When I returned home that day, after seeing the tall one in the trench coat, I pulled out an old calendar and pinned it back onto the wall. When I looked back to the then-current calendar, I marked down the encounter I had earlier that day as "Hair Boy: Freshman Year."
After that meeting, changes shifted from subtle to just plain weird. At first, it wasn't really noticeable. It took me a while to figure it out. Sometimes it would be months between the meetings. Sometimes it would be weeks, sometimes days. But each time wasn't me running into someone who smelled too sweet for words and having odd conversations with said someone. No, it wasn't that at all. It was more like I'd smell him, but when I'd turn around there'd be no one there. Or, I'd see part of a brown coat flying through a doorway followed by a dirty white converse from the leg under it. Not always was it a trench coat, either. Sometimes it'd be a leather jacket or an umbrella or a long, colorful scarf. The scarf was my favorite because sometimes, when I was lucky, it'd get caught in a door.
On one of those occasions, I remember, the scarf got hung on a gate. I had enough time to run over to the gate and look over the man and get a good look at his face. A black-ish felted fedora rested atop the brown, curly mop on top of his head that one could only assume was not a wig. His eyes were a bit sunken in with a nearly crazed look about them. Oh, and great cheekbones.
My calendars soon filled up, leaving very few empty blocks. I had come up with names for all the ones I'd seen: White Hair, Grumpy Recorder, Dandy, Scarf, Celery, Curly Top, Question Mark, Fancy Pants, Big Ears, Hair Boy, and Bow Tie. Not only were my calendars full, but so were my walls. Calendars, pictures, letters, and stories from the first chance meeting in 1992 all the way up until the year when all these meetings finally set something big in motion: 2002.
It had been ten years to the day since Big Ears, NYC, when I saw Hair Boy for what had to have been the 21st time. Whether he had seen me or not—or even, whether he'd known I was there somewhere or not—was no issue. Today would be the day when I would get some answers. So when I'd seen the back of his coat across the store in the mall, I knew it was my chance.
I walked up behind him and tugged on his sleeve, "Hair Boy, we meet again. Never even got in contact with me, I see."
He turned around with something in his hand—silver thing, blue at the end—like he was going to use it as a weapon. I leaned back on my heels and watched him cock his eyebrow while his eyes searched my face. I gave him a minute before it finally clicked in his head and he opened his mouth to speak. "You're the girl from the school, oh, how long ago was that for you? Blimey, seems like years."
"Well, good guess, because it has been. And you haven't changed one bit." I held out my hand for him to shake it, while reintroducing myself. "Remy Orwell, at your service. Now, I need some answers."
X
He came along almost too willingly, and soon we found ourselves sitting in the food court. He ended up being the one who started the conversation that I desperately needed to have with him. "Weell, Remy Orwell. Look at you! Popping up all over my timeline and I don't have a clue who you are. So then tell me… who are you?"
"What?" My eyes widened in disbelief. "Who am I? I'm supposed to be the one asking who you are!" I brought my hands up to my face and dragged them down, along with an overly dramatic sigh and an all too drawn out eye-roll. "I've seen you God knows how many times—," I started again, slightly lying. I knew exactly how many times I had seen Hair Boy, along with the rest. "—and I've seen people to what seems like your equivalent even more than that! How are you all related and why do you keep popping up?"
"Wait, I'm sorry. Hold on. Shh," he started to talk, but I had no idea where he was going with it. Synonyms to his "hold ons" and shushings just kept spewing out of his mouth for a while, until he, too, realized he was going nowhere and got back to the matter at hand. "'Equivalents' of me? What do you mean?"
"Well," I scooted myself closer towards the table and started the story off in New York, those ten years ago. I told him of all the sightings. Of the calendars (I left out the pictures, and the stories. Come on, even I can get embarrassed) and the letters and the mysteries of him. Then I told him of that smile. No matter which person—always looking nothing like each other— the smile was still the same. And the smile wasn't the only thing. That beautiful, wonderful smell was forever imprinted in my soul. The smell was my second way of identifying him. The third reason, you ask, was the hurt.
He emanated hurt just as much as he emanated odd nuances.
Lame analogy, sue me.