward moments she has ever known.

She is thinking, lately, how whatever man wants to like her will have to love all those awkwardnesses. She pictures herself explaining to him: I am always forgetting something (she laughs, remembering her wrist). I'm always running late, always asking questions about things everyone else already knows. I am forever calling a prof or classmate I barely know to find out about an assignment, because I'm always daydreaming during that part of a lecture. My pants are sometimes too short, my sweaters just a little too big, my sleeves not quite long enough to cover my wrists. My hair is always flat, my hands often dry and red. I am always cold. I have written dozens of thousands of letters to many friends and regretted writing them thirty seconds or an hour or a day after they were sent. When I'm tired I get dramatically emotional and blow everything out of proportion.

She pictures him explaining to her: Well, if your hands are cold… you know what they say… and smiling. Whoever he is, she wishes him Godspeed. She can’t help but wonder, though—if he touched her hands, would he find their coldness repulsive? She stares at her fingers, her dry reptilian skin. Then she manhandles her concentration, veering it back to Becky who is trying on a sweater.

Sunday night she is back at school. She didn't mean for the weekend to end so quickly—really, she didn’t—and she wonders why she is here if she's living for weekends and the hours in between homework and classes. She worked two jobs this summer, a nice little café job in the days and a gas station in the evenings, and most of it went to pay for this school. Here she is feeling like the kid in the very back corner of the classroom, in their desks everyone shooting away from her in a fan-shape; by nature she's on the corner, on the border, outside the window. It's the same in her room. Her roommate doesn't know her very well—at all, really—and she goes to bed early. Maria doesn't even know how to do that. She wonders, should she move out at semester? If she asked another girl, what if she said no? As she falls asleep she scrolls through a list of possible roommates, narrowing it down to a few who are very likely to consider the idea.

Coming back has made her quiet; it always does. The weekend filled her with life like there's a balloon of it in her lungs, and she's slowly letting it out, to propel her through the week. She is all very still and ready.

So now she is laying in the top bed with her lungs rasping from allergies. The rest of her is quiet, and she's looking around without moving, her neck tight on the thin pillow. All the shadows are soft. The light coming in from the blinds glows dark orange, laying velvet strips on the ceiling. Her roommate coughs across the room. She should be tired but she's not; she wishes morning weren't coming so fast. She has ideas she wants to write down, like the light coming in the blinds. There will be pen and paper in the morning, she tells herself, and the room will still be here tomorrow night.

She considers taking a walk. Sometimes when it is late and she's alone it is best for her to go out someplace, and be under the sky, and when she comes back her bed is amiable and warm. Then the room is not solitary, only silent.

It's not such a bad place to be a writer, maybe. At night, outside, there is openness between buildings. During the day it suffocates, all the moving bodies, the eyes, the doors swinging, but at night everything is sealed, the grass glows blue in the moonlight and waits and the buildings sleep. There are streetlights, but they are quiet, knowing their place. The trees are like silent mothers guarding sickbeds, holding steady shoulders up. But, between the trees the stars spread open and their arms push back the corners of the sky into the dark branches. There are nights when she doesn't walk long because it is too big for her, the wide Indiana sky. Besides, lately it is far too cold. Poor circulation runs in the family, and once Maria is cold it is hard for her to get warm again.

After all, she is only one, only holding onto the earth by the slick, helpless bottoms of her feet, and they lack gravity—there is so much of the space, and so little of the earth. Even the oblivious buildings are helpless before the space, the shriek and distance of it, their pale square bodies silent and surrounded.

In the morning the buildings, tan and round-cornered with morning mist, wake and open to yawning students with loaded backpacks. A butterfly who has been in the air since dawn lands on shoulders outside the commons, where Maria, swinging a styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and a bottle of water in the other, pushes open with her hip first the inside door then the outside door. She holds her back straight, unable to relax or walk without thinking of the ball-and-socket joints of her hips swiveling. Her shoulders are tense; it is a scared-of-people day. She frowns at the sidewalk jolting dirty under her feet.

"Maria," says a low voice, and she looks up as the greeting shoots toward her in the thin morning air.

"Hi," she says, looking at Gale from beneath her eyebrows. He is not too terrifying. His brown eyes are slow and cautious like he is a scribe copying the Bible letter by letter. She feels a surge of jabber coming, since she can probably tell him about being scared of people, even if he can’t empathize. She’s glad he doesn’t have to deal with her rambling too often, though.

"How are you?" he says, and watches her face.

"Okay," she says. She tries to keep the words to a minimum, watching to see if the interest will leave his careful face. "I'm having one of those days where I'm scared of everybody for no good reason." Immediately she regrets saying this, a little, and tries to laugh at herself, smiling a slow strained smile.

"Sorry about that." He playfully punches her shoulder and she forgets her joints and her rambling temporarily. "Where are you headed?" he says.

"Biology…"

"Ah," and she is surprised to hear undertones of need in his voice. He walks with such a long, easy stride, like a conveyor belt, and his face declares nothing but amusement… usually. Today there is a gleaming, a certain soprano sharpness. He says, "I'll walk with you. I don't have anything to do for a while."

"All right."

"Biology… How do you feel about that class?"

"Hate it," and she smiles up at him, her mouth caught on the edge of laughter.

He does laugh, out loud, and suddenly points at a large shadow sliding away from them on the sidewalk. "Hey, see that?" he says, and looks at the sky.

"Bird?"

"Actually, no, a butterfly."

"Hmm.” She considers that the undertones she heard were not need, but surely just friendliness.

"Weird how big the shadow was."

"Yeah,” she says. She thinks hard for a moment, trying to draw some creative comment from the slowness of her too-early-morning mind. "I wonder if she knows her shadow is so big," she says, and pictures a comic-book butterfly gazing down at the tiny earth, one feeler shading her brow from the sun.

"I doubt butterflies look down to see what kind of shadow they're making," says Gale, and raises his eyebrows a little.

"Well, maybe not," she says.

