THE WATCHER (excerpt)

this was a story that I wrote for my Writing Class under Luis Katigbak

Once, during the night, I had the strange feeling that she had seen me--really seen me--for the first time.

She was sitting up in bed, reading under the yellow light of the lamp, her black-rimmed glasses framing her eyes. It was very quiet and all that I kept hearing, for the last half hour and in intervals, was the sound of her fingers flipping through the book's pages. Then she yawned, dropped the book to her side and leaned deeper into the thick pillows propped up on the headboard. She removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes with her palms, after which her gaze landed on me.

For what seemed like a very long stretch of minutes, she looked at me, just looked at me, with her dark-circled eyes. I saw questions, thoughts skimming her countenance in fleeting hosts. I felt her really look at me, past the layers of shadow and dust, ending the certainty of never being seen. Or so I liked to think.

This girl--whose name I did not even know--looked at me as if she really saw me, as if I was real, was more than what I had been for so long. And, inside me, a flicker of something that made me feel more alive than I had ever been began to stir. The hope that, perhaps, this girl was going to care enough to look for me, to find me.

And then, the moment passed. Overcome by fatigue, perhaps, or simply by the lateness of the hour, her eyes started drooping. She drifted off to sleep and I watched her, praying, please look at me once more, the way you looked at me tonight.