Scourge of the earth

10Jul09

Mr. Fruit is the character I’ve written the most of. I thought I’d share another fragment from him. I just put it together today from fragments I had laying around.

She has freckles, too. You don’t notice them at first, unless you’re the sort of person who goes looking for freckles. They’re tiny specks, as if refined more than most people’s freckles, and spread out evenly over her whole face and neck, like a bit of wheat flour mixed in with the white. She’s one of those girls who looks pretty much the same with or without makeup–that is, flawless looking. But on those days when she’s not wearing any, maybe because she was in a hurry or something, if you look closely you can see those little dots. And I love them.

Unlike most guys, I know her secret. She’s imperfect.  I once noticed her walking down a set of stairs, and when she reached the bottom her last step was heavy and awkward, the way people do when they think there is one more or one less step than there is. I saw her with a cold once, and you wouldn’t know it since she never made a fuss, but she (ever so quietly and girl-like) had to wipe her runny nose with a Kleenex. As far as the common cold knows, she’s just another girl. I once heard her misspeak. It biology class, she said hyperthermia when she meant hypothermia, the total opposite. So don’t let anybody tell you Summer is a perfect girl. She’s a human.

But, like all the rest, I am in love with her. Not in spite of her flaws (as if her flaws were even worth noticing) but because of them. If I met a girl who was perfect I wouldn’t even know what to do with her. I wouldn’t know how to chase her because I’d know that if I caught her, I wouldn’t know what to do next. There would be nothing I could give her which she doesn’t already deserve. There’s a reason people say somebody’s “out of their league.” The couples you see around, the best ones anyway, seem to balance one another out. Like there’s Mr. Socially-awkward and Mrs. No-good-with-money. Or something like that, where you know they’re better off for having one another around. But I’ve got nothing to offer a perfect girl.

And to tell you the truth that’s how I feel about Summer, too, even though like I said I know she’s not technically perfect. But she’s about as perfect as humans come. It paralyzes me. What could I say to a girl like that to make her want me? If I gave her all of me, what could I give that she didn’t already deserve, just for being herself? If I, in my mountain of inadequacies, laundry list of character flaws, can honestly say I consider Summer flawed because she has freckles and her ears stick out, or because she tripped on stairs once in her life or misspeaks once a year, I prove myself only to be an insane, unreasonable ass. And if Summer’s tiny marks of humanity are flaws, then I am an abhorrent monster, a deformed, evil beast, the scourge of the earth.

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Tags: characters, fiction, glowbug, nablopomo09