Jennifer Smith was a girl who never talked. One could not tell if she was simply shy and skittish, or cold and aloof. All I knew was that she never talked.
I met Miss Smith during enrollment prior to our first year of high school. While we were both new to this school, she was a transfer student from a neighboring town. I had been attending classes just one hundred yards away for the last nine years. Our school’s counselor knew this. While I was conversing with another one of our classmates, the counselor called me over. There, standing in the doorway of my high school’s library, I met Jennie for the first time.
She was pretty, but not so much that you believed she desired to be seen. She was fair-skinned with a hint of bronze and her nose and cheeks wore a band of fading freckles, peppered by the summer sun. She had large light brown eyes, green in certain lights. Her eyes were focused, or perhaps, showed a sense of age that was beyond the rest of our peers. Her lips were tight, hiding a smile she only reserved for those who she trusted most. Back then, she wore her hair short, a recent change I understand, since only a few months before it had been much longer. It must have been quite the event when she let it go. Her hair was almost entirely dark brown, but with strands of red, giving it a color that would remind one of fine mahogany. She had the cutest nose. It’s such an odd thing, to think of something as mundane as a nose to be considered lovely, but it was. It brought all of her together subtly, a fine centerpiece to accentuate the natural beauty that surrounded it in this lovely being standing before me.
She, however, wasn’t beautiful like you would consider some girls to be. My meaning, of course, was that she was not a girl in possession, by choice or apathy, of the type of beauty that is awarded luxuries like attention, fame, and social prestige, to girls of a certain mentality. I’m referring to “pretty girls”. Pretty girls are those girls, and sometimes boys, who spend hours in front of a mirror crimping and fluffing, drying and mystifying, so that they will be thought to be beautiful and loved by the masses; some not-so-pretty girls do it, as well. Jennie wasn’t one of those girls, however. She didn’t dedicate the time to doing those things other girls did. After all, such things are only skin deep, so they say. In fact, she was quite the opposite. I say that as kindly as I can. If she wanted to, she could have faded away into any room at any time she pleased, as she often would. She was simply an elusive sort of beauty. Of course, as I would one day find out, she could also be a beauty that could command any room, if the situation suited her, that is.
Of course, I didn’t think all this at the time. It is more something that I reflect upon and have come to realize years later. Back then, she was just another girl, one of those mysterious oddities of my species which, more often than not, confounded and terrified me. Still, this one seemed nice enough.
The counselor introduced us. She would be a new member of the little clan that was my fifty-member graduating class. I was asked by the councilor to show Miss Smith around the school, find out together where her locker would be and figure out where her classes would be. I was not inclined to deny the request. I, and another fellow classmate, walked Jennie around, showing her everything there was to see. The tour didn’t last long, as people who know us and know of the school, know there simply isn’t that much to see. I was nervous since I wasn’t yet used to meeting new people. Everyone in my class had basically been in my class since we were in diapers. Add to this, frankly, even though I had grown up going to middle school and elementary on the other end of the campus all these years, I had little idea of what was in the high School. Think about it, from my point of view. Why would I need to know? It is like the hotel down the street from your Mom’s house. Of course you have never been there. Why would you need to? In any case, I stumbled around, trying to figure out what was there only a little better than the brunette foreigner three paces behind. It was a case of the inept leading the blind, roles which at least she has evolved out of.
She was new and probably nervous about the complete change of scenery. It must have been very strange for her to adapt to us even more than for us to accept this foreigner into our midst. It would be difficult to join with such a coterie of students who have been a holistic part of each other’s lives, for better or worse, for going on nine years. It wasn’t like she was completely alone. She would be migrating with all of her class she had grown up with, too. Her school only went to the eighth grade and most would join us for High School or go on to other schools in the area. It happened every year. In fact, you might say that they were always part of our graduating class, we just didn’t know any of them yet. To be fair though, “her whole class” is a bit misleading. They were eight people. In retrospect, my class of fifty before they joined must have been a bit of a city in retrospect to eight people. The bonds as well. I can’t imagine how close they would have been before they all had to uproot to join this mob that was her new school. Honestly, people from the large cities don’t understand the unexpected oddities of a small town, but sociodynamics have little place in love stories.
