Me and Nimmy

“Who are you, again?”

“Why are you so skeptical? I told you who I am; Besides, you should recognize me even if I didn’t.”

“Ten, nine, eight, seven…”

The girl laughed, said, “You’re not mad. Let me prove it.”

“How?”

“Don’t be silly. You know exactly how.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“You watched Me and Earl and the Dying Girl today.”

“Anybody can know that. All they’ve to do is go online and check my trakt.tv profile.”

“Okay, you got me,” the girl burst out in laughter again, “but then again, I know how you feel about that movie. Can somebody check that online too?”

I closed my eyes and started to count again, “Ten, nine, eight…”

“Ah, stop with the countdown already. You’re not hallucinating. How can you write about someone and don’t believe they can really exist?”

“But you don’t have curly hair.”

“Why would I have curly hair?”, said the girl, touching her hair. She seemed puzzled about my statement.

“Because, I imagined you that way?”

“Why? You don’t like my hair this way?”

Sure I do, they’re even better than my imagination. Her hair was short and straight. She almost looks like a foreigner, almost but not entirely. She said with a smile,

“Thanks.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I know. I also know for a reason that you liked my hair.”

“I see.”

“Tell me, how was the movie?”

“You said that you know how I feel about that movie.”

“Yes, I know. But that doesn’t mean you can’t tell me about it.”

“I felt sad.”

“Just sad? That’s it? Nothing else?”

I tried not to think anything. A clock was ticking on the wall. I looked at it, its second hand circling around without any rest. The girl asked me,

“Who are you hiding from? You do realize that hiding from me is like hiding from yourself, don’t you?”

I kept quite. She’s better than my imagination. My imagination sucks.

“There you go again with self-loathing.”

There was disappointment in her voice. Damn, it’s a freaking paradox. I kept myself from laughing out loud. Let’s not go there now. I broke my silence,

“Okay. I felt like, it’s okay to be a little weird, or different. I don’t know.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Come on. You can’t build a wall to keep yourself from, well, yourself. Say it, I already know it.”

“And I felt calm, normal. It felt good.”

The girl was looking at me, so kind her eyes were. I kept on saying,

“I was afraid that the dying girl was going to die. And you know what? She did. Knowing that she might die in the end beforehand didn’t help when she finally did. Broke my heart.”

I was expecting that the girl would say something. She didn’t. She was looking sad.

“Why do you look sad?”

“Because you don’t. You’re saying it all with a face of stone. Tell me something, have you felt like this before?”

“Like what?”

“Calm, normal…”

“You already know the answer, don’t you? Why are you asking about things you already know?”

“Why are you trying to avoid answering even after knowing that I know the answer? Is saying out loud that difficult?”

“Yes, I did. I did felt like that before.”

“Wasn’t it the best of times?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I’m not dead yet; How can I know if it was the best of times?”

“You really do like to complicate things.”

“But I didn’t feel that calm in a long time, a very long time. I wasn’t sad or depressed. I felt like, maybe I’m not so alone after all. And, no, I never like to complicate things. I want things to be normal.”

“That actually depends on how you define normal.”

Why is she talking like that? Is she trying to make an argument? Make me feel bad?

“What? You argue with yourself all the time. And I don’t get to do that once?”

Damn, I can’t even think of anything without her knowing! She laughed,

“Sorry, I was messing with you. Relax. I know, you don’t like to complicate things.”

“You didn’t tell me anything about yourself. Say something.”

“You know everything about me, well as it turned out, almost everything. What’s there to say?”

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t say something.”

“Okay. Umm… I wish you would’ve written more about me.”

“Me too. But you know why I stopped. Don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. It’s okay. There’s still plenty of time.”

“Hmm… All the time in the world. There’s still time, I hope.”

“Goodbye.”

“Do I get to see you again?”

“Do you want to?”

I woke up. It’s raining outside. It was raining with such saddening sound.

( October 9, 2015 )