As the butterfly’s shadow rushes forward all the small patches of shadow suddenly stretch and merge into one, the sun passing under a cloud. Maria shivers, thinking of cold hands, and warm hands. Her legs are tired, her muscles working too hard to keep up with Gale's long, strong striding.

In the temporary darkness, their conversation comes upon an empty space. Gale keeps up his pace, looking at the ground, at his shoelaces, briefly at Maria, back to the ground. Maria shivers again. She pictures some man, Gale-like, throwing one arm around her kindly. Gale does not, but he sees the quivering lips pale from cold. He sees, too, how white and red-splotched her hands are, and stares at them for a moment until she looks up. They are nearly to her class.

"Have a good day," she says, and urges her cold lips to smile. She hopes it looks real.

"Thanks, you too."

She slips the bottle of water under her arm and uses the free hand to pull the door open. There are some days during the winter, she remembers from last year, when she is so cold she's not sure she can make it the last thirty feet to the door: she tells a friend, once in a while, that when it's that cold she just wants to “lay down in the snow and die.” She always says it laughing, but only when she is inside and her fingers are throbbing with sudden heat.

It's not that cold yet, and there is no snow—only a little mud, some of which she rubs from her shoes onto a mat before walking into the classroom. She finds her brother, who is slouching at the back; his World Civilization book is on the floor beside him. She is the only upperclassman in the room, but their parents thought it would be “good quality time” to have a class together.

"Mason, move your bag," she says, and he drags his huge backpack off the chair next to him and it drops to the floor where it clunks loudly. Maria winces.

"Hi to you too," he says. His hair sticks out in every direction in exclamation points. It looks as though it is trying to dash away from his head.

"Hi."

"Didja do the homework?" he says, tapping on her arm. His arm is long and lanky, his gestures overdramatic and invading. She moves her arm an inch.

"Yeah."

"I didn't."

"Way to go," and she pats him on the shoulder gently, then digs in her backpack for her journal. She drops the journal and her notebook on the desk, and then digs again for a pen. Mason drums on his desk with his knuckles.

"Quit, before I strangle you," says Maria, and he drums a final flurry of beats and then sticks his bony hands under his knees.

"I had this humongous paper due last night, I mean massive," he says, "which is why I didn't get the homework done. Plus at about one a.m. Brian says 'Mason, my life sucks,' so I kinda had to listen to him for a while. I hate not getting my homework done, though. You know how that is."

"Yep," she says. "Hey, guess what? I got a letter." She pulls it from her journal and touches the slick stamp with her pinkie finger.

"Swell," he says.

"From Vanessa."

"Hey, I know her," he says. "From school. High school I mean."

"Yeh." She slowly rips open the top of the envelope.

"You guys used to go sit in restaurants and talk forever."

"Yeah. I miss that."

"I would too."

She unfolds the notebook-paper and even unfolded it is thick. Essie's writing is jaunty, darting outside the lines as often as possible. Essie would understand about school, Maria says to herself, about the snow and the blinds laying stripes on the ceiling, and trying to be a writer when she can't look at people.

Although—it's not such bad place to be a writer, when she has a letter. Especially one like this. She almost doesn't want to read it yet, to bring a clean alone self to the magic; but she can't wait. As the professor talks she holds it flat on top of her notebook with both hands and reads quickly. If it is a good one it will keep her going through the day, and she might get all her homework done.

From the beginning the words are sharp and strong, gripping her from the fingertips in to the bones and then all the way through. Essie knows how to use words right; they have that between them—maybe it's instinct, or maybe, Maria considers, they just know this is the age when they need the strongest words.

Essie has just returned from China. She started the letter from the plane…

"It sounds very lovely," she writes, "and earth-shattering and poetic, so I shall share it with you. We are chasing the sun."

"Read this," Maria whispers to her brother, pointing at the lines. "Isn't that beautiful? I love it. I love this girl."

"Yes," he says, and goes back to taking notes.

Maria stops reading for a moment, staring at a space in between the lines. They are sad girls together, she and Essie. They like to be reminiscent and drink coffee and chat about their losses. She keeps reading. Most recently Essie has lost a soulmate of sorts—"I have managed to pull myself though the trial of her leaving,” she says—but Maria believes she and Essie have both settled into more permanent friendships. She hopes, anyway. It seems Essie is the only one returning letters. Now she devours the rest of the letter quickly, hungry for every word, leaving no time for digestion. She is leaning on her desk with her back entirely curved, and her hair hangs in a little cave around her face.

Essie wraps up.

"Dear, it has been so easy for me to write these things to you. If I weren't already in a band, I would start one called Letters to Maria or something."

At the bottom of the last page, in large block letters, she writes: “Private words and confessions. I love how safe and easy and good it is to tell you what precisely is in my heart. You’re the only one I can, and ever could.”

O for joy! Maria sings to herself. These words are as though Essie is squeezing her hand, It'll Be Okay. Essie is a lifesaver, the orange and white kinds in the rough-sea-rescue movies. With a hot guy waiting on deck and they wrap the girl up in blankets and give her soup. All of the above, she is.

When Maria walks out the door after class, the air is much warmer and the ground is dry; the warm breeze catches under her chin and softens her clenching jaw. The coffee is making her jittery, and her hands are shaking in her pockets, but she tilts her head up and breathes in the sun and nearly runs into some girl.

"Hey," says Gale, this time from behind her. She slows and lets him catch up.

"Hiya," she says.

"You know… I read once, somewhere, that unicorns drink moonlight."

"Do they?" She looks at his bangs, curling with the wind, questioning above his forehead. She has read this, too, but it sounds like a foreign language coming from Gale’s gentle lips.

"Yeah," he says. He puts a finger on the side of her head, presses once, and drops his arm. "I wonder what that would make you?"

She nearly trips. Gale is a science major. He studies wiggling organisms and one day he'll teach apathetic teenagers about cell life. She looks up at him, astonished, but controlling the wideness of her eyes. His eyes slanting down toward her face, he shoots his eyebrows up and then back, smiles, and looks forward again walking. They split with quick bye-see-you-laters when he has to go to class, and she continues to her dorm.

