Week eight(Dec. 15 - Dec. 21) Topic:Square
Winner: Clare
Squares or Circles
By Clare
“Which do you prefer, squares or circles?” a voice came from beside him. Jonathan shook him from his normal mid-class daze and saw that the class was over and kids were starting to get up. He’d almost fallen asleep again. He really needed to get to bed earlier.
“Uh, sorry, what?” he said, confused looking around for who had spoken.
“Circles or squares, which do you prefer?” the lilting voice asked. Jonathan turned to the voice in surprise. It was his desk partner, what was her name? Oh, yeah, Kara.
“What-what do you mean?” he asked, rubbing one eye with his palm, and then the other, trying to rub the drowsiness from his eyes.
“Which do you like better?”
“Uh... I’m not sure. Squares and Circles? What do you mean? Which one I like better?”
“Yes,” she said simply as if she were asking about the weather.
“Well...um...I’m...well I guess I don’t know?” he said.
“Hmm. You should think about it.” She said, and picked up her books and left.
Jonathan just stood there for a second, trying to go through what she had just said, and trying to understand it. Squares or circles? What the heck? He shook his head to himself, and got up to go to his next class.
Unfortunately, his strange conversation with Kara wasn’t banished by shaking his head. He continued to puzzle over it throughout the entire class, not paying attention to the teacher at all.
First off, Kara had almost never talked to him, though they’d been desk partners in both Science and Art for at least two months now. She was quiet, and as far as he could see, she never said more than a few words to anyone. She answered questions (always correctly. A+ student) and complied when people asked her to pass a book or move or whatever, but other than that, she was practically in her own world. Second was that she was...well...different. Not shy-different, or even gothic-different. She was her own brand of different. She wore black a lot, but didn’t hang out with the school Goths, with their devil-cult-wannabe attitudes. Or the Emo’s, with their look-at-me-I-have-a-miserable-life-and-I-like-to-cut-myself personality. She definitely wasn’t one of the Barbie girl horde, with their 69 IQ and their jocks. She wasn’t with the nerds, the skaters, the bookies, the average nobodies. She wasn’t in the artsy group that Jonathan was in. She was neither with nor was a member of any of these groups. She was kind of a group in herself. Her own species of high school teen. She always sat alone at lunch. Not always at an empty table, but always alone.
So there were two reasons why it was so weird that she had asked him a question. And then, there was the question itself. Which did he prefer, squares or circles? Really. That was a ridiculous question. Who actually like one shape over another? Blue over green perhaps, but two basic shapes?
And yet he found his thought wander back to the though again and again. Finally at lunch he decided that he was going to go ask her what she meant. She was sitting alone as always, this time in an empty table over in a quiet corner of the room. One of Jonathan’s friends caught him staring over there and commented, “I wonder what is up with the girl anyway.”
Jonathan got up slowly, and started walking over.
“Hey, you’re not going to go sit with her, are you?” one of his more stuck up friends hissed.
Jonathan ignored her and kept weaving through the tables. Finally he was standing by the table, directly across from her. She was looking down at her food.
He cleared his throat to get her attention, but she continued to stare down at her plastic tray of food. He did it louder, but to no avail. He stood there unsure. He looked at her, and realized he hadn’t really even known what color her hair was before. He pretty much ignored her in classes.
It was a dark brown, almost black. Her skin was pale, and she was extremely thin. So small and thin she almost looked sick. She had this strange wild beauty about her also, with her sharp angles and small bones. Almost like an elf or something. He wasn’t sure what color her eyes were, as she was looking down. It struck him as funny, that he had spent so much time with her, and hadn’t even known what she looked like.
“Well? Do you have an answer?” she said suddenly, as he looked at her unsure of what to do.
“Uh,” was all he could manage.
“No?” she said, in a voice that said she knew he wouldn’t. She finally looked up, and her eyes pierced into him. Gray. They were gray. Almost as if they glittered though. They could almost be called...silver.
Jonathan wondered if she wanted him to sit down or go away or what. As if she had read his mind, she said, “Sit.” He sat.
“So...” he began, but couldn’t think of what else to say, so the word hung there for a second suspended in silence.
