Blessthefall
March 5th, 2012, 07:26 PM
Shadow In the Halls
He woke up early like he did every day. It was the same routine. He walked the dog down by the garden. He went back into his house to take a shower. He got his stuff around and waited for the bus. On the bus, he’d choose an empty seat and rest his head against the window. The boy would watch as the cornfields rolled by, the color of the golden stalks blurring together. Sometimes, a boy or girl would get on the bus and sit by him. Even if the person said “Hello,” he’d barely acknowledge her existence. Words bounced off of him. The voices were just background noise to him. As far as he was concerned, nothing anybody wanted to say to him was important. During the winter, while the bus was dark, it would be easy to miss him; his dark clothing would blend in with the shadows.
The boy would get to the school and walk in quickly. He glided down every hallway. It was hard to notice him going by. He always walked as close to the walls in the hallways as possible. You couldn’t hear him walk past. The only signs that he had been there at all was a soft breeze.
Other people noticed him, and they often talked about him. They called him “The Owl” because of how invisible he could make himself. No one ever talked to him, though. Nor did most of them make fun of him behind his back. They knew very little about the boy except that he had a taste for dark clothes and black hair dye. No one had even seen his pale blue eyes; he wouldn’t stay in one place long enough.
In class, he would often sit in the back row. Everyone knew that it was impossible to hold a conversation with him; he never talked to his peers. When a teacher called on him, he’d give the answer in a whisper. The boy would then fall silent. He always knew the answers. He always did his homework. He had very good grades. He was the perfect student. But he neither acknowledged this or debunked this. He just went through the motions.
In elementary school, kids are usually hyperactive, and they let out massive amounts of their energy at recess. Not him. The boy would often sit near a tree away from the other kids and watch them play. He often brought a book and buried his face in it. No one could ever distract his reading. No one could ever get a rise out of him, and they had abandoned all attempts to do so three years ago. It was impossible.
He’d eat lunch alone. The teachers used to put him at tables with other students to get him to interact with his peers, but he silently refused to do so, instead preferring to eat his lunch and then sit there, his face pointed down.
When the day was over, he’d get on the bus and sit by the window. If anyone at by him, he didn’t move a muscle. It was almost as if he was dead to the world around him. No one could figure it out. He was raised by wonderful parents. He had a great life. Why did he insist on being excluded from everything?
Jade was about to find the answer. In many ways, she was the opposite of the boy. She always wore light colors. Her hair was golden; it was almost as if her hair was engulfed in sunlight. She was a happy-go-lucky kid, always maintaining a bright outlook on life. She talked, she laughed, she played. She had lost count of the number of boys who had a crush on her. Yet, out of all the boys who chased after her, she was interested in the one who wasn’t. Jade wondered if she was crazy.
One day, she came on the bus, when she noticed that the boy was sitting by himself. It was time. She walked down the aisle and sat right next to him in the seat. As usual, he ignored her completely. But that was to be expected. She looked over at him. “Hello!” she said in a bright, friendly voice. He just kept staring out the window. Jade frowned. She was hoping for a different reaction for once. But she wasn’t going to be like anyone else who sat by the boy. She decided to push a little more. “My name’s Jade.” She smiled at him. Then, he looked at her. She noticed his eyes. It was almost as if they were piercing Jade. The boy looked back at the window and sighed. Well, that was a good sign. “Aren’t you going to tell me yours?”
The boy looked at her again, his eyes slightly hostile. Then, his gaze softened up a little bit. “It’s Caesar,” he said.
“Well, Caesar, nice to meet you!” she said and flashed him a smile. The corners of Caesar’s mouth twitched upwards in a tiny smile. “You too,” he uttered softly. The boy looked back out the window. Jade didn’t say another word. This counted as progress.
Jade wasn’t in his class, so she wondered what he was doing in his. She imagined- correctly- that he was sitting in the back row, silent and unnoticeable. She wondered what his grades were. Or what he did when he was bored. What did his handwriting look like? Jade was distracted that day.
