She was free. Twirling around the small room to the Hi-5 music blaring out of the tv she was completely happy.  The sunlight caught on her  sunflower yellow dress and made her look like a light fairy that got stuck on the wrong side of fantasy dreams. She stretched out her arms and let her mousey brown hair fall behind her and she sang along to the tv, unbothered by the amount of mess she was creating in the process. She was blissfully oblivious and I’d do anything to keep her that way.

He looked relaxed and at ease leaning leisurely against the brick wall. His short-sleeved shirt showing off his biceps and his expensive canvas shoes getting scuffed from being rubbed against the concrete . His dirty blonde hair was left gel free and had opted to sweep across his forehead at several different areas. His long fingers were tapping a steady beat against the wall in time with the music that could be faintly heard out of his earphones and his  usually clear blue eyes looked distracted as he looked up and down the street, completely oblivious to me, perched on my balcony watching him. I always knew it was strange to do this, but I could never stop. It was pure bliss to watch him for the 5 minutes that he waited there, but it was pure heartbreak to see his girlfriend running down the street after hopping off at the bus stop. One of these days, I promised myself over and over again, I would hop down from my balcony and tell him about how his ‘one and only’ went out with a different guy every week at my high school and how she was nothing but a heartless doll.  But even as I made these solemn promises I knew I would never see through because it was one thing to feel my heart crumble when his cornflower blue eyes lit up at her sighting, but a totally different thing to watch those same cornflower blue eyes fill up with unshed tears.

Most teenage girls start experimenting when they reach 13. Discovering what type of clothes got the boys attention, what eye shadow brings out there eye colour and so on, but she was different. Wearing one of her dads old checkered shirts and a faded pair of denim knee long shorts she looked out of place. Her blonde hair ending just below her shoulders in a messy plait she looked secure and confident. Not one person could say that she cared about what the girls thought because with her soft jaw and easy smile it was hard enough to imagine her looking bothered let alone anxious about another person’s thoughts. Her make-up free face and scuffed runners immediately made the girls look twice at her way of stepping out of the norm, but to the boys she fit right in. Her petite form made the boys protect her and the girls detest her. But if you ever saw the way she ran to the bus stop after the last bell had run, desperate to miss the other girls and catch the early bus, you knew that underneath her cool, indifferent composure, there was still a young girl running scared for her life against the current of ‘normal’.

She looked… lost. Confused. Hopeless. She was sitting on the ground with her knees up to her chest and her hands raking through her hair. Her hair. Her hair was a blue-black color, silky smooth and flowing through her fingers like water down a river. Her shoulders hanging limp and loose but her entire body tense, it looked like she was sitting in the after math of a bomb explosion, her arms still protecting her face. And then she looked up. And all the air seemed to have disappeared, leaving me gasping and begging for it. Her eyes were a piercing violet, accented by her long, dark eyelashes. Her sharp jaw and hollow cheeks made her look undernourished and unfed but her moist lips said otherwise.  She had a strange beauty; I think the correct way to describe it would be that she was hauntingly beautiful. She was wearing a short black dress, with a full skirt and lace shoulders. When she realized her position, she immediately placed her legs underneath her and off to the side, revealing a little black and white kitten resting in her lap. She stared at me, pinning me underneath her gaze and studying me. Then after about a painstaking 3 seconds her guard dropped and underneath I saw just another girl, lost and crashed on the street. Without a thought for my safety I stepped towards her, determined to find out more about this girl, who’d literally just crashed in my backyard.

His voice was what pulled me in first. Soft and comforting he called me out of the dark. And then it was his arms, strong and steady, in his embrace I felt safe and like nothing could hurt me anymore. Other than that he was just another college boy with a dream. Brown hair the colour of Cadbury Milk Chocolate and chestnut eyes that warmed you up on the inside. It was such a long time ago so I can’t recall much of him, but I do remember his laugh. Oh, his laugh.  The girl that was enough to hold him down in the end was one blazing lucky girl. His laugh was like listening to an earthquake. It started deep in his toes and rumbled its way up his body, eventually bursting out of his mouth in a shockwave that could hurl anybody in hearing distance to the floor in their own burst of joy. His laugh was beautiful. His laugh was full of heart. But most of all, listening to his laugh was like watching you soul dance to the beat of freedom.

He was athletic. He could sprint round the track 4 times and still have enough energy to do a few backflips of a bench. He was always jumping, always tapping his fingers, always moving. Some days, it was like he was an endless bundle of pure movement. It was hilarious to watch him sitting through a double period of math’s, clicking his pens with his bored fingers, tapping his green and white runners, his hazel eyes counting down the minutes until the break bell would go. I remember at the top of the oval one day, watching him release all that pent up energy, running like a lunatic around and around the grassy space, his brown hair getting into his eyes and his hands pushing it impatiently out of the way. It wasn’t like he was tall, with long legs or anything but his lean body and short height made him one of the most agile boys in our school.  He would get put on all the sport teams and his mouth, curved up in joy when they announced his name on the sport tournament champions list was a pleasure to see. If you’ve ever seen a little kid be given a bag of candy, then it wouldn’t be too hard to picture that moment. He wasn’t perfect but he was above average and for someone like me, that was way more than good enough.

