The Ukulele Girl
The girl stands on the street corners, singing for money. Her voice trickles around the city, between buildings, over sidewalks, and through crowds, charming anyone who hears it. The New York cacophony seems to pause for a moment, as if the whole city wants to hear her sing. She takes a break for lunch, likely using the money from the ukulele case she leaves open, and returns to sing through the afternoon.
The girl holds her ukulele like a child. She cradles it in the crook of her slender arm, and strums the strings delicately. She never lets the instrument overpower the sound of her own voice, but perfects the synchronization of the two unique sounds.
The body of the ukulele she has painted to resemble an avocado, the center hole appearing like the pit. The headstock where the tuning pegs appears like a leaf. She did this as a final gift to her younger sister when she sang at her funeral, and remembers the summer days where they would spend hours in the stuffy kitchen together, preparing and perfecting their mother’s guacamole recipe.
She sings happy songs on the street. Smiles are few and far between in New York, and the girl believes that she was born to bring some light to the scowling metropolis. She doesn’t play for money, though she is certainly not one to turn down a donation. She believes that she can help make the world a better place through music. When she first started singing, she didn’t leave a place for donations at all, but, as she sang for the city more and more often, people began to request for her to leave a spot for the public to show their appreciation.
On a Saturday in May, a boy scuttles through the New York City crowds toward his favorite coffee shop. It is not his favorite because of the coffee inside, though no one can deny it is good coffee. In fact, the boy barely enjoys coffee at all. It is something he only recently began drinking as an excuse to continuously return to the store; he only hopes to see the girl.
As expected, she is there, back to the worn brick wall. A puddle of sunlight illuminates her and her instrument like a natural spotlight. She holds the ukulele skillfully as always, and sings a song about falling in love. After weeks of visiting her, he recognizes the tune as one of her originals. As he gets closer, the overwhelming smell of coffee hits him, and the familiarity eases some of his anxiety.
The girl notices him approach. A boy like him would be hard to overlook even in a crowded New York City street. She watches him from the corner of her eye, and notices the way his large hands sweep through his hair nervously. She takes in the freshly shaven look to his face, as though he went to extra lengths to tidy himself up for some special occasion. His skin is a deep bronze color, and the girl can tell that he has more tattoos than the last time she saw him.
The boy feels the familiar flutter in his stomach at the sight of her, and pushes through a few more people until he’s close enough to place a five-dollar bill in her ukulele case. This time, it’s not just money he leaves her. Attached to the currency is a small note he wrote for her that morning. The girl pauses only momentarily in her song to watch him bend down, and place the paper among the numerous other bills she had collected all morning. In the note, the boy explains how enamored he is not only by the girl, but also her music. Feeling slightly foolish, he scribbled his phone number on the bottom, hoping she would use it.
Up close, the boy can see her beauty in all of its minute details and quirks. She’s like no other girl he’s ever seen. For what she lacks in stature, she surely makes up for in allure. Her hair falls just short of her shoulders, dyed a deep red that seems to glow when the light hits it. In the handful of weeks that the boy has seen her, the girl has gone through at least three different hair colors. She has not changed her hair solely to catch his attention, but she is pleased to know it has.
The girl continues to watch the boy out of the corner of her eye. She likes to know he’s looking at her, but wants to maintain the mysteriousness that she knows has drawn him to her in the first place. She notices the corners of his mouth turn up ever so slightly, and his eyes drift closed. For just a moment, he allows himself to be enveloped in her music. She takes the opportunity to absorb his face in all of it’s perfection: his sharp jawline, thick eyebrows, crystal blue eyes, bow-like lips, and mocha tousled hair.
While she sings, the boy has noticed that she likes to keep one side of her hair tucked behind her ear, exposing the piercings there. Contrary to her otherwise dainty and feminine appearance, the girl’s earlobes are stretched to fit quarter-sized gauges, filled with bright, lime green plugs. The remainder of her ear is dotted with gemstones of various sizes and colors.
Resting on the bridge of her nose is a pair of hipster-style purple glasses. She fiddles with them in between songs. Her nose and cheeks are splattered with a slight dotting of freckles, and the skin of her arms and collar show that her face is not the only freckled spot on her body.
