July 1999

She entered the yellow phone box in the evening hours and retrieved a 5 Deutsche Mark coin from her small wallet. She picked up the receiver and inserted the coin into the slot to call the friend, her friend with the blonde hair, blue eyes, tanned skin and spotless clothes. The friend everybody said was not really her friend for what she did.

The phone display should have shown a “5,00” by now, but instead, it just demanded “Please insert coins”. She took a deep breath. This was not the first time a phone in a box was reluctant to work the way it was intended to. She hit the coin slot with her right fist, the receiver in her left hand. Sometimes the coins were stuck on their way down into the phone and some impact would move them down to their final destination. But nothing happened. She hit the slot harder. Her fist started to hurt. Pictures came up right before her eyes, pictures of the boy with brown hair and bright blue eyes that had the colour of swimming pool water. Of him standing close to her friend, the friend in a red shirt, the friend she asked for help because she was to shy to get closer to that boy and even make it clear she liked him. Of the blonde friend, who was always better, always first, always flawless. She should have been furious, but her insides felt as quiet as the center of a tornado. Until today. When, for a moment, her mind went back to reality and she realized the coin would not resurface, some part of her shifted to the side of the tornado. Taking the receiver back into her right hand, she started punishing the phone by hitting it. “Fucking stupid phone box, give me back my money!!!” She, the person who had never done anything bad or illegal besides smoking at 14, was about to seriously damage public property. When two passengers approached, however, she went silent, stood there for a moment. Tears ran down her flushed face. “I want my money back.” she whimpered. She did not feel like 17, but rather like a hurt little girl not having any influence on the world she lived in.

Later that evening, her father goes out to retrieve the coin. She decides to buy something else with it.

August 1999

They are on a subway train, a group of ordinary young people, or so it seems. Two of them, the brown haired boy and her friend, the blonde girl, sit next to each other, their hands entwined like the roots of two sibling trees. She wonders why she is even there, since the Will Smith Movie will probably not cheer her up. Still, she does not know how to feel. It is like there is a huge ball of sadness somewhere inside her, not yet ready to burst. After all, everything has remained the same as it was. School has started again, her friend seems to do better than her (again) and apparently, the smile in the blonde, tanned face tells her the friend did not even expect any objection. She doesn’t talk to the other boys and girls but beams herself away, to the sea, to the horses, to another world where she is a braver version of herself, not locked in an outer shell like an oyster. She braces herself as the subway train hurries through the tunnel.

October 1999

It is an ordinary, grey day at the stables. She is helping a girl grooming a horse after escaping from the drizzling rain that just started a few minutes ago. When the stable door opens, she looks to the right and sees him. The brown haired boy walks towards her. She is not the greatest at reading facial expressions but she notices that something might be wrong. “Hi, um, how are you?” She asks, looking at him, waiting for a reaction. “Fine.” He says nothing more, that is how he usually is, but today, he seems annoyed. Why did he even come here today? She is surprised, since he usually turns up on thursday for the advanced lessons and leaves timely on his sports bike.

She steps outside with the brown haired boy since the rain seems to have stopped and then she sees them. The most probable reason for his aggravation.

The blonde girl, her friend, is approaching on a brown and white horse, accompanied by another boy, as blonde as her, smiling as brightly as her in that moment.

She looks at her friend and recognizes that the expression on the friend’s face is the same one the friend has shown with the brown haired boy weeks ago. The entwined roots seem to have come apart, and a new tree seems to have been planted next to the blonde girl. Two of the same species.

She looks at the brown haired boy again who turns to her and asks: “Do you wanna go for a movie sometime?” She knows she should be happy now.

“Sure, why not?” She replies after counting to three in her head.

But something, something that had grown during the past year, seems to have gotten lost somehow. With a calm outside and a tormented inside, she walks the brown haired boy to the riding hall.

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Based on a true story. Rumours say she got over him, but not really over the situation.
No phone boxes were seriously harmed.
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