The Power of One
There wasn�t anything special about the day. The weather was dire, foul enough to depress the students who waited in the rain for a noisy, yellow bus to pick them up. There was the occasional flash of lightning, followed all the time less closely by a roaring thunder. Indeed the bus was loud, but he, having no friends to talk with, did not contribute to the racket. Being ever alert, he heard the pieces of conversation all around him, even though none of it mattered to him. His mind was set on only one thing today; love.
And he was sure that it was truly love. His closest confidants had told him that it wasn�t love; that it was just a crush that wasn�t working out, but he was sure that it wasn�t just a crush. He�d had crushes before, and he had never felt this strongly. In his mind, a crush is just overwhelming desire; a crush is just wanting to be with someone when there�s something preventing that from happening. This was not a crush. This was love. He knew it somehow. It wasn�t that he had ever been in love before; in fact, that is how he knew it really was love; it was different. He could feel it when he was around her, like something he could reach out and touch. Something in her eyes just reached out and pulled his heart closer and closer to her every time he looked into them. It confused him, though, to the point that he had no idea of how to approach her with his feelings. He thought deep and hard for many weeks, trying to resolve how to do it. The truth was that he didn�t have much experience with girls in general. Sure, he�d talked to a couple before, but had never been on such a close base with one. He�d never been in a relationship. But he was sure of himself. This is love.
He repeated those words in his head as he got off the bus. Everyone else hurried to get inside, but he took his time. He didn�t want to be rushed and beaten by the rain, as if its sole purpose was to make him squirm beneath it. The torrent came down harder than ever now, and the thunder seemed to be coming back. He reached the doors of his school, stopped for a moment, and turned around. He stared out into the street, examined the houses nearby, and scanned the grass and cement surrounding the school. As another lightning bolt assaulted the sky, his gaze swept upward like a bird. He stared at the clouds, thinking that the next time he saw that sky he would not be the same person.
As he walked through the halls to the regular spot, there didn�t seem to be as many people around as there usually was. Of course there was no real difference in the crowding of the halls; he just wasn�t paying as much attention as he usually did. He tripped on the stairs, catching himself and bouncing up before anyone noticed, or at least had time to say something. He nearly bumped into a couple of gossiping girls when he rounded the corner, but caught himself before they collided and quietly apologized as he stepped out of the way. And then he was in that hall.
That hall was the hall that took him to the usual place, where he and most of the people he knew stood and talked, waiting for class to start. As he started down the hall, he caught sight of her, THE her, standing at the opposite end of the hall, apparently deep in conversation with a guy he didn�t attempt to recognize. Her head turned and she saw him. Instantly a smile spread across her face and she waved at him. Smiling and waving back, he slowly walked down the hall, his eyes never leaving her beautiful face. Traversing that small expanse seemed to take a lot longer than it should have, but he didn�t notice and wouldn�t have minded if he had. All that mattered is what lie ahead, what he was walking toward.
He did eventually get there, and the minute he was at her side, she turned from her conversation to give him a great big hug. Blissful numbness spread across his body as they pressed together. The guy who she had been talking to seemed to be finished, so he went to find more entertaining banter. They stood face-to-face, trading greetings and such. �How are you?� he would say. �Good. Tired, but good. How are you?� His smile widened as he thought of words to describe his current emotional status, but was forced to settle with �Great�. She nodded as she accepted that he was great. He was about to ask her to walk with him when a couple guys that they knew walked up. A little annoyed by the setback in his plan, he conversed with the guys and answered their questions. She stayed by his side, casually talking here and there. He consistently looked to her, looked into her caring eyes as if they were some kind of constant medication he needed to continue talking. Most of the time she didn�t notice, but sometimes she would just look upon him with a warm smile.
The bell rang, which meant they had ten minutes to find their classes. Everyone usually ignored this anyway, waiting until they had to run to get to class on time, but he had plans. Today they didn�t have their first class together, so after a few minutes of useless conversation, he offered to walk her to her class. She accepted, thinking nothing of it as he had done the same before many times. Her class was on the top floor, and his was on the bottom of the three, so it was only logical that he would want to leave a bit earlier than anyone else. They separated themselves from the rest of the group and headed down the hall.
