POLLUTING

She became near-sighted in the second grade. It was probably a hereditary kind of thing; no one in school owned a pair of glasses yet, and kids made fun of her, called her four eyes. She didn't like how she looked in them either, like some sort of bulgy eyed chameleon, but she had to copy things from the board and there was no way out of that. 

There was a boy in the class who thought her glasses were cool. He asked her if he could try them on and she was hesitant, she thought he was teasing her. But he wasn't. He put them on and roamed around the room for a bit, and she liked how he looked in them, appearing slightly different than the rest of the boys. It was second grade, but she thought she was in love.

She would admire him from across the room in her shining spectacles, looking through the layer of glass that would help her define his face. She wanted to see him without the filter, with her own natural unmuddled eyes, but every time she took them off things just became blurry. An illusion, a dream, she saw him from afar in his blue t-shirt and grass stained jeans. She thought he had smiled at her so she ran away into the dandelion field, linking up flower stems to wear as a necklace. She drew his figure in the sand and wrote their names encircled in a heart on the peeling bark of her desk. 

She didn't care about what the kids said anymore, frog-like, strange eyes. She would wear her glasses for him to see, even though he rarely looks at her anymore. So she would take them off and live in her fuzzy vision where he always seems like he's looking her way, always seems like he's smiling and just too shy to come by. She whispered his name in the echoey tunnel of the playground slide and wrote his name, over and over on the back of her worksheets and arithmetic scratch paper. Until someone picked up her fallen paper one day.

They made fun of her, the kids or little devils, little sinister souls sinuating in their egg-like shells, rolling on the floors of hell laughing, saying who loved who, four eyes love you, she loves you, sitting on a tree kissing. He rebelled. His blush turned into a flush, of crimson dyes and steaming heat, he said there was no such thing, how would I like a girl like her, she is stupid she is four eyes and I hate her.

She was crying in the corner when he came, the corner wall where she had written their promises soaked in honey and forever vows. She was wearing her glasses when she saw him stomp towards her, face red and he was not smiling. She looked up at him behind her fragile little lenses and watched his hand reach towards her and grab them off her face. The nose rest scraped against the knuckles of her nose, causing them to form red spots on either sides, then she heard a sound. It sounded something like glass breaking, metal bending and crushing of her childish heart.