The day is exhilarating: when she finally escapes the herds of people rushing between classes, Maria occasionally closes her eyes and walks guided only by the smells of bark and ripe, aging trees and a whiff of cologne like a cloud waiting for her to pass through it.

When her eyes are open, she looks at the sky, memorizing the sketchy clouds and the washes of dark grey and blue, lighter toward the west where the pale winter sun is low. As she nears her dorm she focuses on one particular tree, as she does every day: she does not know what kind it is, but its trunk and branches are white with small patches of flaky bark. She finds the gaping sky in between the topmost branches, marveling at the sharp shapes, and marveling too how in the darker part of evening the tree becomes a silhouette and the branches angle crisp and twisted against the soft sky.

By the time she reaches her room she is nearly skipping. Her roommate is typing and listening to loud music, and Maria will have to eventually ask her to turn it down so she can sleep. After such a beginning to a day there is a lot to think about, and she is tired. Maria’s roommate seems to hold her neck very straight to keep her face aimed at wherever she is looking, whenever Maria is around. But she dismisses this often, and again today. She turns the faucet on only a little so it isn’t annoyingly loud. The water is warm silk in her hands, slips around on her cheeks and forehead. She can hardly feel the soap. She’s all numb, her face and hands, numb when she pulls her hair back and numb when she puts on her pajama pants and a sweatshirt. She gets numb like this (and often funny and quiet) when she is tired. But she will do better today once she has slept. She has a long evening of homework ahead of her. She pulls down the shade, squinting at the sun, and climbs into her bunk.

She reads a little Bible before she sleeps. It helps, sometimes, on the bad days, and it is good for her on the better days too.

Therefore be clear-minded and self-controlled so that you can pray.

She is almost too tired to read, and goes over the same line until it sticks.

Therefore be clear-minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Therefore be clear-minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Therefore be clear-minded and self-controlled so that you can pray.

She flips pages.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Count it all joy.

As she falls asleep she tries to find the curves of Gale’s face in her mind. His portrait is slow in coming—the colors in the face are soft, small browns and blues, features gently watercolored. Then the colors fade into a blurred brown field, the sky muted greys, sunless… She wakes herself slightly, to bring back Gale’s face, to fall asleep to it. His is not the sort of face to keep her awake.

She sleeps longer than she had originally planned, skipping her afternoon class on purpose. Sometimes it’s better to skip a class and sleep than to be sleepy and inside out all day… So when there is a phone call at five the ringing wakes her up. The images floating in her head have not changed much since the night before, and there is fluttering in her chest as she climbs down to the floor and answers. It is Mason. She will meet him at the coffeehouse to study, at eight, and maybe get some coffee. Her shoulders hang a little as she gathers her books, sliding them without looking into her bag, and zipping it quickly. She throws her bag over her shoulder and stares at her feet moving until she reaches the coffeehouse. Mason will not be there for another three hours, so she plans to get most of her reading done. She finds a table soft with sunlight coming in through dirty windows, swipes off a few biscotti crumbs, and pulls out her book.

At first she has trouble concentrating. She recognizes several people at a table across the room; they are from the church she attends. One of them is in her poetry class, too. He puts a hand up in greeting, suddenly, and she says “hi,” the word barely coming out. She finds she cannot move; if she moves her legs her ankles will show, and if she turns in her chair it will look awkward, and right at the moment, if she puts her hands on the table she will probably knock something off. It is not him in particular, although she has thought before that they might make decent friends; it is something else. She suddenly remembers the pimple on her forehead. It’s good that none of them can see her up close.

For a long while she is able to concentrate. Only once in a while there is a click, and a rush of fear in her chest, and she tries to angle her head so that no-one around can see her too-pointy profile. When she feels her head is correctly positioned, she relaxes a little; but she has a little bit of a cold and has to keep blowing her nose. If I saw someone blowing his nose here, she thinks, I would not want my coffee in the same room.

After a while she doesn’t have to blow her nose so much and she forgets about her profile. She wonders if it would be strange to go up and say hello to the kid she knows from class. At eight fifteen Mason walks in, his back curved under a heavy backpack, his steps confidant and quick. He slides onto the seat across from her.

“Hi,” she says, her voice low. She stares at a pattern of scratches on the table.

“Wake up, oh Mari-i-uh, wake up,” he sings, scratchy, and stretches across the table to pat her head.

“I am.”

“Y’okay?”

“Yeah.”

His voice has a little song. “Sure?”

“Yeah.”

“You want a refill or anything?”

Now she looks up to see him pulling his wallet out of his back pocket, his skinny frame slouched sideways in the booth.

“Sure,” she says.

“Or do you want something exciting?”

“That would be lovely… Irish cream something. How about, just coffee, with Irish Cream, but iced.”

“Yes,” he says, “that sounds good.”

She bends her head back down to her reading, but before she can read a sentence she is struck by the tall figure of her brother, leaning casually at the coffeebar far across the room: his bones slack, hanging in his clothes, his long, knuckly fingers spasmodically clenching and fanning out—he is chatting with whoever is making their coffees—and one foot tapping rapidly on the hard floor. He is seventeen, and just barely, a very smart kid—a very smart kid. As she stares down at the table again there is that feeling of a gap, of something she didn’t notice, perhaps something Mason has that she doesn’t—but here he is, a steaming cup in one hand and her cup in the other. He sets them down on the table, his wrists awkwardly bent.

“Cold, right?” he says.

“Yeah. Thanks, pal.”

“No prob.”

Her cold cup drips moisture onto the table, and she smears it around with her finger. In the coffeehouse there are people sprinkled around the room, a variety--faint differences in hair color—red, blond, dark, differences in clothing too. There is one person with a laptop, hunched, face strong and tan in the sunlight but glowing a little blue from the screen. A laptop-wielding coffeehouse patron seems like a kind of prophet—so concentrated, mysteriously clicking. Sometimes she has seen Gale here, squinting into a screen. Sometimes, too, he is with a cluster of unfamiliar guys. Then he seems like a member of an altogether alien species.

