The Crazy Girl

I've seen this girl around my neighborhood for more than 3 years. She used to always wear the same clothes, carried a heavy backpack and just walked. At any time of the day, she is walking walking walking. Sometimes she just walks around the block. She never makes eye contact; she rather cross the street. She never talks to anybody. She just walks walks walks.

I'm not the only person that has noticed her. A lot of people in the area has seen her, but no one knows anything about this mysterious character. One time I wanted to figure out her destination and started following her, or as it is called in the P.I. biz, tailing her. Her spidersense warned her about it, and she turned around and walked back.

My roommate got very excited the day when she noticed that the girl was wearing a new shirt. A week later, she heard her singing. The Crazy Girl's life seemed to be transforming. But the metamorphosis was never completed, and we never figured out what happened.

Several times I tried to convince myself to just fucking go talk to her. But, after being chickenshit for so long, I decided that I didn't had the right to ruin the mythology around a character that defined our neighborhood. I've lived content with this decision for more than a year now, and I thought I even had an unspoken agreement with The Crazy Girl: you don't make eye contact, I won't make eye contact.

20 minutes ago, she broke this agreement.

My friends were dropping me off after SxSW (more on that later) at my house, and as I was getting into the house (~3am), she was walking down the street, as usual. She stared down my friends car, and I was shocked to see her attention so focused at something that wasn't just walking. And then, she talked to me:

"What the fuck are you staring at?" Her voice carried a surprising strength. For some reason I always imagined her voice cracking up, shy, as if she hadn't used it for years. But, not only she seemed to use it pretty often, but she used it with the authority only known to a drunken bum mad at you for not giving them money.

I apologized for staring at her, and walked towards her. I saw her eyes, they had fire in them: she had a purpose in life. Not reaching world peace, not getting rich, something much more important. No wonder she avoids eye contact; when she looks at you she projects a collimated beam of emotion that pierces through your retinas overcharging your neurons, to what the brain has the only choice to activate the fight or flight instinct.

"Do you have a cellphone?" She asks. I almost cracked up at the question. For the first time in my life, I apologized for not owning a cellphone.

"I just need a ride. It is important, and I don't have money for a taxi." I asked where she wanted to go, considering if I should give her a ride. She might be crazy, but she is The Crazy Girl from my street.

"You know, whatchmacallit, there, south, not south, there, downtown, not downtown, you know. Fuck. There. I just need to get there now." She wasn't making any sense. I somewhat apologized for not being of any help. "I need to fucking get there." She said. I pointed out that it was a bit late, and there could be far.

I'm not making this shit up, the conversation did turn out to be so surreal that I was talking about the word there as if it was a specific geographical location. "I don't fucking care." She replied as she started walking walking walking. I wished her good luck finding a ride, and she politely replied: "Fuck you."