A Brief Introduction to Well Known Strangers

(Note: This is a teaser for an upcoming essay.)

I am in the library on the second floor right outside the café. It’s called ‘Zekes’, although I doubt that anyone with that name has ever even been inside this godforsaken architectural headache. If he has, I am sure that the police were informed right away and he was promptly and rudely escorted off campus.
Here is something important: The girl sitting directly in front of me.
I see her almost everywhere I go. And by that I mean I see her whenever I’m in the library, which, as of late, means “everywhere I go.” She’s a pretty thing, beautiful really, and not in a typical way. She’s beautiful like a tangled metal fence is. Complex, stunning to look at although you could never say why (at least out loud). She catches me staring at her sometimes and I find it hard to look away. It’s obviously unnerving for her, and I’m not surprised. When I find something to be beautiful, and I mean truly beautiful, I often sneer. It’s a subtle sneer though, as my lips don’t curl over my teeth and my nostrils don’t flare. It’s more of an attitude thing, really: A snaggle tooth and an evil eye hidden beneath a carefully constructed plaster of Paris mask.
She’s wearing the red hat that I’ve never seen her without (a knit wool hat I might add. And not really red. More rust than red. Never red.) I’ve never heard her voice, except on the very edges of my hearing as she talks to a passing acquaintance or mumbles something horribly significant to herself. From the safety of my world (which is an agonizing six feet away) it sounds exactly like a doorbell being rung, or a penny falling down a laundry chute.
I often wonder why she comes here. It isn’t as if she has a stack of textbooks in front of her, or any book for that matter. In wondering as to her purpose in library and life, I feel a sort of affinity with her. Neither of us seems to be able to do a damn thing with anyone at anytime with anything.
I’ve tried, at least three times in the past five minutes, to go over and introduce myself, but I never get any closer to doing so than cracking all the knuckles on my left hand and clearing my throat inappropriately.
Come to think of it, I hope I never meet her. I’m too afraid that whoever she is will ruin all my hopes about her being real.