There’s a possibility that when you see her for the first time, all you notice are the big blue headphones and public lip-syncing.
She’ll never apologize for it.
You’ll see them everywhere – in crowded corridors between classes, in a shopping mall, on breezy terraces. Sometimes, the lip-syncing is full blown singing, without a shred of reserve or self-preservation. It’s the one feature that defines her more than her own face does – if you ever tell her that, she’ll chuckle.
What you’ll notice next is the way she moves.
You can’t quite decide if she detests crowds or loves them – she either wades through them with her eyes on the ground or halt at every other person and ask them about their day. It’s the choice between a two minute solitary walk or a journey of an hour with several companions, and not once can you predict what choice she’ll make.
It’s almost funny to watch.
When you see her again, you’ll notice other things – inconsequential aesthetic observations, she calls them – and you’ll notice that she’s taller than most of her peers and big boned in a buoyant sort of way and that her hair and eyes are a dash of brown in a sea of black. She’ll maintain (always) that they’re ‘inconsequential aesthetic observations’, but will smile (and mean it) if you ever compliment her looks anyway.
She’s full of contradictions like that.
She’s full of arguments too – you can catch her having one (intellectual discussions, she calls them) with absolutely anybody, absolutely anywhere, with her making incredulous faces and appealing to ‘logic’ and visibly appalled if ever the topic happens to be women’s rights or Twilight. More often than not, she gives way to her opponent, inclining her head idiosyncratically and smiling sagely, never once admitting that (privately) she thinks that their argument has no leg to stand on. But she thinks grace and appearances are somewhat important, and opinions can only be contested and not wholly changed, and she’s okay with that. At least that’s what she tells her friends. And maybe you, if ever you ask.
That’s another thing about her – you’ll never catch her not answering a question. She thrives off it, apparently – she’s the girl who raises her hand in a classroom, after all – and more often than not she’ll do the extra research if ever she fails to answer one of yours; you aren’t quite sure why that is, but the happiness on her face at having resolved a query is unmistakeable. You decide that it’s convenient, if nothing else, and so does everyone else.
What you’ll notice last – If only you stick around long enough, that is – is how little she smiles. Oh sure, she laughs a great deal, as much at other people’s jokes as at her own frequent and obscure pop culture references – but it’s a rare sight indeed to find her truly smiling at anything. It doesn’t really bother most, as they, like you, wouldn’t stick around long enough to notice, but every once in a while, you find it unnerving, for as much as those smiles are missing in public, they’re on display in her most private moments, on a park bench with a book, or in the pouring rain all alone, with her arms outstretched like a child’s.
If you ever do see her, what you will see is just another girl. If you tell her that, she’ll smile graciously and never correct you.
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