Her eyes opened with the slow solemnity of someone awakening from centuries of slumber. And, slowly, like the first rays of the sun climbing over the horizon of a barren, benighted landscape, vision came to her. And, like the rising, shining sun, her green eyes leapt forth from her opening eyelids.
The first thing she saw was a cement ground.
It felt cold and harsh against her bare, smooth skin, scratching her like the talons of a monster's claw into a newborn baby.
It was cold and harsh. Its rough surface scratched into her bare, smooth skin like the talons of a monster's claw into a newborn baby. As if a divine dam broke inside of her, a sudden flood of feelings rushed about her body.
Then she felt and heard everything.
The harsh, cold air chilling her body and biting her skin; the raucous cacophony of car horns blaring all around her; the scanty light of the noon sun trickling onto her bare back.;the roar of an airplane soaring high in the sky above her.
She blinked and watched the cement disappear and reappear before her eyes. She felt her heart beat deep beneath her chest. She felt the wintry city air flow in and out of her lungs. And she moaned, a creature coming out of a deep hibernation; as she moaned, she felt her throat tingle with life as her larynx vibrated. And she heard the throaty, soft sound that came from her mouth.
She smiled.
As if rising from a grave, she stood.
She found herself standing in an alley of a city, underneath a dreary, gray sky, through which the warm rays of the sun barely broke through to touch the ground, like intermittent teleportation beams from a mysterious ship floating high above the clouds. She thought she could feel one of them touch and caress her skin, enshrouding her from the merciless chill of the city and filling her with the warmth of a farewell hug from the heavens.
She walked forth from the empty alley.
The shelter only gave her clothes.
Hand-me-downs. Clothes that have caressed and warmed the cold skin of many a homeless child who never knew the warming touch of a mother or father. A canary yellow polo shirt and denim navy jeans. They reeked with weeks of not having been washed and radiated with a dreary dullness that resembled the sky. But, they were clothes.
Her clothes.
And so, in her clothes, she sat alone in a small office that looked more like a closet than anything, while a tall lady talked on the phone in another, even smaller office somewhat away from her. She had closed the door, so the girl could hear nothing that she said to the someone on the other side. And, for this moment, the girl was fine: she simply looked around, her wide green eyes scrutinizing every atom of every object, the way an art admirer analyzes every single stroke of a brush. But, soon, the girl jumped off of her hard seat and crept up to the door. She put her ear against it. And she closed her eyes.
"I don't know," the lady said. "It's weird. We just found her naked near an alley. Other than that, she doesn't have a mark on her. She looks about seven."
...
"Near the alley between 11th and 7th."
...
"I told you: she won't talk at all. Not a sound. She won't even nod or shake her head."
...
"Just tell me when Child Services will be here, okay?"
The girl's eyes opened.
"Good. Hurry up."
The girl scurried back to her chair and sat in it. The tall lady came out, looking at the girl, and her lips stretched into a blinding, plastic smile. She walked up to the girl and crouched in front of her until they looked each other in the eye, and the lady put her hands on the girl's shoulders. "You're gonna be fine, okay?"
The girl just stared at her. Blankly.
The tall lady struggled to keep her plastic smile alive in the face of this strange little girl's apathy. "How about we name you, huh?"
Nothing.
"It's a nice May day," she said. "How about we name you May?"
She blinked.
After what seemed like an eternity, the tall lady just stood. She put away her smile and secretly scowled at the mute lil' brat as she left the room.
The little girl just sat there and stared into the air as if she saw an entire constellation before her. Millions among millions of resplendent stars bursting with an ineffable beauty like the innumerable bulbs of a neon sign that spelled one word:
May.
She smiled once more. Then, she stood up from her chair.
And she ran away.
They were so lifeless.
