You

• Jasmine Coe, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2021

I remember you…what you did, what you are…
It was the first time we met, really met, and you, but a young man, with your puffed out chest and porcupine hair, were waiting on her. It was at the cafe down by the piazza and you were coming over. Slowly mind you, you kept stopping at the passing tables, performing your little tricks for their amusement, your gain. They didn’t realise your intentions, your thievery. But I did. I always did. Almost always. The first time I saw you, a year earlier, I had taken you for a fool, a wannabe someone. But that was all a ruse, wasn’t it? We hadn’t spoken, just locked eyes from across the bay. There was something off about your eyes, but then I saw your smile and that smile terrified me, truly. That seemed to amuse you. Everything did. Everything gained that smile from you. The gaping void lined with leathery, weather-worn lips, juxtaposing against the overflow of those delicately crafted sterling pearls. Some might say it was your worst feature.
You started to walk again, making your way over to her table, pretending to ignore me and my watching eyes. You were taunting me, you knew I was there, waiting, the mid-morning sun seeping through my brown polyester jacket and injecting my body with the heat of a thousand burning flames. I waited there, and you ignored me. I watched in palpable silence as you made your way over to the girl at the table to the left. She had hair that would have made Rapunzel reel with envy and eyes the colour of textured moss. I remember fearing that if I looked into those eyes, I wouldn’t be able to find my way out again, so I looked away. I looked away…if I had just kept my eyes on you…but no. In the time it took for the amiable sparrow to beat its tender wings the woman was on the ground, her whole-body convulsing, her delicate frame shuddering as if in the midst of a terrible nightmare from which she was unable to wake. You knelt down beside her, hands on the knife and…she was dead. She was dead and you stood there and laughed, a laugh like a skidding car. But I paid no attention. I was too focused on her. Fixated on the deep blush of her blood, the way it flowed, the way it seeped out…the glistening knife, nicked from one of the passing tables, clattering to the floor. I breathed it in, the smell, the sounds, the screams…except…there were none.
No one was yelling, no one was silent, no one was reacting and she, well she was sitting, with her Rapunzel hair, and browsing the menu. I looked over to you and you looked at me for the first time and opened your mouth: “Is this not what you wanted?”
And then you were gone.
I wonder when I’ll see you again.