passenger

At the light-rail stop, my headphones mute the world around me in favor of the film soundtrack in my iPod. I open the book, and begin reading. It’s quite good and I’m lost in its pages. Something, whether a feeling or a noise I don’t hear or maybe a movement beyond my vision, makes me look up at the street running parallel the tracks.

She’s directly across from me in a car stopped at the light to my right. She’s hanging out the passenger window, her too-light hair pulled back into a ponytail and her tongue is out. Her face is contorted into the jovial face of a child, but without her hands jutting out from her temples or the expected “neener, neener, neener.” Her eyes are smiling.

Her face is familiar, but I don’t recognize her. It’s like looking at the photo of a friend when he or she was in high school. The same, but slightly different. Then, like a wave decomposing a sand castle or a camera’s flash, everything floods back.

That ultra-blond hair, almost white, pulled back in pigtails at the first meeting of our hallway that first month of classes. The way her eyes met mine like she devouring me in her mind. Joking with her roommates and the guy from third floor. The way-too-competitive rounds of computer games.

The collection of rubbers taped brazenly to the cement walls. Trying to keep her quiet even as the bunk squeaked, threatening to wake her roommates only feet away. The passion in her exaggerated moans and the rug-burn in the center of her back. The one she seemed to show off like a blue ribbon or spelling bee trophy.

The smell of smoke in her clothes. That she walked around with a towel over her head until her make-up was on. How she laughed with a blank expression. Her stubbornness colliding with mine and how she’d pout if she didn’t get her way.

How quickly I was discarded and so easily ignored. The vague reasons and inadequate explanation. The years where I didn’t hear from her directly and rarely saw her. The stories that came to me through tertiary sources of her promiscuity and recklessness. The palpable awkwardness that has seemed to saturate our meetings since.

It’s all back in such a brief moment, the span of a blink or uninterested shrug. I express my recognition, smile at the oddity of seeing her in such a strange way and nod my head as if to ask, “how goes?” I don’t bother taking my headphones off.

The light turns green and the car starts toward it. She shakes her head jokingly, but seems disappointed in my limited reaction. She turns and rests back in her seat, facing front.

I return to the pages of the book for a few more moments before the train arrives.