SirenSong

Part 3

A wind picks up over the abandoned streets, washing over me as it winds through dry wall buildings and metal constructed cars. My red hair flows like a flame behind me, twisting and curling in the air's grasp. I wondered if Daniel was feeling this same wind. Standing on a street with his trademark green Ipod covered in band stickers and listening to his favorite songs while staring at the rush of cars swimming along the cracked streets. Wondering if he'd ever see it again.

I pull my gaze to the ground, looking at the green leafy weeds poking through the cracks in the sidewalk. When I was young, our teacher had set us in front of paper with paints and told us to make a picture. I had gotten so lost dragging my brush in smooth, fine lines that when my teacher had called my name I had jumped. My elbow hit the green paint that had been set up at the edge of my desk and had rolled to the floor. The class laughed at my timidness, and tears had started to leap to my eyes when a hand offered the green paint to me.

Confused, I took it, setting it neatly with the other paints again before I looked to see who had offered it to me. Golden hair fell a little past his chin, and his eyes radiated light like the sun. Like every beam and wave of it was trapped inside him and had bleached his eyes to a fine, light brown and honey color. "Are you okay?" He asked, seeing the tears brim along my lashes.

I nodded vigorously, "Um, yeah, thank you." 

"No problem." He gave me one last, searching look. As if making sure I was really alright before he returned back to his seat, and class swept forward like nothing had even happened, as if a little pocket of timeless air had surrounded us in that moment and popped soundlessly when he moved away from it.

I went home in a daze after school ended, and the next day, I'd passed the boy who'd picked up my paint for me in the hall. He stopped, recognizing me. "Hey," he said.

"Hi."

"I'm Daniel Brighten, by the way."

"Sam Everday."

We worked together on class projects every now and then, and stopped in the hallway to talk to each other as time moved forward. But when we became junor's in high school a crowd of people seemed to form a loose circle around him wherever he went, and sneered at those who we're not one of them. I met Daniel's eyes once when that crowd enveloped him, and it was the same gaze that folded me in warm light whenever I saw it, that always made me feel comforted and cared for. Like I was important.

I wondered how he came to be this amazing person. What details of his life contributed to mapping out his story, what he learned and what he had to endure. I never thought to ask, I never knew how to smile and become his friend. How to reach out a hand to him.

But I didn't have the courage to step forward and slip through that crowd to reach him, to offer him a smile and let him know that I was his friend, that I would stand beside him. It was like that crowd surrounding him became a barrier, an impenetrable wall that could just as easily crumble if I were to find some inner bravery, strength, anything, to pass through it. But I didn't have that, I was to afraid.  A life spent cold and alone had done something to me, changed me from something warm and kind that I had once been. So instead, I turned away, and melted into the sea of people that we're on they're way to their classes.

I never, not once, met Daniel's gaze ever again.

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 An hour later, I was staring at my reflection in the green, icy depths of the lake. The portrait of myself that stared back at me was overlaid with a light green, making my eyes look like a kaleidoscope mixed color of emerald and stone grey in both eyes. In the water, I wasn't plane, I wasn't even pretty. I was beautiful. Why couldn't I have that in real life?