Math had been a mess. He had been too busy fooling around with his mouth while the teacher lectured on about limits. While trying to mumble out a few choice syllables he had missed everything. Of the few exclamations he could unconsciously let out, why hadn't the phrase "I love you" been one of them? He could say "gee whiz" whenever someone did something really dumb, or "oh my god" when he sensed immediate danger. But "I love you"s weren't something he threw around when his brain and mouth could connect. Now it was unlikely that he'd ever be ever to say "love" ever again. Which was just way too much for him to wrap his mind around. He could picture love. he could draw hearts in his mind or with his eyes. He knew what love was, and he could feel its wordless vividity, it's pure meaning, pressing fiercely against the sides of his mind whenever he tried to say it with his mouth.
But it always failed him. He supposed it was for the better. You could overuse the word love, and then people cast you aside as either a liar or naive. And if "I love you" was one of the few things his lips could still sound out, then he'd be typecast as either a jerk or a mindless lover. That would be bad. Although, being functionally mute wasn't very good either.
The bell rang and he folded up his blank notebook and put it away into his book bag. She was sitting just a few seats away, but he couldn't even look at her. It was all just too ridiculous, too embarrassing. She could talk forever. She could talk his ears off (and he wouldn't actually mind that). And all he could say was "Oh god" occasionally. Communication was the foundation which society sat on. Without it, he was unable to obtain the rewards of society. One of those, of course, was love. This thought, simplified and without words, kept his eyes to the ground as he left the classroom and shuffled to his locker, done with another day of school.
And yet within minutes there she was. She rarely walked past his locker after school, and yet there she was. Furthermore, she waved. Paul waved back and, noticing that she was clearly going to walk towards him and start a conversation he'd have trouble being a part in, he grabbed a notebook and flipped to an empty page. He scrawled, "Hi" quickly and held it up, waving again. "Hey Paul," she said, "Are you okay? You looked kind of depressed walking out of math." Julie liked Paul because his face had become emotionally salient upon losing language. She watched him now as his face put on a show, full of interesting mixes of surprise, sadness, determination, and some other things that she could learn to label given the time.
Umm... I'm good kind of. I guess. I couldn't pay attention in math class. Did you? Paul wrote, sacrificing neatness for speed to make the conversation seem as normal as possible.
"Oh yea, limits. I guess they're kind of interesting, sorry you couldn't pay attention. Are you alright? Do you need something? I can give you my notes. Here," she said twisting around to open up her backpack, "we all have off days sometimes, do you want to talk about it?"
Thanks for notes. Not really, it's... ugh... weird. They exchanged notebooks. Julie's face brightened as Paul put her math notes into his messenger bag. "Do you want to go get a milkshake? Usually I go with Susan, but she's sick. And I mean, I know it's not a big deal, and I also know that milkshakes aren't that healthy, but it's a Friday afternoon tradition, and I don't know, maybe it'll make you feel better, yea?"
that would be AWESOME.
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