Through the Glass
By Crystal Heart

Warning: Lines of really bad poetry.

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, but I do own the story.

To Margaret and Lianne

October 20
 

His eyes,
The color of ocean…
     No!
     Entirely too trite.
     “Heart of an ocean?” Oh why did every sonnet of history have to be dedicated to people with blue eyes?
     Serena agonized.  Her heart was aching to be expressed.  Every fiber of her being was moaning in fear of a fate of not being expressed.  It had to be expressed.
     Every single heartbeat had to be expressed.
     She couldn’t forget any of it.  It was loud and clear in her head.  Disjointed images, struggling to be written.  All cluttering up at once, so that the only words that she could write were images…cluttered, weak images that remained unreachable.  A glass wall separated her from her thoughts.
     She could write magical sonnets about fairies, and witchcraft in his eyes.
     But nothing seemed relevant, but the truth.
     “Even when I see you before my eyes, I miss you…”

    Lunch on the campus of Forest Hills High school was a commotion.  A bustling about of gossip, stories, laughter and even arguments.  The boy who sat at the picnic table outside the cafeteria was oblivious to all this.
     “Head’s up!”
     Darien looked up from his work and caught the Frisbee going for his head.
    “Up for a game of Ultimate?”
     The president of the senior class sighed.  “Can’t.  Sorry, guys.”
     Andrew looked at Mina, and she nodded an affirmative.  Andrew kissed her on the cheek, and left them.
     Mina approached Darien, sitting opposite him on the picnic bench.  “What’s wrong, Darien?” she asked, frankly.  He almost never sat alone during lunch.
     “Nothing.  There’s just a lot to do, a lot to think about.  College essays aren’t easy to write.”
     “No, they aren’t,” Mina said, understandingly.  “They have high hopes for you…” she began, cautiously.
     Yes, they all did.  Expectations.  Darien Darcy Annulus, choose a future.  When you choose it, you’ll find everything.  You’ll get whatever you want.  You will get in wherever you want.
     Wherever you want.
     His fingers clutched his pencil again, that way they always did when he was thinking too much.  Mina sighed.  “Darien, don’t.”
     Darien looked up, eyes refocusing.  “Don’t what?”
     “Don’t think.”
     “I just need some time to myself.”
     Mina sighed.  “I take the hint.  I’ll see you, Darien.  Take care,” she got up.
 

October 24

     Air saturated in silence.
     A pluck.
     It resonated in the room.  Ever so carefully, the cellist placed her bow on the strings, sculpting the sound.  Breath crystallized into notes, blood into tears.  Passion into ice.
     The notes rose and fell, rising and setting of days on end.  Eternity in solace.
     The last note suspended in air.
     A tight seal of silence couldn’t be broken, as the cellist remained motionless, bow hovering above the still vibrating strings.
     Tears struck the cello, making trails in the dried salt that had crusted on the wood many times before.
     Every instrument had a story.  Laralea’s had grown a tenfold under her new owner.
     Searching.  A restless soul settled in the body of the performer, and engaged heart with heart.  She sat back in her chair.
     Silence.
     Applause.
     Her audience of one.  “Beautiful, Serena,” Lara Michiru stood up in her chair, gesturing to the music in her hand.
     “Two notes out of tune,” Serena said sadly; notes that were lost.  The composer had written them with purpose.
     She had disrespected the composer’s tastes.
     Lara snapped her fingers.  Her student.  Always so out of it.  “Ready to record?”
     Serena thought it over.  Those two notes…
     But she didn’t have much more time.  They wanted a tape in soon.
     “Well, I guess so.”
 