As if to draw more attention to her nose, the girl has studded her left nostril with a small, emerald stone, seemingly to match her eyes. The boy briefly imagines how many times she has sat under a needle to get all these piercings. Each week, as he places money in the girl’s ukulele case, he notices new details about her.
She frames her eyes in a flawless wing of charcoal eyeliner. Her eyelashes appear long enough to be false, but the boy knows there is nothing fake about her. Her lips are small and thin, but, each time he sees her, it’s as though she’s painted a new color of the rainbow on them. Each one is more beautiful than the last. Today her lips are a dark scarlet to match her hair. Every aspect of her appearance seems calculated and precise, and the overall effect is enough to take the boy’s breath away. Little does he know that her meticulous attention to her own appearance is the result of hours spent on YouTube, hundreds of dollars in makeup, clothing, jewelry, etc. She aims to look effortlessly flawless while only herself knowing the grueling hours she has put into her looks, and the insecurity she has learned to cover up.
However, the girl’s attention to detail, no matter how hard she tries, is not the first thing any passerby notices about her. Stretching the length of her face from above her left eyebrow all the way down to her chin snakes a deep, long-healed scar. The confidence she has worked hard to exude gives the impression that she doesn’t even know it’s there, and she hopes to keep it that way.
She finishes her song, and does a slight curtsy in her rose-print dress to the dozens of hands that applaud her. Small as the crowd may be, she lives for this attention. The boy watches her crouch down to peer into her ukulele case, and extracts the note he wrote for her. Heart beating furiously, he waits as her eyes pass over the words, a small smile creeping onto her face. When she’s done, she looks up and meets his gaze. For the first time, the girl sees something special in this boy. He is not like the other guys she has come across. There’s something pure and sweet about him.
He closes the space between them, frantically trying to come up with the perfect thing to say to her. Without missing a beat, the girl extends her hand, and flashes the most extraordinary smile, just for him. Nearly breathless, he places his hand in hers, noticing for the first time that she smells like vanilla. She maintains her composure, hiding her own nerves.
His mouth stretches into a wide smile, revealing a perfectly straight row of incredibly white teeth, framed by crescent dimples. She is surprised by how much such a simple gesture affects her.
“My name’s, Wren,” she says, her voice as melodic in speech as in song. “Thank you for your note.”
He can’t stop the happiness from quickly taking over his face. “I’m so glad you liked it. I’m Dakota.”
The smile on her face doesn’t falter, and she pauses before taking back her hand. Without breaking eye contact, she rips the note in two. She watches his whole face contort in confusion, and her heart clenches as the smile she has constantly had in her mind since the day she first saw it disappears.
“It was nice to meet you, Dakota, but I’m not interested.”
It’s the sweetness of her voice that hurts the most. The boy feels his heart ache, and she readjusts her ukulele, acting as though oblivious now to the boy with the broken heart.
He watches the two halves of paper get caught up in the wind, and flutter away down the sidewalk, quickly caught up in the New York City hustle. The girl resumes her singing, diving into a song about family, and makes it clear that the boy is dismissed. Their conversation is over.
With a heavy heart, the boy steps away and enters the coffee shop. Without his noticing, the girl’s voice breaks mid song, and she uses all of her self control not to turn and watch him leave. Despite her better judgment, she hopes he won’t give up on her. She wants him to prove he’s not like all the other guys.
Over a cup of decaf, Dakota wonders what he could’ve done wrong. He continues to watch her through the shop window, her bubbly aura, he now realizes, is only surface deep. The boy knows that there’s more to Wren than he could’ve imagined, and his heart sinks knowing he likely will never find out.
Wren watches Dakota leave the coffee shop a while later. When she knows he’s out of earshot, she scrambles to put her ukulele away, and hurries in the direction the torn paper flew. Weaving between angry New Yorkers, her eyes eventually fall on a small, trampled, dirty white shape in the corner of a doorway. With incredible relief, she picks it up and can just make out the numbers Dakota had written to her, full of hope. She traces her fingers over the ink, and takes a deep breath. Maybe she’ll call him later. Maybe she’ll tell him nothing. Shoving the paper into her ukulele case, she dissolves into the crowd, heading home.
