this one of the stories i submitted to hEiGhts. it's not my usual style but i like it. im not usually this minimalist but since (aNd hEre, oNce agAin, i Am aT fAuLt) the stories in heights tend to be this way... then... hai...
anyway, got the, shall we say, inspiration the night when we watched the two filipino plays. wala lang. there was a gigantic snail pero wala siyang kinalaman sa story na 'to... :) here goes:
I See Janie Now
1 Almost immediately, I can see that he is with me no longer. In the span of two seconds—long enough for him to hide the cigarette he was fiddling with, long enough for me to notice it all—he changed. I find it amusing if not a little exasperating.
2 I lean back on the bench to take a good look at him, under the bright fluorescent lights of Kostka Hall. He is standing at arm’s length in front of me, hands in his pockets. He is facing me, his eyes on me but he doesn’t see me. I don’t think he sees me. He pretends to look at me so he doesn’t have to look at her.
3 “Cold, isn’t it?” he asks me offhandedly. The words do not matter. In a way, he is not aware of them at all. He just needs to say something, anything, anything at all to keep him occupied because she is coming near. She’s nearly here.
4 Without answering, I look at his right. In the darkness, I see her. Ah, Janie. Tall, bright-eyed Janie. Fiery, impetuous Janie. Her eyes are on the ground she is walking on. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she is fascinated by the grass that grew in the cracks of the cemented walkway. But I know better.
5 “Ste,” I say but I do not take my eyes off Janie. I rest my forearms on my thighs, my hands dangling between my knees. I’m trying to meet her eyes.
6 “What?”
7 “It’s Janie.” I look at him and he looks at me. After a few moments, he shrugs as if to say Sure, whatever but I can see that he is dying to talk to her. He wants to turn and give her a big grin, open his arms and yell, “Hey, Janie!” He wants to get that smile on her face, that sweet, special smile she used to give him easily. He wants to make her laugh, make her bat her eyes a little. He wants to lead her by the hand to his car, he wants to drive her to anywhere at all, to the ends of the earth if that was the only way he could be alone with her. Or maybe just a nice, long chat with him over coffee and some donuts.
8 He turns away from me, takes the forbidden cigarette out of his pocket. I may have seen too much.
9 I look back at Janie, a couple of yards away from us. She’s finally looked up and now her eyes rest on Ste. I smile to myself. On her face, as clear as red paint on white walls, is annoyance. Even the night cannot hide it. I think she feels what I have seen, what I know. She also feels that my best friend is desperate to hide it all.
10 “Hey, Janie,” I call to her. At the corner of my eye, Ste turns to look at me. Janie starts. I meet her eyes. Her smile is small but it is enough. “What’s up?”
11 “Not much.” Her smile widens and her walk slows as she approaches. She hasn’t looked at Ste. “What are you doing here?”
12 “Training,” I say. “You?” It’s late. She shouldn’t even be roaming around the campus wearing that floating white skirt of hers.
13 “Libe.” Her eyes twinkle. I have an aversion for the library and she seems to know this. She crosses her arms under her breasts. “Cold, isn’t it?”
14 I grin. I wish Ste would snap out of it so I could share this to him. “Need my jacket?”
15 She laughs, a self-deprecating sound that is somehow still pleasing to the ear. She does this a lot. Whenever someone focuses their attention to her, she evades it. “No thanks. I’m happy with my life.” She looks it.
16 Silence settles between us. The bright smile on her face flickers and so does the laughter. She turns to Ste. She seems reluctant.
17 “Oh, hi, Janie.” He says this as if he just noticed that she was here. As if he hasn’t been waiting for her since he first saw her.
18 “Hi, Stephen,” she says lightly. I smile. This will not go well for Ste. The airiness of her tone, the way she said his name, the way her head tilted and even the way her eyes glinted were all wrong. The girl is mighty pissed.
19 “You’re…here.” Even someone as thick as Ste has noticed the sudden wintriness in her.
20 “Yes, I’m here” She turns back to me, smiles a little, nods and goes. The usual To-Hell-With-Your-Best-Friend-From-Janie fashion. She does not look at Ste.
21 I do. He stares after her, confusion in his face. I let him stay that way for a couple of seconds, let his mind wrap around what had just happened.
22 And then I just can’t stand it anymore.
23 “You don’t get it, do you?”
24 He looks at me and what I see in his face tells me all I need to know.
25 I stand up and run after Janie.
26 “Hey, Janie! Wait!” The girl walks fast. It must be those long legs of hers. By the time I catch sight of her, she is already on the walkway in front of SEC A.
27 She turns, brushing the windblown hair away from her face. Her brows are furrowed. What could he possibly want with me? she must be thinking.
28 “It’s dark, you know.”
29 She glances about, at the shadowed faces of the SEC buildings. She shrugs, a graceful tilt of her shoulders. “You have a remarkable ability of stating the obvious.”
30 “An oft-repeated statement.”
31 She smiles. I walk towards her, returning it. We smile at each other like that, a trifle stupidly. Anyone who would see us—Ste, maybe?—would wonder what was wrong with us.
32 Finally, I find the courage to say, “Sorry about that.”
33 She raised her eyebrows. What? That?! she seems to say.
34 “I’m sorry. He was a jerk.”
35 She rolls her eyes. “I’m sorry he’s a jerk too.”
36 I cannot help it. I laugh. After a couple of beats, she gives in. Our laughter cuts through the bleakness of the darkness.
37 “I read that somewhere,” she murmurs.
38 “Hmmm?”
39 She shakes her head. The laughter in her face is slowly disappearing. She toys with the hem of her blouse. “He’s always like that.”
40 I want to say no. I want to tell her that he’s not always like that… Only with her. I feel it is best to shut up.
41 She smiles to let me know that she knows what is going on in my mind. She looks away from me to look at a tree looming above us. The light attached to its trunk bathes us.
42 And then I see her, more clearly than I have since I first saw her. She is…remarkable. The chilly wind whips her short hair around her face, caressing the strong yet fragile-looking contours of her face. Her eyes, deep and twinkling, are on me. She is still smiling.
43 Stephen doesn’t understand.
44 “I’ll take you home,” I tell her.
45 She nods and her smile is sweeter.
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so, how'd you like it? don't tell me. it will only devastate me...
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because of this damned story, my imagination has been on overdrive regarding me and that dude's best friend... it's funny... hehehe. im whacko but, hey.
