Green-Eyed Girl
There is a girl. She is sitting outside of a coffee shop, a headphone in one ear, the other dangling by her left thigh. She is wearing denim shorts and a grey and black T-shirt. Her hair is the color of wet sand, streaked with a lighter shade. Glasses are perched on her nose—I can’t see her eyes but I feel like they would be green. She seems like a green-eyed girl. She is sitting on the very edge of her chair with her sneakered feet flat on the ground and her back hunched as she writes in a notebook. Her head is tilted and—oh, she just stretched her neck, her shoulders rolling back. She has returned to her head tilt. I eagerly await her next movement.
Her right hand, the one she writes with, is paused. She looks over whatever she has just written, judging it. Her finger pushes her glasses farther up her nose and now she is pushing the notebook away… Her face plays out her thoughts. She should be doing something else, probably homework. But no, it’s only eight in the morning. What is she doing here? I begin to ponder it, but then let it go. She returns to her writing. She is smiling now and she closes her eyes, her mouth moving. A good song? A good thought? Whichever, the moment passes and she goes back to writing.
She isn’t stunning. Forgive me for judging on physical appearance, but I don’t know the girl, so bear with me. From what I can see, she isn’t stunning. She is an average teenage girl with slightly tanned skin and long legs. I still want to know if she has green eyes. I make up a tale in my head.
Her name is Emily—common name, I know, but I’m not very creative—and she is 16 years old. She had no drink in front of her. It’s because her best friend is inside, buying her hot chocolate—she can’t stand coffee.
A man has just walked past the object of my distraction. He asks her something and she smiles softly. I can see the words “no” and “sorry” form on her lips. The man keeps walking and the girl—Emily—swallows tightly, coughing subtly into her elbow. She glared angrily at the cigarette in his hand but quickly returns to her notebook.
From my position, I can see her lips move as she rereads her words. The man and his cigarette have made her lose her place. Almost immediately, though, she finds it again and her pen scribbles across the page once more. After a moment, she lifts the pen and twists it. More writing, then more twisting. Nervous habit? Finding a comfortable grip? Either or neither, it happens again and again as I watch.
She stretches her neck again, shifting in her chair.
Twenty minutes pass. She continues to write.
My tale continues in my head. I scratch out the last bit. No one will be joining her today.
Emily is writing a letter. She is writing to everyone and no one. She’s pouring out everything she’s ever wanted to say onto paper with that blue pen and, for once in her life, there is no one there to tell her she can’t.
But this girl doesn’t look like that.
I rewrite my story again.
Emily is writing a story. She’s writing a lovely, romantic story about a boy and girl who happen to meet by chance and immediately fall head over heels, only to be separated. Fate finds them together again. Emily writes a happy ending. She likes happy endings.
She’s gnawing on her lips now. Her pen is unmoving and she leans back in her chair, her eyes closing. The pen falls onto the page, rolling slightly before halting. She drags her chest-length hair up into a ponytail and cracks her knuckles. I get a glimpse of her dark nail polish—I can’t tell whether it’s blue, purple, or black.
Emily likes happy endings. But she has never had one.
I find that quite sad, that vibe I get from her. She is lonely. I can see it. I can feel it. I can practically taste it. Her bag, hanging on the chair, is bulging.
She’s run away. She left wherever her home was and is sitting outside of a coffee shop, in the cold, writing in a little notebook…
Why?
And then I realize. She’s sitting outside of that coffee shop on this day—no. She’s not a distraction anymore from what I’m waiting to happen. Now she’s the reality of what is about to happen.
I start to stand from my spot. The man across the table from me kicks my legs.
“What? Chickening out?”
“There’s a girl,” I tell him, tearing my eyes away from her.
“I saw her. You’ve been fine up ‘til now. Did you just notice her?”
“Have a heart, Joseph.”
His gaze hardens, but Emily is no longer just a shell to me. I can’t fathom why she suddenly feels so real but, for whatever reason, I don’t feel right, letting her sit there. What if everything I’ve made up in my head is true? “Why do you care all of a sudden?”
“Because this isn’t about her. She’s just a child—”
“It’ll help get the point across. You didn’t seem to have a problem with it when we tested the device in Chicago.”
“The body count in Chicago was less than a handful and they were all adults. They had lived, they had lied, they had had real experiences—”
“Let it go, Dean. Besides, she’s outside. Maybe she’ll get away.”
“Let me warn her. Let me—”
“What? Let you tell her that we’ve planted a bomb inside of a coffee shop where four federal agents will arrive in seconds to get their daily caffeine intake? I’m not that stupid. And you’re not either. We want justice, Dean, for what those feds did to Ray. You can’t forget that.”
I haven’t forgotten it. I could never forget it. I say this to him, but he doesn’t speak again, simply reaching for his cell phone and scrolling on the touch screen.
Eventually, we hear voices that sound utterly familiar. In panic, I look up.
The girl is still sitting there, still writing.
“Joseph, please. Ray wouldn’t want a child—”
“Ray can’t tell us what he wants, Dean. You know why—he’s dead and those feds killed him.” His eyes are dark, evil. I hate it when he gets like this. “This isn’t about what Ray would want. This is about revenge.”
“Your niece.”
“Don’t pull the family card with me, Dean.”
“She’s 16 now, isn’t she? She misses her dad. You’re all she has left. What if that was her?” I make one last, desperate plea. “Joseph. What if that was her?”
For a second, I think he’s going to change his mind. Then: “I’d be happy that she gets to be with her father.”
There’s an insistent crackle in our ear buds.
“The feds are in position. Blow it?” Tim asks straight into my head.
I look back at the girl. How lucky she is, not to know what’s about to happen, to get to be oblivious for now when in moments glass from the window will cut through her skin like a knife through butter and the fragments of building will pile on top of her, crushing her. She’ll die slowly.
I try, try my hardest, to send her my thoughts.
Run. Get up. Run. Just get out. Leave your things and go back home. Run!
My heart lifts when I see her sigh. She closes her notebook and stuffs it in her bag. Within seconds, the bag is over her shoulder and she standing up--
“Now.”
The sound is deafening. I’m far enough away, sitting at a table about five shops away, that I don’t feel the heat of the blast and I don’t get hit by any flying debris, but the sound. The sound gets me.
I play the role of worried patron just as well as Joseph does while Tim brings the car around. The only difference between myself and Joseph though, is that I go towards the wreckage. It was a very well controlled blast that Tim set up. He’s smart and capable. The buildings on either side of the coffee shop are only barely affected by the shifting of bricks and bite of flame.
I go towards it and I see her bag, poking out under rubble. It’s real fear gripping me now, not some fake substitute I can conjure when I need to play the part correctly. I am a killer, it’s true. But not children. Never children. Children…they’re too pure. They haven’t lived long enough to be evil.
It’s fear that is making me rip pieces of debris away, ignoring the heat of some still-burning flames—Tim used a real Hollywood-style explosion that looked quite nice and managed to destroy most of the inside of the shop—I see her arm.
I grab her hand and squeeze.
There is no squeeze back.
Later, when the rubble is gone, I find that I was right.
She was 16. Her picture on her ID is very pretty.
She was running away. Her bag held necessities for a few days and a bus ticket.
The little that I can make out of her writing suggests that she was saying goodbye, but it’s too scorched and dirty to be sure.
Lastly, the part that haunts me the most:
She has beautiful green eyes.