by Ali Merci
“Right.” He paused, looked away, and then back at her. “Guess I better get going now.”
“Bye, Asa.” She lifted her hand in a small wave and dropped it back to her side, but she didn’t move right away. Just like last time, she looked at him wordlessly for a mere heartbeat longer—but what felt like an infinity to him.
An infinity in which he saw a pale moon with a crack splitting it into two, a magnificent sun frosting over and sucking the life out of flowers, a girl with no face but long, flowing hair as dark as the starless sky.
That was the thing about Carmen, he then realised. She was a masterpiece who made other masterpieces and went about with her head tilted to the side like she was painting a whole new one in her mind.
And Asa wanted to take a peek inside. To see if her mind was truly as beautiful as her name. Carmen, Carmen, Carmen. It must be so colourful inside her head, while his was just a blank slate.
“How are you leaving?” the words left his mouth as soon as a particularly strong gust of wind blew past them. It sent a shiver down his back, and he wondered if she was going to walk in this chilly weather.
“By foot,” she answered, the ghost of a smile on her face. Asa had come to realise that Carmen’s lips always carried a trace of a smile, like she was just waiting for the moment when she would have to offer one to somebody. As if it was her god-given duty to smile at any breathing, living thing that walked past her.
He wondered then, if more than being colourful, whether her mind was a very sad place instead. A place where none of the smiles she sent everyone’s way existed.
It made him want to send a smile her way every second of every day.
“It’s cold,” he pointed out with a slight frown. And then she did something that set off a grenade in his chest.
She laughed.
No, wait. Not a grenade. Because the feeling in his chest was something light and fluttery, zooming through his chest and his heart in a single strike. Too light to be a grenade, he thought, but also too peaceful to be a firecracker.
He thought of a shooting star then. Just passing through the midnight sky in a single strike, leaving a trail of glowing light in its wake.
He wondered then, if Carmen had a touch of galaxies in her veins.
“My dad said something similar last week,” she said, her voice carrying faint traces of her laughter. “I told him I preferred the walk.”
“You like the cold?” he asked. Stupidly, of course. Like the idiot she always turned him into.
“I like the autumn leaves,” and right as she said it, a leaf broke away from its branch, fluttering around in the breeze, and landed on her hair.
It was a sight. Carmen, with her head tipped backwards and her lips stretched into an open smile as her fingers fought to untangle the leaf from her hair.
God, it was a sight.
Asa was losing his mind.
“You collect it for your journal?” he guessed.
She managed to pull the leaf out and then shook her hair, the strands flying around her face before settling down into an endless black river against her back.
“Yeah.” She grinned and it was like the full moon glowing down at Asa.
Carmen, he’d wanted to say right then, how could you ever believe the moon was cracked?
“I’ll drive you home,” he said, the words leaving his mouth as if he was reading off a script because God knew his mind was too occupied with dark nights and starless skies illuminated by a single full moon.
Surprise flickered in her eyes before her lips curved into a smile again. “You don’t have to—”
“I’d like to.” He shrugged, stuffing his hands back into his pockets. “You’re not even wearing a sweater. And neither am I so I can’t offer you any.”
“You have a very nice mind, Asa,” she told him then, and Asa thought he’d burn by the way she was looking at him.
“Nice mind?” he repeated.
Carmen nodded. “Always looking to help.” She tilted her head and Asa’s world tilted with it. “It makes me think you have a beautiful heart.”
Asa laughed then, because every other logical response had flown right out of his mind. “Come on, we’ve been standing here way too long. We gotta get going.”
But when he’d checked his watch, he realised that only seven minutes had passed since he’d walked out of school and caught up with Carmen.
Seven minutes. And yet Asa could swear he’d caught a glimpse of what infinity felt like.
18.
Everything She Touched
Asa knew he was supposed to focus on the road while driving, but he couldn’t help himself from sneaking sideway glances at Carmen who was smiling to herself in the passenger seat.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked, unable to stop the question.
“This leaf is so beautiful.” She sighed, twirling the dry, pale red leaf between her thumb and forefinger.
“It’s a leaf,” he said dryly.
She laughed then, and he could swear another shooting star was born somewhere in the cosmos. Or maybe it was just inside his chest, near his ribcage.
“But don’t you…” she started to say then trailed off, her eyes narrowing slightly while the wheels in her head turned. “When you see this leaf, or any red leaf for that matter, doesn’t it feel like—like they’re blushing? As if the September wind whispered something so intimate to the trees that they blushed so hard and their leaves turned red?”
Carmen, he’d wanted to say. Carmen, Carmen, Carmen. As if saying her name would make him understand the way her mind worked any better. But Asa realised he couldn’t stare at the leaf in her hand and see it as just a leaf anymore. And it made him wonder then if Carmen had a way of taking the galaxies in her veins and pouring it out through her fingertips, if she knew how she was giving something as mundane as a leaf an element of wonder just by her touch. Maybe everything Carmen looked at turned into a thing of magic. Or maybe, Asa decided yet again, he was just losing his mind.
“No,” he eventually said. “No, I’ve never looked at it that way.”
