literature

What

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Literature Text

What?!

The girl was still looking at him. Michael met her gaze directly for a moment: she smiled at him. He smiled back hesitantly then immediately turned and looked out the window. She kept looking at him! It wasn't a consistent stare: she was doodling on the notepad she had on her lap as well, but every couple of minutes he'd notice that she was looking at him again.

Michael ran her image through his memory to see if he should know who she was. She belonged to the class of person that was neither attractive nor ugly enough to strike to leave a lingering first impression. She was tall and fairly gangly and her hands seemed too big for her arms. Her brown hair was entirely straight and she wore it in a bob. She seemed to grin a little almost out of habit, as if thinking about something nonsensical. She looked up as if she could feel Michael's scrutiny and he immediately turned back out the window. He wondered if he had been fast enough to avoid her noticing his attention.

Michael wondered if she was just trying to bug him. He remembered the time last year when he had been on the bus back from orchestra and had entertained himself by staring at a guy opposite him. The bus wasn't a school bus, and this guy looked to be somewhere in his thirties. Every time he turned to see what Michael was looking at, he'd just continue staring for a beat and then look away again. It drove the man nuts. Michael had never managed to work up the guts to do it to anybody since.

He could always just go over and ask. Michael looked at her fleetingly and, yes, she was looking at him. He smiled again, trying to make it look casual, and resumed window-staring while feeling like an idiot. Yup, he sure could. There was nothing at all stopping him from just getting up, going over there and talking to her.
But he wasn't going to do it. He knew he wasn't going to do it. Instead, he just went back to looking at a concrete wall rush past, covered in various forms of graffiti.

A lot of people always seemed to hate graffiti, but Michael could never understand why. What was so wrong about putting cool pictures and designs on a blank concrete wall? It was creative wasn't it? And it allowed the artist some form of expression and freedom and adrenalin and they hadn't hurt anyone in the process. What's more, it mean there wasn't just some blank wall for him to stare at on the way home. There were people, Michael thought, who just wanted to paint the whole world beige. It was entirely inoffensive, it didn't cause any problems, and it never intruded on your space. You could just carry on in your beige life in your beige house all alone and productive and perfectly neutral.

Michael smiled to himself at the thought and turned to look ahead of himself when he suddenly noticed the girl was standing right in front of him, still grinning a little. He visibly jumped, at which she laughed. A gruff voice announced that the train was now pulling into Central. The girl looked up, glanced out the window, pressed her lips together, looked back at Michael and kissed him.

It was safe to say he hadn't seen it coming, so he had no idea what to do. It didn’t last much longer than a second or two before the train jerked to a stop. The girl broke off, laughed at the look on his face, her own face beet red, and then skipped out of the train and onto the platform. Michael sat up and stared at her. He shook his head and mouthed "what was that?"; at her, but she just smiled and waved. Michael swallowed. Should he get out? He was going to see some friends, the next train wouldn't be past for about half an hour, he had no idea who this girl is but was he going to let her walk away without explaining what the hell that was?

No he thought, not a chance. With a rush of adrenalin Michael got up just as a cheerful recorded message announced that the doors were closing, and jumped out of the carriage. He looked around before he caught sight of her brown bob going up the escalator that was in front of him, so he jogged around and took the stairs up to get to the top before her. She was beaming now, but when she saw him she seemed to freeze in place.

"Oh. I. I wasn't expecting you to follow me." She said and laughed briefly. Michael made a noise as well, somewhere between laughing and just exhaling in surprise. "Wh- what, what, what" he managed, and motioned towards the departing train, "What was that?!"

The girl blushed and shrugged helplessly "Life is short and you are hot. I've wanted to do that to someone for ages, and you were there, so I thought why not? You're not complaining are you?" She asked along with an expression that Michael wanted to take home and pin to his wall. "No! Heh, no, I'm not, I guess just... What? What?! Why? I mean... What?"

She laughed and patted him on the head; "You really are adorable."
Pause.
She motioned towards the city: "I've kinda got to get going."
"Oh. Yeah, ok. Um." Michael shook his head again and offered his hand. "I'm Michael! Very pleased to meet you." The girl smiled and shook.
"Claire. Ditto. I'll see you around!"
"Yeah, bye."

Claire walked off towards the city and Michael went back down the stairs to the train-station, head reeling.

Shit. Why didn't I ask her number?
Right! This week's weekly story. The plot was a request from a friend.

I wouldn't really class this as a romance, it was just the closest category I could get it with Devarts category choosing mechanism. I think they'll never be able to make it general enough to fit everything people here write.

Even though this wasn't my idea, I think it turned out rather well. What do you guys think?
© 2007 - 2024 MrHyperbole
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audience-of-one's avatar
Just a thought: All of the story, up until the last line, is in...........third person? Last line seems a bit out of place.