None of her friends were there with us then, so she was alone, and by my guess, probably pretty scared. I did what I always do in those situations. I made jokes, or at least attempted to. That’s what I do; I make jokes. I made fun of our school, her new home, because I knew its faults. I compared it to hers, implying that where she had come from had prepared her better than my peers and I had been by our alma mater just down the hill. I knew this because I had relatives who went to her old school, as well. Jennie, however, didn’t understand my meaning. She thought I was being sarcastic and making fun of her. I had no knowledge of this at the time. She made concerned, or perhaps aggravated faces at me and raised her eyebrow in what I could only guess was disapproval. All I knew was that, for some reason, I had made her annoyed. It was either that, or maybe this girl was just a nasty and unsocial person. I didn’t have much more to say after that. Whatever the case may have been, she didn’t have much to say during that stroll, either. In fact, I am quite certain I don’t remember her saying anything at all. She was quite cold, by my account. “No matter.” I thought. “I’m about to enter High School and none of this going to matter either way.”
Jennie puts it delicately that, “Love at first sight was not something we experienced.” I’m a little less subtle with my account. Our first impressions of each other were thus; I thought she was a stuck-up snob and she thought I was a flaming jackass.
Had she known that my intentions were only to see her laugh, make her comfortable and see what her smile looked like, she may not have been so suspicious. Had I known that at that moment she was going through such suffering elsewhere in her life, I would not have been so judgmental.
In time, eventually, I grew to know more of her. I said knew of her. Remember, she never talked.
I first met her more, through friendships and acquaintances during art class, freshman year. We both enjoyed art, mostly drawing, sketching, and vandalism. Well the last one was primarily only me, but I will get to that later. The class was, in practice, really only a class where the seniors and other upperclassmen would be allowed to goof off and do nothing while the impressionable and wide-eyed freshmen hadn’t learned enough not to care. We had a wonderful art teacher, ancient by the accounts of our parents, whom he also taught, but deceptively youthful and vibrant with a passion that encouraged young artists against the tide of apathy that poured in from every crack in the walls of drab and dreary town.
I made friends with her and two other girls that year. Well, I made friends with her friends and she was there. I stopped thinking she was stuck up and just decided she was shy, or perhaps a little stranger, after five months and never hearing her talk, at all, to any of us.
I do remember one time, though, that will always be the moment that I first thought she was remarkable. She was up, talking to the teacher, and away from her desk. I walked by and saw a picture she had drawn. It was a still life drawing of a shoe laying on its side, laces dangling randomly on the ground, in the shadow of basketball. We had no such installations in the art lab, so she must have done the work at home. I was fixated on the realism. It was so perfectly drawn, so tangible. I felt that if I touched it, I could feel the grooves, and the thread of the shoelaces, and the worn soles beneath them. I’m certain, to this day, that if you compared it to a real ball, the number of bumps would have been the same. The shoe was amazing too, but seemed oddly disproportionate. It turned out that this too was every bit as accurate. Jennie just has tiny feet.
After that, I watched her from time to time. She was a mystery, a curiosity. How could one be so unattached to the cares and childhood drama that was the political strife of high school, and yet so attuned to the subtle detail, which could produce that picture? How could she so clandestinely avoid it? Was she some sort of impossibly wise genius who had discovered, as the rest of us discover only years later, how very unimportant all the drama of high school which embraced us all was? Were we all some sort of experiment to her, our movements under her patient gaze, but like a good scientist, never interfering with her trial? Was it simpler than that? Had something happened to this one? Was she just some sort of frail bird, afraid to fly, or perhaps, the owner of a broken wing?
