I awake in my bed with dreams still lingering in my hazy eyes, dried trails of tear crusted to my cheek. It always takes me a few minutes to realize that the dirty autumn morning light that slants across my face is of the real world, and not some distant one.  So I rub my watery eyes and yawn, realizing that I have yet again awaken to a reality that is not my own. The usual routine of getting a shower, dressed, and out the door was soon to come. I don't eat breakfast; I am not a morning person. Nobody is ever home in the morning, it's usually just me and my toothbrush. I leave at around ten after to get to school in plenty of time. I run across, or rather see this girl about a block away from my house, the school being only five blocks in the same direction. Her hair is short, black and fits around her face perfectly, her eyes are warm puddles of chocolate boiling against the flour-dusted paleness of her face. Sometimes if a dream was unusually persistent I would sometimes consider the fact that it was her I was dreaming about, but than I start to feel selfish. I just thought she was very pretty. Well, of course I thought she was pretty, I didn’t know her well enough to see any of the faults she carries like the rest of us. I myself am not what you could call attractive, I have been told I have a rather unique look. Which means I am nice to know, not love.

Usually I would walk behind her a good distance as to not have to deal with talking to her. I don’t have a fear of people really, but it's just that I like to watch and usually I have nothing to say anyway. Today for some reason she walked at a slower pace than before, I had to walk even slower to stay behind, almost not walk at all. Suddenly she stopped walking all together. I wasn't sure if I should also stop, maybe walk backwards, or just keep going. Before I could make up my mind she turned and looked at me. Not with a cold hard look, nor a happy one. It was empty. Her eyes were glazed over and sleepy, she looked completely lost. As she looked at me in this blank manner I feel deeply into the barren wells of he eyes. Even though I could feel the firm ground beneath my feet it felt as though I was falling. I was completely adrift when she took a deep breath and asked  "Let’s walk together for once?" Her thin voice could barley travel the short distance between us. She didn’t show any body language, no quiver of the lip or shift of stance. She just said those words while standing there completely unguarded and open. I wanted to say I was thinking the same, that I always though that. I felt compelled to pour out every dream I thought I had of her, of every day when I yearend to talk to her. Yet in the end I just nodded and joined her.
It was about three blocks and neither of us had spoken a word. The sky was the color of wet concrete, clouds ran through it in dark, smoky cracks. The grimy light of a smothered sun seeped down between the trees, scathing them like bleak sodden skeletons. I wasn’t sure if I should look at her since she didn’t even seem to notice I was next to her. So I only stole small glances. Up close she was humanly beautiful. Her cheeks and nose were sprinkled with faded freckles, faint ghosts of childhood. Her lips were thin and pale, pressed hard together as if deep in thought. Her eyes were still half closed and hazy, she walked in a straight determined line, as if nothing was going on around her. Or as if nothing going on around he was worth noticing. As I tried to sketch her face in my mind with permanent maker, her hand brushed slightly against mine. It was only a quick swipe but in that second I felt warmth, the kind of warmth that only a body could produce. The kind of warmth I have been yearning for ever since I had discovered my longing of another persons body. I don't know if she noticed but it didn't really matter anyway. It was enough to keep my heart pumping like a foolish child waiting for Christmas. When we finally got to the entrance of our school we just went our separate ways, not looking at each other or saying anything, just letting our selves be swallowed in the masses. I usually don't see her through the whole day until I walk home.

All through out the day I could only think of her. Usually I would spend a period of school musing of talking to her, of what she would be like. And than I would wonder to other topics, or just go to sleep. But that day I couldn’t get away from her, her face stayed with me. In each and every class I sat at my desk and let my brain wonder freely. I do this all the time, with all kinds of people. I make up stories and situations that reflect what they could be like. I would sit behind a pretty girl and think of her as a bookworm, her glasses sitting atop her nose as she peruses through a classic French novel, while she her self peruses through life looking for some sort of classic heart to fall for. Though if I ever did hear her talk to a friend about her love life I was usually very far away from her goals. People can be anything you imagine, but when imagination ends and reality begins, they are usually quite ugly. That never stops me though. With this girl I imagine her to be immensely sad. I don’t know why but all the small things I barely know about her lead me to nothing but loneliness. From the way she walks to the emptiness in her eyes that swallowed me earlier this morning. Though in her mind I can see dreams, thousands of them, some still dusted with gold from childhood, some rooted deep into her heart full of sleepy eyed daydreams, and others lingering in the crevasses of her mind like shadows creased between books. Maybe she wanted to be a doctor, or no a vet, ever since she was little but as she grew her mind matured before her face. It changed into an ambition to become a writer, a poet or a painter. Her ragged looks seem to only hint at the pace in which she runs down the streets of love. I see her heart plump with the fantasies of puppy preteen affection, but frightened by the bulldogs of harsh love. Maybe she has never been kissed, but feels it on her lips every single night as she lay sleepless in bed while cars play lullabies on the road outside. I see her whispering into book after book as she loses her mind in the midst of what she can’t seem to understand. I try to figure her name out and the first one that surfaces is Emily. I call the name out in my head, trying to imagine her face turning in response to it. It seems almost too real, yet I doubt that it’s her name.
School is not something that I really enjoy. Not only because you have to do work and such, but because I have to be around lots, and lots of people. People I do not know. I wouldn't say I fear crowds, just small spaces with too many people. When you feel so overwhelmed you sometimes retreat into yourself, you feel alone in your world. It’s almost like you don’t exist at all. It’s a selfish feeling really, thinking you alone are the only person ignored into silence. Yet today I feel more alive than I have ever felt. It seems that now that I have finally met this lonesome-walking girl I wanted to be real. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t like what I imagined in my mind. I wanted to dig deep into her thoughts and heart, I wanted to uproot all of her dreams and fears. I wanted to shed secret after secret with her until we were nothing but naked bodies ablaze in the light of this world. It didn’t matter how small I felt my place was among this disaster of people, because I knew it was mine and it was mine alone to offer to her.

