The Light and the One Just Like Me

First Notebook

I could see a familiar yet unfamiliar face staring right at me from the other side of the glass.

The face belonged to a normal boy. A boy with his hair cut to the normal length, functional eyes that looked just a little grey under the unfortunate lighting, and just enough baby fat on his face to look exactly his age. Christopher was like any boy you see when you walk into a normal school on a normal day. Someone that anyone would forget within a few minutes after meeting him since there isn't anything unique to remember him by. He has no quirks, no peculiarity, and there was nothing eccentric at all about this boy.

He was the definition of normal. Yet, as Christopher smiled at me with that normal face and a normal tilt of his head a little to the left, I felt a wave of discomfort through my veins and cringed in disgust.

There was nothing wrong with that smile, of course. It looked normal, just like the rest of him was. Yet there was something about the way that he smiled that just felt so wrong to me, that I had to turn away to run from the uneasiness I felt.

There was something about him that other people couldn't see. Something that I could. And I really wished that I couldn't. Because if I couldn't, I wouldn't feel the discomfort that I felt every time he smiled at me, and I wouldn't have noticed the way he looked at me when I looked back at him.

With disgust. With discomfort. And with a judging glance behind that friendly, normal smile.

I hate him.

I slipped my jacket over my shoulder and walked down the stairs. I really don't have time for this today. Not that I would've stayed in his presence any longer than necessary without a proper reason to leave. Mother had told me that I should visit my great-grandfather that day, and since it's a long way there, I had decided that I might as well get there early so I could get back home hopefully before sunrise.

Informing my mother of my departure took way longer than needed after she stopped me on my way out to fill up my bag with food, presents for my great-grandfather, as well as an umbrella just in case. "The weather seems to be great right now! The perfect chance to go outside and get some fresh air." My mother had said before rushing me out the door.

The sun was high in the sky when I made my way into the streets and toward the subway station. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the wind wasn't going very strong. Yet even under such an 'ideal weather to go outside,' I felt suffocating as my grip tightened on the straps of my bag, adjusting it, hoping it would make the uneasy feeling go away.

It doesn't.

I gave up on fiddling with the straps as I made it underground, my chest painfully tight as I scanned my ticket to enter. Finding where I needed to go was more of a pain than necessary when it requires you to navigate through all six underground floors in hopes of finding the line you need (especially when the map is so hard to read), but I am not the one in charge of how it works so complaining is useless. What isn't useless, is planning your trip beforehand. And it wasn't until I was already closing in on my station, that I realized that I had messed up on my calculations.

In the hopes of returning home early, I had completely neglected the importance of checking the traffic beforehand to make sure that I was not going at a busy time. Which I had just completely messed up because right now, early in the morning on a normal weekday, was the perfect time for busy adults who needed to go to work to come and ride the bus. I really had lost track of time and reality ever since summer break had started just four weeks ago.

As you would expect, the subway was full when it arrived, and I was for sure not the only one waiting at this stop. The door opened in front of me, and it was already packed to the front when the people surrounding me pushed me in along with them. Cramped by people from all sides, I was squished like a sardine in a can as the door beeped and closed.