All of them. Countless shoulders brushed past her, innumerable elbows bumped into her, an infinite amount of feet scuffed her shiny Mary Janes. And they all proceeded on with their private business, marching like robots perfectly programmed by an ingenious engineer behind the curtain of culture. All like ants underneath a weary, gray sky, all untouched by the benevolent sun. And none of them cared for the fourteen-year-old girl named May in the schoolgirl uniform she stole from the locker room of some all girl's private high school.
She tried to navigate her way through this turbulent sea of humanity, fighting through callous shoulders, sharp elbows, and careless feet. That cacophony of car horns blared in her tender ears harder that it ever had before. The chilly moisture of the air cast a woeful wateriness in her green eyes, which the city's gargantuan electronic billboards blinded occasionally as they tried to burn brainwashing images into her mind.
She suddenly felt like she was drowning.
In this sea. She struggled to stay afloat and calm like the eye of a hurricane as the world swirled around her like a drug-induced dream. However, no matter how far her feeble feet walked, and how much her thin arms and legs flailed in the ocean, and how much her young lungs fought for air, she still didn't know she was. Maybe not even who she was.
But, still, she walked, navigating herself underneath a sunless, starless sky, until a desolate area gave her a breath of fresh air. She could feel herself resurfacing from the sea as she took in deep, clean, unpolluted breaths, and she looked around in the serene suburbs she somehow stumbled upon. She saw it all as another world from the ever-racing heart of the bustling city. Somewhere she could sleep forever. But, still, she meandered along--this time, not with the desperation of a drowning victim but with exigent silence of a wary wanderer, until she saw an all-boy's private school that had just been dismissed. Waves and waves of uniformed boys surged forth from the building like smoke from a collapsing building and slowly enveloped her sidewalk like a flood. She thought she'd nearly drown again. And, after awhile, at first, she didn't think she would. But, then, a swarm of them seemed to surround her like sharks, whispering among themselves and giving her curious glances.
A few in particular stood out.
"Hey," one boy said to her. He was grinning.
She just looked at him.
"Haven't seen you around here before," said another grinning one.
And she just looked at the other one. But, she still said nothing.
And so the questions continued. An endless assault of who, what, where, how, and why, all to which she maintained her eternal silence. Then came the inevitable question of whether she was "fuckin' mute."
She walked away.
And, for the second time in an hour, she found herself once again navigating through an ocean of humanity until she reached yet another lonely alley in a set of projects. The droning groans of a boy abandoned in pain pulled her inside of it. By a dumpster, she saw an eighteen-year-old boy wearing one of those schoolboy uniforms lying against the building, holding his side, face discolored and puffy with bruises, head leaning to the side. His eyes were closed.
After a moment of her standing before him, however, they opened. Slowly. Solemnly. As if awakening from a coma. And, the first thing he saw was the greenest eyes he ever saw. And, she saw the bluest she'd ever seen. She then knew. He would dispel the clouds and he would be her bow. And more: her sun. Her North Star. All the stars.
He was the one.
"Thanks for helping me back to my house," he said in his living room to the fourteen-year-old girl. He had cleaned himself up and changed into street clothes. "Some fellow seniors of mine had a bone to pick with me. They take it too far."
She just smiled slightly. Her first communication.
"You go to Saint Lucy's?"
After staring at him for a moment, she shook her head.
"Why do you have their uniform, then?"
She just stared at him. She shrugged.
He shrugged, too. "You know their saying?" He pointed at an insignia on her sweater. She glanced down at it. The insignia shined with a captivating lumnescence: framed with a golden circle inside which an intricate, poetic criss and cross of lines and figures resided with golden letters circling along the bottom. "A caelo usque ad centrum."
She looked back up at him.
"It means from the sky to the center. Or, from heaven all the way to the center of the earth."
And, just as the word "May" had earlier--what seemed like a seven-year eternity ago in the office of a shelter--the insignia suddenly lit up before her eyes like an entire galaxy of greatness. And it made her smile once again.
He gave a shy smile. "Sorry. I'm a nerd about these things."
She just kept smiling.
"My name's Paul, by the way," he said, holding out his hand. "What's yours?"
She mouthed the word "May."
