The Other Side of Balance

The Other Side of Balance          
I can hear her call, though she's many miles away.  It's more of a feeling really I suppose.  I'm working my job in the city when it hits me, a clear, burning bubble of emotion that's not mine.  She's mad, and she's forgetting, and I start running, yelling to my boss that I'll be back at the docks in a while, and neither knowing nor caring how I know it's her.

         She never was a stable girl.  When I met her she was scary. Even to me.  I remember seeing her when she came to school the first day.  She sat in the back of the tiny and not particularly well lit room, in a corner and she seemed to pull the shadows around her, adding their color to her skin and clothing.  She didn't talk, just sat there staring at the other students, I wasn't sure if we were what she was looking at.  Her eyes always seemed old, far away, and back then they were angry, hurt, like an abused dog's.  They cut into anything they looked at and tore it apart, slowly.  Nut when the principal asked her to introduce herself she surprised me with a soft voice.  At first it was a rough monotone, flat and lifeless, and somehow threatening but when she began talking about the things she liked, it changed.  It was a little harsh still, probably from disuse, but strangely pleasant.  I figured she sang.  She did, and sculpted and wrote and read.  She always read.  I liked that about her.

         That's odd, I think,  I never got involved with people until she came around.    Something had called to me in her back then, like it is now, but quieter.  I was drawn to her then, and she to me, though neither of us knew why.  Maybe it's because we were so alike.  She just hadn't learned control yet. 
I get into my old Camaro, the black paint around the handle chipping a little more when I slam the door.  The body is a piece of shit, but the engine beneath purrs like a pleased dragon when I turn the key, and my perfect sound system comes to life, blasting my ears with The Shout's million voices.  It almost hurts my ears, drowning out the purr, but it doesn't stop the thrumming in my head.  She's close to breaking.  I take the back streets until I hit 101, and muscle my way into the traffic.

         I remember her glaring at me.  She didn't know she was glaring, it was just how she looked at the time she told me later.  She was in her corner, one hand absently playing across the keys of the crappy old piano we kept in the biggest room in the school.  She was watching me over the top of a worn novel, and I couldn't tell what she was thinking.  It was unnerving.  I could always tell what people where thinking.  That's why it was so fun toying with them.  I walked over and talked to her.  I don't remember what I said, what she said.  But after that we began hanging out.  Every day she would sit in the same place, not near the piano, because other people had taken to frequenting that area.  It was winter and everyone spent as much time as they could inside.  Except for her.  She had her own place outside in the quad, at a paint-stained metal picnic table. She always sat facing the door, in the left-hand corner, her head bent over a book or this old leather bound journal she was never apart from.  Sometimes she brought clay, and sculpted little creatures, happy looking, in bright colors, each very unlike her, but similar, somehow.  After a while I began sitting with her.  We didn't talk much, just sat there, doing whatever.  I brought a knife once and she watched, fascinated as I sharpened it.  And then she defended me, one of the few times she ever spoke in those early days, when I nearly got kicked out of school for having it. 
         Nobody ever defended me before.  Not even my own family...
         
        I'm in Palo Alto now, still driving way over the speed limit, as is my custom.  I'm surprised it's only been a few minutes.  Perhaps I'm driving a little bit faster than usual.  I take the Middlefield exit, Drive down the street, at a much more sedate pace, make a few turns and end up at the school, a place full of memories I didn't want, and a few I probably wouldn't be here now without.  I park quickly, get out, and sprint to the back of the school, where I'm sure she is.  The math room, or at least that's what it was before I left.  She stands right outside the door, shoulders rigid, I can't see her face, but her stance tells me everything.  She's about to lose it again, like she did back then
         
         She was shaking, her eyes wide and her hands clenched so tightly that I could see blood welling where her nails had bitten through.  I hadn't been there earlier, so I didn't know what had happened, but I caught her before she could move again, and she snarled at me, cursing with words that weren't words and she twisted in my grasp.  She was bigger than me, but we were even in strength.  I talked to her and pulled her away from the shocked student who'd incurred her wrath.  I took her back, past our table, through a wooden gate and pressed my back against a white tree.  I didn't say anything then.  I just stood there till she calmed down.  And then she looked at me.  I'd never seen someone so scared before.  Not unless you count me looking in the mirror one day a lifetime ago.  She took to staying near me after that. She followed me to the train station (I didn't have my car back then)  and worried when I didn't show up to school.  I found I did the same, worrying I mean.  I'd never cared about a person like that before. 
         Still don't.
        I sneak through the back way, past the tree and the gate, and position myself in her field of vision.  I can see her eyes now, far away as usual, and unfocused.  They clear after a moment, and she tenses.  The idiot who pissed her off is totally oblivious, both to my presence behind him and her instability.  But then she sees me and her eyes change.  I smile, shake my head a little, and I can see her remembering.  She smiles back, but her eyes become sad, and I almost say something, almost go back to her, but I have work to do, and she needs to be able to function without me.  So I turn and leave, back to my car, lingering just long enough to hear her strangely pleasant voice, now clearer and not so dark, she's been singing, and get back into my car. 
         I drive away, holding on to that sound.