Beauty

She sat directly across from me in English. When I say directly I mean, exactly. It was almost as if she mirrored me in my seating position most of the time. I always made sure that I got into my seat first, so I could get this seat, I can’t imagine sitting anywhere else in this white box. She always got her equipment out in the same order. Bag on table. Pencil Case.

Black pen.

Blue pen.

Notebook.

Bag on floor again. She was almost obsessive in the way she laid out her pens, dead straight, the tips both pointing towards me. When she was happy with them, she would give this big grin and flick open her notepad. I’ve seen her writing before, a mass of swirls with erratic flicks and circles to dot the ‘I’s’.

I loved to watch the way she wrote. When she was deep in concentration her small pink tongue would stick out the side of her plump lips; it thrilled me to know that she was lost in thought when I saw this expression. Maybe she was thinking of me. Other times, when she was bored, she would rest her head on her pale little hands and look at me, rolling her eyes, smirking. I would always mirror her action, sarcastically sighing. I loved the small, high-pitched giggle she would give afterwards.

She wore patterned dresses, with dark coloured tights. The floral patterns were intricate, swirling flowers, dancing petals, mouth-watering colours. They were modest, covering most of her creamy white skin, but still enough to make me feel crazed. Her beautiful slender arms were still showing and the rippling cascade of her dark curls shielded the tops of her shoulders from my view.

Her face was agonizingly perfect, even when twisted in a grimace as she struggled to understand pathos, or another useless term in our lectures. The nose was thin, resting above the shapely rouged lips, but just below the wide green eyes, outlined in black that were always sparkling with the anticipation of new knowledge as she entered the room.

She smelt of incense. Thick, billowing smoke, the kind you got from old libraries and broken down theatres. Occasionally the wind would blow the scent towards me and I would have to blink to keep focus on the lesson, without turning to gaze at her again.

I’ve sketched her face more than once, trying to perfect the delicate curves in my clumsy biro, failing to create the sweeping luxury of her hair with my incapable fingers. I slumped down into my chair, crinkling the ruin in my palm. She looked up at the sound and cocked her head, inquisitively. I nodded back at her and she arched an eyebrow, comically before looking back down at her work, leaning over the paper, flourishing her fountain pen with added extravagance, finishing her full stop with a weighted 'dot'.

But as normal, the bell would toll and the lecture would end. Most would sigh a breath of relief, but a sob choked the back of my throat at the thought of departing from her. She would open her satchel and scoop her things into it, springing up delicately and twirling her way out of the room, absent-mindedly.

I held my head in my hands and stared at the floor, raking my hair back. I had English again tomorrow.

Her face looked especially beautiful tonight. Her expression was one a little different but I have to say it was one I enjoyed. Eyes wider, bloodshot with red, nostrils flared a little, her mouth creased up in a line. I wanted to touch it.

She felt like satin.

I sat and watched her for days. But her face changed, moved almost. Her mouth drooped a little at the corners and her eyes were glassy. They looked lovely, like shining orbs.

I sat and watched her for weeks. She changed again. Her cheeks were hollow; her skin looked sallow and was starting to yellow around the curved edges. Her eyes were barely even there anymore and the incense smell was gone. I shook her shoulders and yelled at her, but she wouldn’t listen.

I told her to be beautiful again, I screamed it at her, I begged and pleaded, cried and shouted until I was red in the face. I told her I would dance, sing, beg, bleed, rob, steal, murder, read, write, anything! But she wouldn’t hear me. She just shrunk and shrunk until she eventually became ugly and spited me. Spited everything I had done for her, every second I had wasted staring paralyzed at her ungrateful face. I think she did it on purpose.