Redheaded Liars

She had been in his class, must have been ten years ago. Her hair had been brown back then, almost a default color, with only very bright light bringing any other colors to light. It had a weird red tint to it now, a look which he didn’t think much suited her. She must have thought differently because her hair was very definitely Red on further inspection. He wrote because he wanted to be a different person, she dyed her hair. Really who was he to judge? But seriously, where the brown had had little variation, the red had none, it was all just red. He was going to judge, he just had to. 

Grad school had been nothing more than a traumatic experience to be purged from memory, but she had stuck out. Not in the warm hearted way of a crush on a student but an “Oh God, another ramble only semi-connected to this horrific story. I can’t decide which I hate more: her rambling, domineering interpretations or this story.” She was almost the discussion leader when he should have been. Frustrating but nice that the awful opinions he had on the story were brought to light by her first. It made him less cruel.

But now, walking through the high school with one of the other English teachers he’d met, she was happily discussing how the plague had led to great things in human history. John was nodding in very much a “thirty steps to my classroom,” kind of way. Still domineering. 

For the sake of talking to her, he waved at John and called his name out.

 ***

She never talked about sex, he noticed. They’d been having coffee on Sundays for four months now, and it was still something she never talked about. If he brought it up she’d talk about it, of course, and if the conversation required talking about it she would; but she never talked about sex otherwise. She never brought it up as a point of discussion, or even to prove a point. It was as though her life was devoid of it. She never brought up a number of things, but that was because they weren’t part of her lifestyle. He knew because by getting to know her, he realized that a lot of the half-remembered things from when she was his student were lies. They weren’t lies he’d made up, but ones she had fed him and her classmates. She lied a lot to those who she believed she would never grow close to. 

“It’s such a vulgar thing to tell someone, to tell you, Michael, but it’s also so ridiculously easy. It puts parameters on a friendship, if they do get close. It’s making a box for myself in someone’s mind.” It made him wonder if she is lying to him then by telling the truth.