She turned her head towards him, offering him a crooked smile, and goddammit, he’s supposed to be focusing on the road. “That’s good.” She nodded. “It must be nice, just seeing the world for what it is.”
Carmen, he wanted to say. Are you out of your mind? Because now Asa didn’t want to see the world for what it was anymore. Now Asa wanted to see it through Carmen’s eyes. Maybe then, when he stared into the mirror, he’d see himself as magic too. Maybe then, if he touched his cheek, his skin would have that element of wonder too. Just like everything Carmen looked at, just like everything Carmen touched.
Silence had fallen over them, but Asa didn’t know if he could describe it as either a comfortable or an uneasy one. Because she was undoubtedly thinking of something—no, not thinking—probably painting another theory inside her head, and he was battling against watching the road and watching her.
It was silent, yes, but with neither of them acknowledging it, there might as well have been noise.
“Why do you like her?”
The question startled Asa, who’d been lost in thought of her midnight hair and her ivory skin.
“What?” He blinked. God, was he an idiot?
“Willa.” She smiled. “Why do you like her? If I’m right, you really don’t even know her yet.”
Did Asa like Willa? He didn’t think so. But it would take a lifetime for him to explain.
“I just need—she’s got the wrong idea of me.” His fingers tapped the steering wheel, eyes scanning the vehicles in front of him as they stopped at a red light.
“There’s always someone out there who’s got the wrong idea of you.” Her eyes narrowed a slight fraction. “Always going to be.”
Asa clenched and unclenched his jaw. “And I’m okay if that someone was Hunter,” he said. “Or Cromwell. Don’t see why it’s necessary to add another name to that list.”
The silen
ce grew thick and uncomfortable for him as he continued to feel Carmen’s eyes burning holes into the side of his face, studying him. There was this sudden urge to just rip the steering wheel off and chuck it out through the windshield. Maybe then she’d look away.
“She does have a wrong impression of you,” Carmen finally said, looking away as the light turned green and Asa started driving again.
“What makes you say that?” He shot her a glance and then turned his attention back to the road in front of him.
“At lunch the other day, Joyce and Lottie were giving her the rundown on the social hierarchy of our school.”
“And?”
“I guess she had it in her head that you’re a player.” Carmen’s voice was steady as it usually was, the words flowing from her mouth easily in a conversational manner. She spoke like she had all the time in the world to say whatever she wanted, and that fascinated him for some reason. “I kind of set the record straight.”
He shot her another glance from the corner of his eyes. “Set the record straight?” he repeated, lips turning down into a small frown. “What do you mean?”
She turned to look at him then, pulling her eyes away from the road outside. “Well.” She paused. “You aren’t a player.” It didn’t sound like a question, and it didn’t sound like she was uncertain about her words.
No, Carmen said that like she was stating the sky was blue and something in Asa’s chest—right smack dab in the middle of it—lurched forward as if being hurled from a cliff.
“No?” he asked, his truck coming to a slow stop in front of her house. His eyes quickly scanned the address plate on her front gate, making sure he’d gotten the right house.
“No,” she said. And then she pulled her eyebrows together, wrinkling the skin on her forehead. “What? You’re not sure of yourself?”
“No, it’s just…” he trailed off, eyes fixated on the floor of his truck, seeing but not caring about the empty gum packet he’d carelessly discarded there. “It’s only natural for people to assume that of me, given my popularity and looks and whatnot.”
But you didn’t, he wanted to add. Why didn’t you, Carmen?
“I don’t much care for assumptions,” she mumbled, averting her eyes when he looked up at her.
“It’s not like the assumptions are too far off,” Asa quickly said, feeling restless for some unknown reason. “I mean, I do fool around—”
“Why are you doing that?” she cut in sharply, her lips twisted into a scowl and eyes narrowed into slits.
Goddamn, he thought, her eyes. Gone was the calm; it was pure storm now.
“Doing what?” he asked, looking away because her stare was too intense. Carmen was too intense.
Again, not Asa’s type. Asa liked simple.
“Justifying what they label you!” Her voice shook with the strong undercurrent of anger, her eyes wild and passionate and, in that moment—in that fleeting, almost insignificant moment—Asa saw the artist in her. He saw the girl who had the ability to soak and engrave the pages of her journal in colours and strokes of her emotions.
Or maybe, he just saw Carmen.
“I’m not justifying it,” he muttered, feeling edgy now and just wanting to get the heck out of her presence. “It’s just—it comes with getting to the top of the food chain. They see Isla, they see a slut. They see Hunter, they think he’s the bad boy with a heart of gold.” Asa scoffed, wondering if Hunter even had a warm, beating heart in him. “And they see me, and think I’m a player, a manwhore too egotistical to be settling down for one girl.” He met her eyes, his ordinary brown drowning in her stormy ones.
“So what? You think it is okay for them to get away with it just because it’s the norm?”
“Hey, I offered to drive you home out of kindness but I didn’t sign up for a goddamn game of twenty questions,” he snapped, shooting her a glare but to his immense bewilderment, Carmen just smiled with a tangible softness.