At lunch, she noticed him sitting by himself, and decided to go and sit by him. Her friend wasn’t there that day, so it wasn’t like she was abandoning anything. When she was walking over to Caesar’s table, she couldn’t help but notice the teachers on lunch duty were looking at her like she was a bird repeatedly flying into a window. Not that she cared. She didn’t think too highly of the teachers, either. Especially Mrs. Torres, who taught her friend Melissa’s class. If Melissa had been there that day, she would’ve spent a solid ten minutes telling Jade exactly what the teacher could do with her homework.
Jade smiled at the thought and sat down at Caesar’s table. “Hi again!” she said. He looked up at her, gave another small smile, and went back to eating his lunch. She didn’t know what else to say, so she asked him how his day was. Caesar shrugged, finished his sandwich, and got up to throw his stuff away. Right then, the bell rang. Everyone got up to get rid of their trash and take care of their trays. Jade was shocked; she had spent so much time thinking of what to say to him that she had abandoned the school’s chicken nuggets. Maybe she should do what Caesar did and bring a lunch. Oh well. On to recess.
Jade went outside and ran to the swing sets. They were already occupied. Shrugging, she started to walk around the playground. This was usually time she’d take to talk to Melissa, but Melissa was sick. Jade walked past the kindergarten slides before she noticed Caesar sitting under a tree, reading a book. She was about to walk over to him when an annoying voice stopped her in her tracks.
“Looking for someone?” Heather asked.
Jade frowned and sighed. “Not really.”
Heather was one of the more popular girls in the school. Volleyball, basketball, you name it. She was athletic and pretty. She went everywhere with an entourage of seven other girls. The prettiest girl in the school, most would say, except that she was too abrasive for any boy to want. Her loss, Melissa would say. Jade glanced over at Caesar. He was still buried in the book.
“Looking at the Owl, huh?” Heather sneered. “What’s wrong, are they out of freaks at the store?”
“I was just thinking he might enjoy some company,” Jade answered in a small voice, terrified. She looked down at her feet. Heather and her entourage laughed and cackled at Jade. She felt helpless. Someone save me, she thought. I can only do this for so long.
*****
Caesar had always enjoyed Sherlock Holmes. It was scary to his teacher that he could read the books with such ease. This one, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, was the sixth one he had read more than three times. He enjoyed the way Sherlock Holmes reasoned everything out and used common sense and logic to solve even the most impossible crimes. People who looked at Caesar didn’t acknowledge he was a person. But he was. Not that Caesar wanted anything to do with anybody. He thought back to Jade on the bus and at the lunch table. Why was she talking to him? Did she want something? Was she dared to do it? Caesar’s mind was overflowing with questions. He looked up.
And he seen the girls cornering Jade.
Caesar’s first instinct was to lower his eyes to the book. After all, playground confrontations were none of his concern. He didn’t need any stress. He just wanted to be ignored. That was all. Yet, he couldn’t ignore it. There was something about Jade that made it harder to ignore her. Maybe it was her happiness. Maybe it was the way she spoke to him earlier.
He looked around and found a small piece of a branch. It was shaped like the letter “Y”, and he could tell that it was pretty thick. He found a few small, loose pebbles around the tree. Then, Caesar removed a rubber band from his pocket. He carried it so he could hold pencils together so he always knew where they were. He fitted the rubber band, tested it, and put a rock there. He pulled back and aimed.
*****
Jade was sure she was going to get bullied around. Every girl in the group looked at her with the same crazed look in their eyes. Heather had a nasty smile on her face, her expression filled with delight. It was time to ruin that pretty face once and for all. A large girl stepped forward. She had a square face and had to be at least 6’2”. She was very heavyset. Everyone called her the Gargoyle, including Melissa. The girl was about ready to bully Jade around.
Then a small pebble flew past the girl’s face.
The girls turned around in disbelief and shock. Who was doing this to them? They looked around. Just as they turned in the direction of the swings, a pebble hit Heather square in the face. Pebble after pebble came toward the girls until they ran away screaming.
Jade was in as much shock as the girls. She had a feeling she knew where they had come from and who shot them. She looked toward the trees where Caesar had been reading his book.
