Sta.sh
"D'you remember last summer?
I was too busy packing my stuff, to listen to the little, 9 year-old girl beside me.
"Uh-huh"
"And when you fell in that hole?"
I stopped.
"Are you going to call me Alice again?"
The White Rabbit wasn't exactly what I found there.
She giggled and sat next to my suitcase, which looked like some bomb exploded in it and all the clothes flew outside. On the bed, on the floor, chair, drawers and wardrobe.
When I heard her, my mind sent back to me memories I wished I could just erase, closing my eyes. My right leg started to hurt, while I felt again the texture of cold, wet earth on my cheek.
"No...but I wanted to ask you something. You're older than me. And I saw that guy, you know, looking at you in a very weird way."
She caught my attention.
"What do you mean?"
"Falling in love is like...umm...falling in a hole?"
Her question triggered a "Click!" somewhere in my brain. I moved my gaze away from her, starting to play with the metal rings on my right hand.
"Well...kind of."
"Why?"
These questions, combined with the look in her eyes, formed something very close to an interrogation. But still, everything was sincere, it was as you heard it, no hidden meanings or subtle words. She didn't have to deal with this kind of things, she didn't know anything about them.
I sat next to her.
"You see... when you fall in a hole, it's because you didn't see it, you didn't pay attention or something else distracted you."
"Or because you wanted to fall."
"Well, this doesn't happen often. So, if you fall, you don't do it on purpose."
She starred at me, her big eyes betraying the questioning thought she had. I continued:
"Someone said 'You can't control who you fall in love with... here, it's pretty much the same"
She had a puzzled look, but I didn't ask her anything. I just kept talking.
"And, you know, if you fall in a small hole, you don't need help to get up. If you hurt yourself, the pain is going to disappear fast, letting you with no memory of the incident... Small crush, nearly love but not exactly, goes away fast. But if you fall in a big, deep hole, you're going to get a very painful wound. And you can't get out on yourself. You need someone else to help you. The wound will heal, but it will leave a scar, and you will always remember what happened. So if you're head over heels in love, only someone (usually, better than the one in the present) can get you out. But you will always remember the one before him, because of the scar. It may not be visible, but it's for sure there."
"Ahem, so, if that guy helped you get out of that hole..."
She was looking straight at the scar left on my right leg by the accident.
"...It means he fell in love with you?"
- Yeah, sure. As if good things ever happen to me.
"No. Let me explain one more t..."
Too late. She already had that in mind.
"Haha! You're in loveeeee! And he's toooooo! "
She started to dance around and to put the words on music. Shouting, she got out of the room.
Wait...
What
did
she
say
about
him
looking
at
me?