The girl holds her ukulele like a child. She cradles it in the crook of her slender arm, and strums the strings delicately. She never lets the instrument overpower the sound of her own voice, but perfects the synchronization of the two unique sounds.
The body of the ukulele she has painted to resemble an avocado, the center hole appearing like the pit. The headstock where the tuning pegs appears like a leaf. She did this as a final gift to her younger sister when she sang at her funeral, and remembers the summer days where they would spend hours in the stuffy kitchen together, preparing and perfecting their mother’s guacamole recipe.
She sings happy songs on the street. Smiles are few and far between in New York, and the girl believes that she was born to bring some light to the scowling metropolis. She doesn’t play for money, though she is certainly not one to turn down a donation. She believes that she can help make the world a better place through music. When she first started singing, she didn’t leave a place for donations at all, but, as she sang for the city more and more often, people began to request for her to leave a spot for the public to show their appreciation.
On a Saturday in May, a boy scuttles through the New York City crowds toward his favorite coffee shop. It is not his favorite because of the coffee inside, though no one can deny it is good coffee. In fact, the boy barely enjoys coffee at all. It is something he only recently began drinking as an excuse to continuously return to the store; he only hopes to see the girl.
As expected, she is there, back to the worn brick wall. A puddle of sunlight illuminates her and her instrument like a natural spotlight. She holds the ukulele skillfully as always, and sings a song about falling in love. After weeks of visiting her, he recognizes the tune as one of her originals. As he gets closer, the overwhelming smell of coffee hits him, and the familiarity eases some of his anxiety.
The girl notices him approach. A boy like him would be hard to overlook even in a crowded New York City street. She watches him from the corner of her eye, and notices the way his large hands sweep through his hair nervously. She takes in the freshly shaven look to his face, as though he went to extra lengths to tidy himself up for some special occasion. His skin is a deep bronze color, and the girl can tell that he has more tattoos than the last time she saw him.
The boy feels the familiar flutter in his stomach at the sight of her, and pushes through a few more people until he’s close enough to place a five-dollar bill in her ukulele case. This time, it’s not just money he leaves her. Attached to the currency is a small note he wrote for her that morning. The girl pauses only momentarily in her song to watch him bend down, and place the paper among the numerous other bills she had collected all morning. In the note, the boy explains how enamored he is not only by the girl, but also her music. Feeling slightly foolish, he scribbled his phone number on the bottom, hoping she would use it.
Up close, the boy can see her beauty in all of its minute details and quirks. She’s like no other girl he’s ever seen. For what she lacks in stature, she surely makes up for in allure. Her hair falls just short of her shoulders, dyed a deep red that seems to glow when the light hits it. In the handful of weeks that the boy has seen her, the girl has gone through at least three different hair colors. She has not changed her hair solely to catch his attention, but she is pleased to know it has.
The girl continues to watch the boy out of the corner of her eye. She likes to know he’s looking at her, but wants to maintain the mysteriousness that she knows has drawn him to her in the first place. She notices the corners of his mouth turn up ever so slightly, and his eyes drift closed. For just a moment, he allows himself to be enveloped in her music. She takes the opportunity to absorb his face in all of it’s perfection: his sharp jawline, thick eyebrows, crystal blue eyes, bow-like lips, and mocha tousled hair.
While she sings, the boy has noticed that she likes to keep one side of her hair tucked behind her ear, exposing the piercings there. Contrary to her otherwise dainty and feminine appearance, the girl’s earlobes are stretched to fit quarter-sized gauges, filled with bright, lime green plugs. The remainder of her ear is dotted with gemstones of various sizes and colors.
Resting on the bridge of her nose is a pair of hipster-style purple glasses. She fiddles with them in between songs. Her nose and cheeks are splattered with a slight dotting of freckles, and the skin of her arms and collar show that her face is not the only freckled spot on her body.
