Amaranth

6

        "What's wrong with you?"

        "Nothing"

        "Nothing?! For God’s sake, you play with dead people!"

        "They're not dead."

        "Yes. They are! What is wrong with you?"

        "Nothing."

        He groaned in frustration, wanting to pull his hair out, wanting to knock some sense into her head, and yet wanting to leave so that she was someone else’s problem.

        "No,” he stated, then his voice rose in hysteria. “There is something seriously wrong with you. Nobody in their right state of mind would come to a graveyard every day! You even sleep here sometimes!"

        She gasped. No one was supposed to know. Was he going to tell someone?

        He saw her stunned and horrific expression. It was the first time he had seen her react so normally. It calmed him down immensely.

        "How did you know?"

        He regarded her for a long moment before he made up his mind to tell her. "I can't sleep, so I come here sometimes. But I've seen you here every time I come. Do you really stay here all night? Do you ever leave?"

        She shook her head.

        "Why not?" he asked as if it was the question to a simple answer. It was.

        "I don't know the way out."

        Somehow he knew she meant more than a doorway out. She meant something more profound and more life-related, something he wasn't quite sure he wanted to know just yet.

        If she needed his help, she would have asked him by now. But she hadn't, so she wasn’t in some kind of trouble. But she was always there, always hanging around, and she was slowly making him question his sanity. He felt like she was a ghost meant to haunt him and only him. Like she chose him to agonize when there were seven billion other people in the world begging to be heard.

        "Why are you here?" He tried again.  

        "I don't know."

        "Don't you have a home? A house to go to? Parents?"

        "A home?" she asked. The word stuck on her tongue like it was the first time she tasted it.

        "Yeah,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. It was.

        She shrugged.

        "How old are you?"

        She shrugged again.

        "Does anyone know you're here? Isn’t there someone who’s worried about you? Wondering where you are?"

        She nodded. He was excited. Finally, a breakthrough! It was the first time he was excited since his mother’s death.

        "Yes. My friend."

        "And who is your friend?"

        Her face expressed hurt before she stared blankly into his eyes. He couldn't look away. Not now.

        She blinked. The moment was over.

        "You."

_________

November 12, 2014