I would have liked to have known, but I had my own problems which were ever present to me in the knowable universe, namely, all that childhood drama that was the political strife of high school. Always the awkward soul, I found myself embroiled with the mundane problems every young boy of certain age finds himself in at some point or another. I was shy, awkward, teased, unpopular, and could not get a girlfriend if my life depended upon it. Perhaps it was related to poor social status and a particularly low rank in the collective pecking order. Maybe it was just shyness in the awkward years. I suppose that most of those problems were my fault, in hindsight. After all, I don’t ever remember asking anyone out in the ninth grade. Looking back, it is probably safe to assume that most of my problems were all in my head, not too different from today. I suppose that even more then than now, the problems that only exist between your ears are the hardest to put out of your mind, but I digress.
I remember one day in particular, where I was more frustrated than most. There was a girl in our art class. She was older than we were, a junior, and a very pretty blonde. She was nice to me once, and to someone like me, that’s all that really mattered. I was infatuated, I suppose.
I wasn’t irrational about it. I never even considered asking her, well… anything.
She hung out with the rough crowd, the burnouts and rednecks, only there for a passing C, which they did precious little to earn. It isn’t that I hated these guys. I played football with many of them. I was young, but the field was one of the few areas of my life in which I felt confidence. I had strong legs, and could perform. I stood out among the freshmen to them and, in a small way, they respected me enough to never bully me, which I felt thankful for.
Still, strong legs don’t equate to strong knees. Those were weak. I couldn’t bare the idea of walking up there and humiliating myself by talking to her. Their marginal respect for me danced on the edge of a poorly balanced feather in the gale. To lose it would have been devastating. For that reason I just sat and watched when I felt no one would notice.
The cowardice of it all, or rather, the lack of good options available to someone in my perceived predicament, was too much. One day, I broke.
I sat staring at this girl and finally just decided to vent. My eyes caught Jennie. She was alone, sitting at an easel painting. She was in the center of the art lab. It was odd for her to be alone, missing her usual party-of-two entourage, that is. My attention was averted from the blonde and I watched Jennie paint quietly to herself. She was an enigma, a subtle sort of splendor, but an enigma.
I decided what I would do at that moment to relieve my pent up frustration. I gathered my courage and I walked over to her.
This story doesn’t end the way you think.
I pulled up a chair beside her. I somewhat ambushed her, in all honesty. Never expecting company, she was quite startled by the sudden direct attention.
At that point, I did what I had come to do.
I blurted out to her, “Jennie, why can’t I get a girlfriend?”
I can only imagine exactly what she would have been thinking at that moment. For some reason, I was completely all right with having no idea what it was. She had a shocked look of stillness. She completely stopped what she was doing, and had a look I can only imagine on a frightened rabbit, or perhaps a person suddenly worrying that they are about to be eaten by a crazed peer. This girl had to have been shocked at the brazen, social recklessness of random acts of self-deprecating honesty. She remained still, and from what I remember, never dropped the look of bewilderment for the rest of our conversation. Conversation is probably the wrong word, but at least for the duration of the time I talked at her she was still like the oak. Either way, for some reason, I knew exactly how this encounter would end, though I was wrong as to the reason why. I gave her not a second before continuing.
“No, it’s OK. You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted to talk to someone. You look like that kind of girl that you can trust, so I decided I would talk to you about it.”
I laughed nervously, but began to give in to the letting go.
“Besides, I know you won’t tell anyone, because I know you never talk. I just wanted to get it off my chest.”
That was actually a bit careless. It must read as rather offensive to the third party, too. Add to this fact that just because I never saw her talk, did not actually mean that she would remain silent the moment she was back with her little friends. For all I truly knew, she would convert the art lab into a print shop to make out signs and pass out little slips of paper declaring my complete and utter ineptitude. I know I gave her the power to do that and more, and for no real reason either. She could really destroy me if she wanted. Also, between you and me, I am and have always been a horrible judge of character. I always give people more credit than they are worth. That trusting look on her then, whether true or not, was really just a naive calculation of factors I could not possibly understand. In spite of all this, I continued anyway, foolhardy as it was.
“I don’t really get it. I’m a nice guy. I am nice to everyone. Everyone else are jerks to me, but I am the nice guy. I would think that girls would like nice guys like me.”