As if to draw more attention to her nose, the girl has studded her left nostril with a small, emerald stone, seemingly to match her eyes. The boy briefly imagines how many times she has sat under a needle to get all these piercings. Each week, as he places money in the girl’s ukulele case, he notices new details about her.
She frames her eyes in a flawless wing of charcoal eyeliner. Her eyelashes appear long enough to be false, but the boy knows there is nothing fake about her. Her lips are small and thin, but, each time he sees her, it’s as though she’s painted a new color of the rainbow on them. Each one is more beautiful than the last. Today her lips are a dark scarlet to match her hair. Every aspect of her appearance seems calculated and precise, and the overall effect is enough to take the boy’s breath away. Little does he know that her meticulous attention to her own appearance is the result of hours spent on YouTube, hundreds of dollars in makeup, clothing, jewelry, etc. She aims to look effortlessly flawless while only herself knowing the grueling hours she has put into her looks, and the insecurity she has learned to cover up.
However, the girl’s attention to detail, no matter how hard she tries, is not the first thing any passerby notices about her. Stretching the length of her face from above her left eyebrow all the way down to her chin snakes a deep, long-healed scar. The confidence she has worked hard to exude gives the impression that she doesn’t even know it’s there, and she hopes to keep it that way.
She finishes her song, and does a slight curtsy in her rose-print dress to the dozens of hands that applaud her. Small as the crowd may be, she lives for this attention. The boy watches her crouch down to peer into her ukulele case, and extracts the note he wrote for her. Heart beating furiously, he waits as her eyes pass over the words, a small smile creeping onto her face. When she’s done, she looks up and meets his gaze. For the first time, the girl sees something special in this boy. He is not like the other guys she has come across. There’s something pure and sweet about him.
He closes the space between them, frantically trying to come up with the perfect thing to say to her. Without missing a beat, the girl extends her hand, and flashes the most extraordinary smile, just for him. Nearly breathless, he places his hand in hers, noticing for the first time that she smells like vanilla. She maintains her composure, hiding her own nerves.
His mouth stretches into a wide smile, revealing a perfectly straight row of incredibly white teeth, framed by crescent dimples. She is surprised by how much such a simple gesture affects her.
“My name’s, Wren,” she says, her voice as melodic in speech as in song. “Thank you for your note.”
He can’t stop the happiness from quickly taking over his face. “I’m so glad you liked it. I’m Dakota.”
The smile on her face doesn’t falter, and she pauses before taking back her hand. Without breaking eye contact, she rips the note in two. She watches his whole face contort in confusion, and her heart clenches as the smile she has constantly had in her mind since the day she first saw it disappears.
“It was nice to meet you, Dakota, but I’m not interested.”
It’s the sweetness of her voice that hurts the most. The boy feels his heart ache, and she readjusts her ukulele, acting as though oblivious now to the boy with the broken heart.
He watches the two halves of paper get caught up in the wind, and flutter away down the sidewalk, quickly caught up in the New York City hustle. The girl resumes her singing, diving into a song about family, and makes it clear that the boy is dismissed. Their conversation is over.
With a heavy heart, the boy steps away and enters the coffee shop. Without his noticing, the girl’s voice breaks mid song, and she uses all of her self control not to turn and watch him leave. Despite her better judgment, she hopes he won’t give up on her. She wants him to prove he’s not like all the other guys.
Over a cup of decaf, Dakota wonders what he could’ve done wrong. He continues to watch her through the shop window, her bubbly aura, he now realizes, is only surface deep. The boy knows that there’s more to Wren than he could’ve imagined, and his heart sinks knowing he likely will never find out.
Wren watches Dakota leave the coffee shop a while later. When she knows he’s out of earshot, she scrambles to put her ukulele away, and hurries in the direction the torn paper flew. Weaving between angry New Yorkers, her eyes eventually fall on a small, trampled, dirty white shape in the corner of a doorway. With incredible relief, she picks it up and can just make out the numbers Dakota had written to her, full of hope. She traces her fingers over the ink, and takes a deep breath. Maybe she’ll call him later. Maybe she’ll tell him nothing. Shoving the paper into her ukulele case, she dissolves into the crowd, heading home.