November 10

     His lungs burned.
     His legs cried out in pain.  He saw the exhaustion rise in his eyes until his eyes stung with sweat, and he couldn’t see.  He felt his stomach groan, crunching up into knots of agony.
     And there was the shirt of the rival.  The red on the shirt blurred but he distinctly sensed it.  Bile rose into his mouth.  Salt.  Blood or sweat?
     And he pushed harder.
     “Go on!  Come on!”
     Finish line.
     All state cross-country.  Second year in a row.  Guaranteed.  He sighed in exhaustion, slowly slacking his pace as he tried to bring his body down.
     His legs cried to be relieved.  But he had to walk it off.
     “Good…race…Darien…” Ken panted three minutes later, when he cross the line at fifth place.
     “Thanks…” he gasped as he tossed his wet head back, and sprayed his overheated face with the water bottle.
     *Push yourself.*  Always push yourself.
 

November 18

     Unrequited love.
     There he was, at his locker, just a little ways away…
     Serena looked away, stuffing books into her locker.
     Darien Annulus was so beautiful.
     It wasn’t just his looks, though he was wonderful to look at.  Darien Annulus had a heart.  It pounded with passion for studies, work…
     …and she hoped, love.
     Would she say anything today?
     No, she wouldn’t.
     She never would.
     “Serena!”
     She turned to her step-sister.
     Lita was tall, athletic, lithe.  Her auburn hair, bouncing perfect, and her eyes, endless green.  “Sere, I need the car tonite.”
     Sere cringed.  She hated those words.  “I don’t know…”
     “Please?” Lita pouted.  “Late cross-country practice today…”
     Serena sighed.  She had an orchestra concert tonite.  Her mother would side with Lita this time.  “Oh, all right,” she handed the keys quietly to Lita.
     They slipped, and fell to the floor.
     Just as He was walking past.
     He bent down.  “Here you go,” he tossed them careless to Serena, who caught them haphazardly before they could slip down to the floor once more.
     And he walked on.
     She held her breath, and held herself in check, as she handed the keys to her sister.  Damned if she’d let her sister *ever* find out she was in love with Him.
     Lita smiled, “Thanks.”
     Serena looked after her sister, and fell against her locker.
     *How could he not even look at me?  Am I not pretty enough?  Interesting enough?*
     Sure, in ninth grade, she looked like somewhat of a geek, in her pink frames and silly meatball hair.  Since then she’d gotten nicer frames, even contacts that she wore on occasion, and her hair was now cropped nicely at shoulder length.
     But she supposed that her inner self could not be disguised.
     It always showed through. Evidently, too uninteresting to Him.

     Lab.
     Amy stood next to him, goggles on, titrating.
     Accuracy.
     There were few people he could work with and totally trust their results.  Amy Harper was one of them.  “I think it reads 4.56,” she examined.  She gestured to the buret and he looked at it, examining.
     “You’re right.”
     They smiled, and Amy sighed in relief.  “You start calculations.  I’ll take care of this.”
     Darien walked to his desk, took out the calculator, and started crunching numbers.
     Amy watched him.
     He was handsome.  At 6’3”, with his dark ruffled hair and blue eyes, the color the copper solution they had been working with.
     It was no wonder Serena had been well nigh in love with him the past four years.
     And Darien?  As long as she’d known him, he’d been a good person.
     Too nice to say no to a lot of girls.  Ended up in the middle of prom his freshman year with a senior girl, going to various functions with other girls who dared to ask him out.
     But none of them appeared to really attach to him.  He remained on his own in lab, calculating titrations after school with her, his lab partner.
     There was hope for Serena!  She just had to take that chance.

