I’m sidling slowly down the hallway, one step, two steps, and then another. I pass them, the perfect pair floating down the hallway towards me, then flitting past. They’re the ones everyone admires—attractive, charismatic, with the allegedly pristine, we are oh-so-in-love relationship. Everyone wants that, that look of false adoration he gives her when she runs up to enfold him in her plastic embrace. Everyone wants the meaningless touch of ceran wrapped lips these days. They want the appearance of unbridled, young love so intensely they’ll give up authenticity for fabrication.
He has never been one for such nonsense, and I tell him that through quirked eyebrows as his passing glance brushes mine. Miss Plastic California hardly takes notice; her bejeweled eyes never see anyone who isn’t her beau or a clone. That is why my shock surfaces prominently when she spots little Miss No-name. The girl people scarcely see, even though she’s always there. She’s the gangly girl not yet grown into her limbs, with a toothy grin, and freckled sun-kissed, sun-burnt skin.
When her head tilts upward, No-name’s moonstruck eyes ignite with bitter bemusement, breezing by Miss PC to settle on him. Given their history, (only I have seemed to perceive), the way she looks at him is surprising. The sunshine in her smile slaps him across either cheek, leaving them burning red with the awkward unspoken past. The jaunty angle of her expression, and the way she turns with a bounce in her step to walk away speaks volumes more than if admonishments had jumped from her throat. Miss PC’s hackles are raised, her vacant expression cracked with jealously as her arms curl around him.
I think only I can spot her possessive stance, or the talons sinking deeper into his flesh. I wince, and whisper, “I told you,” to absolutely no one, because they are long past now. I don’t know what to do, there is no one here to talk to in this place. I run, run where I think Miss No-name might have gone, because she is the only real person I know. She is the comfort cast by a fire while chilling rain beats incessantly at the house. She is the person I go to see when people like Miss Plastic California, with her guise of perfection, ruin good people. People like him and Miss No-name herself. There is a difference however between the two of them. Miss No-name came through Miss PC’s words with only a sad little frown. Quite unlike him scathed and torn by Plastic sneers, and convincing susurrations.
My pattering footsteps slow to steady pat-pat-patting, then become muffled by the dirt and fresh green shoots she tends.
“Please try not to step on them.” Miss No-name says pleasantly, rising with inept grace to fold me into a hug. Then her body is retreating back to the flowers she cares for so brilliantly.
“How can you stand that!” My words, and frustration I feel towards people like he and Miss Plastic California burst through my dam. They gush out my mouth in resentful tones.
Her eyebrows furrow with confusion, “stand what?”
“They way he treated you! How someone as beautifully fake as her stole such a sweet little naive boy from you! It’s so cliché, how can you stand the Hollywood plastic glamour surrounding it?! Why do boys go for that, can’t they get around the surface?” Her gaze hardens as I speak. I feel myself recoil, having realized the hurtful undertones in my complaint. I have dubbed Miss No-name ugly.
“These things happen.” She speaks with silk smooth words like flowing water. “Tell me, though, what is beauty?”
I am at a loss for words, and my anger withers to nothing. Beauty always seemed a physical thing, but as I open my mouth to say that, I acknowledge it might not be true. Miss Plastic California is physically speaking, gorgeous from her radiant face to the voluptuous curves of her petit structure. Albeit, her insides are warped to an incongruous shape, like her twisted little smirk she reserves for people her stilettos impale. Opposite of her are those resembling Miss No-name. People full of wind-chime laughter, crooked Cheshire cat smiles, ill at ease features and limbs. Though their hearts are cracking and over-flowing their ribcage with the enormity of their love, and kindness.
It is then I realize.
“You.” I answer readily, as the frostbite hesitation melts off my tongue. “You’re beauty.”
Miss No-name looks as if she might argue, but stops and shakes her head. A long slow smile spreads her mouth wide, as a slight giggle bubbles from her throat.
“Thank you.” She whispers through a kiss planted upon my forehead, before nudging me on my way. Not a word leaves my lips, for the understanding twixt the pair of us is palpably wonderful.
The definition of beauty, I realize is relative to the person. To my father it’s my mother, to the artist I believe it could be anything and everything.
For me it will always be Miss No-name.