But Caesar was nowhere to be found.
*****
Days went by, then weeks. But there were no signs of Caesar. Jade guessed that she was the only one who noticed. Caesar was never on the bus, never in school, never on the playground. It was almost as if he had vanished from the world. She thought about him for a while, then pushed him from her mind. Jade was almost certain that Caesar had never existed except in her own imagination.
Years passed. She had some good friends, she lost some bad friends. Life went on as it always had, a repetitive, boring cycle of school, homework, and chores. Jade went through middle school like everyone else, going through the motions. She never changed. She was still the happy blonde girl she had always been. Jade and Melissa remained friends. Nothing seemed to change.
Adjusting to high school was difficult as well. It was hard to keep up with some of the classes. Jade adjusted well, though. Life went on.
The first day of her sophomore year, she got on the bus and rode to school. She walked inside the school and went to her locker. She remembered her locker number. 97. She went to it and unlocked it. Jade then picked up her books and went to class. Normal day, normal life.
When she got to her first period class, Jade looked at the rows of desks, picked one in the second to last row and sat down. She set her book under the desk. The teacher, Mr. Young, was already putting some equations on the board for when the rest of the class got in. Why he was doing this escaped Jade. She groaned and put her head down in disbelief. Welcome to Geometry, she thought to herself.
Class started. She was left alone for the most part. A girl, Kaitlyn Miller, was sitting to her left, asleep. Mr. Young asked a question that Jade was pretty sure should be hypothetical.
“Okay, people, why do we learn Geometry?”
The question turned out not to be so hypothetical. Hands were raised. Mr. Young made a big show of searching for somebody to answer the question. What he said next sent disbelief through Jade.
“Yes, Caesar?”
Jade swiveled around at her desk so quick she almost lost her balance. Behind her was a kid with black hair, dressed in dark clothes and huddled in the corner. He answered the question in a whisper. Jade couldn’t believe her eyes. There was a familiar person in the corner, a dark figure that would once again occupy the space in the school, a shadow in the halls. He had returned.
He woke up early like he did every day. It was the same routine. He walked the dog down by the garden. He went back into his house to take a shower. He got his stuff around and waited for the bus. On the bus, he’d choose an empty seat and rest his head against the window. The boy would watch as the cornfields rolled by, the color of the golden stalks blurring together. Sometimes, a boy or girl would get on the bus and sit by him. Even if the person said “Hello,” he’d barely acknowledge her existence. Words bounced off of him. The voices were just background noise to him. As far as he was concerned, nothing anybody wanted to say to him was important. During the winter, while the bus was dark, it would be easy to miss him; his dark clothing would blend in with the shadows.
The boy would get to the school and walk in quickly. He glided down every hallway. It was hard to notice him going by. He always walked as close to the walls in the hallways as possible. You couldn’t hear him walk past. The only signs that he had been there at all was a soft breeze.
Other people noticed him, and they often talked about him. They called him “The Owl” because of how invisible he could make himself. No one ever talked to him, though. Nor did most of them make fun of him behind his back. They knew very little about the boy except that he had a taste for dark clothes and black hair dye. No one had even seen his pale blue eyes; he wouldn’t stay in one place long enough.
In class, he would often sit in the back row. Everyone knew that it was impossible to hold a conversation with him; he never talked to his peers. When a teacher called on him, he’d give the answer in a whisper. The boy would then fall silent. He always knew the answers. He always did his homework. He had very good grades. He was the perfect student. But he neither acknowledged this or debunked this. He just went through the motions.
In elementary school, kids are usually hyperactive, and they let out massive amounts of their energy at recess. Not him. The boy would often sit near a tree away from the other kids and watch them play. He often brought a book and buried his face in it. No one could ever distract his reading. No one could ever get a rise out of him, and they had abandoned all attempts to do so three years ago. It was impossible.
He’d eat lunch alone. The teachers used to put him at tables with other students to get him to interact with his peers, but he silently refused to do so, instead preferring to eat his lunch and then sit there, his face pointed down.