     “Give it up already!” Rae sighed.  “You’ve been in love with that guy since freshman year, and one would think you’d learn by now, but noooo…Serena must be all ‘But one day…’  Serena, Darien Annulus isn’t worthy of you.”
     Serena sighed.
     Rachel Mae Douglass, with her slight hint of a South Carolina accent, where she was originally from.
     “What do you see in him, anyway?  He’s not half as interesting as he could be.”
     “Because he doesn’t go out and save people, or start revolutions, you won’t look at him.”
     “His handsomeness is so…conventional…”
     Serena shook her head.  “You don’t know him…”
     Rae looked at her friend.  She’d tried already…for several years.  “Neither do you.”
     But Serena wouldn’t ever fall out of this silly schoolgirl crush.
     “You’ll see, Serena,” Rae continued, “when you meet someone who does deserve your attention, who appreciates you.  It remains questionable that he even knows you exist!”
     “He knows!  We just happened to have different teachers…”
     A fate determined by her participation in the school orchestra…all four years.
     “You laugh, but Rae.  You don’t know.  I love this man.  I love him with every part of my being.  Heart, mind, body, soul.”
     “She’s gushing about Darien again, isn’t she?”  Amy joined them at the library table.
     Serena placed her head down, closed her eyes, breathing a pained long breath.
     Amy reached out and tangled her fingers in Serena’s silky hair, and soothingly said, “Serena, why won’t you do anything?”
     Serena looked up.
     And looked away.  “It’s not relevant.  I don’t need to.  Unrequited love is good.  I could probably write one or two mournful pieces some time in college and brush it off.  I can let my ideal go away…vanish into thin air, or my ideal could change.  It doesn’t need to be Darien…but oh…I wish…”
     “Don’t try to rationalize again; last time, you tried telling us that you wanted to go to Harvard because that would pay off more than going to a conservatory.”
     She was always so confused, Rae mused.  Where did Serena lose all her direction?  How did she?

     He wanted to wrench his tie away.
     Why must Wednesdays always be so long?
     Rae looked at him.  Darien looked back with an assuring nod.  He knew what he had to do.
     Darien always knew what he had to do.  Darien was a great debater.  Darien was good at everything he did.
     Great Expectations…
     As the last negative rebuttal took her seat, Darien got up, straightening his tie, and setting his mind in focus.  The case.  The case.  The case.
     “Affirmative’s case stands…” he began.
 

December 11

     She wasn’t weak by nature, though slightly unstructured.  She was a poet and a pragmatist at the same time.  Her ideals spouted off rainbows, and in the end she could only see the raindrops.
     The piece began unemotionally.
     It swelled in a matter of seconds.
     What was the story this time?  A story of sisters separated by a magical enchantment?  A woman who sacrificed herself for the safety of her lover?  A little girl, growing up in a house of glass?
     So melancholy.
     Greg Fielding looked at the conductor.  Ms. Michiru was being held captive in the silky bonds of notes.  The orchestra simply watched as Serena pulled her heart and played it for melody.
     And he was to enter in a matter of seconds.
     Ms. Michiru queued him.
     Lifting a bow, the principle violinist drew the bow across the strings, and searched in Serena’s melody a place.  And in the vibrations, a dip in invitation.
     Serena opened her eyes and met Greg’s across the conductor’s podium.
     He began.
     The melodies fought, comforted each other, like loves.  Tones sang in fury, unregretful, and then in mourning for ideas uttered that would never be taken back.
     The orchestra slid in seamlessly with a background.  The cries, the gossip behind them.  Stories of lovers that ought not be.  Doubts.  Pushing the melodies apart.
     And they vanished.
     Stricken, his tone vanished with them, drawn away, leaving her alone.
     And she mourned, echoing previous professions of love…and then silence.
     He looked at Serena.  Thank you.
     For what?  Her glassy eyes reflected.  Her frame was still huddled over her cello, as if she could not pull herself from the force that connected her to it.
     Finally, she sat back.
     Applause.
 

February 14

     “Here you go,” he held the door open for her.
     She looked through the glass of the door, and met his eyes.
     Eyes that were carelessly looking elsewhere.
     And he turned to meet her eyes.
     In the glass of the door, there was a refection of himself.  Through the glass…
     Her eyes, through the glass, reflected him.  But it wasn’t him, was it?
     Entranced.
     “Darien!?”
     He looked away.  When he turned once more to the door, she was gone.

Winter
Lives in your eyes
Caressing the softness
That dives deep within; How can you
See me?