"May?"
She nodded.
"You don't talk, do you?"
She shook her head.
A moment. "I see."
She just kept gazing into his eyes as his body twisted at his hips to and fro, eyes darting along the floor. "Is it that you can't or--"
She suddenly took his hand in her own and squeezed it like a child. When he looked at her, he saw those green eyes glow with the great earnesty of a fourteen-year-old girl who wanted to see the world, to see all of its beauty and its ugliness, to feel all of its pleasure and pain, to submerge herself in all its goodness and evil. To live.
He squeezed her hand back. So soft and gentle yet eager.
Slowly, she smiled.
Slowly, he smiled, too.
New City.
That was the name of this strange land she was a stranger in. She mouthed the words on her pink, plump lips: "New City." She tried to run her hands across the name. The way it made her tongue flail and flick inside of her mouth. The way it made her eyes light up. The way it lifted her and carried her away. She wanted to see it all.
So, he showed her.
And he was the bow of her ship, set for a course to the unknown. Destination anywhere.
They swam through the densest streets like they were the most relentless rivers. They scaled the tallest skyscrapers like they were the mightiest mountains. They did the randomest actions like they were the most significant acts of humanity. They saw art exhibits and submerged themselves in the paintings of artists long-gone like they were portals to another world and dimension. They saw people push and shove and curse each other on the sidewalks. They saw a car hit an old lady and speed off without losing the slightest speed. They saw homeless people beg them for money. A person on a corner offered them marijuana and Paul bought it. Gigantic billboards blinded the both of them with advertisements for hair gel and lipstick and Coca-Cola. People offered them pamphlettes, some they ignored, some they took and threw away at the corner garbage can only a few feet away, others they kept because they simply forgot to throw them away. They harassed a policewoman and ran from her for several blocks through an endless stream of people, people, and more people until they both just had to stop and take a breath and laugh. They went inside city gardens where he picked lilies of the valley for her and placed them in her hair, where she cherished them. And they scaled the Statue of Freedom that stood along the shore, overlooking the entire city, keeping its eternal, glorious vigilence over every man, woman, and child, over every rooftop, underneath every star.
In a restaurant that night, May went to use the bathroom. When she hunched over the sink holding her stomach, though, she knew.
It was happening again.
Her bones seemed to swell as if receiving a sudden surge of seven year's worth of calcium and growth. As she grew taller and taller and as her hips widened more and more into the wide width of a ripe woman's, her schoolgirl's shirt became too short. And as her pubescent breasts blossomed more and more like flowers into the respectable size of a grown woman's, her schoolgirl's blouse became too tight. And, as her body writhed and ached in the agonizing sensation of seven year's worth of living--pain and pleasure--experienced in a mere thirty seconds, her voice was too small.
When it was done, she ran away once again. Even the joy of running now felt weird, however: her hips swung and her breasts bounced in a way they never had before. It all made her head spin. This was a dream. She wanted to die.
But she soon found herself inside yet another alley. Her third one in nine hours. And, she leaned against a wall beside a dumpster, her head leaning upwards with eyes closed as her heavy chest heavily heaved with the terror of a girl running away from time and fate.
Something seemed to find her though.
When she opened her eyes, she saw what it was. A group of boys. No. Men. Five of them. All with grins that looked only slightly more twisted than those of the schoolboys she past so long ago.
They all grinned at the twenty-one-year old woman before them who wore clothes too tight for her full-fledged figure.
In the alley, Paul wrapped her nearly-naked body in a table cloth he stole from the restaurant. She had just been lying on the floor yet again: rough, cold, damp cement chilling and cutting into her baby-smooth skin, all underneath a dark, cloudy sky, with no stars to keep their vigil over her. And, for the second time today, her cold, naked body was now enraptured with the warmth of clothing. Warmth. A sensation of homeyness. But, not just by shelter this time around. This time, by love. Even the warmth of his sweet whispers of "It's okay," and "I'm here," and "You're safe" made her shudder with delight and her back tremble with a warm chill. Safety.
