Sara Carvalheiro-Santos

Second Place: Nonfiction

“The Girl with the Bangs” 
by Sara Carvalheiro-Santos
10th grade, Villa Walsh Academy

—

THEIR PLACE

She would walk up those stairs evey morning, knock on the thick wooden door, and wait. Wait for him to open the door with a big smile on his face. He was happy to see the girl with the bangs. The girl, no more than four years old, was dressed in an odd outfit, pink leggings and cupcake shirt, bangs hidden with a hat. He invited her in as he always had, and she would walk in without a stumble in her step. It was a small apartment, nothing too big, but it was her world. Her mind was always there with him. She would turn her head right and see what was on the small TV. It was the news, as usual, but she would quickly scurry to find the remote and see what cartoons were on. Pressing the buttons, skimming through the channels, she quickly found something to amuse her. She would look back at the man and urge him to come next to her on the couch. That couch was their spot, old and brown, with horizontal lines running across its entire length. He walked next to her and sat down. They would watch the stupid cartoon together until she was bored. No sign of anger ever crossed his face, even though she had just barged in. She sat close to him, giving him a hug and leaning on him. He wore his usual set of clothes, a white shirt that smelled like him, joggers, thin rectanglar glasses, a gold watch ticking down the time, and his gray locks always pushed back off his face. He was always, in her mind, in the same exact outfit every day, the same smell, the same watch. He would talk to her in between the cartoons. Sometimes he would speak in English, sometimes in his native tongue, but she understood everything he said. She would tell him they should play kitchen and he would just nod and say yes. Always a yes. And so off they went into her imaginary world.

BLOOD RED 

The girl with the bangs would be woken by her dad. She would take her pink striped covers off and rise from her wooden bed. Her feet would touch the carpet and she would look around. No sun hitting brightly inside her room that day, but instead, a cool light engulfed the small space. She got up and got ready, with a lot of help from Dad. Dad would pick out her clothes, do her hair, and make her breakfast. In no time, she was ready for preschool. Before leaving her room for the last time that day, she put on some jewlery. Nothing fancy, just her favorite plastic flower necklace. She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled. She was happy with how she looked. As she readied herself to leave, she remembered the man, the man with a smile on his face. The girl called out the man’s name with joy, urging him to come down before she left. She didn’t like leaving him. They had more fun together than she did with anyone else. As he came downstairs, eager to say goodbye to the girl, his head spinning, he fell, face first, body stiff, blood rushing out of his head, soaking the flowers on the carpet beneath his feet. The little girl, who was so excited to see the man, was now crying, rushing her way back through the heavy wooden door into her room, each step faster than the last. The girl didn’t know what had happened. She didn’t know anything. She sat hiding in the same room where just a few minutes before she had been smiling. Her breathing was now heavy, more labored with every breath she took. Tears fell from her face, tension rising in her head. The girl with the bangs didn’t understand that the man was sick; she didn’t understand that he struggled. She thought maybe she caused the man to bleed, caused the man to fall, but it was quite the opposite. She was the reason the man was still alive. The girl with the bangs was the reason he hadn’t given up.

A BLACK WALL UNIT

The man wasn’t upstairs. He had been quiet lately. The girl with the bangs didn’t know where he was, but she knew for sure. The girl’s mom came home after many days away. She didn’t realize that her mom had been with the man, away, in pain. Her mom had a sullen look on her face, no sleep in her eyes, no color in her skin. The mom had to explain to the girl with the bangs something the girl did not understand: death. The girl sat down with her back against the black wall unit, legs crossed, her short hair against the black cabinet. The color of the girl’s hair matched the furniture perfectly. Soon this wall unit would be known to her as the spot where she cried tears that would make her hurt for years. That wall unit was where she understood the concept of death for the first time and where she learned that her best friend was gone forever, never to return.  He would live on in her memory forever.

3,652 DAYS LATER

Now the girl with the bangs no longer has bangs. She’s grown up and has long hair. That girl who was best friends with the man still misses him. She still cries sometimes when she thinks of him. The girl still wonders what he’s doing up there, if God is with him, if he’s singing praise with the angels, or if he’s watching his favorite team up there and not the cartoons she always forced him to watch. She wonders what he does now that he’s not here on earth. The girl hopes he knows that he has affected everyone around him, that he changed people’s lives, that he still makes people laugh when they think of him. The man’s story is not to be forgotten. His name was Manuel.  The man was a hard worker, one who dreamed of a better life for his family and worked hard everyday to make that a reality.  That man was my grandfather, missed, loved and gone 3,652 days ago…way too soon.