     Yes.  There it was.  “The Stare”.
     Serena shut her blank book, a spiral bound book.
     The cover was a combination of various strips of sheet music, from her favorite pieces.  Dried rose petals were pasted on, and wrapped in a coating of protective lamination.
     The lines were written in dark black ink, with steady and unsteady hand.
     She looked at the lines she penned: “How can you see me?”
     She should have stayed.  She should have let him look.
     But what would he see inside?  Her heart offered to him?  No, being mysterious was enough.
     How embarrassing.  Nothing to say.  No courage to say it with.
     A tear punctuated the last sentence.
     “Serena!”
     She dropped the book, and stuck it in one of the compartments of her bag.
     She wiped her eyes.
     “Serena it’s getting late.”
     Serena looked at her step-sister.  “I just needed some time to myself.”
     Lita nodded understandingly.  Her step-sister was so small and delicate, but there was so much that radiated from her.  It was a force that made people treat her reverently.
     “Come on, Serena.  Mom’s getting worried.”
     Serena nodded slowly.  “All right.  Let me get my things.”

     A walk.  That’s all he needed.  A walk in the park, and everything would be all right.
     What was troubling him?
     It wasn’t as if life wasn’t good.
     No, life was great.  Everything was set.
     Her eyes.
     Those eyes.
     Could she see him?  Did she see him?  What did she see?
     The question burrowed in the folds of his brain, and made the spots sore.
     Every single thing he had thought in the past was wiped away.
     That girl could see something in him.  There was something in her eyes that he had never seen before in anyone else’s.
     What was it?
     There was a something under a tree.
     Confused, he approached.
     It was a book.
     Picking it up, he ran his fingers over the rose petals.  Curious, he opened the book.
 
 

…For I am someone you’ll never know.
I see someone you’ll never see.
I am someone you’ll never meet,
Or perceive.
I stand in the shadows of your eyes
And I am content there.
     Oh where did she put it?
     She rummaged through her bag.
     Her book.  Oh where was her book?
     Her heart pounded as she turned the bag upside down and shook it furiously, tears starting to rise to her eyes.
     She remembered putting it in the folds of her bag hurriedly when Lita came along.  Did she perhaps not tuck it in the bag, but under the bag?
     Oh she had to go back to the park!
     It was raining.  Oh dear.  Her book would be all ruined!  She had to find it!
     She ran back to her tree.
     Nothing.
     Panic punched her in the stomach.
     Not there.  Someone took her book.
     All her poetry.  Her reflections.  Her heart.
     On Valentine’s Day.  How sickening.
     Sitting down at the tree, she leaned her head back, and cried.
 

February 15

Looking for the sun in night,
Reaching for the stars in day.
     It was amazingly clear how much he was missing.
     Had he ever felt that way?  Reached for the impossible?  Who was this woman, who was so intriguingly passionate about life?
     He shouldn’t have taken the book, but it was about to rain and he didn’t want the book to be ruined.  But she probably grieved for it this moment.
     He knew it was a she.  “In her world…She…her eyes…”
     Lines and lines of passion, sadness, truths, and yearning.
     Why did this girl feel so strongly?  How could she feel so much?
     She was a dreamer.
     She dreamed of…a person.
     So many lines, so many heartbeats, penned down and preserved in ink, laminated with tears.  She yearned and yearned for not only him, this mysterious stranger, but for the world.

Why she falls,
Time after time
Into Reality
     Void.
     The tones were saddened, and stretched languidly.
     She was lost.
     The vibrato disappeared as her notes became dispassionate.  She rejected him.
     Rae’s viola mingled in, the woman who hated love, pressing her friend to reject him.
     The entreaties of Greg’s violin disappeared.
     And Serena’s melody mingled with Rae’s.  Serena’s sadness and Rae’s triumph concluded the piece.
     Breathe.
     Class bell.
     Serena and Rae broke eyelock, and looked to Ms. Michiru.
     Ms. Michiru sighed, as she always did when disrupted from a moment of musical intensity.  “We have to stop.”
     Serena got up, and started packing away the cello.
     “You were sadder than usual,” Rae ventured casually.
     “I lost my book,” Serena said, quietly.
     “Oh dear,” Mina joined them, violin in tow.  “Are you sure it’s lost?”
     “The last time I had it I was in the park, writing, and then Lita came, and so I quickly put it away.  I thought I put it in the bag, but I guess not.  When I went back, it wasn’t there.”
     “Did you check your bag?”
     “Yes!  I checked everywhere!” Serena said, upset.
     “It’s all right, hon,” Mina embraced Serena.
     “It won’t be all right…ever again.  My heart was in those poems.  Every word I wrote in had purpose.  My purpose.  And someone else probably picked it up, and tossed it away, declaring it to be trash.  My feelings…reduced to someone’s waste.  All those ideas.  I won’t ever see them again.  Those stories…they’re lost.  I won’t ever be able to think of them all…it all is in a void.  Nothingness.  Forgotten sentiments.”
 