When the day was over, he’d get on the bus and sit by the window. If anyone at by him, he didn’t move a muscle. It was almost as if he was dead to the world around him. No one could figure it out. He was raised by wonderful parents. He had a great life. Why did he insist on being excluded from everything?
Jade was about to find the answer. In many ways, she was the opposite of the boy. She always wore light colors. Her hair was golden; it was almost as if her hair was engulfed in sunlight. She was a happy-go-lucky kid, always maintaining a bright outlook on life. She talked, she laughed, she played. She had lost count of the number of boys who had a crush on her. Yet, out of all the boys who chased after her, she was interested in the one who wasn’t. Jade wondered if she was crazy.
One day, she came on the bus, when she noticed that the boy was sitting by himself. It was time. She walked down the aisle and sat right next to him in the seat. As usual, he ignored her completely. But that was to be expected. She looked over at him. “Hello!” she said in a bright, friendly voice. He just kept staring out the window. Jade frowned. She was hoping for a different reaction for once. But she wasn’t going to be like anyone else who sat by the boy. She decided to push a little more. “My name’s Jade.” She smiled at him. Then, he looked at her. She noticed his eyes. It was almost as if they were piercing Jade. The boy looked back at the window and sighed. Well, that was a good sign. “Aren’t you going to tell me yours?”
The boy looked at her again, his eyes slightly hostile. Then, his gaze softened up a little bit. “It’s Caesar,” he said.
“Well, Caesar, nice to meet you!” she said and flashed him a smile. The corners of Caesar’s mouth twitched upwards in a tiny smile. “You too,” he uttered softly. The boy looked back out the window. Jade didn’t say another word. This counted as progress.
Jade wasn’t in his class, so she wondered what he was doing in his. She imagined- correctly- that he was sitting in the back row, silent and unnoticeable. She wondered what his grades were. Or what he did when he was bored. What did his handwriting look like? Jade was distracted that day.
At lunch, she noticed him sitting by himself, and decided to go and sit by him. Her friend wasn’t there that day, so it wasn’t like she was abandoning anything. When she was walking over to Caesar’s table, she couldn’t help but notice the teachers on lunch duty were looking at her like she was a bird repeatedly flying into a window. Not that she cared. She didn’t think too highly of the teachers, either. Especially Mrs. Torres, who taught her friend Melissa’s class. If Melissa had been there that day, she would’ve spent a solid ten minutes telling Jade exactly what the teacher could do with her homework.
Jade smiled at the thought and sat down at Caesar’s table. “Hi again!” she said. He looked up at her, gave another small smile, and went back to eating his lunch. She didn’t know what else to say, so she asked him how his day was. Caesar shrugged, finished his sandwich, and got up to throw his stuff away. Right then, the bell rang. Everyone got up to get rid of their trash and take care of their trays. Jade was shocked; she had spent so much time thinking of what to say to him that she had abandoned the school’s chicken nuggets. Maybe she should do what Caesar did and bring a lunch. Oh well. On to recess.
Jade went outside and ran to the swing sets. They were already occupied. Shrugging, she started to walk around the playground. This was usually time she’d take to talk to Melissa, but Melissa was sick. Jade walked past the kindergarten slides before she noticed Caesar sitting under a tree, reading a book. She was about to walk over to him when an annoying voice stopped her in her tracks.
“Looking for someone?” Heather asked.
Jade frowned and sighed. “Not really.”
Heather was one of the more popular girls in the school. Volleyball, basketball, you name it. She was athletic and pretty. She went everywhere with an entourage of seven other girls. The prettiest girl in the school, most would say, except that she was too abrasive for any boy to want. Her loss, Melissa would say. Jade glanced over at Caesar. He was still buried in the book.
“Looking at the Owl, huh?” Heather sneered. “What’s wrong, are they out of freaks at the store?”
“I was just thinking he might enjoy some company,” Jade answered in a small voice, terrified. She looked down at her feet. Heather and her entourage laughed and cackled at Jade. She felt helpless. Someone save me, she thought. I can only do this for so long.
