The Five Senses:

Sight

Livi

You know, it never occurred to me to wonder what people looked like out of school. No, that’s wrong.

It never occurred to me that people might look different when they aren’t in school.

She’s always wearing this one pair of jeans that fit her badly, making her hips look massive and her legs short. Tucked in, as per the dress code no one else follows, is a baggy, manly shirt. It’s so utterly unremarkable I’d never have noticed (or at least not noticed and remembered) if she didn’t wear the same basic thing every single day for the past six years of her life. Probably before that, but I didn’t know her then. Or it simply took that long for me to notice and remember.

Always, though, is the wrong word. At least, without a qualifier it is. She’s always wearing this ugly stuff that makes her look like some shapeless girl boy in school.

It never occurred to me to wonder what she would look like in something else.

It never occurred to me that she would wear something else when she wasn’t in school.

Yet there she is, shopping happily in the mall, just a few racks ahead and to the left of me. I still have a perfect view, and can recognize her hair and neck, which is maybe the only reason I know it’s her. Her jeans are some perfect dark blue that makes her legs look skinny and long, or maybe it’s that way because they fit. Just fit, not tight and squishy like some girls think it has to be, but they skim her legs and I can tell that she’s a girl. Or maybe now, I can’t tell she’s a girl but can tell that she’s a woman. Because she still has hips. She has a waist too, and her shirt doesn’t cover it. Okay, it covers most of it, but it lets a little bit of flesh peek out, and that helps me know her jeans fit, there’s not one of those little rolls. The shirt is bright yellow, and it fits her well too, and I can’t tell what’s on it since she isn’t facing me. I can tell you she’s wearing all sorts of bracelets, bright and big and shiny, I can see them because she’s trailing her arm along a rack, just sort of to do something, not really looking at what’s on it.

I’m not sure why, but she turns, and there I am looking at her. “Hi, Corey!” she whispers to me, but it still carries. And it has this cute little half-wave that goes with it that makes all those bracelets go flash!

It never occurred to me to wear something else.

It never occurred to me that I always looked the way I did in school.

It just…didn’t.

Giving her only a preoccupied smile in return to the pleasant greeting, I just kind of dump the clothes I had in my arms on the closest display table and leave the store.

I’ve just realized that I’ve never seen that girl before in my life.