"I know a place we can go," he said to her.
The moaned the moan of a creature coming out of hibernation again. And she nodded.
All the time, he thought to himself: If I was a few moments late, she....
Underneath an increasingly clear night sky, they sat on the soft, sandy shore of Jolly Roger Beach, where the waves came and went away like the oscillations of a dreamy mind, where the sand felt as soft as a cloud in the sky, and where nothing could hurt them.
They sat beside a bonfire Paul had made after collecting large amounts of wood from various places nearby. May sat silent as he collected it all. And, now, May sat silently as she leaned her head against his shoulder, her body into his, and her heart into the fire.
"You grew," he said flatly.
Despite the warmth of the fire, she felt the cold of the dead devour her spirit. Her eyes started to water.
He laughed a little and hugged her tighter against him. "One hell of a growth spurt, huh?"
She closed her eyes and she wished she could laugh.
"I don't know who or what you are but I'm glad I met you."
After letting those lovely words sink into her spirit, the words felt like warmth personified. And she hugged him tighter, too.
For a long while, they just sat there, letting the fire consume the wood, and letting its warmth consume them both in its welcoming enrapturement.
"A lot of may flies are in this area, you know."
She listened with the passion of a child hearing her father's best bedtime story.
"They're interesting creatures. They only live for like a day. And, all in that one day, they go from being babies to adults." Pause. "Isn't that insane? Whenever I come here, I always try to imagine that: living life in a day. Boyhood to manhood. And then just dying. It's unimaginable."
She nestled her head into the nape of his neck.
"But, sometimes, so many may flies appear, that they're just everywhere. Covering every surface and the rest dancing around each other. Like some big party." He smiled into the fire. "I imagine that's the happiest party anybody could ever throw."
She smiled.
"And it's just crazy, too: in all that craziness, you have the beginning of life and the end of life all in one big party, in all one day. It's like they finally found home. Or heaven." Pause. "I always imagined that home is where you can feel warm and perfect. Like a newborn baby in a blanket."
She opened her eyes and swam in the curling, ephemeral flames of the fire, drinking in its warmth and the warmth of his body. Home.
"It's chilly, winter days like this that make you think about home and what it really is, you know? And where it is. And why it is what it is. I don't think it has to even be a warm place. Just a place that makes you feel warm. And at peace."
Her fingers skipped along his chest as her head turned to his. His turned to hers, too.
And she kissed him.
And he kissed back. Her slender, elegant hands roamed all about his body and his clammy yet amorous hands cupped her ripe breasts and caressed her womanly curves, going down to swaddle her wide, child-bearing hips.
The moon and all the stars in the sky kept a twinkling vigil over them and the bonfire fed their desire as they made love on the sand.
And so they sat there: on the sand, her head sleepily leaning against his shoulder, her naked, sweaty body against his. The bonfire had reached its peak awhile ago but radiated with its wonderful warmth like never before. A warmth that enveloped her like the logs in the fire. Yet, just like the logs, she, too, was slowly yet surely disappearing. Her spirit disintegrating into ashes, being carried away by the waves, being pulled upwards by the shining midnight moon, floating away into the sky to once again become one with the resplendent stars above her.
And, so, she grew sleepy.
Her eyelids slowly lowered like a curtain on the stage she'd been prancing around on all day and all night. And, she tried to fight it. She tried to fight it with all her might. This was her home and she wanted to stay. She might as well have been trying to scream, however. And, as slowly and solemnly as her eyes had opened in that isolated, lonely alley when she was seven twelve hours ago, they closed. And, slowly, like the last warms rays of the sun crawling back beneath the horizon of a flourishing landscape, vision left her. And, like the falling, sinking sun, her gleaming green eyes descended back behind her closing eyelids.
"I love you, May," Paul said.
He received no answer.
He looked at the head of the body leaning against him and frowned. "May?"
He only heard the cackling of the fire and the incessant swish of the waves.