“What kind of homework do you have?” says Mason, and she jumps a little.

“Just reading, and journaling.”

“Ah.” He waits a few seconds, and adds, “I have mostly reading, but I have to study for a quiz too, in Phys-Psych.”

“Yeah.”

“Everybody said it was such a hard class, but it’s not so bad.”

“That’s good,” she says, and swishes the ice in her cup to mix in the flavor. Mason talks about classes a lot. She is tired of the hello-hows-it-goings, of the how-was-your-weekends, of the quick glance up to say hi to a stranger. She is tired of talking about school. There’s real life, too. She’s tired of things not happening soon enough. She considers writing Essie and telling her not to tie herself down to a roommate for next year. When she thinks about it hard enough… she looks around at the dark figures in the room. There is no one to keep her here. Or no one who would want to keep her here, once they touched her clammy hands... She frowns, scrunching her eyebrows at her book. Mason drops his head and blows gently on his coffee, and then opens a textbook.

“Read well,” he says, and pulls a highlighter out of his bag. Then he places his elbows solidly on the table and reads, his neck craned, occasionally slashing the highlighter across a page.

After a little while someone taps on Maria’s shoulder. Yes, it is Gale.

“Hi,” he says, “What are you reading?” He sits on a chair between Maria and her brother, lowering his bookbag to the floor.

“Ethan Frome,” she says, turning the book to show him the cover.

“Hi Gale,” says Mason.

“Hey, what’s up, Mason?” He points at the book with his eyes. “I read that last year.”

“Usual,” says Mason. “School.”

“Really?” says Maria.

“Yep, and actually, I think there was a part that reminded me of you…”

“Seriously? Where?”

He takes the book from her and flips through. She knows where he is going, almost, because when she had come to a particular line she had stopped, scribbled it on her bookbag, and smiled about it for a half-hour afterwards.

“Here,” he says. Then he reads:

“Ah… The…trees and fields spoke to him with powerful persuasion.” He leans back triumphantly.

“Nice,” says Mason.

“That’s it!” she says, “I thought of me too.”

“I like Mattie,” says Gale. “She’s fascinating.”

“Yeah,” Maria says. “I suppose if I’m Ethan, I’m sort of looking for a Mattie. Vice-versa, of course.” She flips through the book to find her place again.

“That makes sense.”

“Matties don’t come along very often,” she says.

“Nope, they don’t.” He looks at his hands, thickly wrapped in brown skin.

“I should read. I have a hundred-some pages left tonight.”

“Right.” He nods as he bends down to fumble around in his backpack. As soon as he is sitting up straight again, he takes a deep breath and exhales it toward the table from his mouth. Then his head comes up, neck straight, and he looks at Maria’s small white forehead.

“Do you want to take a walk?” he says. “Just as a short break, maybe?”

“A walk?” She looks at his face, and sees the jaw muscles shifting with his words.

“I’ll be okay,” says Mason, looking up from his textbook and blinking. “You guys go ahead.” He watches Maria, sees her face turn a little ghostly, sees her wipe her hands on her jeans.

“It’s a pretty incredible night out there,” says Gale, nodding toward the door. “Clouds and stars and whatnot. You know. You can say it better than I can.” Her eyes widen.

“I try,” she says. She sits back and forces her muscles to relax, turning a pen in one hand and looking at his hair.

“Um,” she says, and switches the pen to the other hand. “As much as I would love to…”

“Aww, Maria,” he says, and grabs hold of her wrist with both of his hands. “You know you’re going crazy to get outside.”

Her whole body twitches once, as though a small bolt of lightening has struck her. Leaning forward, he sees a startled flash in her eyes, like something wild. Then she pulls her small hand out of his and tucks her arm across her waist. She nods. She is going crazy to get out. But there is the what if. There is what if about the clammy red-splotched hands.

“But I really should read,” she says. He nods back.

Mason watches as his chest expands too quickly, and when he sighs it is hard for his lungs to let go of the air. When he speaks again his voice is low and flat.

“Okay. I should get back and do some homework then,” he says.

“I should be more careful about homework,” she says, her hand still clasped to her side. “It gets away from me. But everybody can’t be a procrastinator.” She follows his face with hers as he stands up. Mason looks over at her, slouching, and raises his eyebrows until they are stretched across the top of his face.

Gale glances at him, pushes one corner of his mouth upward, and picks up his coat and bookbag. He takes a step backward into the open floor of the coffeehouse. Carrying his coat under one arm and throwing his bookbag over a shoulder, he turns and heads for the door. Before he gets too far he turns his head a little and tells them goodbye. Mason leaves a few minutes later, after finishing his coffee, but Maria reads off and on until the coffeehouse is nearly empty.

Around midnight she finishes her book, and looks up and around the coffeehouse to note who is still there and how the light has changed. She slides her novel carefully in her bookbag. On the way out she delicately drops her empty coffee cup into the trash, and then opens the door, bracing herself against the coolness of the night.

Hi this is a story that I wrote for my english coursewrk. Any feedback is appreciated.



I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
But that was just a dream…
--R.E.M. “Losing My Religion”

She is timeless today: She has forgotten her watch.

It's all right because she has a spare—a clip-watch on her purse. But she knows the clean strip around her wrist will bother her if she thinks about it. Importantly, she did not forget her journal; it is safe in her purse with her favorite pen, and the purse is bouncing reassuringly on her hip. She probably won't use it today, since she and her younger sister Becky are just walking around the mall—but she feels naked without it. It's risky not to bring the journal. She imagines if she didn't have paper or a pen, running into the nearest store: The girl looks up lazily from the counter, Can I help you? She says, Um, Can I borrow a pen? And do you have a scrap of paper? I had a sudden thought and I'm going to be famous someday so I thought I should write it down. You can have my autograph if you want.

