My Eyes On You

Rejected

He saw her. His gaze sliced through her body, shaking her even more than the tears had.

She knew she would have to leave him.

In desperation, she persuaded her psychiatrist to set up a conference with him. Everyone thought it was a bad

idea, but Leah now had an insatiable need to see him, talk with him, and be with him as much and as often as she

could.

The conference was a bomb. She was so anxious ahead of time that she took her first taste of alcohol from her parents‟ collection of wines. She barely remembered what they talked about, and she spent the good portion of the meeting staring at Brendan‟s feet,feeling dizzy.

As she left the room, his mother glared at her. His father smiled.

She prepared to leave Early Winter. Searching through

her jewelry collection, she found her most valuable possession. It was a turquoise bracelet that her father

had bought her when she was a little girl.

The next day at school, she begged one of his friends to give it to him. The guy came back and said that he had refused it. She fell to the floor in writhing agony, crying and pulling at her hair. She was in the middle of the hall, and kids were walking all around.

“Give it to him again,” she pleaded and demanded.

He left and did not come back.

The weekend after she left, it rained in sheets. A friend wrote her a letter that said, “I think God was

crying.”

She watched the trees and houses zoom past. The summer was in its full heat, but within the air-conditioned

car, Leah was comfortable and sleepy.

Her father was busy concentrating on the road. She picked up her paperback again, but was unable to concentrate as the car bumped and vibrated. Instead, she pulled out her headphones and turned on the music.

It was slow, metallic, angry, and self-hateful.

Her mother was staying behind in Early Winter until the house was sold. That meant that she was going to spend some time alone with her father for a while.

The new town‟s name was Hopeville. She had visited

the place twice, but she knew very little about it.

As they reached their exit, Leah turned off her music and looked around. The trees were shorter here. The land

was flatter, and the streets were more narrow. But omehow, it had its own beauty and charm that Early Winter

did not have.

Looking up at the white split-level that they would soon be calling their home, Leah didn‟t see how she would ever be able to appreciate it the same as she had her old house. But once she got inside, she felt immediately that

she was home.

She collapsed onto the bare hardwood floor, exhausted from a full day of traveling, and flailed her arms around. She was tempted to go to sleep right there in the living room.

A few weeks passed, and cool winds blew their way into town. In the first week in September, she started school.

The monstrous stone schoolhouse was a looming, gigantic structure nestled in a forest of pines. Due to the recent building of a second high school in town, the

old fixture was only half-occupied, which made it seem even larger.

Inside, the ceilings were high and it looked like a cathedral, with arched doorways and buttresses. The lighting was inadequate, for the square windows were too small and the electricity was poorly set up.

The flickering lightbulbs reminded Leah of flickering candles at a wake. On the first day of school, Leah covered her face in

make-up more thickly than usual and donned an ankle-length dress with short sleeves and a subdued floral print.

She covered her body in a layer of cologne and pinned her hair back on either side with a black barrette. She made little friends. Not that she really cared, at this point.

She decided that she was tired of trying to make impressions. She decided that she was going to be a “loner” and eat lunch every day in the library by herself.

She proceeded to talk with a few people on a friendly basis on occasion, but the cycle that had begun in Early Winter

soon continued.

“Hey, b***h!” a girl yelled. Her name was Stacey. She was “popular”—had tons of friends and always had groupies congregating around her.

Leah spun around. She looked weakly in Stacey‟s

direction, not wanting a confrontation.

“Hey, I‟m talking to you! Don‟t you have anything to say?”

Leah shook her head uncertainly.

Stacey approached her, getting unsettlingly close. “I don‟t want trouble,”

Leah simply said.

“Yeah, well you‟re going to get trouble if you don‟t stay out of our way.”

“I don‟t know what you mean.”

“You know what I mean, freak. You‟re new here, aren‟t

you? Just stay out of our path, and we won‟t f**k you up.”

Leah walked away.

They started to make fun of her. They teased and cajoled her. They followed her partways home after school

in order to try and scare her. They, too, thought she was strange.

She had dark hair and wore mostly black clothing. She rarely smiled. She was overconfident and egotistical, they

thought. She didn‟t talk enough; she was too quiet. She didn‟t go to parties and she didn‟t hang out after school.

She spent her free hours writing poems and reading horror novels. She dreamed about using the g*n, which was still in her possession, and going on a killing spree.

Her mother had just arrived. She couldn‟t take this anymore. While the days were getting shorter, and the

nights were getting cooler, she made a decision.

She called her friends from Early Winter and told them

'that she was going to run away.

“I‟m coming back,” she said.

“How nice,” they said. “Well, we‟ll see you when you get here.” They didn‟t believe her; they thought she was just talking s**t.

She also told a couple of people from

Hopeville. They, also, did not believe her.

She arranged for a cab. She cut class one day to walk into town to buy a train ticket.

On the morning she was supposed to leave, she kissed her parents and told them she had to go to school early to

work on a project. She walked to the house where she had told the cabbie to meet her, but the cabbie didn‟t show up.

She didn‟t know what to do.

In the coldness of early morning, her breath fogging in front of her face, she saw an office complex about two blocks away. She started walking towards it.

When she got there, the front door was open, and she peeked her head inside. A woman behind a desk said, “May I

help you?”

Leah threw her hands to the side. “I don‟t know what to do,” she said in exasperation. “I called a cab to come

and pick me up to take me to the train station, but he hasn‟t shown up. May I use your phone?”

“Go ahead,” the lady said.

Leah dialed quickly, then waited for someone to answer. But no one did. She then explained her situation to the receptionist, leaving out important gaps of information that might incriminate her.

A woman in a pants suit, who had been listening to the conversation from behind her door, jumped out and spontaneously offered to give her a ride.

Leah felt relieved. Her train was scheduled to leave in less than half an hour, and the station was at least twenty minutes away.

On the way there, she lied constantly. Oh, she was

just visiting in town. Oh, she was staying with her aunt and uncle. Oh, they had left early for work and couldn‟t

take her to the train station.

Leah thanked the woman and got out with her bookbag, which was stuffed with clothes instead of books. She

rushed to the platform and hopped onto her train just in time.