She’s known for arriving ten seconds after the bell. Doesn’t matter the class. I always count
in my head when I hear the chimes squeezing through the closing classroom door. I hear her
footsteps, and she pushes into the back, followed by the empty echoes of our school’s hallway.
She’d look freshly showered, smell like a beach on a rainy day. Weird, I never saw her attend
swimming lessons at the neighborhood pool while growing up.
A week before she stopped showing up, she came in ten seconds before the bell. I saw the back
of her head for the first time as she plopped into her seat at the front of the classroom.
Six days before she stopped showing up, she was there a minute early. She’d braided her hair
and had three notebooks alongside a blue highlighter and a mechanical pencil I’d never seen
her use before.
Five days before she stopped showing up, she wore a new hoodie from the local thrift store.
Smelled like detergent. Go Bears.
Four days before she stopped showing up, she wore winter boots and a red turtleneck. Three
days before, she arrived ten whole minutes early, and fell asleep up front; the teacher didn’t
wake her. At two days, I thought about asking why she was wearing sweaty volleyball arm
sleeves under a tank and the Bears hoodie. Early September didn’t call for layers.
The last day before she stopped walking into the classroom, her eyes were red, and she was
nine seconds after the bell. She sat in the back, and I turned around to see the front of her pale
forehead. I imagined thoughts in there but couldn’t read them. It was as though I was blind
and needed Braille, but my fingers couldn’t feel. Her hair was unbraided and wet and frizzy
and dripping small puddles into the carpet. Had she gone for a swim? I remembered that she
used to be excused from beach days in elementary school.
The day she stopped showing up, the river tides were high. No one asked, but I didn’t see the
braided back of her head, the beading sweat of her forehead. I saw a desk, still damp with
small fingerprints.