Surfaces

PART THREE | TAKE MY BREATH

03

Declan Harte was far from perfection - he knew this simply because he had been told that simple fact many times in his life. He was not a clear image of perfect and he was okay with this. But when he looked over at the auburn-haired girl from across the room he knew that she was indeed perfection sat beside him. It wasn't that she was the most beautiful human being - even though she was easily the most exquisite girl he had ever laid eyes on - that girl that was sat in the seat crying to herself, was the only person he had seen in ages that was real and pure and full of emotion to the point where he himself couldn't even understand it.

It hurt him to see her hurting; even though she was a stranger, not even an acquaintance to him. They hadn't ever looked at each other before; let alone talk to each other. Yet, Declan felt as if they were stars in the galaxies, locked in the same space and so far away from each other but still connected by some sort of orbit or force.

The bell rang shortly after everyone finished presenting their essays, and all the students that were overflowing in the classrooms, flowed out into the hallways; all except for two. Vera continued to sit in her seat with her headphones in her ears, her mind blank without thought. And Declan sat there watching her with worrisome, until Mrs. Burton cleared her throat and announced that they should get on with their classes.

Vera sighed, looking over at Declan with furrowed eyebrows before she walked off, rubbing her eyes with her sweater. Declan followed behind with his head low, as he let his black hair hang in his eyes carelessly. As he came around the corner of the lockers, he noticed Vera at her locker grabbing all of her things in her bag.

He slowly walked over to her, his heart racing with nerves and anxieties as he approached her. She noticed him right away and sighed with annoyance, but ignored his presence and continued grabbing her books and eventually closed her locker loudly. And that is when their faces met, the first time that they both had actually looked at each other.

Vera's green and yellow sunflower eyes looked into his light ocean blue eyes.

Declan's plump lips trembled as he looked at Vera's heart-shaped ones.

"Why are you following me?" She asked, looking away from his face to the bare floor beneath them. Declan stayed silent for just a second longer before clearing his throat, "that poem that you wrote was very intriguing, I just wanted to tell you that."

"It was stupid," Vera mumbled, beginning to walk away from him. But to her fail, Declan was persistent in talking to her the whole way to the doors of the large school that they had been in for almost four years. "It wasn't stupid, Vera. It was far from that, i-it was deep and I could feel the emotion that supported it."

Vera turned to face him with squinting eyes and scoffed, "how can you find it to be full of emotion and depth when you don't even know me?" Declan shrugged his shoulders, his eyes looking down at the floor, bewildered at that fact himself. He didn't know her at all, so he himself couldn't understand why he felt everything that she had written in that poem, and why he was drowning in those words.

"I don't know why, Vera, but-" his eyes adverted to where she was standing, but she was already gone and so was his breath as he realized just how complicated Vera Dalton could easily be.