The Boy Who Wore Boat Shoes

20⎜The Hug

20⎜The Hug

Doors were pretty interesting things. Some possessed the ideology that doors were just planks of wood, metal, plastic, or any other material that had hinges on them and provided entrance and exits to places—that was it. Unlike those particular people, I seemed to have acquired a much more complex association with doors. Doors were the entities that determined so many various incidents in life. Going in one could lead to an entirely new experience, or be the paradigm of routine and order. Doors could also be scary, for the aspect of uncertainly that veiled over them. What if the door opened wasn’t the right one? What if one accidentally knocked on the door that lead to an international drug smuggling ring? What if the door belonged to an axe murderer?

           As I stood before a specific door in a college dorm on the Stanford campus, I was wondering all these random thoughts and worries about what lay on the other side. What if I had the wrong door? I couldn’t hear anything coming from the other side, so was afraid that maybe it was empty. Maybe there was nobody inside. Then again, I hadn’t exactly let my presence be known, so what was I even thinking?

           Cautiously, I positioned my knuckles on the door, and then patted lightly, only to receive silence. I knocked again, but this time louder, and I actually got a reply. It wasn’t the response I had been expecting, but it was still a response, nonetheless.

           Standing before me was a beautiful girl. She was barefoot and had baggy sweats on her long legs. A large black T-shirt was on her small frame, completely swallowing her up. Her hair was set in a loose ponytail, the curls erupting from a central point in the back of her head. And then there was her face. She was such a gorgeous girl, yet all I seemed to notice about her face were the tears that were running down it. Water was spewing from her eyes and gushing down her cheeks, and she was mutely crying. Unlike most people when they cried, this girl wasn’t making any noise. She was just allowing the tears to cover her striking face.

           I didn’t ask if she was okay, mainly because I had always hated it when others asked me that question. Like, if I was crying (which rarely ever happened), did I look like I was okay? No. So then why bother even wasting breath on the rhetorical question? It had never made sense to me. It was clear as the translucent drops of liquid on her face that she wasn’t okay, so asking if she was had easily been ruled out as a plausible conversation-starter.

           Since words were never really my forte—verbalizing them, at least—I acted on instinct. They always said that actions tended to speak louder than words, so right now I tried to prove them right. Not even thinking about what I was doing, I allowed my arms to come around her, and she wrapped her own thin ligaments around me, too. Her head rested on my chest, tucked underneath my chin. I rubbed small circles on her back, hoping that they would help, and we just stood there—in the hallway of her dorm, as she cried, and I attempted to console her.

           I could feel her jagged breath as she continued to cry, just hugging me, as I hugged her. And hugged her. And hugged her. I felt like I was holding such a fragile thing in my arms that should’ve been labeled, “CAUTION: HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE,” and was unaware if I was handling it—well, her with as much care as was meant. As the seconds passed by, her grip around me only grew tighter, and I found myself returning the tautness, hoping that I wasn’t squishing her. Closing my eyes, I internally began to ache over the fact that she was hurting. It shouldn’t have affected me in the slightest, but it did. I didn’t like seeing her like this.

           What felt like hours passed by, though were really probably only minutes, and only then did her hold around me loosen the slightest bit. I took it as a sign that she was beginning to come out of this dark place filled with all the evil and demons she was suppressing, so allowed my eyes to wander from the tip of her head to beyond. More specifically: to her dorm room that lay in front of me.