Two of a kind

chapter 3

There were three sides to every story. There was the hero's point of view, the view of the villain and then there was what actually happened.

What had actually happened?

But there was one more side - to this story at least. The cypher's. The cypher was unnecessary, irrelevant. Basically he was the character that shouldn't exist in the first place, he did though, he existed unneeded and overlooked. The cypher was the background character, with just as much potential to be a hero or a villain, just as interesting a story to tell, just as agonizing an internal struggle, lacking only the opportunity to tell it.

The cypher was the owner of the coffee shop the pretty girl had bumped into the Rich handsome CEO at. The gothic girl in the same class as the bully that picked on the nerd, the less skillfully palyer on the basketball team who wanted just as badly to be voted prom king. Their lives could be just as interesting, perhaps even more but no one cared for them, they were doomed to the fate of being flipped over by the reader, less intrigued by their simplicity, eager to continue on in the tale of their hero and villain, for whom they had opened the book in the first place.

Candidly, they were the tree no one notices in the play. No words, no lines, damned by the hand of the writer to be nothing more than a spectator in the book. Bailey was supposed to be the cypher in this story. Had the universe or perhaps the writer made a mistake?

What were the odds? Why her?

She was not near as smart to be the school geek, not near as mysterious to be the weirdo, not near as affluent to be the b***h. She wore no hoodie, donned no glasses, there was nothing for the handsome guy to take off that would make her look less appalling. Her life was in distinct lack of abusive parents, traumatizing past and life threatening secrets. So why her then?

Why had she gone into the library, why had she felt an unnerving attraction towards that stranger, why had she written that note, why in the good Lord's name had he responded and the most pressing question on her list of concerns that day, why had he dismissed himself so promptly?

And only before she could see them. She longed for them now, the full view of his face, the sweet lustrous brown of his eyes. It reminded her of the burs and hedges and near silk-like dirt of the gardens in her childhood home.

Milford, connecticut was beautiful and somewhat rusty, forlorn in the perpetual pleasant summer. Old and lovely surburban home of her grandparents, bailey had spent many Summer's there with her family. Attending dinner in the prim, spacious victorian styled dining table centred at the parlour, sewing dresses with her grandmother and sisters, sitting side by side along the familiar open-aired porch under the merciless southern sun, watching immense gradual sunsets and bleak golden sunrise from the window within the guest room where bailey lounged with the rest of her much older siblings. One of her most favored traditions was sitting on grandmother's lap, listening to stories and the unrealistic yet mesmerizing tales of her youth and childhood and travels. Her grandmother was so lurid now, she found it hard to believe most times she'd once done all that bailey had heard.

What she loved most of milford was the garden a few yards down the family house. She remembered sneaking off to the walls built round it by hedges and laying amidst the lush hybrid grass. Kneeling gently on it's edges, pen and paper at hand, books by austen and the bronte sisters at her side, she'd sit reading their tales for hours and when their words had filled the void in her heart, she'd write her own.

When she was about eight years old, mind light as a feather, heart leaping with innocent, celestial joy, she would trod merrily down the paths with delilah her eldest sister, while the remainder covered for them - their mother hardly approved of time wasted reading stories and not textbooks and the rest of their siblings did not crave literature as bailey and her sister did.

They'd go breaking dawn, before breakfast, after lunch, quiet unwatchful moments in the evenings and if time and the bright midnight gleam of the moon permitted, unearthly late at night, laughing and telling stories and reaching for fire flies, merely enjoying the heavenly view of their grandparents estate in the quiet, mischievous night. Later, much much later when they'd hurriedly snuck back and delilah and everyone else was sound asleep, bailey would light a candle in her little desolate corner of the bedroom, pen and paper on the desk beside her bedside table and write her heart away. Confessing her deepest and most childish desires.

Bailey missed those days. In more recent years, it was simply her, her mother and father that partook on visits to milford. Delilah had grown, becoming a woman quicker than bailey had expected or prepared for. She worked now as an intern in baltimore. Face timing and messaging when she could. None of her other siblings though only luca remained at home with her and her parents, cared for trips to milford.

There was little to write about the town now. It's loneliness and desolution had only grown with time. The hedges were now a pale brown, once dark green leaves now withered and muttered the abandoned paths, the grass had become stiffened and breakable with the fingers and all the books she'd enjoyed reading as a child in the house had been donated by her grandmother to the children's home. Even the stories felt faded and bleak in her ears. She'd heard them all before, a thousand times over only now her grandmother's voice was dry and weak and she was far too big to sit on the slender bones that forged her lap.

Now that she thought about it, that library, that letter, those eyes, were the most poetic thing to have happened to her in years. She needed to find this guy - if only for the sake of one last adventure, whoever he was.