The Eyes Of An Artist

Chapter 1

I arrived late, as usual. The room was full of people that sat in dark plastic chairs and listened to a lady with a microphone.
I leaned against the pale white wall and saw a girl next to me.
- Hey, there aren't anymore free chairs, right? -. Dumb question but whatever.
She laughed in a sweet way and looked at me.
- No - she said. I liked her eyes, soft and brown. They had this emotion, feeling. I thought to myself "eyes of a girl".
After a while I took my coat off, everything seemed so boring so I started looking around the room. I saw the faces of the audience, the expresions of concentration and emotion. I felt this strange tension in the air and the colours had this glow that made me feel dizzy. Sometimes my anxiety made me feel like I could no longer stay in the room so I concentrated on my breath, body and relaxed.
Then I kept looking into the croud while the voice of the lady sounded loud in the room.
Suddenly the girl's eyes stared into mine as if I had done something wrong. Her expression was serious, strange, very strange. I still remember the look, the stare and I can't read it... It seemed to me that I had offended her and the anxiety climbed all over my skin.
I looked back at her for a while, we didn't say anything to eachother. Then I gave her a soft smile. Didn't even think about it. It drew itself on my lips until it was too late. She said nothing and looked away.
Time passed, the lady kept on speaking until she said that we had to make groups for an activity. I didn't know if we were going to participate since we weren't sitting in the chairs that had, each one of them, a coloured paper on the back. So I asked her,
- Hey, how are we going to be part of this since we don't have any chairs?
She looked at me with her pretty brown eyes and then, looking forward, she said,
- Oh, I don't know - with a sweet laugh.
I took my small back pack from the floor where her bag was also and walked towards the closest group where I had seen some of my classmates. And I saw that she followed me. I thought that she already had a group or something.
They offered me a chair and she looked at me with this intense look. Her eyes were on mine in a way that made me forget about the crowd. I felt this responsibility, that I couldn't leave her behind. So I started looking for a chair for her until somebody else offered one to her.
We went on with the activity and I searched for her in the large group. She was strange... The way she sat in silence but somehow marked a presence without saying a word. She had something that made me feel observed, it made me feel as if we were together in some way.
I remember this moment when she was looking at me but she had this expression, as if she knew something about me that I hadn't said. I had seen that look on other girls that I liked before.
This hadn't happened to me for a long time. Several months of nobody in my mind, nobody had caught my attention. And now it was strange, I felt something without forcing it or waiting for it.
The activities ended and I left. We met eachother again at the doors that lead to the exit and it was strange. I opened one of them and she came with me.
- Do you study Musical Therapy? - I asked her. The exposition was of Social Musical Therapy.
- I actually finished the carreer already. I still have to do the thesis - she answered. She was strange, I liked her. I was a head taller than her. She had curly hair and her eyes were expresive, emotional.
- Oh... Is it difficult? - I asked.
- Well... I chose to do it on my own, it would be easier if I did it with someone else -. When she said this I thought that she was strange, the way she said things with a calm tone, as if she were living on the outside and observed everything from there. She gave me this energy... She was present but didn't have that gravity that pulled everyone else down, she seemed to be floating and somehow still here, in this world.
- I didn't know you could do it with somebody else - I said. And suddenly a guy that went to the same course as me appeared. That made me very happy, a known face finally.
The girl asked us in wich course we were and we both said second year.
Then we were about to leave the building and I couldn't leave without knowing her name.
- What's your name? - I asked. I didn't think if it was strange to ask her that, I had to know.
- Dolores - she said sort of smiling. Her eyes had this energy, this look in them, they shined a little. And I asked myself if that meant anything.
- And yours? - she asked while walking outside.
- Hannah - I said.
We were outside and it was late. The streets were full of darkness and there was this cold breeze that made me feel alive. I liked to be there with her and nobody else. I wanted to stay, freeze that moment. Cars running on the avenue, golden lights reflecting themselves on the dark street, the trees moving with the wind and her, there, in front of me.
We stood still for some seconds.
- I'm heading that way - I said looking to the left of the sidewalk.
- Oh, I'm going this way - she said looking the opposite way.
- Well, bye - she said shaking her hand in the air. I did the same without knowing what to do.
And then, as if something had taken over me, this impulse, this emotion, this thought of "you'll probably never see her again", made me move towards her and kiss her on the cheek while she did the same. I felt her skin, it wasn't cold or warm, it was just skin. Soft and strange, unknown to me.
We kind of bumped faces and it felt wierd. It made me laugh a little. And then we were walking in opposite directions and I couldn't forget the look of her eyes, the emotion.
That night I walked alone in the city remembering every detail. The way she sat, her voice, her laughter, how she walked full of life and, and overall, her eyes. I just couldn't forget how she looked into my eyes. I felt that when she looked at me she touched me on the inside, she would feel me under my skin, touch my feelings, my thoughts, my emotions. The way she looked into me felt warm, intense, and profound, very profound. Her eyes had this warmth but also distance, this emotion but also strenght, this interest but also indifference.
I've always been into contradictions, never known why. To simple seems to easy, and she was so strange. She seemed to exist full of contradictions... That's how it seemed to me.
That night the city was full of people, noises, cars, lights but it lost that magic without her there. Suddenly it turned into this monster that made no sense, this loneliness full of bodies walking around and nothing more. I wanted her by my side again and knew deep down that we probably wouldn't see eachother again.