Gallery of the Dead

Sixty-Four

The girl opened her eyes and slowly rolled over on the bed to have a look at her alarm clock, though she didn’t really have to. Like always, she woke up just as the sun began infusing its first light into the dense night sky.

For a moment, the girl didn’t move, her eyes fixed on the dim red glow of the digital timekeeper on her bedside table. Then, as the stupor of sleep finally began to dissipate, her lips stretched into a timid smile.

‘It’s Friday,’ she whispered to herself.

With those words, the timid smile gained confidence before the girl rolled over again, this time to face the ceiling.

‘It’s Friday,’ she told herself one more time, her voice a lot more animated than a second ago.

‘Yes it is. Yes it is. It’s Friday.’

Her words came out dancing to a silly melody that she had made up on the spot. As she sang her improvised verse, her hips shook from side to side and her head bobbed up and down to her own crazy rhythm.

The reason behind all that happiness was simple — today she would see him again, just like she had last Friday, and the Friday before last, and the Friday before that one.

They always met at the old park, the one behind the ugly, disused school. No one played there anymore. No one walked their dogs or rode their bicycles there anymore either. With the school closure just a few years back, the whole area was slowly forgotten, which suited them just fine.

‘No one can know about our meetings, OK?’ he had told the girl the first time they had met, four weeks ago. ‘They won’t let us meet if they find out.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she had replied. ‘My mother really wouldn’t like that.’

With every meeting they got a little more comfortable with each other, and that was another reason for the girl’s barely containable happiness. Last Friday they’d held hands for the first time. It had made her feel like she had never felt before — warm inside, goose bumps on the outside, happy all over. She really hoped that he would hold her hand again today.

That thought alone brought a new smile to the girl’s lips and a new, more animated rhythm to her improvised song. Her arms punched the air in front of her one at a time in a syncopated movement.

‘OK, OK,’ she told herself, bringing her enthusiasm down several notches. Before she could see him again, she had to go to school, and before that she had to get ready.

She turned and checked the bedside clock one last time. Definitely time to get up.

She swung her feet over the bed and sat at its edge. Right then, an idea came to her — before leaving for school, why not sneak into her mother’s bedroom and hide one of her perfume bottles in her school bag? Her mother wouldn’t mind, would she? She had so many of them. Plus, she wasn’t stealing it; she was just borrowing it. She would return it when she got back. Maybe she could even borrow a pair of earrings — those shiny ones her mother only wore on special occasions. Those were beautiful. Everybody loved them, and if she wore them, he would love them too, wouldn’t he?

‘Yes, of course he would.’

Maybe he would even love her.