*****
Caesar had always enjoyed Sherlock Holmes. It was scary to his teacher that he could read the books with such ease. This one, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, was the sixth one he had read more than three times. He enjoyed the way Sherlock Holmes reasoned everything out and used common sense and logic to solve even the most impossible crimes. People who looked at Caesar didn’t acknowledge he was a person. But he was. Not that Caesar wanted anything to do with anybody. He thought back to Jade on the bus and at the lunch table. Why was she talking to him? Did she want something? Was she dared to do it? Caesar’s mind was overflowing with questions. He looked up.
And he seen the girls cornering Jade.
Caesar’s first instinct was to lower his eyes to the book. After all, playground confrontations were none of his concern. He didn’t need any stress. He just wanted to be ignored. That was all. Yet, he couldn’t ignore it. There was something about Jade that made it harder to ignore her. Maybe it was her happiness. Maybe it was the way she spoke to him earlier.
He looked around and found a small piece of a branch. It was shaped like the letter “Y”, and he could tell that it was pretty thick. He found a few small, loose pebbles around the tree. Then, Caesar removed a rubber band from his pocket. He carried it so he could hold pencils together so he always knew where they were. He fitted the rubber band, tested it, and put a rock there. He pulled back and aimed.
*****
Jade was sure she was going to get bullied around. Every girl in the group looked at her with the same crazed look in their eyes. Heather had a nasty smile on her face, her expression filled with delight. It was time to ruin that pretty face once and for all. A large girl stepped forward. She had a square face and had to be at least 6’2”. She was very heavyset. Everyone called her the Gargoyle, including Melissa. The girl was about ready to bully Jade around.
Then a small pebble flew past the girl’s face.
The girls turned around in disbelief and shock. Who was doing this to them? They looked around. Just as they turned in the direction of the swings, a pebble hit Heather square in the face. Pebble after pebble came toward the girls until they ran away screaming.
Jade was in as much shock as the girls. She had a feeling she knew where they had come from and who shot them. She looked toward the trees where Caesar had been reading his book.
But Caesar was nowhere to be found.
*****
Days went by, then weeks. But there were no signs of Caesar. Jade guessed that she was the only one who noticed. Caesar was never on the bus, never in school, never on the playground. It was almost as if he had vanished from the world. She thought about him for a while, then pushed him from her mind. Jade was almost certain that Caesar had never existed except in her own imagination.
Years passed. She had some good friends, she lost some bad friends. Life went on as it always had, a repetitive, boring cycle of school, homework, and chores. Jade went through middle school like everyone else, going through the motions. She never changed. She was still the happy blonde girl she had always been. Jade and Melissa remained friends. Nothing seemed to change.
Adjusting to high school was difficult as well. It was hard to keep up with some of the classes. Jade adjusted well, though. Life went on.
The first day of her sophomore year, she got on the bus and rode to school. She walked inside the school and went to her locker. She remembered her locker number. 97. She went to it and unlocked it. Jade then picked up her books and went to class. Normal day, normal life.
When she got to her first period class, Jade looked at the rows of desks, picked one in the second to last row and sat down. She set her book under the desk. The teacher, Mr. Young, was already putting some equations on the board for when the rest of the class got in. Why he was doing this escaped Jade. She groaned and put her head down in disbelief. Welcome to Geometry, she thought to herself.
Class started. She was left alone for the most part. A girl, Kaitlyn Miller, was sitting to her left, asleep. Mr. Young asked a question that Jade was pretty sure should be hypothetical.
“Okay, people, why do we learn Geometry?”
The question turned out not to be so hypothetical. Hands were raised. Mr. Young made a big show of searching for somebody to answer the question. What he said next sent disbelief through Jade.
“Yes, Caesar?”
Jade swiveled around at her desk so quick she almost lost her balance. Behind her was a kid with black hair, dressed in dark clothes and huddled in the corner. He answered the question in a whisper. Jade couldn’t believe her eyes. There was a familiar person in the corner, a dark figure that would once again occupy the space in the school, a shadow in the halls. He had returned.