Every Bright Thing

COME SECOND PERIOD, the New Boy arrives without warning. No heads up, no announcement, he’s simply here when last period he wasn’t.

 

I spot him before he spots me. Thrill at the sight of him. Like the arc flash of a downed cable in a storm. Though when he finally clocks me — hiding in the gloom at the back of the class — he stares me down for the longest time, and somewhere within that far-reaching moment, the whole room is ripped apart. Although it ain’t just the shock that’s got my head spinning. Shame crawls up my neck too, hot as fresh laid tar. Shame for my thrifted jeans and oversized shirt. Shame for this one-horse school in this broke-down excuse for a town. And so my gut heaves wild, almost like my body remembers this boy, as if a once stubborn hollowness swells with unexpected feelings.  

  

I can’t breathe.

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How is everybody else breathing?  

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But as you know by now, I got issues with other people. Boys especially. They’re the ass-burn of my life, worse than chigger welts in high summer. And that goes double for strangers. It’s why I always start with the watching. You watch someone long enough, you see who they really are. And so I study this boy, suspicious-like, squinting at him like my chemistry homework, tracking how he shifts in his chair, his ratty-ass backpack slung across his shoulders like a broken wing. Even his eyes are careful. Always checkin’ the exits, the windows. Like the ghost of a much younger child. It’s the kinda look a boy gets when he’s spent way too much time waitin’ on somethin’ bad to happen.

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He’s also got a strange way of holding himself. A very still surface. And I wonder at that stillness, because I know that look. It’s a way of protecting yourself, like a box turtle drawing in tight at the first sign of trouble. But that won’t save him round here. This school ain’t seen no fresh meat in so long he might as well be a mythical creature. Pale stalk of a boy, eyes bright like a lone coyote. And yet despite lookin’ tougher than the back end of a shootin’ gallery, there’s a softness to his voice that seems at odds with the way he looks — all black clothes and dark hair falling into his eyes, his skinny frame whittled down to nothin’ but bone and sinew. It’s a very in-your-face skinny, a what’s-wrong-with-your-home-life skinny. Like a pack of wild dogs raised him up from under a porch somewhere. And I briefly wonder how many different colors I’d have to use to catch the feelin’ of this boy on canvas.      

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And besides, new kids usually talk all the time. But not this one. He don’t talk to no one. And when he ain’t in class, his nose is always in a book, shrinking into himself. And I been fightin’ it all morning, this need for him to look at me, but also never look at me again, both things at the same time, goosefleshing my arms. So now inside my frisky brain we’re all panting breath and skin slick with sweat, our mouths locking together, like I’m as good as half-way in love with him already.

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I gasp, lookin’ away again, a wave of somethin’ warm moving through me, like a glow behind my ribs — a sense of belonging — almost like I’ve a body unmarked by pain, by loneliness.

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Reckon I’ve been waiting on that feelin’ for a real long time.

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Like a light come on in a room I forgot I had.

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But then I remember how it’s only 10 AM and I should not be staring so early in the morning.

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Thankfully, he don’t notice.

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In fact, he don’t seem to notice much of anything at all.

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Guess I oughta say here how I’ve always been drawn to what don’t fit right in this world. And this boy don’t fit right. I can smell the rot inside him. Mothballs and alcohol. Switchblades and roadkill. It hurts my crotch to look at him. So when his eyes meet mine for a second time (his eye to face ratio is really quite extraordinary), I feel such a vast sickening lurch happening all down the front of my insides that I panic and almost run out the room.  

  

Okay, so I may have lied about him not noticing other people.

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I actually lie quite a lot. You’ll get used to it.

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So now I’m gut-feeling this boy in a place I never knew I had, a deep place, a place where the humming in my teeth never stops, a place where I’m stunned by the crave of him — unripe, scary thoughts like fragile seams of silver spidering through the darkened cavern of my brain.

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It ain’t a bad sensation exactly, it’s just wildly unexpected.  

  

He don’t even make a sound when Bryce the Inbred Lizard snaps every one of his pencils, slow and deliberate, right in front of him. He just stares, with those huge black eyes, until Bryce (in a moment of gormless bewilderment), shrugs and leaves him alone. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in years, and it kicks loose a hot spark of want inside me.   

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And so I do my thing. The watching. The waiting. The snapshot glances out the corner of my eye, furtive and slippery, a manic flush of heat flooding my cheeks with fire, the feelin’ washing over me, prickling my skin and softening my edges, the way it wraps around me, the way it makes me feel bigger than myself — I dunno how else to say it, or what to name it, because it’s surprising, the way somethin’ that powerful should’ve made me feel gone and yet it don’t.

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And that’s when it happens.

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When I trace the shape of him in one of my notebooks (ripped yellow fingernails, skate shoes beat to hell, ring of grime round his neck like a slave collar), a vibration passes over me, a ripple of motion, like I’m hurtin’ with vertigo, because suddenly, there it is, almost like my pencils have revealed it — his hurt, shining with a rare-jewel glimmer, shot through with unspeakable violence. I can’t put it into words, but it’s there all the same. Someone did things to this boy. Bad things. Christ. The little did I know. Sitting quiet at my desk, tryin’ not to freak out. ‘Cause now I’m lookin’ through my pencils, I can see how he flinches at the sound of the bell, or when someone moves a little too quick in his direction. I see the shake in his hands, and the bone-deep tired in his eyes, almost like he ain’t slept in a safe place for years. I see an undoing of the natural order of things, like somethin’ is broken inside. Not just bent or cracked, but broken in a way that changes the shape of your world.