February 20

We are in separate worlds.
I’m stuck here,
In this land of dreary monotony,
Working,
Dying a little,
Everyday.
No difference.
I can only watch and dream.
     Who was she?
     “Darien?”
     Darien dropped the book under his textbook, and turned around.  “Hey Rae!”
     “Sorry I’m late.  Serena had a minor crisis.”
     “That’s all right, let’s get started,” he said, pushing aside the textbook and book.
     She could be someone like Rae.  Perhaps Rae had some secret side that she never showed anyone.  Perhaps everyone did.
     This girl, as lost him.  As clueless.  So beautifully perceptive, and so simple.
     Where was she?
     He looked at Rae, who sat explaining holes in their case and plan.
     He never thought it before.  There was so much to people he never knew, never would find out.  And somehow, he wanted to know everything.  What was her favorite color?  Why?  Did it remind her of a certain blanket she loved as a child?  Was she allergic to anything?  Did she have siblings?
     “Huh?”
     He realized his last words were uttered aloud.  He looked away.  “I never got to know you, Rae.”
     Rae shifted uncomfortably in her seat.  “Must you?”
     Darien laughed.
 

February 24

I don’t want that
To see you fall,
From that temple you have built around yourself
High on a storm cloud
And I don’t want to taint your equilibrium
By bringing in my innocence.
     She looked at the new blank book before her.
     She looked at Lita, and looked back at the book.  Lita?  Buy her a blank book?  “What is this?”
     “You lost yours.  I want you to have this one.”
     It was…
     She’d taken little quotes they’d both liked, and printed them out in different fonts, and pasted them across the cover.
     “Sunflower petals?” Serena looked at her sister.
     “Yes, for friendship.  We are friends, you know…”
     Serena looked at her step-sister.
     She’d never thought her evil, but she’d never thought her a bosom friend.  They were too different to be good friends.
     And she’d done something so selflessly beautiful.
    “Thank you, Lita.”
You gathered the heavens for a scarf,
And stole the moonlight for your hair.
You polished the Earth for a pearl,
And placed it in your heart.
     The sunset was mysteriously beautiful tonight, Darien mused, on his evening jog.
     Was it in the way he saw things?  Was it in the way the sky warmly greeted the evening?
     Or was it the melody in the air tonite?  A lovely, musky tone.  Full of a content laziness that drawled and waltzed on the horizon, pulling him further.
     It was rich with feeling.  Passion for life.
     He slowed down and looked about him.  The melody wasn’t just in his heart though.  There was a faint strain in the air, entwining itself with the peace.
     It was as if that melody was looking into his heart, and amplifying it.
     The air he breathed, its molecules were oscillating in time with the music.  With his heart.  And he simply felt perfection.
     The person who played this melody…
     There was an image in his mind.
     Through glass he saw her.
     The air swelled around him, as he tried to focus.
     There was something about her eyes.
     There was a poem.
     There was a girl in the glass.
     There was a melody.
     He was so muddled.
 