I thought of the blonde behind me. I may have even looked at her.
“You know what? I really think that girls don’t want nice guys like they always say they do. I really think they like jerks. I don’t know, though.”
I probably rambled on a bit more. The details after that escape me. I just remember finally reaching the end of the rant, after what was probably a magnificent display of verbal nonsense. I breathed deeply with a sigh of relief and said to her finally,
“Thanks Jennie. I needed that. You take care.”
Then I picked up and walked off. I thought to myself what an idiot I was and how crazy she must have thought I was. I walked out the door and turned down the hall to get a drink. I thought to myself about all the horrible damage she could do with what I had just, for no reason, entrusted with her.
There was still plenty of time left in the hour. That meant we would have to, somewhat… just exist together for the next twenty minutes or so, probably not talking about what had just happened. That’s exactly what happened, too. I sat down and pulled out whatever project I was working on and pretended to focus on it. My eyes darted periodically to see if she was ever looking at me. She wasn’t. It’s odd, I don’t remember ever looking at the blonde again. To tell the truth, I don’t even remember the blonde’s name. Tabitha? Samantha? It doesn’t really matter. It never really matters what the extra's with no lines names are in stories like this one.
Jennie continued on painting as if nothing had ever happened. Her focused gaze never faltered. For some reason, I knew then that she would never repeat what I told her, not even to the two friends of hers. It would probably die with her if not for me telling you now.
It was still remarkable to me how unattached she seemed to the rest of the world. She was a strange one. That much was sure. Ethereal, yet, in spite of that, she was a beautiful mystery that would one day be unraveled. Today, though, she just continued to paint in chameleon silence.
In Physical Science that year we would briefly study the phenomenon know as the black hole. It may sound odd to bring up supermassive remnants of long dead stars here and now, but as I would realize only much later, Jennie was a black hole.
Physicists have never actually seen a black hole. No one can. They are massive singularities, bodies with gravitational forces so powerful and a pulling strength so great that nothing, not even light, can escape them. That’s why they’re invisible to us. When something wanders by, be it a massive star or even a lonely mote of light, that object will be drawn in, held close, and embraced by the mysterious body for countless eons. We only know of their existence by looking at how they affect the objects around them.
By their nature, though, they seek not to be seen. All the other brilliant, showy objects dance about vibrantly, either glowing dimly for many years or burning bright for few before dying out marvelously. They capture our attention. The whole time, these massive stars are never able to interrupt themselves long enough to realize that they have been caught in the influence of something subtle, but something greater. All this time they've been orbiting a single object, petite and simple, but monumental in the degree in which it shapes everything around it. It has been guiding their movements silently from their center gravity without thought of doing so and never accepting recognition for the role which it plays in shaping the heart of everything.
Those objects which are caught by the black hole’s pull, those which have abandoned their causal free orbits, those that fully embrace the pull of overwhelming force, will experience an existence unlike any other. As they fall, looking back, they will see the universe fade as time itself melts away. All of history will pass in moments as one draws closer to the singularity. Seconds will become hours, hours will become millennia and in time, all the universe will disappear as only the two will remain, ever drawing closer. The object will cross the event horizon, the shroud of mystery which protects the introverted stellar body, leaving nothing else to steal its focus. As the eons disappear, the loan adventurer will be stretched and bent, reformed and made nothing but pure matter until eventually, the two will combine, adding to the already overwhelm force which brought them together. As I watched her sitting in the center of the art lab, all of us, little points of light dancing about oblivious to her, I can not help but remember how very much the whole universe seemed to circled around her for those few moments. Silent she remained, unaware of how central to my universe she would become.
Then, I didn’t know the value of the trust I put in her. I also didn’t have the wisdom to act upon a person who showed so capably that she was worthy of it. Perhaps if I did have the wisdom, I would have realized what was underneath. I might have understood the why to why I could trust her. If I had been any smarter I would have known that she had felt something for me for months. If I had done so, however, this story would have turned out far different, and not likely for the better…
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