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She sat, staring out into the sky for a while through the skylight in the center of the food court. The mall was her favorite place in the world, but she was really sick of this pizza. Because she didn't want to waste money, she began to munch on the slice anyway, and remembered why she bought it in the first place. She savored the taste of cheese and tomato sauce, and pulled out her notebook and began to write.Whenever people walked by, they assumed that she was a poet, but she simply wrote down who she saw. She was a common fixture at the mall. She sat at the edge of the food court next to the movie theater and wrote for hours. He composition book was open to a blank page as she waited for someone interesting to walk by.
Soon, the teenagers would start dragging in for the cheap movie at 10:30. Teenagers so sleepy they can hardly keep their eyes open, let alone pay enough attention to grasp a plot. "But it's summer," she wrote, "the movies don't have many plots this time of year." The page slowly began to fill with smooth cursive. Soon, a group of teenagers walked by toward the movie theater, and she watched them. They seemed so familiar, so much like someone she had known once. There were five of them. The girls were dressed in their wide leg jeans and cropped T-shirts. Their hair was styled perfectly, and their shoes were the expensive, trendy type. The guys were wearing their baggy jeans and Starter baseball caps, with their oversized band-of-the-hour T-shirts. 'Their look screamed 'I'm willing to spend two hundred dollars to look like a slacker' as they walked by the table, without glancing around to the different people in the mall," she wrote as they passed her table.
But one of them did glance in her direction and a glimmer of recognition flew across his face. He knew hat he had known her once, and she knew that he would remember soon. She dropped her notebook and pen into her bag and quickly left the table. He watched her leave, wondering why she seemed so familiar. But his friends were already walking off and he rushed to follow them, looking over his shoulder as she walked out of the mall.
A week later, she worried that she wouldn't be able to go back there to her favorite table, afraid she might be recognized. But she went anyway, and sat watching people again. She was watching a pair of girls argue when suddenly the seat beside her moved. He sat down and looked at her for a moment.
"It bothered me all night, trying to figure out who you were, and finally I remembered you. I used to go to school with you, over at Sylvan High. Do you remember me?"
She stared at him, how could she have forgotten him, star of the baseball team, the fastest 100 meter runner in the school's history. Frm what she had heard he was even up for Valedictorian this year. She opened her mouth to say that, but the words stuck in her throat. So she simply smiled a weak smile, and waited for him to speak again.
"What happened to you anyway? Where did you move to?"
"I...I haven't really moved anywhere permanent yet. Since, well, after the accident, I've been moving around a lot."
The accident. She wondered why she referred to it that way. It wasn't really an accident. It was some drunk driver out for a joy ride in a stolen car. She ran her finger along the scar that ran the length of her arm. Everyone said she had been lucky to survive, but she really hadn't been. Her parents had both died, and their life insurance policy had been enough for her hospital bills and their funerals. She had to move out of her house because she couldn't afford the rent, and she worked a low wage job to buy gas for the van she lived in. She really wasn't that lucky at all. She had dropped out of regular high school to be home schooled because of her odd hours. She would get her diploma soon, but not at a ceremony, but in the mail. She didn't want to tell him all of that.
"Actually, it's stupid of me to ask you where you went. I mean, I kind of know. People have talked a lot about it. Is it true? Did you really drop out of High School?"
"I didn't drop out, but I have to work during the day, so I can't go back."
"Listen, I don't know how to ask you this, but are you really, um, staying in your car?"
She stared at him. "How does everybody know? I didn't think anybody had noticed."
"In a town like Sylvan, it only takes one person noticing before the whole town knows. So is it true?"
She told him the whole story, from beginning to end. It felt good to tell a real person, instead of rehashing it in her own mind, over and over. She had written so many times about how nice it would be to tell someone her story, to get it out in the open so maybe someone would be able to help her, but she hadn't until now, she had never had the courage to face what had become of her life. Perhaps now she would manage to move on, and things would get better.
The girl sat at her table and closed her notebook. She looked at the empty seat across form her and wondered if it would ever get better. She stood slowly and dropped her notebook in her bag and headed for the van she called home.
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