Scribing Sue

There was something about Sue Harper, always something simple, which took my breath away.

It happened on morning bus rides, watching her flushed face glow before a frosted window. It escaped me on Cliffshore Avenue while her auburn hair flailed as she cycled past on summer evenings. I've logged and listed the countless reasons Sue affected me so strongly and the ways she changed me. She has lived through my writings for years.

But it wasn't always that way.

Before I moved to town, I had very few outlets to the world. I would grunt. I would speak with my eyes. I would wait for simple questions needing simple answers. My parents tried to force me to learn sign language, but I refused to stick it out. The process was too stifling. Using signs didn't make me feel weak, or like I was less than other mutes. The notion was just a waste when my primal methods had worked without hitch. After a month of lessons I stopped caring and began to scrawl ideas down on paper, just enough to get by. It quickly became depressing-getting my base points across from sticky notes, napkins, bare hands.

Then I met Sue.

In an instant, my lost voice felt bigger a burden then it ever had. Never before had I felt such a longing to say what my body would never allow me. And I realized my sounds and jumbled words wouldn't cut it. I had to get better. She made me need to get better. In a near perfect way, Sue introduced me to my greatest outlet: journals. She crafted me into the articulate writer I've become. It's almost too cruel an irony that the girl who saved my life has never known the truth.

Everything about Sue infected my mind and inspired my words, but not in typical teenage ways. Never fantasies of flesh atop some withered peak overlooking bright cityscapes, the windows down and hands close. I refused to see Sue in lieu of a lustful prize. It was always with a certain reverence. Calming visions of her brushing by in the halls or talking with her pack.

There became something blissful, even soothing about pen and paper to express my ideas. Something novel, something important, that I hadn't felt until Sue lifted the veil. I know that had I been granted even a day's worth of time to speak, nothing would have made me talk. The pen was always enough so long as she was near. I kept a flip pad in my pocket and another one stashed in my glove compartment when the road let me lead. I wrote and expressed at breakneck fluxes of ideas as months passed. Acing my classes, revealing myself ...all because of her.

It could go without saying that I became one of her studious onlookers at school. Like some love-barraged vagabond struck dumb, only the analogy was true. Sue was the most memorable girl on campus, the most complex of creatures, likely why there were never enough pages to justly flesh her out. While other popular girls flaunted their wares, she refused to see herself for the fair person she had become. It was an aura of modesty surrounding Sue Harper that made her turn a blind eye to other eyes that followed her between classes.

She had an incandescent grace, almost a daring kind. Sue skillfully dodged the vices of peer pressure despite having plenty of opportunities to cave. Even with her status and cliques, her eyes always leveled to mine-an honest motion when my classmates would cast me pitied glances. Knowing that she looked to me as the quietest of equals sent me soaring. We were lab partners and were paired for assignments. True friends during school hours. That was just right for me. A bond never mentioned but in pads of paper and simple similarities.

Her friends would constantly argue over her looks and clothes. Of which features were her best of the day. To me her smile was her most precious attire, one she never failed to wear when I was nearby. After you had seen Sue Harper's grin the sun would seem a flickering bulb. It was dazzling, welcoming, and faultless. Her canines and fronts: perfectly symmetrical. They were clean and the color of silky down, not marble-like snow tracks that linger in the mouths of stars and their rich posses. Sue never had to aim for such fakery.

Sue was also never one to wear makeup. It was a choice that often caused her grief. In me it sparked an unwavering sense of respectability. That was simply her favor. She had no hidden agendas. Nothing to preen and cover with lotions to replicate magazine models. It was the way she broke all the stereotypes about pretty girls, and how she remained surprisingly humble throughout, that prompted my paragraphs to flow on daily regimens.

If I had kept many close friends, I know what they would have mused had they known my feelings. I was in the minors and Harper batted for the big leagues. Chances were slimmer than a skipped rock from Venice Beach landing on the sands of an Asian continent. I would not have cared. I was content. Scribing Sue, line after line, was always fulfilling.

That was the way of my world. Sue Harper commanded my senses and logs for the majority of my high school career. Because of this, however, there were times when protective jealousy would lurch inside. When I had heard she would go to the junior prom with J.J. Landon, I amassed nothing but sardonic thoughts. Thoughts of J.J. ditching Sue to linger at a spiked punch bowl and grope her friends. J.J. renting a cheap motel room, checking in at midnight with Sue's arm unwillingly tight in his. Pawing her and telling her it would be okay. While her smile disappeared. Something I never wanted to see...

Then during that bright night, dancing with girls who only felt sorry for me-Poor little mute. Care to dance? Is my smile convincing? -I realized how foolish I had been. I saw Sue waltzing slowly in his arms and remembered that J.J. was a decent guy. Then I saw her smile. From across the flashing lights and limbs of my classmates, Sue was happy...so I was happy. I never let those envious fantasies fly free again.

Until graduation day, and my realization that Sue would only ride her bike for one more summer below my window, my journals thrived. Through semesters and football games and midterms she filled empty line after line, and remained my humble friend. Then that final May arrived.

Even in the open sunshine of our ceremony, after several heartfelt speeches trailed by monstrous applause, the shadow came. Like a tainted meal, it entered sharp and settled deep. And as I watched Sue grasp her diploma and embrace her favorite teachers, lost in the surge, my infatuation with her remained. I couldn't shake it.

That longing still refuses to die, three months after that warm afternoon. I'm sitting on my porch, again assembling the puzzle of my life into a new volume. That day was a celebration of the times ahead, but somehow my thoughts remain stuck in the same worn loop.

All my pages of Sue are organized on a shelf by my desk. Of every journal, not even the original lacks her name. I have hundreds of pages reflecting the girl. Her laugh, her soft voice, her name-but the Sue I would know if I could speak remains an enigma. I know that she hopes to major in history out west, in Colorado or Arizona. I thought she would fall behind me. Yet my pen is still stroking, filling new lines with the same nostalgic feelings I've bottled.

As I write this, she is packing a rental truck with her family several houses down my street. My friend is moving on and away to a life where I will remain an echo from her high school years, quiet and unrequited. I know that I can not walk to her, open my mouth and sputter, "I love you, Sue. Thank you. Don't forget me." My voice will never form. But by God if I won't try. I have a yellow flip pad in my pocket and a faithful number two.

It's time to say goodbye.