To him the halls seemed deserted. The only things that he paid attention to were her eyes, sparkling as if she was standing in front of a fire. They seemed to surround him with some power, something that held him hostage from the rest of the world. He couild barely spare enough attention to keep talking to her, but he was able to, clumsily. He didn�t notice when anyone said hello to him as he walked by. He didn�t notice when his shoulder collided with that of someone else. He felt connected to her eyes in some sort of poetic and symbiotic way, as if he would shrivel up and die if she turned the other way. Fortunately she didn�t.
When they arrived in the hall her class was in, he was glad to find it mostly deserted as it usually was. According to his calculations he still had another few minutes before people started flowing into their classes up there. He turned to her as they stood outside the door. Again they engaged in casual conversation while he scrounged around inside for all the courage he could find. He had to say it, and the time had to be now. Any longer inside and it would start to do damage. It had to be now.
Of course he knew he couldn�t just throw it at her. Catching a person off guard like that was not only impolite and rude, but it was almost cruel. He had to warm her up, get her somewhat prepared for it, although he knew you can�t really be prepared for something like this. He started talking, at first only being able to say a few words at a time, separated by �err�s and �uhh�s. He looked to the floor just as he had looked in her eyes just footsteps before, as if it was holding him up, keeping him going. He looked up and the confused look in his eyes destroyed any sense his words made. He stumbled around a bit, mumbling and murmuring almost to himself. It had always been harder for him to transform words into thoughts when he was talking to her, but this was ridiculous. This was going to be harder than he had thought.
He stopped talking completely. He closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, still scraping up courage and solidity from wherever such is found. When he opened his eyes, her expression had changed from confusion to concern. That look brought forth more bravery and confidence than he had been able to find. He stood there, looking in her eyes, thinking of exactly what he wanted to say. Then he started. �Kim, we�ve known each other for most of this year, and we�ve been friends for about half of it. I�ve never had a real friend before, someone who cares about me and listens to my problems and supports me. You�re really important to me, and I don�t think my mind would survive without you. I don�t know how it did before I met you. Just one look at you makes me happy, even when I�m really depressed. I feel closer to you than anyone else I know. For the first time in my life, I�m happy. I just wanted to let you know that I�m in love with you, and that I want to live and die at your side.�
At first her face was blank. Either she didn�t believe what she�d heard or she had momentarily forgotten the English language. She looked at something behind him, focusing hard on it while her mouth stood open. Her gaze lowered and her eyes unfocused, as if she couldn�t close her eyes but she didn�t want to see anymore. She looked into his face, where his confident smile had faded. Horror spread across her face at the realization of what she had to say. Her mouth struggled for words, but there was no air to support them. All she could do was shake her head and look at him in disbelief.
The look said it all. He was shocked. Never had he thought of this, never had rejection crossed his mind. He looked around, searching for something to grab on to, something that would help him, something that wasn�t there. He couldn�t look in her eyes, he felt drained and powerless against her horrified gaze. His head lowered and he closed his eyes. He pressed his eyelids as tight together as he could, as if he was trying to keep his eyes from falling out. His began to shake. His insides screamed loud enough to deafen him, but he ignored them. The knife was in his heart; there was nothing he could do about it. He was changed, for better or worse. All his will to live disappeared as if it had never been there.
Suddenly everything stopped. Time itself seemed to pause. When he brought his head up, he didn�t see her, only darkness. She was still there, of course, but he didn�t see anything. His whole body relaxed. He felt empty, dead to everything that had ever told him that he was alive. His eyes rose, as if expecting to see some bright light shining overhead, but there was nothing. No bright blue sky, no stars in the black void. He couldn�t even see himself when he looked down. His senses were dead. A single large, cold tear fell onto his cheek. He winced at it, tried to run from it. He crashed into the wall behind him as if he had been slapped across the face. That single, powerful tear seemed to finalize everything. Without a single look back, he started walking.
Rejected or not, he was still sure of it. It was love.