His face was broken. He had scars on the right side of his face that made his nose look wonky. Which was why the first word I said to him was ‘Wonky’ and the next one ‘Band-Aid’. I remember thinking he was an imperfect perfection. Which I guess is understandable because with his mouth almost always in a

grin and his black hair spiked up in a black halo around his head, he still reminds me to this day of a fallen angel that got cut up by a glass rainbow on his way down. They tell me that he’s changed now, that he’s some hippie kid with a rainbow band around his head but to me he’ll forever be that kid who had longer eyelashes than I did and a smile that lit up the world. And nothing, nothing can ever change that.

Her deep brown eyes were filled with unshed tears and her face was so pale that it felt as if, if I blew a breath of air she would blow away like a piece of paper in the wind. Her small hands were shaking uncontrollably and her legs seemed as if they would collapse underneath her. Her previously white dress was now speckled with the blood of her family and her thick brown hair had fallen over her shoulders, dangerously close to going inside her half open mouth, but she made no move to move it out of the way. Then with an almost doll like procedure, she closed her little primrose colored mouth, straightened her back and pushed her hair to the back of her shoulders. A determined and ruthless look came upon her facial features and with a silent agreement she looked around at the cruelly murdered bodies of her family, promising upon their scattered souls to seek vengeance and complete the mission that was meant for her whole clan. Even though it came too early, it was her time to step up and take control.

She was one of the Differents but so close to average that she hung like a tightroper in the balance. She didn’t mind being alone, and it was evident by the way she kept her pacing in check and walked in no hurry at all to get to her locker at the other end of the hallway. In saying that, there was something in her that screamed insecurity. To the sweeping eye, the way she held her books held no meaning but to me, a silent observer it was evident that the way she clutched her books rather than held them showed something inside that was more than just emotional attachment. Her hazel brown hair bounced behind her and held back from whipping her face by a headband and the first time I watched her I was swept up in the flow of wanting to believe that she was good different. I mean, who wouldn’t? Confidence seemed to ooze out of her and she was just as comfortable in a crowd of people than with just me crouched in the back corner, silently watching her. Nut that was before I noticed all the little things, the way she would untie her shoelace with her other shoe and crouch down to tie it back up when she felt someone was getting to close, or the way she walked a little faster when she walked past certain girls lockers and the way she seemed to disappear almost instantly when the girls conversation used to get a little heated. I followed her once and found her crouched in the corner of the storage hallway, her hair halfheartedly covering her face and her deep brown eyes filling up with tears. I sat in front of her and stayed silent. For a girl like her there is no need for words.

Eun Mi was adorable. Clapping her hands, crawling across the floor, it didn’t matter what she did because to me she was the most beautiful thing in the world. Although, I think that’s what every  mother thinks of their child. But to me she truly was, her glossy black hair stopping at the base of her neck, her chubby cheeks that flashed a dimple when she laughed, her chubby arms, all these things made her perfect to me. One day all that baby fat would be gone, and so would disappear her wide-eyed rapture at everything that was new and strange. But when she grew up, it’d all be ok because I could stand there next to her and watch her change.

She was tired, but she was trying. Her eyebags and slow movements gave away her exhaustion but she tried as hard as she could to muster up enough energy after a long day at work to make this day special. Watching from the one of the tables in the middle aisles I saw her stifle a yawn while her son was eating his pasta and when he asked if she was ok she replied with a topic changing sentence, “Fine, how was school?”. But it was so obvious that she wasn’t. Being a single mom with a kid still in primary school was taking its toll on her. The migraines came more often than usual now and the painkillers got stronger each day but she was careful to make sure that her son never saw her take them, she reported on the phone to her mother after her brief happy birthday message. The way she treated her son broke my heart, it was so painful to watch her try so hard to make sure that all her overtime hours paid off for this one special meal at this fancy restaurant. “Mum, can I have a party here for my next birthday?” “Yes, of course you can.” She replied, fully  aware that like 2 weeks ago, next year she’d be telling him that she felt that birthdays were a family thing.

She looked so out of place, one lone wolf in a flock of sheep. Her white dress standing out among the crowd of black clad funeral goers. She heard the whispers blow with the wind as they talked about her strange way of dress, her different coloured skin, her silky black hair done up in a plaited bun, but she paid no heed to them. Her footsteps light and silent as she floated closer towards the gravestone. In her small hands she delicately held a red rose, just another contrast to the sea of white roses already crowding the stone. The other attendees looked upon her condescendingly but she just bowed her head as she passed them and in her light fairy steps she came to a stop in front of the grey stone. She stretched out her thin arms and placed her rose where her grandmothers heart had stopped beating.

She was hostile, cold, unwelcoming and unforgiving. Standing at the end of the hallway she seemed to have a laser beam that screamed OUTCAST and warned the other children to stay away. But there was something about her, about the way she walked that entranced me and brought me closer. She had long, jet black hair that fell over her face and cascaded down her back like a waterfall and a sour red lips that required no lipstick and was probably the only thing the other girls liked about her. She walked with her head bowed low over her books that she’d hold close to her chest, her thing arms wrapped protectively around it. I’d only seen her get violent once and that was because one of the other girls had dared to grab the books out of her hands. I have never seen a girl move as fast as she did when she reflexed and slapped the girl square across the face. No apologies, no mercy. Her movements were always fluent and to me she was a force of nature. Beautiful and devastating all at the same time.