Unnoticeable

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I cannot place the exact moment in time when I began to fall in love with Mason Lyle. My mind does hurdles trying to retrieve when that moment was. But I just can't be sure. I could close my eyes and spin around, like kids do at parties when they pin the tail on the donkey, and just randomly stab a pin into the place when I think it was. But I think that'd be inaccurate, or at least, unsatisfying. I know that people often say this about those they fall in love with; that they're special, that they're different. But he really was. He really, really was. Not in a freakish, needs-serious-help, has-leprosy kind of way. He was different to me. And he was different to everyone else I knew.

Mason Lyle wasn't like other seventeen year old boys at our school. He didn't play sports, and he didn't go through a whimsical stream of girlfriends. He wasn't part of some clique, and he didn't stop to talk to friends in hallways. I don't think he even had friends. Even the awkward, shy boys, as vampiric and pimpled as they were, had friends. It wasn't due to his aesthetics that he didn't have friends or a girlfriend. In fact, many girls lingered their eyes upon him when he quietly trudged to his locker every day. He just had a way of treating most people as invisible. It was fair to say that Mason Lyle was an enigma. He'd either not talk in class, or not show up at all. The times when he would talk in class, was when teachers pressured him for answers. And somehow, he'd always have the correct thing to say. It stumped us, students and staff alike. After a while, the teachers hardly pestered him. The ones who kept at it, I think did it to check if their estimations or theories were correct. He'd look like the most reserved and absent person in the class, but that was the thing about Mason Lyle. He paid attention. Even when it seemed like he didn't.

Girls had begun to approach him since he transferred to our school at age fifteen. Similarly, to how he treated most people, he paid them little notice. He'd throw at them some insulting or sarcastic remark, or roll his eyes, or just ignore them flat out. And so after a while, girls stopped trying. His rejection cut badly enough the first time. It was one thing to be treated with disdain, and it was another to be completely ignored. I think somehow receiving some sort of reaction was better than none, but either way, girls stopped trying to get his attention. He was written off as a freak or a lost cause. Everyone knew his dad owned the garage on Simons Street. And his dad had been in prison before. I think that's what probably kept groups of the more ballsy and antagonising boys from striking up trouble with Mason. That and the fact that Mason looked like someone you just did not want to mess with. No one ever saw his angry side. And I guess no one ever wanted to. He'd always rock up with his combat boots and some thin band T beneath a lazy checked shirt, matched with jeans that looked tired and fraying at the knees. When it got colder, he'd throw on a leather jacket, but his hair never became thicker than a buzzcut. That was probably another thing that tremored a faultline of intimidation in people. Amongst his blatant disregard and worrying perceptiveness, was a small thing. It was a straight line of a scar, where hair could not grow, just behind his left ear.

I possibly had some banal interaction with Mason before, but the first one I really could remember, the first one that stained me (and I wouldn't dare admit it at the time) was at one of Sophie's parties. Sophie had that kind of set up with her parents, where she was an only child, and her parents were these people who had a decent fortune, a large house, and a habit of going away somewhere sunnier on weekends. Once most of us were sixteen, these house parties became more and more regular, and more and more I tried to find how I belonged in them. I wasn't ostracised. That's not what I mean. I was always invited. But I just wasn't sure how to operate. I had gotten drunk once, pretty badly, and it wasn't even at one of these parties. It was when we were fourteen and it was just Sophie and I. That time had wrecked me enough. I never really understood the glory of getting drunk, especially not when it, (and sure, it was only that one time) had made me feel like my body wasn't my own and my insides belonged to some decaying and crazy rat monster. What was so glorious about feeling crap? We were teenagers. We could manage that without the help of alcohol. But Sophie seemed to find it glorious; drinking, and blasting music, and dancing around her parents' wide lounge amongst sweaty and inebriated people our age. From early on, I kept myself busy at these parties by laying out snacks before everyone came, and then once people had arrived, picking up empty cans and cups. Oh and smoking. That was a thing I was trying out.