quiet

I'm not sure it is I that should be telling this story; I was always
involved, and for some reason, I was always addicted to every part of
the story; but it just seems that it should be her's to tell. She was
the first and for the time being, the only brilliant person I have ever
met; we were in elementary school and she was the new girl in a class of
very close and established friends. We had the pleasure, or
misopportunity of growing up in one of those small towns in which
everyone knew everyone and by the time you were three your parents had
already chosen your future spouse and your future profession and you
just had a planned path to live. It was the typical small town America
with every cliche you could imagine.

So understandably, when this new girl moved into town, as late as the
fifth grade, she was already out of the picture for most of the boys as
we had been promised to our future wives; and as far as the girls in the
class, well, social and popular rank had already been established,
leaving her to be the low-lady on the proverbial totem poll.

In saying all of this, I guess it'd only be fair to explain that none of
this bothered her. She was completely satisfied sitting in the back of
the classroom; befriended by the least popular girl in the class. When
she spoke, it only came after she had been spoken to. At lunch and
recess she was the one calm person who didn't rush to the front of the
line and immediately lose all civil and social skills. She was a kid
that acted more like an adult?

This could be blamed on her mother who ran away when she was two, or her
father that had the outsized task of raising a young lady on his own.
But he did so to the best of his abilities. He was a genius in film and
theatre and thus most of the lady skills that she was acquiring at such
a young age came from Audrey Hepburn, who we all know was and is the
classiest lady to grace Hollywood.

I suppose that also played to her passion of dressing very awkwardly as
a child. Of course her father always had her to school in jeans and tee
shirts that were faded and too large for her small frame, but she always
wore very guady neck pieces and necklaces, or flashy ear rings that
stood out horribly. I guess she was our town's first true taste of
Hollywood. She was in her own ways, very magical.

Her name was Daisy, Daisy Pearl Hughes, and she moved to Hull Texas my
fifth grade year. I sat on the front row of Mrs. Shaw's home room, she
sat in the very back. It took me two years before I said my first word
to her.

There is so much history that I could recall, and seemingly none of it
matters for the story I feel obligated to tell. I'm wrong, it does
matter, all of it. Every piece of the history, my personal history
growing up in Hull, her's as well, our's as part of this group of same
aged people and such. It all matters; really it does.

But I feel I can sum it up, all of it from the seventh grade when I said
my first words to her, until our graduation in high school, by simply
saying three words, "I hated her." Trust me. I know how bad that sounds
and I know how strong of a word hate is; she was just non-existant to
me, which was very difficult being as she dated one of my best friends
and took just about every higher level class that I took in high school.
As mentioned before, she was the first and for the time being, the only
brilliant person I had ever met, but in saying that and in dropping to a
lower level, this might be because she was very weird.

Throughout junior high school she aced every test and class she took,
and she told these great stories about New York, and Italy, and
Hollywood, and she cried a lot. All of this is why I hated her; my
friends and myself also aced our tests and classes, and I loved hearing
stories and telling them, and usually I took compassion for those that
were hurting.

But with Daisy, instead of seeing her as being smart, I thought of her
as being over-prepared, and her stories, I just took as lies, and when
she cried it just seemed to me that she needed or wanted attention. And
high school was worse. She grew to be very pretty, and even more
intelligent, she had a larger imagination, and while she didn't cry as
much, she began having her heart broken as she became a woman, always
falling for the wrong boy.

I don't know why I hated those things about her; those things were the
same things that attracted me to other girls. But when we graduated from
Hull-Daisetta high school in 2001, she was the one person I didn't care
to say goodbye to, and never did.