March 4

And I fear to actually touch you
To teach you my perceptions
To show you the sun,
Because I’m afraid you’ll feel too much heat
And burn up,
Never wanting me to come back.
     The dance was slinky and very slow.
     She approached the melody carefully, tiptoeing on strains ever so lightly.
     If she took too much, if she brought too much, then she’d shatter it.  It slipped into air.
     It resisted the ear, and invited it, beckoned it.  A tease.
     It giggled cruelly.
     Greg’s melody reached for it.
     And fell away.
     It flitted around him.
     His tone became frustrated as he reached once more.
     And she teasingly blew a raspberry with her cello, and continued to dance away.
     The orchestra’s rollicking melody echoed hers, and the end flew up in a wall of color and light, of passions and sentiments.  A revelation of all the world’s feelings, infused note by note.
     And ended with Greg’s soft melody, full of longing.
     “Good!” Ms. Michiru smiled.  “Class dismissed!”
    The noise of the room rose with students standing up and gathering their book bags and packing up instruments.  A few students practiced a phrase or two, over and over, and there was fiddling in the corner as some first violins deemed the time appropriate to be silly.
    It was a good day.
    “Serena, that was brilliant!  I don’t know what has brought on this change, but your playing is much more…fulfilled.”
    “I am much more fulfilled,” Serena replied, smiling, as she packed up Laralea.  She smiled mysteriously, and was on her way.
 

March 14

Oblivious to
Obsidian depths
At her feet,
And forgetful of
Injustice in the world.
     Her music haunted him.
     Words mingled with the music, creating a tempest of emotion and thought.  The writer was in love with someone.  Who?
     All mingled with a face, reflecting him, a character he’d never seen before, but did now.  How did she know?
     So confused.
     It was light today.  The tones rollicked off the walls and whirl-winded past him, as he walked out to the student parking lot.
     He raced those tones.  He had to find this melody.  He had to resolve this.  Who was this, who played so close to his heart?
And she can
Find true intent
By just peeling
The surface tones away,
Revealing a person’s
Inner-most thoughts,
And locked up dreams.
     The sunlight hit the room ever so lightly, stroking the corners.
     Serena smiled.
     It had been a good day.
     Somehow, lately, her whole being was full.
     Without her book.
     Without her pining for an illusion.
     Did she love Darien Annulus?
     Yes, she did.
     But…
     It was different.  He was different.
     He didn’t see her, but she saw him, with his new smile.  The one that always glimmered at any hour, secretly in some unknown spring.
     A part of her feared that he was in love.
     Another part loved him too much to hate him for it.
     And the last part of her hated that part.
     And her book of longings was not around to make her feel badly about it.
     Her book of Calculus was not around to make her feel badly about it.
     Her calculus book.  There was homework tonite.  She had to get it from her locker.
 She’d go out the back entrance, cut across the soccer field and grab it.  She grabbed her backpack and coat, and left her cello in the case; it’d be a split-second if she ran; she’d be able to get back before too long.
 


