Skip

Lewis skipped down the street that evening, as he often did on Friday evenings, hoping, wishing, calculating for a chance encounter with a beautiful stranger who would ask: “Why are you skipping?” He had rehearsed the answer in his head hundreds of times, anticipating every possible interaction that could arise. But this woman, this imaginary perfection, would not really care why he was skipping. She would appreciate the fact that he was skipping simply because he wanted to. She would see that he skipped only for the sake of the joy that comes of skipping. She would take the skipping as a glib act of joyful irreverence, a childish yet charming way of pulling everything he could out of life.

He skipped, passing couples and dog-walkers and people carrying grocery bags. None of them, it seemed, took any interest in his display of free spirit. That was just the type of person his personal rebellion was aimed at: stodgy, pent-up and anal-retentive people, self-involved, jaded conformists leading their scripted lives. It was a rebellion he thought a lot about, a rebellion he felt was much-needed.

Lewis crossed Melrose, then Elm, then Avenue, hopping lightly at red lights before resuming his bouncy trajectory. The patrons at the diner sitting in the window turned their heads as he went by, and he felt them frowning in bewilderment long after he’d passed them. He relished the feeling. The thought that he was the subject of bewilderment was heartening, pushed him on. He smiled, and his smile, he realized, would only serve to support his idea of himself as a happy-go-lucky eccentric. He was larger than life. He was a force of nature. He was a fine example of a life well lived. He felt that he was of another world, a kind of savior to these miserable, trudging mortals.

And then she said it: “Why are you skipping?”

Lewis was bobbing up and down at a traffic light, resentfully watching a limousine as it turned onto Richardson. He was still smiling, but he had forgotten why. This made his grin look alien and something like demented. He didn’t realize that his face was still distorted when he looked at who had asked the question.

She was shorter than he had expected, and younger. When he turned his head and looked down at her, he saw a child, no older than fourteen, looking up at him. She was wearing a plaid skirt, down to the knees, socks halfway up her calves, and a white blouse covered by a green jacket. Her big blue eyes looked out of place. They looked like a fashion faux-pas with the schoolgirl uniform she was wearing. The bright blue disks were trained on his face, suddenly making him aware of the smile that had atrophied there.

Lewis immediately knew that his responses were useless. The prepared answers he had written and re-written instantly became just a collection of words, a script to a movie that would never be made.

“I...” he began. He stopped the lazy hopping and ground his heels into the sidewalk. “I dunno.”

“’Cause you look silly,” said the girl.

“Not everybody thinks so.”

“Well, I do.” The girl said this plainly, as though she had won an argument, then turned her massive blue eyes forward, facing the opposite side of the street. Lewis felt his face turn red. Who was this little girl to stifle his evening of planned spontaneity?

“You must skip sometimes,” he said. “Children skip all the time.”

The girl started crossing the street, the light having just turned green. Lewis jogged to keep up.

“Don’t you skip?” he asked lamely.

She kept walking South, away from his apartment.

“Sure I do. But I’m twelve. You’re, like, fifty.”

Lewis paused for a second, figuring some quick arithmetic in his head.

“I’m closer to your age than to fifty. I’m just twenty eight.” They were halfway down the block now.

“Do a lot of twenty-eight year olds skip down the street?” she asked.

He felt odd now, vulnerable to a girl, not even a teenage one. He knew that most people his age didn’t skip. That was exactly why he did. But there was no way to explain that. Not to her.

“Sure they do. When they’re happy, when they want to feel like a kid...” he fell silent, trying to think of other disingenuous reasons.

She stopped walking when she reached the bus stop and sat down on the bench. He stopped, considered heading home. Then he sat down next to her.

“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” she said offhandedly, like a coworker mentioning the weather.

“Well, you started it. I’m trying to answer your question.”

She turned her head towards the end of the street, away from Lewis, scanning for a bus. There were none.

Lewis shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to look uninterested. This made him look like a repressed pedophile struggling to restrain himself. Anger crept into him. How could he be humiliated by a child?

“I skip because it’s fun!” he blurted out. “It’s relaxing.”

“Just walking is more relaxing,” she said, without turning her head. “Why don’t you just walk?”

Lewis frowned. “Well, why do people go jogging?”

“For exercise.”

“Maybe I’m skipping for exercise.”

“You told me you didn’t.”

Christ! Lewis thought. Why can’t she let up?

From her left stocking, the girl produced a cell phone and proceeded to type into it very quickly. Lewis wondered what she was writing, and to whom. He became acutely aware of the compromising appearance he was projecting to passersby: a twenty-eight-year-old man, sitting and conversing with a twelve-year-old girl.

“I guess...” he said, after the girl had slipped the phone back, “I guess I’m trying to find someone.”

The girl turned to him and furrowed her brow. “You need to skip to find people?”

“No,” he said, slowly. He didn’t know where he was going. He was feeling his way through the unfamiliar, murky waters of honesty. “It makes me different. It makes me special.”

The girl looked at him inquisitively.

“Skipping is special?”

“It is when you’re twenty-eight.”

“Everybody’s got something special,” she said. He thought that she sounded like a tiny Mr. Rogers. He felt like a child again, and this girl had expanded into motherhood.

“That’s not really true,” he said at last.

“Well, how many people would sit down and talk with a twelve-year-old?” said the girl.

He thought for a moment, then offered, “I only talk to the wise twelve-year-olds.”

He heard the bus brake at the light, half a block away.

“That’s special,” she said, getting up. Lewis followed suit.

“So...” he said. “I skip because I don’t feel anything else about me is interesting.”

The bus was pulling up at the stop now, and passengers were getting off, pushing through the line of people waiting to get on.

“You’re just as interesting as anybody else.”

The girl didn’t say goodbye. Lewis watched her pull out a bus pass from her right stocking and get on, and saw her sit down at the back, putting on her headphones.

Lewis walked home. His mind was enveloped by the little girl and what she had said. The same couples and dog-walkers and grocery bag carriers were on the sidewalks, but he no longer saw them as lofty and  bourgeois. They were no more special than him. They were real and flawed and lovable. They were all special, and not a single one had to skip to prove it.