But she has her journal and she even has her sister, which adds up to a lot on a weekend home from college. Tangent to the noise of Becky's rollicking social commentary, she thinks of homework and how much she has procrastinated and that she will be tired after church again. She knows she will have to get some serious caffeine tomorrow night to keep her awake for the hour-drive back to school. But Becky is wired today, and the social commentary interrupts in loud, high frequencies. They are both bargain-shopping for fall clothes. Becky is shopping for a man, as she always is. There are boys who look at Becky when she walks past, but she's looking for a good boy, a rich, kind boy who will want lots of children.

"Ooh, Maria," says Becky. "Look at that one. Three o'clock blue shirt blond hair."

"Nice," Maria says. She's absolutely sure Becky will marry someone who is gorgeous and successful. And kind. And flexible. And tolerant. He will be looking for a stay-at-home-mom/hot babe combo platter, which is Becky—who just now swings her dark hair around to get it out of her face; her lips are pooched a little, her eyebrows raised… She's definitely in hunting mode.

Maria wishes this particular day would not end, even though shopping wears her out brutally. She is much more at ease with this supermodel of a sister than the hundreds of normal people at school. She tries to look them all in the eyes, but she's always too aware of her pale face and hair and waist and small bony hands and all the awkward moments she has ever known.

She is thinking, lately, how whatever man wants to like her will have to love all those awkwardnesses. She pictures herself explaining to him: I am always forgetting something (she laughs, remembering her wrist). I'm always running late, always asking questions about things everyone else already knows. I am forever calling a prof or classmate I barely know to find out about an assignment, because I'm always daydreaming during that part of a lecture. My pants are sometimes too short, my sweaters just a little too big, my sleeves not quite long enough to cover my wrists. My hair is always flat, my hands often dry and red. I am always cold. I have written dozens of thousands of letters to many friends and regretted writing them thirty seconds or an hour or a day after they were sent. When I'm tired I get dramatically emotional and blow everything out of proportion.

She pictures him explaining to her: Well, if your hands are cold… you know what they say… and smiling. Whoever he is, she wishes him Godspeed. She can’t help but wonder, though—if he touched her hands, would he find their coldness repulsive? She stares at her fingers, her dry reptilian skin. Then she manhandles her concentration, veering it back to Becky who is trying on a sweater.

Sunday night she is back at school. She didn't mean for the weekend to end so quickly—really, she didn’t—and she wonders why she is here if she's living for weekends and the hours in between homework and classes. She worked two jobs this summer, a nice little café job in the days and a gas station in the evenings, and most of it went to pay for this school. Here she is feeling like the kid in the very back corner of the classroom, in their desks everyone shooting away from her in a fan-shape; by nature she's on the corner, on the border, outside the window. It's the same in her room. Her roommate doesn't know her very well—at all, really—and she goes to bed early. Maria doesn't even know how to do that. She wonders, should she move out at semester? If she asked another girl, what if she said no? As she falls asleep she scrolls through a list of possible roommates, narrowing it down to a few who are very likely to consider the idea.

Coming back has made her quiet; it always does. The weekend filled her with life like there's a balloon of it in her lungs, and she's slowly letting it out, to propel her through the week. She is all very still and ready.

So now she is laying in the top bed with her lungs rasping from allergies. The rest of her is quiet, and she's looking around without moving, her neck tight on the thin pillow. All the shadows are soft. The light coming in from the blinds glows dark orange, laying velvet strips on the ceiling. Her roommate coughs across the room. She should be tired but she's not; she wishes morning weren't coming so fast. She has ideas she wants to write down, like the light coming in the blinds. There will be pen and paper in the morning, she tells herself, and the room will still be here tomorrow night.

She considers taking a walk. Sometimes when it is late and she's alone it is best for her to go out someplace, and be under the sky, and when she comes back her bed is amiable and warm. Then the room is not solitary, only silent.

It's not such a bad place to be a writer, maybe. At night, outside, there is openness between buildings. During the day it suffocates, all the moving bodies, the eyes, the doors swinging, but at night everything is sealed, the grass glows blue in the moonlight and waits and the buildings sleep. There are streetlights, but they are quiet, knowing their place. The trees are like silent mothers guarding sickbeds, holding steady shoulders up. But, between the trees the stars spread open and their arms push back the corners of the sky into the dark branches. There are nights when she doesn't walk long because it is too big for her, the wide Indiana sky. Besides, lately it is far too cold. Poor circulation runs in the family, and once Maria is cold it is hard for her to get warm again.

After all, she is only one, only holding onto the earth by the slick, helpless bottoms of her feet, and they lack gravity—there is so much of the space, and so little of the earth. Even the oblivious buildings are helpless before the space, the shriek and distance of it, their pale square bodies silent and surrounded.

In the morning the buildings, tan and round-cornered with morning mist, wake and open to yawning students with loaded backpacks. A butterfly who has been in the air since dawn lands on shoulders outside the commons, where Maria, swinging a styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and a bottle of water in the other, pushes open with her hip first the inside door then the outside door. She holds her back straight, unable to relax or walk without thinking of the ball-and-socket joints of her hips swiveling. Her shoulders are tense; it is a scared-of-people day. She frowns at the sidewalk jolting dirty under her feet.

"Maria," says a low voice, and she looks up as the greeting shoots toward her in the thin morning air.

"Hi," she says, looking at Gale from beneath her eyebrows. He is not too terrifying. His brown eyes are slow and cautious like he is a scribe copying the Bible letter by letter. She feels a surge of jabber coming, since she can probably tell him about being scared of people, even if he can’t empathize. She’s glad he doesn’t have to deal with her rambling too often, though.

"How are you?" he says, and watches her face.

"Okay," she says. She tries to keep the words to a minimum, watching to see if the interest will leave his careful face. "I'm having one of those days where I'm scared of everybody for no good reason." Immediately she regrets saying this, a little, and tries to laugh at herself, smiling a slow strained smile.

"Sorry about that." He playfully punches her shoulder and she forgets her joints and her rambling temporarily. "Where are you headed?" he says.

"Biology…"

"Ah," and she is surprised to hear undertones of need in his voice. He walks with such a long, easy stride, like a conveyor belt, and his face declares nothing but amusement… usually. Today there is a gleaming, a certain soprano sharpness. He says, "I'll walk with you. I don't have anything to do for a while."

