Faces

The clock on the the wall ticked as I sit, tapping my pencil along to its rhythm. I could sit this way for hours, listening, every fiber attentive to my surroundings. Hearing everything. The faucet in the bathroom was dripping, always, every fifteen seconds. The street one floor down and to my right has a steady slow traffic, whoosh, whoosh. Fathers returning to their families after a long day at work, kids on bikes, single mothers trucking a weeks worth of groceries home. A dog barks down the street that intersects with mine. I'm one house down from the corner of Pine and Cherry. Such usual, common names for streets in a quiet rural area.
  I spend most of each day like this, alone. Sitting at the dining table, lights off, but still enough light through the front windows to see everything. My vision is blurry, I'm not focused on anything but basic shapes and forms, the vibrations of the sounds around me reverberating through the dust motes that fall just at the end of my nose. And I wait.
  I'm always waiting for something, it's different every day. Today I feel like I'm waiting for the end. As in if I died today, I don't think I would care, or feel regret, fear, sadness, happiness. Just nothing. I don't often feel like this. Mostly I'm just like you or anyone else, angry at the slow traffic on the way home from my normal job as a desk attendant for a dentists office. Can't get more basic than that. Sometimes I'm happy because I stopped by the market and they had fresh apples, no bruises, nice and crisp. But there are days that I realize I'm going home to an empty house, devoid of sound or personality and I wonder what it would be like to share my life with someone else.
  I never have been good at making friends. Sometimes the girls at the office invite me to go out to the bar with them and meet a girl, or meet anyone for that matter. I don't talk much, considering I'm a secretary and spend most my day on a phone. That's pretty much the only talking I do, unless necessary. Casual conversation with the clerk at the market, passers by as I wait for the bus, or ride my bike and nearly run someone over. I don't pay much attention to anything, in any situation. I hear the others at work saying how I'm always caught up in my own head. They're right, really.
  When I was a child it wasn't like that. I had a best friend, but he died in eighth grade. He was hit leaving my driveway on his skateboard to go home, he only lived two streets over. I saw the whole thing. After that we moved to a new town, new school, new people. I didn't make a single friend. Not to say no one tried, because they did. Some of the boys my age offered to sit with my at lunch, I would nod and agree. When I never spoke to anyone they just drifted off. Oh well. It didn't bother me.
  My parents tried everything to make it better, therapy, medication. Nature, pets. Vacations. Nothing helped. Except sitting and listening to the world. I could be my best friend better than anyone else could. I could never leave me behind, move away. Die. I was always there for me and I guess no one else understood it but me.
 The clock on the wall ticks on until I can't stand it anymore. The faucet drips. Drips. Drips. The silence is so loud my ears are full of it. I slam the pencil I had been rolling in my fingers down and stand up, throwing my chair back and letting it topple over.
  Outside isn't any better. Hands stuffed in pockets I walk to the intersection and stride down Cherry. The dog barks at me as I pass, a couple kids on bikes swoosh by me, not sparing a glance. I continue on, watching my feet as they step, one, two, one, two. My pace is even, each left foot landing on the he sidewalk cracks in almost the same place each time. Cars zip by, fluttering the untucked tails of my button up and tousling my hair. Soon the sidewalk becomes a blur too as I unfocused my mind to everything.
  "Watch out!"
  I hear it just in time to look up and stagger back. My feet lost track somewhere and I've walked into the street and nearly got clipped by a small, red car.
  The voice who warned me nears. "Are you alright?" Alarmed. Nervous.
  My eyes stop the second my heart does. Blue green to warm brown. My blood is ice cold. The sound around me stops and continues in a way I've never experienced. She's in front of me, red hair curling and flipping in the wind, pupils small and alert. She exhales through pink lips and blinks once, twice, three times. Freckles and flushed cheeks.
  "Can you hear me?"
  I think my head nods but I can't escape from myself, my eyes trapped in hers. Until her hand reaches and touches my left shoulder.
  All sound erupts, noise and dogs barking and faucets dripping, cars whooshing, kids laughing on bikes and skateboards and tail lights and brown soft eyes and red hair.
  But all I can do is nod again and she smiles. "Good. Watch your step next time."
  And she's gone and all I can do is stand trapped inside my thoughts instead of ask her name.