The next few days considered in a similar suit, with quite a lot of boring. Alex and I always spent study hall together, discussing the weirdest of topics. I liked him. I really liked him. Not in a romantic way, but we became really good friends really fast, and every second I spent with him I enjoyed so much. He was something I looked forward too when I woke up in the morning, and the reason I was anxious to go to sleep at night, to see him the next day. He was the only good friend, let alone best friend, I’d had in years.
On Friday, after school, I decided to do some thinking. Thinking was a favorite pass time of mine, where I could relax in solitude. I found thinking calming, and so I thought of it as my type of yoga. Another thing I found calming, was water, and so I decided to walk to this park that’s just down the street from the high school.
The park was nothing special, just a lot of grass, a couple trees, and along the side of the cliff separating the land from the water was a sidewalk. Behind this sidewalk, were some conveniently placed benches, at one of which I took a seat.
I looked out across the lake from my bench, calming my thoughts and blocking out what was happening around me, which I read somewhere was referred to sensory deprivation. Because of the grey, dreary day it was, no one else was around. My mom was probably sleeping, so I had this period of independence, that today for some reason or another, a perfect opportunity to have some solitary thinking time.
What interested me about looking out into this vastness, was the way that water eventually met the sky. The water obviously continued, as of course did the sky, but from my perspective, and if I didn’t know any better, I could easily say the water and the sky coalesced to form an in between space. The alternative way I occasionally found myself thinking was of considering the way the water meets the sky expressing the concept of both going on for infinity.
As I felt this newfound calm senselessness wash over me, I began to hear small voices come near me. Two small children, one boy, the elder one of the two, and a girl. The girl, looking to be only about two, ran to the edge of the cliff. A man, whom I presumed was their father, was quite a bit behind the two children. As he saw his daughter racing towards the edge, I could the see the panic in his face.
I instantly snapped out of my zoned-out tranquility, and suddenly realized what was going on. The girl was about to slip off the edge. I was about to get up and race towards, when someone else had already beat me to it. The boy, I recognized, was Alex. I jogged lightly towards where he was holding the little girl.
“Why are you here?” I asked inquisitively. He held the little girl with one arm, like she weighed no more than a feather. Her brother had run back to children’s father, who came up to Alex and I.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. If you hadn’t of been here, I don’t know what I would’ve done. Thank you,” he said, taking the young girl into his own arms from Alex, putting his face against his daughter’s. “Never, ever, do that again Ellie. Ever,” he said to her, and thanked us again before leaving with his children.
“At least he appreciated my heroism,” Alex said to me, flexing his biceps. He was wearing a t-shirt, because obviously he’s insane (it is quite cold), which very acutely showed off his muscularity.
“Good job. Anyways, back to my earlier question. Why are you here?” I replied.
“Well, my dad is still at work, and my mom is at a business trip in Australia, so I decided to wander around saving young children about to throw themselves off cliffs while beautiful young women nearby stare like crazy people at water,” was his answer. He tucked his hands in his pockets casually, while all I could think was that he had called me beautiful. And then crazy. But still, he had called me beautiful.
“Are you stalking me?” I asked, suddenly realizing that it was definitely a possibility. He did seem to know where I was quite a bit of the time.
“I prefer the term ‘examining with great interest’,” Alex said flirtatiously, stepping towards me slightly, to lessen the giant gap that had been between us. His being next to me definitely proved the height difference we had. I was pretty short, and he was pretty tall, so he towered over me.
“Well, as you may have learned from your examinations, I am quite boring. I stare at water and stuff,” I said, trying not to read to in depth into the whole stalking thing. We started walking back towards the street together, his hands still in his pockets (not looking cold at all, I might add) while I shivered fiercely within my sweater.
“I think you underestimate yourself, Rosalind. I believe staring at water can be very interesting.”
“I could definitely write some poetry about it.”
“Oh how the water sways, amidst the morning haze, with children almost dying, while I sit there longingly sighing,” Alex recited on the spot, faking an English accent for his performance.
“I was not longingly sighing!” I said, laughing.
“One would beg to differ,” he replied, joining my laughter with his own. We continued to walk without any actual destination in mind. We had a period of silence, mostly because I was too cold to speak, before Alex reignited conversation.
Ember Bound 