Missing Out

• Sinead Mccullough, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2009

The first time I saw her, she was walking past my house. Just hobbling along slowly. She wasn’t that old, maybe mid-forties, but she moved as if she had already hit eighty. There was nothing particularly special about her; I might not have even noticed her if our eyes hadn’t met as she walked past the old jacaranda next to my driveway. That was when I realised that she hadn’t taken her eyes off me for the entire 15-metre journey past my house.
From then on, I kept a lookout for her, and started noticing more and more. She always carried a mesh shopping bag, which never had anything in it; she favoured her left leg slightly, producing the shuffle-like movement that had caught my attention. And she was always looking. There was no malice in her eyes, just curiosity, maybe even wistfulness.
She always walked alone. I learnt that her husband had died in a motorbike accident years ago. She hadn’t talked to anyone since. And over and over again, I heard the word ‘strange’.
“She’s so strange!”
“Isn’t it strange?”
“What a strange person!”
Laughing, I agreed.

She lived in a house a few doors down from mine, but for some reason I had never noticed her. Well, I can’t be expected to know about everything that’s going on!
So I just watched as she walked back and forth past my house, catching glimpses of lives displayed in open windows. I sometimes wondered if she was trying to remember her own.
I noticed a lot of other things as I watched this woman. The neighbours’ old cat had gone, and had been replaced with a small black fuzz ball with emeralds for eyes.
The couple across the street had a baby girl who stared in wonder at the blue sky and laughed like a crystal chime when her mother made a face at her. I hadn’t even noticed that she was pregnant.
I watched a family say goodbye to their old Volvo with chipped and rusty paintwork and welcome instead a new four-wheel drive, and for the first time I began to wonder about my neighbours. What were their lives like? What did they love, what did they hate? What made them laugh and cry? I wanted to know everything I could about the people who surrounded me. The people who, until now, I had barely taken notice of.

I invited neighbours for dinner, parties, coffee, anything I could think of really. And slowly I learnt more and more. Only then did I realise that I wasn’t the only one in my world. Only then did I realise what I had been missing out on.