“Thank you for that, Asa.” She opened the door of his truck and twisted her body around to get out of the vehicle. Adjusting the strap of her bag and smoothening down the front of her shirt, she met his eyes one last time. “Thanks again. I’ll be out of your hair now.”
Shooting him another small closed-lipped smile, she turned around and started walking away, never even bothering to close the passenger seat door.
Sighing in half exasperation and half amusement, Asa leant across the seats and closed the door himself.
In the process of doing so, however, his nose caught a whiff of something lingering in the air. It was subtle and yet strong in its own way. In fact, it reminded him of his kindergarten days when the teachers used to make him paint and he’d always ended up making an utter mess.
Paint. It struck him in full force and he wondered how he could’ve missed it. But it made sense now. Carmen was an artist and it appeared that she left traces of that fact wherever she went.
So, with faint traces of paint smell and the scent of his watermelon-flavoured gum mixing together as one in his truck, he began his drive back home.
19.
Beneath Skin & Bones
Carmen thought her shoulder blades had turned to dust and that her spine wasn’t some heavy bone but a river of still water because of the way she felt so light and unburdened.
Her lips stretched into a wide smile as she strolled into school the next day, seeing past the bodies walking in front of her and instead replaying the scene in her head of when Asa had reached into his backpack and handed over her art journal.
How simply wonderful and terrifying was it that when she’d defended Isla, she’d believed she didn’t deserve any of that kindness back? But hours later Asa had walked up to her and told her exactly the opposite. He’d said “What goes around comes around” like he was telling her that It’s okay, Carmen, I’ve seen you be kind to everybody and here’s some of it for you. As if he was blind to the chaos she carried in her bones.
Don’t kid yourself, Carmen, she told herself. Asa didn’t notice your act of kindness because he was watching you from the sidelines; he only noticed because he happened to be right there that day in the cafeteria, and he must have felt obligated to do something in return.
Carmen couldn’t expect everyone to be like her, could she? Just because she admired his brave heart when he took a stance and stood up for the things he believed in, it didn’t mean he did the same for the same reason. She observed, yes, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was being observed in return.
But, for the most part, she felt relieved. She felt this unusual sort of bliss. Because Asa hadn’t turned out to be a complete jerk. He actually had decency, and even though what he did must have been just a random act of niceness in his eyes, it was much more for her. She found herself wondering if perhaps Asa’s heart was made of the same beautiful gold his skin was painted in.
For one painful moment, a vision of his eyes flashed before hers. Eyes that were anything but an ordinary brown. She recalled that hint of desperation, that look of exhaustion when he thought no one was looking. The kind of exhaustion that was more than just a need to sleep. It was the kind of exhaustion that ran bone-deep and drained one’s soul dry.
Despite her better judgment, Carmen turned around and began walking towards the direction of the lockers. Who was she to question Asa’s feelings for Willa? If he wanted her help, then she was willing to offer it. More so now than ever.
If his heart-warming act of doing the right thing at the cost of what he wanted were any indication of the kind of person he was, then Carmen would like to be there for the entirety of it. She’d like to be there to see what he looked like beneath his skin and bones.
20.
Only Human
Asa had one of his worksheets tucked between his lips as he tried—but failed—to clear away some of the clutter, in what looked like an aftermath of a hurricane, inside his locker.
“Hey,” someone said from next to him. He knew the voice belonged to Carmen,
but when he turned his head around to face her, his mouth fell open anyway, and some of the paper from his mess of a locker fluttered to the ground in a slight whoosh.
He was prepared for the midnight hair and the thundercloud eyes, but goddammit, Carmen was grinning at him. Her teeth was a little crooked, a testament of her being human and not celestial like she seemed to be, and that knocked the breath right out of him.
Carmen was only human. Human. Human.
“H-hi.” He blinked, opening his mouth to ask her how she was doing, but how do you force yourself to speak when no arrangement of the twenty-six letters from the alphabet seemed adequate in her presence? She was all mismatched things that fit together. How do you ask someone like her how they are doing? Which part of her would he be asking?
Asa didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him. Yes, he was a bookworm. Yes, he read. Yes, he was normally good with words. But Carmen seemed to have crushed his literacy then and there which was just the most ridiculous and amazing thing that he could’ve ever imagined happening to him. A week back, he wouldn’t have even spared this girl a second glance if he’d brushed past her in the hallways. But the minute—no, the second—he’d picked up the art journal, that had changed. Because now that he knew of her existence, she was all that seemed to be there. As if Carmen West held the core of the entire universe within herself and commanded his soul to sing to her tune whenever she was within reach.
There he went again, with those damned words. As if every fibre of his being knew too well than to simplify her into mere words, so that every single thing she did was automatically turned into poetry. He might just top his AP Literature class with Carmen by his side; he might be able to create masterpieces instead of the same old mundane papers he wrote for assignments.
“Um, Asa?”
Her voice brought him back to the now, pulling him out of his thoughts gently, the way his mother sometimes tugged at his chin to turn his head her way. It was oddly comforting.