I was also sixteen at the time, with hair as short as a schoolboy's, with only moderate good looks, but with an inexplicable fire flickering deep inside me from time to time, wilder than the girl who would attract the most bees and butterflies.
The spring after Carmen's arrival, the fire in my heart finally blazed up, burning my mind out of shape, and there wasn't a moment when I wasn't secretly watching her. Yet no matter how much the people around me mobbed, humiliated, or ignored Carmen, I remained immobile, and you can consider me cruel or shy or evil-minded, it was always the truth.
It wasn't until three weeks later, when no one was looking, that I finally worked up the courage to let the feathered ball in my pocket accidentally roll down to her feet.
Carmen picked the ball up and held it in her hand, and I purposely didn't look her in the eye, pretending that I didn't really care who I was talking to, and said absently,
"I hear it's been passed down from the Earth, but sadly, I'm not very good at it."
Carmen looked at me without saying a word, and my heart jumped out of my chest as I hastened to add,
"Do you know how to play?"
After a moment of silence, Carmen lowered her eyes and whispered,
"Yes, I can."
Our friendship began with those words.
Many people thought that Featherball was a simple toy, a small ball controlled in the palm of the hand by an electromagnetic glove, no matter how much it was flipped around, it just couldn't escape from the space controlled by the magnetic field, and eventually it could be transformed into quite a number of tricks, and it had been popular on the moon for a while a couple of years ago, and then everyone quickly moved on to other exciting games. However, only the true insiders know how wonderful and addictive the more subtle patterns are. I thought I was an expert, but I was surprised to find out that Carmen was much more adept than I was at a handheld sport that had absolutely nothing to do with gravity and was perfect for a person's self-indulgence.
Over the next few weeks, we sat unannounced in the corner of an unmarked staircase after school and played for ages on end. Two people who rarely cared about other people's accents when they were concentrating on the game, at first we just competed against each other in silence, occasionally saying a few words, and then it gradually turned into a wordless conversation. In addition to playing pinball, Carmen had taught me other, more ancient Earth games like Othello and even flip-flop, silly, outdated games that kept us both entertained.
To this day, it's hard to explain exactly why I persisted in my attempts to build a friendship with Carmen, a woman whose romantic lore shows no signs of resurrection. But on the other hand, Carmen was different, she was awkward, shy, a bit inexpressive, but had that wonderful quality that only people used to long periods of loneliness have, and you couldn't help but want to explore her inner world. Sometimes when you sit next to her, gazing so closely at her fluttering eyelashes and sensitive lips, you may think that you have traveled to an old fairy tale world and met a cursed princess, a forbidden witch. But in a moment the illusion clears and you see just the same pale, skinny little Carmen who needs your company and protection.
On the surface, our friendship didn't seem so hot and heavy. Carmen didn't live at the school, she was driven there and back by Mr. Navarro, and at lunch she just sat alone in a corner, silently overcoming the moon vegetables that were too much for her to eat. More than once I've seen groups of boys and girls swarming over to her, hooting and hollering, and falsely asking,
"Tell me about your life on Earth, young lady?"
Carmen put down her spoon and looked at them and said slowly, "It's not much different on Earth ...... We live in cities too, but the cities are on the ground, and you can see the sky once in a while, and at night there's . . stars"
"Star-stars!" The guys laughed, purposely dragging their voices out to mimic her, and at the end of it, one by one, they piled the slimy kale chowder all over her plate and took off.
When this was over, I sat down next to her with my plate in silence, forked her the fried red sausage, and said,
"How are the stars, Carmen?"
She bowed her head, "The stars are fuzzy, you can't usually see them unless it's raining." She gazed into my eyes every time the stars were mentioned, "You'd have to see them for yourself to know, it would be a very magical feeling to find a small twinkling star out of all the darkness, as if it's only been twinkling there for you for so long, and you'd be wondering all the time just what it is that makes it so special."
"We could go up to the surface and look, Carmen." A great idea popped into my head, "They say that when you look at the stars from the surface of the moon, you can see every one of them clearly."
Carmen shook her head, "Mr. Navarro wouldn't approve."
So for the rest of the day we just bowed our heads and overcame our respective kale chowders, the sin of wasting food is a big one.
Now it has to be said about Mr. Navarro.
Mr. Navarro is more or less a mysterious figure, claiming to be Carmen's father, yet Carmen has never referred to him as anything more than Mr. Navarro; his file at the INS is virtually blank, and there is some speculation that he was either once in a position of power or a top hitter, only the latter of which would have the right to write off his résumé after retirement.
Mr. Navarro is said to be in his mid-forties, but looks much older, and his looks ...... how can I put it? In short, it is very unforgettable at first sight, tall and thin, dark complexion, hands with prominent bones, white and strong teeth, deep-set eye sockets, according to lunar aesthetics is quite handsome, but it is the most tyrannical man I've ever seen, no lunar man would ever supervise his sixteen-year-old daughter so harshly. Any movement on Carmen's part was enough to upset him and make his already somber eyes grow even colder. So Carmen was too afraid to do anything, too afraid to participate in sports, too afraid to giggle with the boys, too afraid to sing and dance, too afraid to wear pretty clothes, too afraid to have afternoon tea with everyone.
