“What’s your name?” I asked her for the second time.
She smiled again, and walked up to where I was seated on the grass. She plopped down beside me with a light thud.
“What happened next?” she asked, brushing her hair behind her ears.
“You didn't answer my question.”
She rolled her eyes at me, and I sighed, continuing with my story.
“That has been my last happy memory. Just us friends, sitting on the stairway below the auditorium, talking about how time flies; recalling all the fun times we have spent in this school. I almost felt like a part of the conversation,” I said in an even tone.
It had been the last day of school. For them.
I had another lonely year stretched out in front of me. Talking about the fourteen years of our lives spent together, it made me feel like I belonged. It didn't matter, at least not for that minute, that I would spend fifteen here. It didn't matter that I wouldn't have a single friend in this huge school. This campus of memories would mean nothing to me.
It did not matter.
Because for that special moment, I felt at home.
“The feeling didn't last. People can only talk about the past for so long before dwelling on the –” I was cut off mid sentence.
“Future,” she completed.
“Yes. I don’t have one,” I said, meeting her eye.
“You do. A bright one.”
I gave out a dry laugh, my voice lacking any sign of humour.
“Just because you are bad at academics, it doesn't mean you won’t be good at anything in life,” she said, giving a meaningful glance at the guitar on my left.
“There are too many people who play, not many who listen,” I said.
“But you do. You play. You sing. You listen. You believe.”
“How would you know that?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
“I can hear your thoughts.”
I stayed silent, wondering why on Earth I was even here talking to someone who was obviously a figment of my imagination. What else could she be? Just an eighteen year old girl in a boys’ school, sitting in the middle of the football ground? Seemed a bit unlikely.
I wondered if my mind was playing tricks on me again. It was possible. This wouldn't be the first time I had heard or seen unusual things.
Cats crying, the fan moving unnaturally fast, clouds forming words in the sky.
Just little things that no one else seemed to see.
Now that I looked at the girl beside me, I noticed her fingers, spread firmly on the ground. They were almost transparent, but not quite so.
She caught me looking, but didn't say anything about it.
“When do you plan on leaving home?” she asked me.
I blinked, trying not to be surprised at how much she knew about my life, without being told.
“Soon. I have to get away. Everything is holding me back. Not letting me do what I want.”
“What do you want?” she asked, but in a way that made me wonder if she already knew.
“Something more,” I said, my thoughts away someplace else.
She smiled understandingly at me, and placed her hand on top of mine. We sat there for quite a bit, not saying anything at all.
I picked up my guitar after a while, and looked at the sky as I sang.
Somewhere in the middle of the song, I looked at her.
There were tears in her eyes. But there was also something more. I was afraid to look deeper.
I saw me - older, happier, and successful. But what appealed to me the most was that I looked content.
In her eyes, I saw a vision of me, a person I've always wanted to be.
By the time my song ended, my eyes were wet too.
“You are amazing,” she breathed.
I looked away.
“It won’t be long before the world sees that,” she told me, picking up and holding my gaze.
My words got caught in my mouth, and I just sat there, watching her fade, inch by inch.
“I have to go,” she finally said.
I nodded silently.
“My name is Apple, by the way,” she said slowly.
“What kind of a name-”
I tore my gaze from the ground, my mind wandering to the conversation I’d had with a friend of mine a couple of months ago.
“What would you name your child?” my friend had asked.
“Billie Joe.”
“Unfortunate name for a girl, don’t you think?” she’d said, laughing.
“Apple,” I had said unthinkingly.
“Even more unfortunate.”
As of now, I stopped mid-sentence. I looked up at her with an intensity so great, it drove a hole in her body.
I could only catch my daughter’s knowing smile before she faded away completely.