Don’t you see?
We’re two far apart to hold each other tight.
Don’t you know?
We’re too close to see the wall between us.
Together we’ll never meet.
And we stay here
Because there is nothing we can do.
     Out of breath he entered the room.
     Empty.
     Sadly, he looked around the room.  Various instrument cases locked up in the storage room, as he found when looking through the small thin window.  Some chairs, more music stands.
     She was a ghost, wasn’t she?
     Saddened, he opened his book bag, and from it withdrew a well-cared-for spiral bound book.  He looked at it, fingering the music notes.
     The musical ghost would appreciate it.
     God knew that he was going in too far with this.  The writer, the musician.  He’d never met any of them.
     *Darien get a mind!*
     He sat down on the floor, leaned his head back against the wall, and closed his eyes.  Why couldn’t he fall for someone normal?
     He looked at the book, opened it, fingered the pages, wrinkled with Her tears.  She existed, right?  She’d been so real to him.  From her tones, he sensed she was his age.  From her anguishes, not being recognized by the man she loves, she just yearned and yearned.
     He slammed down the book.  What a cruel joke.
     He stormed out of the room.
And I know that you love me,
But dear, we’ll never be.
     She entered, out of breath, putting the back door.  She took out her key to the storage room, and unlocked it, grabbing her cello.  She’d be late for her lesson.
     She turned around, and checked the room to see that she had gotten everything.
     A book.
How can you walk so lightly across this shore?
Do you know that your steps leave
An imprint in the sand that even my tears cannot wash away?
     He shouldn’t have left it behind.
     He impatiently rushed back into the school, and into the fine arts hall.
     It had to be there.
     How could he have been so stupid?  He wrestled with the locks.
     The minute he drove up the driveway at his home, he decided he needed to get his book back.  No matter what was going on with his life, how stupid this impulse sounded, he needed those words.
     Locked.
     He got the janitor.  “I left something in the room earlier.  I need to find it, so I can do my paper tonite.  Can I get in?”
     The janitor walked back down the hall with him.
     Could a man even possibly walk slower?  Darien felt his heart pound restlessly.  He felt he was losing her…
     The janitor sorted through his keys.
     Every jangle rattled his nerves.
     The click of the lock echoed in his mind, and he entered the room.
     Empty.
A fallen angel,
Looking at you through the looking glass,
The glass that offers no portal.
     She stared viciously at the book.
     She’d just reorganized herself.  She’d been so good.  It couldn’t happen now!
     “Why me?!!!!!”  she yelled out the window.
     She flipped through the pages.
     All in tact.
     It was if it’d never left her hands.
     It was if she’d never been the person she had been for the past month.
     She looked at the book on her desk; it had musings.  Happy musings.  Not unrequited love.  True love.  The love that allowed for happiness when the love of your life falls in love with someone else.
     And now she had gotten her angst-infused, passionate, longing torrents back.
     She stared at the book angrily.
    It was time to exorcise a few demons.
 

March 15

Love is voice that comes round and again
Love is a story that won’t begin
     What a lousy day.
     He had repeated her words in his head a number of times.  And heard those words ringing so much that he ceased to remember the words; they simply settled themselves in his mind.
     He hadn’t been able to pay attention at all during class.  He could see that GPA dropping steadily.  Didn’t really matter, though.  He was a second semester senior, after all.
     In a few weeks, he’d find out about college.
     What a relief.  Somewhere far away, where he couldn’t hear her voice.
     He hadn’t even met her.  When did she even come to life long enough to have a voice?
     Who took his book?
     Where did go?  Did it vanish, in the same mysterious manner that it appeared?

Love is the stream of eternity
Love is the question of identity
     She had to go in.
     She’d left the school right after classes were over.  But she scowled at her cowardice.  She could do this.  Outside, she sat down on the bench and put her head in her hands.  He’d be coming out soon.  She had to go in before he left.  She had to go find him.
     She got up, and set her purpose.  Lip in a straight line of determination, hands fisted around the book, she brought it to her chest, and walked toward the school with it as a shield.
     As she reached for the door, it opened out towards her.  She moved herself to the left, holding the door open.
     Through the glass.
Two orbs,
Obsidian
Stars in the heart of the sky,
Beckon my mind, pulling all thoughts
To you.
     Through the glass.
     He saw her through the glass.
     Her eyes.  They did not reflect him.  They reflected herself.
     And in his reflection in the glass, he saw the self that she had seen in him before.  The self he was now.
 In her hands, she held his book.
     His eyes met hers once more.  What would she see in his eyes?
     “Darien!”
     Someone called his name.
     He would not look away, not this time.  He wasn’t going to lose her this time.
Deprived
Of your thoughts, you
Reach, I am there; mirrored
Feelings come to fuse, past time
And space.
     He was pushed from behind.
     He fell forward, as others pushed themselves out of the doors, anxious to get home.
     He swung around to the other side of the door, to hold the door open for the other students.
     She ran.
 