More than once I've said to Carmen, "God, I don't know what's going on on your planet, how can he keep you under control like this when girls as young as twelve or thirteen can move out and live on their own here!!!"
Carmen just lowered her eyes and shook her head, she was really going against the grain as well.
If it wasn't for the chocolate muffins, I probably wouldn't have progressed to holding a grudge against Mr. Navarro.
The chocolate muffins were something Carmen had promised me countless times.
"If I let you win this round," she always said, "I'll buy you an Earth-flavored chocolate muffin that I baked myself, and wow-" she groggily made a salivating expression. Or for kale and carrot chowder, or linear algebra homework, that sort of thing. But none of it ever materialized, and it was all nothing more than a game of lip service.
One afternoon, however, Carmen offered out of the blue to invite me to her house.
"Mr. Navarro has gone to immigration and won't be back until tomorrow." She announced in all seriousness, "Carmen is going to bake chocolate muffins and whipped cream pudding at home, and I was wondering if anyone would like to do the honors."
It was supposed to be a pleasant afternoon. When I first arrived at Carmen's house, I was surprised to find a house more simply furnished than the home of the most conformist moon dweller, with a simple kitchen plus toilet and a tiny room that served as a living room by day and a bedroom by night, with hardly a single extra item beyond the most basic pieces of folding furniture, and I couldn't help but think that the people who lived here could get by on nothing more than the air they breathed.
Despite this, Carmen magically baked muffins and puddings from the simplest of ingredients, and we stowed all the furniture away in the walls and sat on the spotless, polished floors and ate snacks and drank bagged black tea, which was almost more pleasurable than the governors' wives.
That time of year, the net lamps hidden in the walls spread their lightest glow evenly throughout the room, enveloping Carmen's dark, blue hair as if it were a light, bright corolla of flowers. I couldn't help but smile as I gazed at her.
"What?" She saw the look on my face and hurriedly wiped her mouth vigorously to see if there were any snack crumbs on it.
"I was just thinking," I declared in all seriousness, "what an honor it would be for me to sit on the floor of her home*** drinking afternoon tea with the one and only Miss Carmen in all of Moon City on a unique and wonderful afternoon!"
Carmen looked away from me and didn't say anything, her face involuntarily reddening. I laughed and couldn't help but sigh, leaning over and gently tugging on her hair that had fallen to her shoulders as she turned her head to look at me.
"Carmen, you don't belong here." I said softly, "You were born a little witch, can't you figure out your destiny?"
Carmen pursed her lips, which made her blush even more, and eventually she just shook her head and looked up at the ceiling, sighing softly.
"You know what?" After a moment of silence, she spoke, "Sometimes I feel like I'm not really Carmen."
I looked over at her in surprise, and she hesitated, pulling her bed out and removing a moving hologram from a well-hidden compartment.
"I found this when we moved, don't tell anyone."
I took the photo, already guessing what I'd see, a picture of the young Mr. Navarro with a voluptuous bohemian woman, the former dressed in the silver-blue leotard popular with top hitters decades ago, with irritable gray eyes watching his lover, the woman in a busty dress, a voluptuous arm around his chest, swirling and writhing voluptuously and provocatively, but with the look of a wild cat, as untamed as a wildcat. like a wildcat, if she was untamed and untamed.
I returned the photo to Carmen and watched as she carefully hid it, the relationship between the two men in the photo and the Carmen in front of me will probably always remain a mystery.
Carmen sat down again, looking miserable, and I laughed again, purposely messing up her hair before simply stretching out and falling comfortably to the floor in one smooth motion, pushing the cups and saucers all the way to the side.
"Forget it, forget it, you'll always be my little Carmen, no matter what fate throws at you." I said lazily.
So Carmen laid down next to me as well and put her tiny head on my shoulder. We just lay shoulder to shoulder on the floor, staring up at the motionless dark shadows on the ceiling and the churning waves of light cast by our unfinished black tea, and couldn't help but lose track of time. The clock jumped noiselessly, and there was silence all around us, except for the sound of our breathing on each other that filled the room with warmth.
Yes, it had been a dreamy afternoon that had ended in a nightmare. That night, Mr. Navarro came home early, unexpectedly found the messy cups on the floor, leftover black tea snacks and two sleeping girls, after a few seconds of dismay he dragged up the sleepy-eyed me and threw me cleanly out of the door, in the darkness I only saw a pair of bottomless deep-set eyes, yet they contained all the loathing, contempt, and coldness, so much so, that I was completely defenseless for a moment. I was completely defenseless for a moment. It was a long time before I realized how he was able to exert that harsh influence over Carmen.
The next morning I waited early in front of the school and eventually saw Carmen being brought to school as usual by Mr. Navarro, only at dinner time I noticed two more greenish-gray fingerprints on her wrists.
This time I scooped all of her stew onto my own plate without a word, secretly vowing to get my revenge someday.
Another month or so passed, everything was uneventful, yet the temperature in the air was gradually changing. When the short summer arrived, the entire Moon City was no longer dead and silent, but changed a brand new look.