When the bell finally rings I find myself looking for her in the hallway as I walk towards the exit. I scan all the faces, some I’ve seen before, and others I’ll never see again. As I walk out the door I decide to wait by the steps incase she passes by. I stand against the cement wall and try to map out some sort of greeting I could call to her but end up with nothing. I than notice the flow of students had faded to a trickle. I take a deep breathe of a sigh, the fall air rolling over my taste buds, leaving behind the taste of rotting soggy leaves. After deciding she was already half way to where ever she lives I begin to walk home. It would be kind of weird to worry about her like I knew her, but I am disappointed none the less. Yet as I keep walking I continue to worry about her. Could this obsessive feeling be love? No, I just thought she was interesting. I wanted to get to know her more, then maybe I could take this fleeting feeling I have in my chest and turn it into something worth living for, something that would be worth waking up for.

When I get to the begging of the street my house is on I find myself loathing the quietness of it, as soon as I open the door it’ll be there waiting for me like a sad whimpering dog. I slip on my headphones and turn the music all the way up to where I can not even hear my own footsteps. This is how I usually walk home, clutching at my Walkman and staring at the ground as if looking for something I’ve lost. “Oh get me away from here im dying, playing me a song to set me free…” The music lulls me into a private universe were I am the only person who can hear this beautiful music in such an ugly world. Usually I stop at cross walks and look for cars but I can’t seem to find that in me today and I put my trust, what little there is into the drivers. I can recognize where I am just by the look of the sidewalk. I know I am halfway home because a huge tree root has cracked and raised a section of cement. I know when I am at the crosswalk of my own street because it is the only one that is next to a major road. I find myself staring at the clean tar pavement painted with the yellow dotted lines before I realized it. Standing on the curb I look up for the first time to check the crosswalk sign. A car drives by  and in the wake of its speed I catch a person walking towards me from the other side. Through the narrows of my eyes I see its the girl from before in mid stride in the middle of the road. She seems caught off guard, as if she was stopped in mid sentence, her arm out stretched with something to give me. The words never came out of her mouth though, that very instant it seems someone up stairs blinked.
"Still it was worth it as I turned the pages solemnly, and then with a winning smile, the poor boy with naiveté succeeds. At the final moment I cried, I always cry at endings." The voice in my headphones sang mournfully as the no walking sign was blazing red. A car sweeps her off her feet like a fairytale prince, spinning her in a gown of broken glass that shudders in a sickening collision. She lands like a foul ball just out of reach. I was running towards her before I knew it with my heart pounding uncertainly I fall on my knees next to her. As I go to touch her, to feel for a pulse I can only bring my shaking hands to hover inches from her face. She’s lying on the pavement looking straight up to the sky as if looking for figures in the clouds. I murder my fear in a blind attempt of comfort and pick her up  in my arms. They become damp with blood as her face ripples with pain, her eyes slowly open in tiring blinks. Instead of being empty as before her eyes are flooded with fervent emotion. Tears teem from the corners of her eyes, tiny translucent cars veering down the avenue of her cheeks. She strains to lift her head close to mine but it falls heavily against my arm. I lean closer to her face, her eyes becoming huge churning oceans of earth. She puts her hands on my face, her palms lingering with warmth like a late summer sun. With a voice that is  choked with pain she whispers through clenched teeth and busted strawberry lips.
"I spent…all day writing this…for you." She holds open her hand and in her palm lies a folded piece of paper. She smiles beautifully as I take it from her, a smile that reaches from the edge of oblivion, struggling through the thick shadows of death, haunting in its tranquility. Her eyes close as the left over tears stream down her face, smearing the blood like rain streaking a window and cascade off her chin. Her other hand slips from my cheek as one finger grazes my lips as if to hush me. She dies in my arms, right then and there as a smeared marshmallow giraffe slowly floated above us. Car have begun to halt in confused screeches as their drivers shout worried questions at me while others dial their cell phones quickly. Soon I hear the wailing of sirens coming towards us. I don’t move though, I don’t shed any tears or look up from her face. I embrace her in that last deathly human embrace, feeling her body against mine in ghostly warmth. The paramedics come, and steal her from my blood stained arms. They put her into the back of the ambulance as the police shout at bystanders. I watch everything happen from far away, from deep within myself as I feel any sense of the world drift off with the ambulance, wailing cruelty into the distance. I answer all the police’s questions with the voice of a mute man. They leave with the promise of a phone call and I stand there trying to soak it all in as the people slowly disappear. I sit down on the curb and unfold the crumbled paper. As I read my eyes well up with tears for the firs time since I can remember. I begin to bawl uncontrollably as sentence after sentence resonates in horrific familiarity. It’s as if she was copying down everything I had conjured up about her that day. From the tremendous loneliness to the phantom kiss she felt each night. Her heart was scrawled out on this piece of paper from beginning to end and it was signed;
Immensely yours,
Emily
I sigh a salty, lung-piercing sigh and walk towards my empty house.