"All right."

"Biology… How do you feel about that class?"

"Hate it," and she smiles up at him, her mouth caught on the edge of laughter.

He does laugh, out loud, and suddenly points at a large shadow sliding away from them on the sidewalk. "Hey, see that?" he says, and looks at the sky.

"Bird?"

"Actually, no, a butterfly."

"Hmm.” She considers that the undertones she heard were not need, but surely just friendliness.

"Weird how big the shadow was."

"Yeah,” she says. She thinks hard for a moment, trying to draw some creative comment from the slowness of her too-early-morning mind. "I wonder if she knows her shadow is so big," she says, and pictures a comic-book butterfly gazing down at the tiny earth, one feeler shading her brow from the sun.

"I doubt butterflies look down to see what kind of shadow they're making," says Gale, and raises his eyebrows a little.

"Well, maybe not," she says.

As the butterfly’s shadow rushes forward all the small patches of shadow suddenly stretch and merge into one, the sun passing under a cloud. Maria shivers, thinking of cold hands, and warm hands. Her legs are tired, her muscles working too hard to keep up with Gale's long, strong striding.

In the temporary darkness, their conversation comes upon an empty space. Gale keeps up his pace, looking at the ground, at his shoelaces, briefly at Maria, back to the ground. Maria shivers again. She pictures some man, Gale-like, throwing one arm around her kindly. Gale does not, but he sees the quivering lips pale from cold. He sees, too, how white and red-splotched her hands are, and stares at them for a moment until she looks up. They are nearly to her class.

"Have a good day," she says, and urges her cold lips to smile. She hopes it looks real.

"Thanks, you too."

She slips the bottle of water under her arm and uses the free hand to pull the door open. There are some days during the winter, she remembers from last year, when she is so cold she's not sure she can make it the last thirty feet to the door: she tells a friend, once in a while, that when it's that cold she just wants to “lay down in the snow and die.” She always says it laughing, but only when she is inside and her fingers are throbbing with sudden heat.

It's not that cold yet, and there is no snow—only a little mud, some of which she rubs from her shoes onto a mat before walking into the classroom. She finds her brother, who is slouching at the back; his World Civilization book is on the floor beside him. She is the only upperclassman in the room, but their parents thought it would be “good quality time” to have a class together.

"Mason, move your bag," she says, and he drags his huge backpack off the chair next to him and it drops to the floor where it clunks loudly. Maria winces.

"Hi to you too," he says. His hair sticks out in every direction in exclamation points. It looks as though it is trying to dash away from his head.

"Hi."

"Didja do the homework?" he says, tapping on her arm. His arm is long and lanky, his gestures overdramatic and invading. She moves her arm an inch.

"Yeah."

"I didn't."

"Way to go," and she pats him on the shoulder gently, then digs in her backpack for her journal. She drops the journal and her notebook on the desk, and then digs again for a pen. Mason drums on his desk with his knuckles.

"Quit, before I strangle you," says Maria, and he drums a final flurry of beats and then sticks his bony hands under his knees.

"I had this humongous paper due last night, I mean massive," he says, "which is why I didn't get the homework done. Plus at about one a.m. Brian says 'Mason, my life sucks,' so I kinda had to listen to him for a while. I hate not getting my homework done, though. You know how that is."

"Yep," she says. "Hey, guess what? I got a letter." She pulls it from her journal and touches the slick stamp with her pinkie finger.

"Swell," he says.

"From Vanessa."

"Hey, I know her," he says. "From school. High school I mean."

"Yeh." She slowly rips open the top of the envelope.

"You guys used to go sit in restaurants and talk forever."

"Yeah. I miss that."

"I would too."

She unfolds the notebook-paper and even unfolded it is thick. Essie's writing is jaunty, darting outside the lines as often as possible. Essie would understand about school, Maria says to herself, about the snow and the blinds laying stripes on the ceiling, and trying to be a writer when she can't look at people.

Although—it's not such bad place to be a writer, when she has a letter. Especially one like this. She almost doesn't want to read it yet, to bring a clean alone self to the magic; but she can't wait. As the professor talks she holds it flat on top of her notebook with both hands and reads quickly. If it is a good one it will keep her going through the day, and she might get all her homework done.

From the beginning the words are sharp and strong, gripping her from the fingertips in to the bones and then all the way through. Essie knows how to use words right; they have that between them—maybe it's instinct, or maybe, Maria considers, they just know this is the age when they need the strongest words.

Essie has just returned from China. She started the letter from the plane…

"It sounds very lovely," she writes, "and earth-shattering and poetic, so I shall share it with you. We are chasing the sun."

"Read this," Maria whispers to her brother, pointing at the lines. "Isn't that beautiful? I love it. I love this girl."

"Yes," he says, and goes back to taking notes.

Maria stops reading for a moment, staring at a space in between the lines. They are sad girls together, she and Essie. They like to be reminiscent and drink coffee and chat about their losses. She keeps reading. Most recently Essie has lost a soulmate of sorts—"I have managed to pull myself though the trial of her leaving,” she says—but Maria believes she and Essie have both settled into more permanent friendships. She hopes, anyway. It seems Essie is the only one returning letters. Now she devours the rest of the letter quickly, hungry for every word, leaving no time for digestion. She is leaning on her desk with her back entirely curved, and her hair hangs in a little cave around her face.

Essie wraps up.

"Dear, it has been so easy for me to write these things to you. If I weren't already in a band, I would start one called Letters to Maria or something."

At the bottom of the last page, in large block letters, she writes: “Private words and confessions. I love how safe and easy and good it is to tell you what precisely is in my heart. You’re the only one I can, and ever could.”

O for joy! Maria sings to herself. These words are as though Essie is squeezing her hand, It'll Be Okay. Essie is a lifesaver, the orange and white kinds in the rough-sea-rescue movies. With a hot guy waiting on deck and they wrap the girl up in blankets and give her soup. All of the above, she is.

