Just one quarter and a whisper. That’s all it took.
Mrs. Miller gave us twenty minutes to explore the site authentically, which meant half my class was scrolling on their phone and the other half was taking selfies with the columns. I wandered off towards a shrine of some sort. It was smaller than I thought it would be, weathered down from time, the stone outline of a once great shrine. The air smelled like rosemary and thyme, with something sweet I couldn’t put my finger on.
I don’t know why I meant it. I’d said prayers before that I didn’t mean and felt nothing, the words evaporating the moment they left my mouth. But something was different this time. Maybe it was being in Greece, with the beating sun on a clear sky. Then I dropped the quarter and whispered what I’d been hoping for the last two months, since Alex started dating Chloe without even looking at me.
“I want to be someone people can’t look away from.”
A woman behind me said, “Careful what you ask for.”
I jumped and turned to face her. She was standing under the shade near the temple. Her eyes were the light blue color of the surf. She was looking at me, with neither disdain nor kindness.
“It’s just a quarter.” I said.
She smiled. “Of course.”
Mrs. Miller called and when I turned back she had disappeared.
It started on the bus. Lexy, who hadn’t spoken to me since our fight in November, turned around and stared at me. Not just a quick glance, a stare.
“Lexy? What’s up?”
“…” It was like a trance.
“Lexy?”
She snapped out of it, cheeks rosy, and turned around. Then Declan across the aisle let his phone slide out of his hands and didn’t bother to pick it up. Mrs. Miller paused a half second too long on me doing her headcount. It felt like everyone was staring at me, even the beating sun staring down at me through the bus’s window.
That night I could tell something was wrong. The whole class was loud, sunburned, and happy. For once I was the center of it. Everyone drifted towards me, boys I knew in passing found reasons to spark conversations. But something wasn’t right with their eyes. Soft and unfocused. I couldn’t stop seeing it in everyone I looked at. The way Alex looked at me. It had nothing to do with who I am or the way I laughed. Just a need, using me as an excuse.
Chloe scoffed at him, jabbing him in the side. Bringing him back to this world, briefly ashamed. But then she looked at me. That same softening. That same absentmindedness in their eyes. I had to get away from all of them. I excused myself and went outside for some air.
There she was. As if she was waiting for me.
“I want to undo it.” I said.
“You can leave another offering.” Just a statement, no guarantee.
“If I don’t?”
She paused. “You wanted people to not look away. They aren’t.”
“But they aren’t seeing me.” I pleaded.
“No. People controlled by desire rarely do.”
I thought about that damn quarter, the shrine on the hillside and how I truly meant it.
“What do I have to leave?”
She turned and looked at me, really looked at me with those light blue eyes.
“Something you’ve held on to for too long.”
I knew what I had to do. I went back inside to the restaurant and went back to the hotel with the class, trying to avoid their eyes. After Mrs. Miller did her rounds that night, I snuck out of the hotel. Thankfully I had actually looked at the sun bleached buildings that led to the site.
The shrine felt different at night, it was smaller. I’d been carrying the pencil for three months. A normal, Ticonderoga pencil. I might have been able to get Alex to look at me, but he wasn’t really seeing me. It wasn’t real. I had tried to imagine it working, but I knew it was never going to happen.
I slowly kneeled down and placed the pencil on the shrine, right on top of the quarter. The wind picked up. The air smelled like thyme, and that other thing beneath it. Then just the night. I walked back to the quiet town and snuck back in the hotel. I laid in bed and looked at the ceiling and thought about the way Alex looked at Chloe when she jabbed him in the side and he came back to himself. Embarrassed and real and actually his. It wasn’t how I wanted him to look at me.
I think I can live with that.