Encounter

In middle school, I thought I’d meet someone with the most perfect eyes in the world, laughter like waves of the ocean, and fascinations similar to mine in literature, art and music. He’d have a gorgeous name. He’d play an instrument, perhaps the drums. He’d wield a sharp pen and with it he’d produce prose so astonishing that it would leave the world gasping for more.

He’d be unconventionally good-looking. Rugged hair, a light mole on one cheek, a dimple that showed only when he smiled… and he’d not smile often but, when he did, it would leave me in a little bit of a tizzy. People would be interested in his character, one that would exude a slight enigma.

Most of all, he would love me like he loved no one else. At the same time, even though we’d both know the truth of our passion to be so whole and fulfilling, we wouldn’t explicitly show it. He’d tease me until I bubbled with fake anger. We’d adore each other as best friends, then fall hopelessly in love fifteen years later. Our close friends would force us to get married because we’d be too shy to decide to do it ourselves and, on the night of our vows, the tequila would leave tears streaming down everyone’s happy, swollen faces. We’d all drink to us for many nights to come.

My phone buzzed. Immediately, I clicked my laptop shut.

I felt exhausted. I’d been in bed all day, typing fanciful stories about my own life. I had over a thousand of them, but I never shared them with anybody. I rarely revisited them myself. Over the years, they had found themselves nested more deeply in the confines of my hard disk, collecting layers and layers of digital dust. My older stories were in bound diaries at the bottom of a cardboard box somewhere, eerily insignificant but not completely forgotten.

Some writings repulsed me. I would recall how passionately I had written them by Nani’s oak desk during my long summer holidays, eyeing the sunlit balcony for my true love to appear through the railing and climb in. He’d be strong enough to carry us both down the bungalow’s heavy brick facade, and we’d escape to some faraway land.

There’s me digressing, again.

The point is that he never came, and I never relented. I continued to write about all kinds of dreamy passions even though they felt woefully unrealistic. Behind my laptop screen, the love-hate relationship between my words and myself became all-consuming, my mind too sadistic to let go of fantasy and my ego too sensitive to admit to the real world. And sometimes, I wondered if the hopeless romantic in me would ever die. That’s a tale for another time.

My phone buzzed again. I forced myself out of my comforter before squinting at the screen. Two messages from my housemate.

Let’s make pasta tonight. Can you run to the grocery store and buy some, please? I’ll be late.

Get some eggs too, I think we’ve got like 6 in the fridge.

I groaned. My housemate’s tardiness was not unusual, and she often worried about our food stock not being replenished quickly enough. Our fridge, with its overflowing compartments, told a different story. A trek to the grocer’s would be miserable at this hour. My legs were sore from being sat on all day, and I had very little energy left in me to face the city's brutal evening commotion.

I was starving though, and some pasta tonight might be nice. To the grocer’s it was.

“Cash or credit?”

“Cash,” I replied quickly.

I fumbled in my bag for a while and produced the exact change. The old cashier stared at me in amusement, not once in four months questioning my peculiar habit. After making the payment, I gave him a sharp nod like I always did, then left with my pasta and eggs.

I wasn’t even fifty feet away before I heard someone yell at me.

“Hey, girl in blue!”

I instantly spun around. A young man, perhaps in his late twenties, came bounding to me from inside the store.

“You forgot a coin,” he panted breathlessly, outstretching his palm.

“Huh.”

I stared at him for a while. He looked wheezy. His face was contorted as if all the world’s energy were being sucked straight out of him. He continued to hold his palm up, but he didn’t say much else. I took the little silver coin I must have dropped while paying the cashier. That had never happened before. I was usually very careful about drawing change from my purse, even if my mind was wandering.

“Thank you.”

“Make sure to calculate your change right. The cashier didn’t even check!” he exclaimed, pulling out an inhaler.

I looked at him funny. “What?”

“You didn’t drop that coin, you just paid him a little extra. I saw it because I was behind you in line. The old man didn’t even notice.”

The asthmatic boy suddenly had my full attention.

“Why didn’t you tell me when I was inside the store?” I quizzed.

He breathed hard before answering. “It was a single coin. I thought it shouldn’t matter at first. But it bothered me.” He looked at me with a somber face, hoping I’d prod him for more.

I humored him.

“Um. Why did it bother you? It’s only a coin.”

He wet his dry lips. “Exactly. Please, don’t mind me saying this but… but I thought about it and realized that you must have really decided to do something so perfect as pay in exact change.”

“Yes.”

“That’s a conscious thing. It’s really so conscious.”

He gulped deeply before continuing, “But when you accidentally gave up that ordinary coin, you knew nothing of its value at the time. I did though, because I saw it. And how could I simply stand around to see how grossly you had erred?”

If this were another one of my stories with me as its main character, I would have reeled.

I stared at his pained face unblinkingly, noticing for the first time his shiny, nearly inconspicuous eyes, his dry mouth and his weathered suit and tie. Something inside me unlocked like floodgates as he peered at me earnestly. It felt like a spotlight was burning down on me, exposing me to a truth I’d never faced. It felt terrible... until the sensations turned gradually into elation. Enrapturement. Enlightenment.

The wonder of it was too much to contain. I needed to write.

“Keep the coin. You may call me. I mean—if you want,” I bumbled, blushing as he stared at me with a hint of new amusement.

As soon as I jostled my business card and the coin into his confused hand, I ran home, mind brimming with fresh words and sentences, pausing only to set the pasta and eggs down on the kitchen counter before I dove straight into my computer.

I’ve erred. I miscalculated my grocery change today, but I’ve made larger miscalculations. I had an encounter today that has likely squashed my naïve daydreams forever. I don’t need a dimpled boy. Or dreamy passions or butterflies or glitter in the air. I think I could do with someone who chases me despite his burning lungs and shows me a face full of anguish and honesty—one I’ve never seen before, yet one that’s seen me for who I am amid this rush of a lonely city I’m trying so hard to find perfection in.

I’ve been so terribly alone because I’ve avoided the heavy lanes of my world in search of a peaceful, pleasurable lake to cruise through instead. But there isn’t a lake, and there is no ship, so I must stop now before I get swept away by a storm that exists only in my head. All I need is to roll with the heavy lanes until I’m flowing with lights and cars and people whose eyes are full with beautiful, simple truth.

He now wields my coin, the little metal game changer he showed me a dizzying reality through. I don’t know his name but I honestly won’t mind if it’s not gorgeous. If he thinks to call me, perhaps he will.

And I’ll write no more stories now, for I’m the Girl in Blue… who just never had a clue.