Anyway, here goes. . .
She wrote things on her hands, cryptic notes, abbreviations, acronyms. They were little reminders to herself, to give a friend back her book, to pick up ten dollars owed from someone else. She was an impatient sort, and she never waited long enough for the ink to fully fade before writing something else on her palm, so it looked almost as if she had criss-crossing semi-transparent veins of words upon her hands. She said this suited her, because if the outside of her was entangled in words, it was fitting that the inside should be as well. She carried a pen everywhere, fumbling for it with her inky fingers, digging through her pockets when something came to her mind. Often, that thought would land on her palm, and when she waved, people would see her mind on her hand. Sometimes though, it was a longer thought, and she would rummage around in her backpack until she found a little notebook, crisp clean sheets of paper, and hurriedly write down sentences. She wore long tiered skirts that furled around her ankles and converse sneakers, and her skin was dark, very dark. She was so dark that at night all you could see were her eyes and the half moons of her fingernails, twisting and blinking. She had long nappy curls of hair only just darker than her ebony complexion, that were always slipping out of her loose bun and hanging down about her nose. She didn't care about her appearance. She was more focused on the outside, or within the outside--the unseen but not unthought. She was thin, but not waif-ish, and she was calm and careful. She answered questions slowly, with a long pause for thought before she opened her mouth. When she smiled, only one side of her lips turned up. It was a thoughtful sort of smile. She was a thoughtful sort of girl.
He, on the other hand, was not the sort to look before he leapt, or to think before he spoke. He was easily excited, and moved like a train running. First, he would raise his eyebrows, blink his eyes, lean forwards. Then, just as a train begins to gather steam, so did he, becoming animated as he stood up, his mouth working, his body moving, as words began to flow and his hands gestured slightly. He had man-boy hands. They were becoming like a mature man's, with protruding knuckles and pronounced veins, but they had this innate softness about them, sturdily delicate--that edge of vulnerability that comes with development. They were the perfect hands for skipping stones, she thought. She would daydream about his hands holding a dappled gray stone at the seaside, about how his fingers would grip the edges and then loosely hurl them out across the waves. She would sigh and tuck a curl of her hair behind her ear, and write this image on something, the underside of a leaf perhaps, which she would tuck amongst the pages of her notebook. He also had this little hemp necklace, weighted with a stone in the back and with a thick metal loop hanging from the front, pocked and dented, which lived around his neck always. The pockets of all his pants were ripped, as were the sleeves of his hoodies, which he would absentmindedly tear and bite at when he was daydreaming. Often, when he was bored, he would reach into those ripped pockets with his man-boy hands, and pull out a ragged crossword puzzle which he had taken from the newspaper. He would sit with the paper, his teeth nibbling and the edge of his sleeve, his chair tipped back, oblivious. He would sit there and do the crossword, slowly filling in the little white squares without registering whatever was going on around him. He would be oblivious to whichever class he was ignoring, or whichever teacher was droning on, and he would just read the clues to that crossword puzzle, mouthing the words with his lips. She found this habit charming, the whole crossword deal. He liked to read, and he was rather smart, but he was none too keen to do schoolwork, and people didn't really know why or how he passed any of his classes, since he listened none during class nor completed any of the homework. Still, he always passed, and did not badly either. He read book after book on his own, and had amassed a huge vocabulary. People knew he was smart, but it was an odd sort of smart. He was not school smart, he was mind smart. She understood this.
She did well in school as well. People often called her smart, top of the class, genius, even. They didn't realize how much this angered and hurt her. She didn't want to be known as smart, she wasn't just smart, she was Tulya. And she didn't spend her time alone learning the lessons before they were taught, or whatever people thought she did, instead of hanging out with everyone. She wasn't socially inept, or too shy or ashamed to be part of their big clique, their band of high-school kids. She just chose to flow in a different direction. She would go outside, to the park, while they would be watching a movie. Or she would go to the theater when they were at the park. And all the time, she would be writing, words leaking from her ears. That's just how she was, how she chose to be. He understood this.
He was well known among the school, though. He was friends with the collection of teenagers roving the halls, the friends or groupies banded together in a one for all, all for one situation. You could often see him walking with a few of his buddies, his neck tilted back a little, his face smiling, his hair tousled up. He had olivey tan skin, and soft brown hair. Someone would call his name, "Bay, Bay," and he would lift his chin up in reply, in challenge, in question. People liked him. He was likable. So he hung around everyone and they hung around him. But if he ever saw Tulya or the hem of her skirt whisk around a corner, he would smile doggedly, almost apologetically, and he would break off from this group and lope down the hallway to catch her.
The two of them were wrapped tightly around each other, bound together by a ribbon, a ribbon of words. A ribbon of words she had written, of words he had read, a ribbon of words they had said to each other without speaking. The words said Bay and Tulya and love and brown and lines and train and happiness and a shared mug of hot mulled cider, and they said tears and ocean and frustration and bare bellies and sheets of paper and sheets of linen and they said the infinity sign. They were strong words, and she and he walked strongly together, arm linked with arm.
Title Quote: Crosby Stills & Nash, You Don't Have to Cry