March 27

But when
We leave, our junction
Lingers, undisturbed.
We will go our own ways, longing to
Return.
     Where did she disappear to?  Was she real?
     It made no sense.  When he turned around, she was gone.
     Was she just an illusion?  A week.  He’d searched for her in the halls.  She was never there.  He never saw her.  He went running by the park, in hopes that he’d see her under her tree.
     He was almost convinced she was a ghost.
     “…Come with me?”
     Darien shook his head.  “Excuse me?”
     “You haven’t been paying attention to a word, have you?”
     Darien looked tiredly at his friend, “I’m sorry, no I haven’t.”
     Andrew sighed.  What was with his friend lately?  “I’m going to the orchestra concert tomorrow, for Mina.  Would you like to come?”
 

March 28

     Self-preservation.
     She could offer no other excuse.  Whatever idea that she had of giving the book to him, of tossing away her feelings, of moving on ceased to exist when she looked into his eyes.
     And life basically ended about then.
     She would confront him, some time.
     Just not now.
     Not ever?
     Preferably.

     He shifted uncomfortably in the chair, and looked about him.
     He felt odd, sitting here.  Would she play on that stage tonight?
     The orchestra was tuning.  Bursts of discord as the notes vacillated from in tune and out.
     Formal black spanned the stage’s occupants.
     Finally, lights of the school auditorium dimmed.
     First, a young man entered, with a violin tucked under his arm.  “He’s Greg Fielding.  He’s the concert master,” Andrew whispered.
     He never knew the orchestra people.  Looking in the faces, he recognized Mina, and Rae, but not many others.  She was not there, of that he was certain.
     Greg bowed, stood up on the podium, and the orchestra once again tuned.
     Silence.
     Next, Lara Michiru entered, and smiled to the audience and bowed.  “She’s a really great cellist, from what I hear,” Andrew commented.  “The next girl-“
     Lara gestured to the side of the stage, from which entered an angel.
     She wore white, looking almost ghostly pale in the light.  She carried on her arm, a dark, almost red cello.
     “That’s Serena Arroway,” Andrew said, almost breathlessly.  “She’s…brilliant.”

     Tone.
     Drift…a tale spun in moonlight, of a kingdom long ago.  A princess and a prince, torn apart but bonded by destiny to find each other…
     Passion.  Love.  Terror.  Death.  Rebirth.
     Longing.
     It stretched over the audience, congealing on notes that struck the heart, and then dissolved.
     Life.
     She opened her eyes now.  They met Greg’s, and effortlessly, he melted into her creation.
     Entwined, their melodies charmed the ear, tickling other instruments into animation.  The violas slipped into arpeggios, and the cellos behind her made runs across the strings.
     Eternity.

     She stood, and bowed.
     “She’s going to some great conservatory.  Ms. Michiru wanted her to have her own concert…” Andrew said, while they stood, giving Serena Arroway a standing ovation.
     Darien didn’t hear his friend.
     He could see only her.
     Her face, glimmering with happiness, and tears, as she hugged the conductor, Greg, Rae.
     She was the one.

     She smiled as she hugged her friends once more.  They huddled around her, and she simply sighed, content.  She had done it.
     Success.
     Her parents came now, her step-father ready to take Laralea.  Serena relinquished her cello reluctantly, and smiled to her step-sister, who presented her with a bouquet of white roses.
     “So let’s go and celebrate.  What do you say to Friday’s?”  Mina smiled, as Andrew came and put his arm around her.
 T. G. I. Friday’s.  She looked to her parents.  “Have fun, darling,” her mother kissed her on the cheek.
     Serena smiled.
     “You did marvelous, honey,” her step-father said once more, and kissed her on the cheek.
     “Thank you,” Serena smiled, as she started to button up her formal overcoat.
     “So, shall we?” Rae asked.  Greg offered his arms to both Amy and Serena, and they took them, and happily started to wander off.
     The door opened for them.
     Through the glass, she saw him.

     “Um, I think we’ll go on.  Darien can take Serena, right?” Rae said, forcibly detaching Serena’s death-vise on Greg’s arm, and taking the place before Serena reattach.
     Serena looked pleadingly to Amy, who looked at Greg and proceeded to start conversation.  Lita, where was Lita?
     She was walking out with Mina, and they were in heavy conversation.
     And then she looked to Him.
    He had opened the glass door and stepped inside.

The End