When Maria walks out the door after class, the air is much warmer and the ground is dry; the warm breeze catches under her chin and softens her clenching jaw. The coffee is making her jittery, and her hands are shaking in her pockets, but she tilts her head up and breathes in the sun and nearly runs into some girl.

"Hey," says Gale, this time from behind her. She slows and lets him catch up.

"Hiya," she says.

"You know… I read once, somewhere, that unicorns drink moonlight."

"Do they?" She looks at his bangs, curling with the wind, questioning above his forehead. She has read this, too, but it sounds like a foreign language coming from Gale’s gentle lips.

"Yeah," he says. He puts a finger on the side of her head, presses once, and drops his arm. "I wonder what that would make you?"

She nearly trips. Gale is a science major. He studies wiggling organisms and one day he'll teach apathetic teenagers about cell life. She looks up at him, astonished, but controlling the wideness of her eyes. His eyes slanting down toward her face, he shoots his eyebrows up and then back, smiles, and looks forward again walking. They split with quick bye-see-you-laters when he has to go to class, and she continues to her dorm.

The day is exhilarating: when she finally escapes the herds of people rushing between classes, Maria occasionally closes her eyes and walks guided only by the smells of bark and ripe, aging trees and a whiff of cologne like a cloud waiting for her to pass through it.

When her eyes are open, she looks at the sky, memorizing the sketchy clouds and the washes of dark grey and blue, lighter toward the west where the pale winter sun is low. As she nears her dorm she focuses on one particular tree, as she does every day: she does not know what kind it is, but its trunk and branches are white with small patches of flaky bark. She finds the gaping sky in between the topmost branches, marveling at the sharp shapes, and marveling too how in the darker part of evening the tree becomes a silhouette and the branches angle crisp and twisted against the soft sky.

By the time she reaches her room she is nearly skipping. Her roommate is typing and listening to loud music, and Maria will have to eventually ask her to turn it down so she can sleep. After such a beginning to a day there is a lot to think about, and she is tired. Maria’s roommate seems to hold her neck very straight to keep her face aimed at wherever she is looking, whenever Maria is around. But she dismisses this often, and again today. She turns the faucet on only a little so it isn’t annoyingly loud. The water is warm silk in her hands, slips around on her cheeks and forehead. She can hardly feel the soap. She’s all numb, her face and hands, numb when she pulls her hair back and numb when she puts on her pajama pants and a sweatshirt. She gets numb like this (and often funny and quiet) when she is tired. But she will do better today once she has slept. She has a long evening of homework ahead of her. She pulls down the shade, squinting at the sun, and climbs into her bunk.

She reads a little Bible before she sleeps. It helps, sometimes, on the bad days, and it is good for her on the better days too.

Therefore be clear-minded and self-controlled so that you can pray.

She is almost too tired to read, and goes over the same line until it sticks.

Therefore be clear-minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Therefore be clear-minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Therefore be clear-minded and self-controlled so that you can pray.

She flips pages.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Count it all joy.

As she falls asleep she tries to find the curves of Gale’s face in her mind. His portrait is slow in coming—the colors in the face are soft, small browns and blues, features gently watercolored. Then the colors fade into a blurred brown field, the sky muted greys, sunless… She wakes herself slightly, to bring back Gale’s face, to fall asleep to it. His is not the sort of face to keep her awake.

She sleeps longer than she had originally planned, skipping her afternoon class on purpose. Sometimes it’s better to skip a class and sleep than to be sleepy and inside out all day… So when there is a phone call at five the ringing wakes her up. The images floating in her head have not changed much since the night before, and there is fluttering in her chest as she climbs down to the floor and answers. It is Mason. She will meet him at the coffeehouse to study, at eight, and maybe get some coffee. Her shoulders hang a little as she gathers her books, sliding them without looking into her bag, and zipping it quickly. She throws her bag over her shoulder and stares at her feet moving until she reaches the coffeehouse. Mason will not be there for another three hours, so she plans to get most of her reading done. She finds a table soft with sunlight coming in through dirty windows, swipes off a few biscotti crumbs, and pulls out her book.

At first she has trouble concentrating. She recognizes several people at a table across the room; they are from the church she attends. One of them is in her poetry class, too. He puts a hand up in greeting, suddenly, and she says “hi,” the word barely coming out. She finds she cannot move; if she moves her legs her ankles will show, and if she turns in her chair it will look awkward, and right at the moment, if she puts her hands on the table she will probably knock something off. It is not him in particular, although she has thought before that they might make decent friends; it is something else. She suddenly remembers the pimple on her forehead. It’s good that none of them can see her up close.

For a long while she is able to concentrate. Only once in a while there is a click, and a rush of fear in her chest, and she tries to angle her head so that no-one around can see her too-pointy profile. When she feels her head is correctly positioned, she relaxes a little; but she has a little bit of a cold and has to keep blowing her nose. If I saw someone blowing his nose here, she thinks, I would not want my coffee in the same room.

After a while she doesn’t have to blow her nose so much and she forgets about her profile. She wonders if it would be strange to go up and say hello to the kid she knows from class. At eight fifteen Mason walks in, his back curved under a heavy backpack, his steps confidant and quick. He slides onto the seat across from her.

“Hi,” she says, her voice low. She stares at a pattern of scratches on the table.

“Wake up, oh Mari-i-uh, wake up,” he sings, scratchy, and stretches across the table to pat her head.

“I am.”

“Y’okay?”

“Yeah.”

His voice has a little song. “Sure?”

“Yeah.”

“You want a refill or anything?”

Now she looks up to see him pulling his wallet out of his back pocket, his skinny frame slouched sideways in the booth.

“Sure,” she says.

“Or do you want something exciting?”

“That would be lovely… Irish cream something. How about, just coffee, with Irish Cream, but iced.”

“Yes,” he says, “that sounds good.”

