You, her, and the Author

You

What is it about anonymity? Is it the enigma, perhaps the challenge? You have heard things about her. You have heard that she drives away on her scooter after class hours and delivers to whoever orders. What she delivers, of course, is a mystery. It can’t be anything legal, though.

The scandal happened yesterday. She walked out of the restroom, looking a little flustered. She was holding a paper cutter, which you think is, obviously, a slightly strange item to be brandishing to a restroom. In a short while you found out what the scandal was. Everyone did. It was more than slightly strange, another addition to the list of oddities she held to her credit. She stabbed a boy from her class with a paper cutter. It was more than a little serious, enough to get him sent to the hospital. You’d think that he would do something about it, press charges, maybe? She stabbed him. That is definitely not something a normal person would do. Maybe it has something to do with what she delivers. In fact it probably does. The question is, what did he have to do with it? You know that he isn’t ... well, the type. He’s a nice, normal boy. You know you’ll find out when he comes back, but naturally, he didn’t come today. He will come tomorrow, and a little bit of the enigma will be removed. She hasn’t come to class today, either. Maybe she’s afraid. People are probably looking for her. It is a little exciting though, you admit. So far, it has only added to the enigma.

You hear that a couple of girls from her class went to talk to her at her house. You wonder what that achieved. Maybe something, maybe nothing. From what you hear though, she admitted she’d stabbed him. She didn’t apologise though. She didn’t explain. She expressed absolutely no remorse. 

Tomorrow they will come back to class. When she comes back, everyone will look at her accusingly, while she goes on walking, or drawing, or reading her book. She will look at the world nonchalantly, and run her slim fingers through her hair expressionlessly. He will come back, holding his injured arm delicately, glancing around nervously, his expression begging everyone not to ask, and when they do, he will answer evasively, going about sculpting his little ceramic bust as best as he can with one semi –dysfunctional arm.

Then, someone will see them exchange a secret smile in the library while he mouths, “Thanks for not bringing it up,” to her, and she will say “and thanks for not saying anything either” in a soft whisper, but loud enough for that someone else to hear.

All this will do is increase the anonymity and the challenge, and add some enigma to this otherwise normal boy.

Her

What I do every day is I attend class, I have lunch, I drive to the bookstore to do my shift. It’s pretty mundane actually. Except Friday nights, or sometimes when I go to Savera after class.

What happened yesterday is why everyone came over to my house today, to “talk to me.”

What happened yesterday is, I was in the college loo, in the morning. My hair had been getting in my face. So I decided to cut some of it off. Which would have been fine, but I was cutting it in front of the mirror, and this boy walked in. Firstly, I was embarrassed; I didn’t want him- actually anyone- to see me cutting my hair in the college loo. Anyway everyone thinks I’m weird. And then he was obviously kind of taken aback or whatever too, and what with the loos being so small I ended up bumping into him, because I tried to make for the door to leave quickly. Well when I bumped into him I was holding the cutter – it was my good cutter, the big thick one- and it kind of bumped right into his arm. Which meant I’d accidentally stabbed him. So, it was just this accident that happened. Besides, it was his fault too, because he shouldn’t have been in the women’s at all. Anyway so I just kind of hurt him more trying to get the paper cutter out, it was pretty bad, and I yelled at him asking him what the hell he was doing in the women’s, and he was crying and he said he didn’t realise and he then he began to beg me to just go away and not tell anyone this happened, and he was crying too, so I just left.

It was really weird because he was hurt kind of badly and I felt messed up about it, so I went home. Then all these people came and I don’t know what in the world they thought, because they were like “You know, this is pretty serious, everyone’s shocked that you stabbed someone and all, and this could get pretty serious” and all of that. Anyway, I’d told that boy I wouldn’t say, and besides I think I would come off as pretty stupid too, I guess. So I just kept quiet.

When we went back obviously everyone was wondering what happened, but no one asked, thank God. Anyway I met him later in the library and he said thanks, so I said thanks too, for not saying anything.

That was basically what happened, not that it particularly matters, but it wasn’t mundane, like mostly everything else, you know?

The Author

I think she knows that everyone thinks of her the way they do, with intrigue, but she’s too afraid to say it aloud even in her mind, because she’s afraid that it might be untrue. She wants it to be true. She looks like anyone else, but its only accumulated incidents that make you think of her as an enigma, like the one that happened yesterday, and other random happenings of a varied nature.

Of course, she’s always working a lot on whims, why would she cut her hair in the middle of the day? She could have waited, but she didn’t. She had it coming I suppose. She seemed very dazed when the whole incident happened, and her face looked positively tragic. She still seems dazed when her friends visit her now. The reason why she isn’t telling them is, of course, that she is embarrassed but it’s also that she knows it will only make everyone wonder.  She talks to everyone lying down on her bed, and it’s true, she looks a little flustered. 

When she goes back to class, she walks around like she hasn’t a care in the world, but I know she is acutely aware of everyone wondering what happened. Later when she meets the boy, she will look a little flushed; you will see the embarrassment and the gratitude in that flush on her face. Of course, all said and done, she will be glad that something out of the ordinary has happened. She always is when these incidences occur.