“Do you know why you can’t pick, Jonathan?” she said after a moment of awkwardness. Her lilting voice was quiet as ever, but it seemed loud at the same time, as if she demanded attention and respect.
“Uh, well...” he said. What could he say? That it was a stupid question? That would be rude. And mean.
She smirked a little, and raised an eyebrow. “It’s not a stupid question, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Jonathan’s eyes grew wide. It was like she was reading his mind!
She smirked again. “Think about it, Jonathan. Why can’t you pick?”
“Because they’rejust shapes,” he answered after a seconds thought.
“Ah, but some people like round rugs over square ones. Some like square mirrors over round.”
“But that’s different.”
“How?” she asked.
“Well, those are things. These are just... shapes,” he replied, forehead wrinkling in confusion.
“Yes,” she said, “they’re just shapes. But would you have all buildings round? Or all wheels square?”
“No...” he started, but she interrupted him, “Jonathan, the reason you can’t pick one shape over another is because you need both.”
Jonathan thought about what she had just said for a moment, and then asked, “But why are you telling me this?”
“Because, you need to know it,” she said simply.
“What do you mean?”
But without another word, she stood up and got her tray. Jonathan watched her for a few seconds as she walked to the trash to throw away the leftovers and then jumped up to catch up with her.
Strangely, instead of heading to her next class, she headed for the doors. She was about to step out, when Jonathan called, “Hey, wait!” dodging kids walking in the halls. She turned to face him and smiled. This time it wasn’t a smug smirk, but a nice smile. She waited while he made his way to her, and when he got there, she said, “Here,” and she placed something in his hand. He looked at it. It was a dark brown leather necklace with a dark wooden bead on it. On one side of the bead there was a J scratched into the wood reviling lighter wood underneath, with a square scratched in on one side of the J, and a circle on the other. He rolled the bead over in his hands, and the other side had the letters RMBR on it.
Jonathan looked up at Kara for a second confused, and then back down at the letters. “R-M-B-R?” he asked. “What does that stand for?”
“Remember,” she whispered, ignoring the question, and taking the necklace and tying it around Jonathan’s neck. She started to turn but he stopped her with a hand.
“Where are you going?” he asked, removing he hand from her shoulder quickly. She felt like ice.
“Others need lessons too, Jonathan,” she answered with a mysterious smile. She turned towards the door and was out in a blink of an eye. Jonathan stood there for moment, bewildered at what had just transpired, and then ran out the door. There was a gust of wind blowing the falling snow into a turmoil. Kara wasn’t in site. Jonathan looked around frantically. He had to ask her why he needed to remember. But she wasn’t there. It was almost as if she never had been.
There was another gust of wind, and it probably just was just his imagination, but it seemed to form the shape of a girl who disappeared into scattered snow in a second. He shook his bewildered head and went back inside.
“Hey,” he said to his friends, sitting back down at the art group table, “That Kara girl just like disappeared.”
“Who?” one of them asked.
“Kara. The strange one that never talked?” Jonathan said.
“Dude, the only Kara here is Kara Smith, over there,” another one said, pointing over to the Barbie girl table.
“No, the one I sit by in Science and Art!” he exclaimed.
“Um, you don’t sit with anyone in those classes,” his friend said. “Do you need to see the nurse or something?”
“Oh, never mind,” he said, getting impatient with them. Were they just playing him, or what?
“Hey, check it out, my yearbook came in today!” one of the arty people said.
“Here, can I see it?” Jonathan asked, wanting to show them Kara.
“Sure.” He grabbed the book and went to the art class page. He searched in confused. In one picture, he sat by himself at an empty desk, and in another, the gathering of all the kids in the art class, Kara was missing. He went to the back section with pictures of all the kids in the school. He went to the K’s but there was only one Kara. Kara Smith, with her shiny blond hair. His forehead wrinkled. Had he just imagined her or something? Was there something wrong with him after all?
“Hey, nice necklace. Where’d you get it?” the stuck up one at the table said. Jonathan’s hand went up automatically to his neck. Sure enough there was the necklace. She had to have been real, then. He fingered it and remembered the letters on there. RMBR.
“Remember,” he whispered to himself. Remember.
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