Nina

One of the most startling realities of the situation was, when investigated more closely, there really wasn’t anything so special about Nina. To pin her up against a board and dissect her features piece by piece, like the anatomizing of a rare species of butterfly, would reveal a number of human qualities: blond hair that frizzes against either side of her scalp, a pale complexion whose pinkish pallidity makes her lips difficult to distinguish from the rest of her face, and an average height that is often disguised by moderately-heeled ankle boots. Overall, as a creature evaluated behind an objective barrier that excludes all remnants of human inclinations, she was really quite ordinary. However, remove, the boundary (if such a thing could ever exist), and the complications of emotion interfere with the picture.

Firstly, she was the “new girl”. I’m sure that regardless of stature or aesthetics, being the fresh face in a sea of uninteresting people whose particularities have long since melded into unrecognized and commonplace features can only serve you well. However, it wasn’t only this new sense of arrival that drew our eyes to her like hungry moths to a luminous flame; it was also her command of attention.

She had no shyness–not even a drop of self-consciousness–in her warm-blooded body. She was bold and unapologetic. She would laugh loudly at inappropriate jokes, a spew of giggles that unraveled in spurts of endearing raspiness and high-pitched chortles. If she didn’t like the way someone was acting, she’d roll her eyes and say, “For the love of God.” Taken aback by her confidence, anybody would stop mid-sentence, with eyes widened with sudden awareness of self that was inextinguishable. Nina’s legs sprawled, uninhibited, underneath the desk. Boys whose legs usually sat, wide-kneed and unapologetic, suddenly drew in with timidity. Nina had a possession of authority, but seemed completely unaware of it.

Because of this, her name spread around the lips of everyone and anyone who had met her. Sometimes, it would be a mere topic of conversation, you’ll never believe what Nina said today, and was typically met with a falsetto spew of laughter that rang with slight envy and amazement at whatever they had found amusing in her that day. Other times, it would be coiled in hushed conversation, whose content would remain behind drawn curtains, did you hear what Nina did, and bore the jealousy of girls who can’t stand to see someone else’s confidence illuminate the lack of their own.

I watched her carefully, myself. Fortunate enough to have classes with her, I had a healthy spread of time in which I could indulge the corner of my curious eye with observation. I was startled when she entered class, in shirts whose hems hung just above her stomach. I studied her closely for signs of self-consciousness of the line of pale skin that banded her waist like the sun-bleached ring that appears on stones collected from the beach. I was confounded by the fact that she didn’t seem to hide herself. Her body lied languorously in her desk, limbs sprawling, hair spread across her shoulders. She wasn’t like the other girls whose clothing hung around their bodies–revealing a glimpse of a thin shoulder here, a peep of exposed waistline there–whose arms probed their stomachs nervously and gently pulled folds of their clothing out from their frame as they spoke. When Nina raised her hand, she didn’t bring one hand to her waist and one arm up, halfway, hovering. She thrust her arm all the way up in the air and if her hand wasn’t noticed promptly enough, she just spoke.

I watched her with awe as she gnawed on the rim of water bottle. I smiled to myself when she swore loudly when the teacher moved to collect last night’s homework and how nobody seemed to care. Not even the teachers penalized her, so hypnotized by her confidence were they: just like the rest of us. Amazing. I watched her with a gleaming mixture of pride, you can do it, and amazement, how do you do it, and a sliver of hope that toyed in the back of my mind, I wish I could do it.