Friday 27 March 2009

The girl with braces


She stood at the bus stop and tried not to stare at the couple who were desperately clutching at each other. The girl had train tracks and smiled longingly at the boy.

She immediately started wondering about the potential dangers of snogging someone with metal strapped to their teeth before remembering that she once had train tracks too. Top and bottom. Had she made out with boys back then? She couldn’t recall. Surely she must have done. She remembered when she was a teenager dispassionately kissing a boy behind a bus at a campsite on the west coast of Ireland. She must have had braces then – hell – she had them for most of her adolescence.

The couple moved off. She tried to look discretely to see where they were going. Her discretion was unnecessary. They were too wrapped up in one another to notice this random girl staring after them.

It was cold.

It was, in fact, very cold. She wished that the man she was in love with was with her. If his arms were wrapped around her, then she wouldn’t have been looking at other couples – at a girl with braces. But maybe it was ok to be alone. Maybe it makes you take stock of what’s important, makes you realise what you really want. Makes you aware of how much you long for that particular person.

Then the bus came thundering down the road and she bounded onto it. And she was happy because it was warm. And she was happy because, when she was waiting at the bus stop, she had decided that as soon as the bus arrived, that she would sit on the top deck and write down what was going through her mind while she had been waiting at the bus stop. She would write it for him.

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