A Short Story

I wanted to discribe something, but I couldn't do it plainly or poeticly, so I wrote a short story. Enjoy!

We were there in a crowded room.
Everyone talking, in conversation about politics or love or the latest gossip. When a young woman walked in, she couldn't have been older than 18. She was quiet, but even the least attent of us could have seen that she was anxious about something. Her eyes darted between people, as if she was looking for someone.  She wasn't too tall, so I offer to help find her friend, but she replied with "Thanks, I'm fine" and continued her search in another direction. Only a bit after this, her search took on what seemed to be a hightened sense of urgency, like she had looked at every face in the room and didn't find who she was looking for. At about this time, she started getting noticed by the crowd People that saw her became distracted from their conversations, and more than one conversation had to be restarted with "I'm sorry, what were you saying?" Noticing this, and apparently not wanting to be noticed, she found a chair at one side of the room and sat down. She continued to anxiously search the room and didn't talk to anyone Now that I had be quietly watching her for about 10 minutes, I wanted to find out what was wrong, to get to the bottom of this. A plan started forming in my mind of how I'd approach her and ask what was wrong or who she was searching for, but a friend started talking to me, and I was distracted for several minutes. A door opened into the cold air outside, and I could swear I got a glimpse of her walk out. When you just barely see things, you don't remember specifics, you just remember emotion. The picture I remember is that she was defeated, her mission for coming that night was a failure.

For some reason, for several days I couldn't keep my ming off of her. Who was this girl who came to our party for such a short time? She said nothing more than an obligatory greeting and an occational "Excuse me" as she pushed through the crowd, but there was something about her... Something I can't quite put my finger on. She was different, and did not come for the same reasons the rest of us did, but because I hesitated to talk to her, I may never find out what she was thinking.

Later that week, as I was talking to several friends who were there, I found it strange that every one of them had noticed her. Some didn't care, some quickly dismissed her as someone they had no business with, and some thought as I did, and wanted to talk to her, but for whatever reason, did not.

A couple weeks later, when she was mostly out of my head, I wound up talking to a friend about this person and he replied that he knew who she was. It ends up she went to the same high school he did, and that she lived an ordinary life, and was planning on going into nursing or something like that. He had bumped into her after the incident, and just gave her an informal greeting; a smile and a "How are you doing" or something like that. She respond in kind and the meeting was over. Nothing seemed wrong.

So I wonder. What was it that night? What was it...
I, as a writer of fiction already know;
and you, as the reader, may never find out.
But I'll leave you with one line, the reason for all the others.
It was the first line I typed when I wrote this, but it's the last line in this story.

"But we just stood there, everyone afraid to move"