Four Versions

26.

The familiar sight of the bench came into sight and I nudged Ari. ‘This is where Mason and I usually meet. It’s weird, when we met I fell asleep on his bench and was late for my curfew. Go figure how that went.’

Ari smiled but kept silent. She seemed a little bit out of it today, ever since breakfast, and I wanted to cheer her up. First she didn’t want to go out; it’s still cold, but I convinced her to. Now we were seated next to each other and stared off in the distance, our minds wondering to two very different places.

‘Hey Ari, is there something I should know about you? I mean, we don’t know each other that well.’

She looked up and then to the sky. ‘Hm,’ she softly said, ‘I’m not sure what I could tell about myself. I like drawing a lot,’ she mentions. Then she fiddles with her hands. ‘I’m quite a perfectionist, which is why most of my drawings are unfinished.’ Her nose was red from the cold and I figured mine was too.

‘What about you?’

I thought about it for a while. I didn’t want to drop the bomb of my dead sister on her the second day I was with her, so I decided to not go into that. Not yet at least. ‘I have loved everything creative ever since I was little. Singing, acting, writing; you name it, I liked it.’ I smiled when I thought back to when my father and Caitlyn read some of my stories and told me I should do something with it.

‘Eventually I realized that I really wanted to be a model.’

Ari nodded. ‘Why a model though if there are so many other creative things you could advance in?’

I shook my head and looked down. ‘I promised a special person I would do it. And I don’t like to break promises.’

Ari intently looked at me, as if she was expecting me to say more, but I avoided her face. I didn’t want her to see the loss in my eyes, yet I knew she would find out sooner or later. A thing she said shot through my mind and I turned to her.

‘Hey, you told me yesterday that you used to do gymnastics. Why did you quit?’

She smiled a bit at the memory of something I will probably never know and laid an arm over my shoulder. ‘I once did this competition and apparently there were scouts, but not only for gymnastics. Apparently there were modelling scouts too; they were starting a new company and needed faces to promote this.’ She removed her arm and leaned to the front while rubbing her nose. ‘I didn’t win that season, nor did I got scouted by any of the gymnastic ones. But one modelling scout did see me. They told me to contact them when I was a little older, as they knew how demanding the profession could be. I told them I would think about it and quit gymnastics after a nasty incident.’ She pointed at the corner of her eye and rubbed over the little scar.

‘How did that happen?’ I asked.

‘I fell from the bars after I had broken my ankle. Fell right on my eye. I’m lucky I’m not blind.’ She sighed. ‘I did love gymnastics, but it was never my calling. My parents always want us to achieve our best out of everything we do, so of course I had to fill the gap of not doing gymnastics anymore. Modeling became that filler.’ She stared off in the distance and I was sure she was spacing out. She suddenly said something that made me rethink how great her life was.

‘And it also became the rest of my life.’

The tone in her voice wasn’t excited or happy, it was sad and lonely. She clearly didn’t like something about what she did and I could basically feel the pressure on her shoulders. Instead of asking her about it I just threw and arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. It was getting darker and also colder, so sitting there so close to her could warm us both, as well as passing the silent message on.