She bends her head back down to her reading, but before she can read a sentence she is struck by the tall figure of her brother, leaning casually at the coffeebar far across the room: his bones slack, hanging in his clothes, his long, knuckly fingers spasmodically clenching and fanning out—he is chatting with whoever is making their coffees—and one foot tapping rapidly on the hard floor. He is seventeen, and just barely, a very smart kid—a very smart kid. As she stares down at the table again there is that feeling of a gap, of something she didn’t notice, perhaps something Mason has that she doesn’t—but here he is, a steaming cup in one hand and her cup in the other. He sets them down on the table, his wrists awkwardly bent.

“Cold, right?” he says.

“Yeah. Thanks, pal.”

“No prob.”

Her cold cup drips moisture onto the table, and she smears it around with her finger. In the coffeehouse there are people sprinkled around the room, a variety--faint differences in hair color—red, blond, dark, differences in clothing too. There is one person with a laptop, hunched, face strong and tan in the sunlight but glowing a little blue from the screen. A laptop-wielding coffeehouse patron seems like a kind of prophet—so concentrated, mysteriously clicking. Sometimes she has seen Gale here, squinting into a screen. Sometimes, too, he is with a cluster of unfamiliar guys. Then he seems like a member of an altogether alien species.

“What kind of homework do you have?” says Mason, and she jumps a little.

“Just reading, and journaling.”

“Ah.” He waits a few seconds, and adds, “I have mostly reading, but I have to study for a quiz too, in Phys-Psych.”

“Yeah.”

“Everybody said it was such a hard class, but it’s not so bad.”

“That’s good,” she says, and swishes the ice in her cup to mix in the flavor. Mason talks about classes a lot. She is tired of the hello-hows-it-goings, of the how-was-your-weekends, of the quick glance up to say hi to a stranger. She is tired of talking about school. There’s real life, too. She’s tired of things not happening soon enough. She considers writing Essie and telling her not to tie herself down to a roommate for next year. When she thinks about it hard enough… she looks around at the dark figures in the room. There is no one to keep her here. Or no one who would want to keep her here, once they touched her clammy hands... She frowns, scrunching her eyebrows at her book. Mason drops his head and blows gently on his coffee, and then opens a textbook.

“Read well,” he says, and pulls a highlighter out of his bag. Then he places his elbows solidly on the table and reads, his neck craned, occasionally slashing the highlighter across a page.

After a little while someone taps on Maria’s shoulder. Yes, it is Gale.

“Hi,” he says, “What are you reading?” He sits on a chair between Maria and her brother, lowering his bookbag to the floor.

“Ethan Frome,” she says, turning the book to show him the cover.

“Hi Gale,” says Mason.

“Hey, what’s up, Mason?” He points at the book with his eyes. “I read that last year.”

“Usual,” says Mason. “School.”

“Really?” says Maria.

“Yep, and actually, I think there was a part that reminded me of you…”

“Seriously? Where?”

He takes the book from her and flips through. She knows where he is going, almost, because when she had come to a particular line she had stopped, scribbled it on her bookbag, and smiled about it for a half-hour afterwards.

“Here,” he says. Then he reads:

“Ah… The…trees and fields spoke to him with powerful persuasion.” He leans back triumphantly.

“Nice,” says Mason.

“That’s it!” she says, “I thought of me too.”

“I like Mattie,” says Gale. “She’s fascinating.”

“Yeah,” Maria says. “I suppose if I’m Ethan, I’m sort of looking for a Mattie. Vice-versa, of course.” She flips through the book to find her place again.

“That makes sense.”

“Matties don’t come along very often,” she says.

“Nope, they don’t.” He looks at his hands, thickly wrapped in brown skin.

“I should read. I have a hundred-some pages left tonight.”

“Right.” He nods as he bends down to fumble around in his backpack. As soon as he is sitting up straight again, he takes a deep breath and exhales it toward the table from his mouth. Then his head comes up, neck straight, and he looks at Maria’s small white forehead.

“Do you want to take a walk?” he says. “Just as a short break, maybe?”

“A walk?” She looks at his face, and sees the jaw muscles shifting with his words.

“I’ll be okay,” says Mason, looking up from his textbook and blinking. “You guys go ahead.” He watches Maria, sees her face turn a little ghostly, sees her wipe her hands on her jeans.

“It’s a pretty incredible night out there,” says Gale, nodding toward the door. “Clouds and stars and whatnot. You know. You can say it better than I can.” Her eyes widen.

“I try,” she says. She sits back and forces her muscles to relax, turning a pen in one hand and looking at his hair.

“Um,” she says, and switches the pen to the other hand. “As much as I would love to…”

“Aww, Maria,” he says, and grabs hold of her wrist with both of his hands. “You know you’re going crazy to get outside.”

Her whole body twitches once, as though a small bolt of lightening has struck her. Leaning forward, he sees a startled flash in her eyes, like something wild. Then she pulls her small hand out of his and tucks her arm across her waist. She nods. She is going crazy to get out. But there is the what if. There is what if about the clammy red-splotched hands.

“But I really should read,” she says. He nods back.

Mason watches as his chest expands too quickly, and when he sighs it is hard for his lungs to let go of the air. When he speaks again his voice is low and flat.

“Okay. I should get back and do some homework then,” he says.

“I should be more careful about homework,” she says, her hand still clasped to her side. “It gets away from me. But everybody can’t be a procrastinator.” She follows his face with hers as he stands up. Mason looks over at her, slouching, and raises his eyebrows until they are stretched across the top of his face.

Gale glances at him, pushes one corner of his mouth upward, and picks up his coat and bookbag. He takes a step backward into the open floor of the coffeehouse. Carrying his coat under one arm and throwing his bookbag over a shoulder, he turns and heads for the door. Before he gets too far he turns his head a little and tells them goodbye. Mason leaves a few minutes later, after finishing his coffee, but Maria reads off and on until the coffeehouse is nearly empty.

Around midnight she finishes her book, and looks up and around the coffeehouse to note who is still there and how the light has changed. She slides her novel carefully in her bookbag. On the way out she delicately drops her empty coffee cup into the trash, and then opens the door, bracing herself against the coolness of the night.