He lived in a world of infinite possibilities, but he believed none of them would lead to her. She lived in a world of endless possibilities, but she never thought it would lead to him. He remembered seeing her golden curls for the first time in seventh grade. They reflected light back to those who watched, so he learned to cope with the brightness. Every day, he sat in class memorizing her mannerisms, noticing every detail, and gazed longingly at every smile. Everybody looked, he saw. They only saw a pretty face. All he saw was the light reflecting off her hair, and that was good enough for him. She remembered noticing his green eyes watching her in ninth grade. They reminded her of emeralds, twinkling in the light. From then on, she felt his intense stare. It got to the point where she began to watch him too.. She watched the way he kept to himself, the way he tapped his pencil against his desk when he got nervous, and the way he turned away when she looked. How much could a person learn from another from just a simple glance? She wondered about the things he learned, from watching her. As the years went by, he never had the chance to get to know her. He believed he was a useless fragment in hr world. If he was brave enough to strike up a conversation, he would do it in a heartbeat. They couldāve been friends by now. Friendship, a thing he never expected having, was not enough for him. He wanted to look into the light's eyes, be with the light, and see the person beyond the light. He wanted more. He needed more. Instead, the light held hands with different clouds with different names, none of them being, him. As the years went by, she lacked the courage to talk to him. He still watched. She still glanced. She felt drawn to him, and she wanted to know why. There was something about him, besides the emerald eyes that made her look. She sometimes looked past the person in front of her just to see the boy who stood ten feet away from her. Her best friend thought she was insane. He heard stories about different universes out there, similar to the one everyone lives in, that follows a different road, a different possibility, a different him. There's a version of him out there brave enough to say hello, brave enough to ask her out, and brave enough to run his hands through her golden hair. He walks down a road with her hand in his hand, wondering if a world exists where they walked down different roads. Another version noticed a different girl, another version moved on, another version ceased to exist. The version of him that existed in this universe longs for her eyes to meet his for just a second, and he would remember that moment for the rest of his life. She learned about different dimensions that formed from decisions she never made. There he stood in the middle of the hallway, just him and her. Part of her wanted to stop and say hello, the other part wanted to move past him, not sparing him a single glance. As she neared his emeralds eyes, her brain forced her mouth to form into a smile. To avoid seeing his reaction, she immediately turned her head away. What dimension did she create from a simple smile? What is happening in the dimension where she said hello? What about the dimension where she chose to ignore him? What on earth did she just do? Smiling to himself, he felt his heart flutter. For a second, he thought that smile directed towards someone else, but he was the only one there. Maybe she knew who I was, he thought. To others, that smile would mean nothing. To him, that smile meant the world. Her best friend, Cassie, glanced at the boy with the emerald eyes, before glancing at the girl whose hair reflected light. He felt confused. She felt nervous. He sat down in his usual seat in the back of the classroom, and she began to walk towards him. His heart skipped a beat. Her heart began to beat faster. Time slowed down for the both of them. They were merely strangers, but werenāt at the same time. He watched her take a seat beside him, pushing away her golden curls away from her face. She turned towards him, and his eyes met hers. "Hello," she began. "I'm Lily." He knew her name, of course he did. They were in the same class for all those years. How could he not know her name? He examined every detail that he never got to see from far away. He watched the curls that caught his attention all those years ago. Beautiful, he thought. They never outshined the person beyond the light. Instead, they framed the picture that he never really got to see before. "Hi," he responded with a smile. "My name is Dylan." She also knew his name. Teachers always called on him when he paid attention to her, opposed to paying attention to the lesson. How could she not know his name? She glanced at his emerald eyes. Captivating, she thought. They were as intense as they were from far away. However, they paired nicely with the warm smile he gave her. Suddenly, they talked to each other like they knew each other for years. They conversed in hushed whispers during the entire class. They walked down the hallway where she first flashed him a smile, and she felt a blush creep into her cheeks as she thought about that incident. He watched her animatedly talk about anything. All her attention focused in on the boy next to her whenever he laughed in amusement at her stories. He thought about the version of him out there that never talked to Lily in his entire life. He wondered what happened to him, and wondered if he still longed for her eyes to meet his. She thought about the dimension she just created and the other dimension where she never got the courage to talk to Dylan. She wondered what happened to that girl. Did she live the rest of her life lacking courage? To be fair, emeralds never really sparkled without light. Athea
