Letters You Will Never Read

Glasses Boy

Tenth grade was when I saw you for the first time. It was actually the first day of school. You were trying so hard not to look terrified, being transferred to my high school after moving from another state. You amused me, I remember. With your crooked wire glasses (before you got contacts) and that tremble at the corner of your mouth, even when you smiled.

You did everything to hide your nervousness as you introduced yourself to people, but I could see it, sense it; by the end of the day you would need somewhere to hide. I think antisocial people such as ourselves have a kinship that extroverts do not, but that's just a theory. I think we need eachother.

I'm smiling as I remember it:

The first time we actually met. You were my lab partner. Almost every memory from then was funny, since we did everything wrong. We messed up our experiments, not always intentionally, and we both found the same random, ironic things so hilarious. We became friends.

We always understood eachother through the eyes, but we never spoke our minds, not really. We talked about deep things and silly things and scary things, but nothing personal. We had to find that out on our own.

The reason you moved was because your house burned down. The fire was started by your sister, who had downs syndrome. No one knew if she meant to start it or not, of course everyone doubted it, of course it was hard to lose her in the fire. You never told me about it. I had to find out by observation and a little research.

The first clue was when we talked about siblings. I said I wished I had a sister. It was only a split second, but I saw an emotion or something in your eyes. It stunned me so I could hardly say anything for a moment, but we both covered it up and changed the subject. Apparently your guard is only ever down for a moment before you go back into hiding. That has come in handy often since then, but I fear the same is true for myself. We had so much in common...

For some reason we grew apart. It wasn't till the end of senior year that our passing smiles became conversations again. I could sense something wanting to happen, something pulling us back together. It was probably the urgency; soon we would be parted, and we both knew that the chances of us communicating after high school were grim. I knew that no one else could understand me as well as you could; everyone else got frustrated when I closed them off, but you knew what it was like. We both felt how much we needed the other, but we were scared.

Terrified...

And mad. You were the mad one. You never would have demanded that I tell you things if you weren't mad. Angry, crazy, completely mad. It was a strange sort of luck that you were mad, it actually drove my fear away. I wanted to tell you everything then, I so badly did. But I didn't; instead I promised myself you would know everything, even though at the moment I didn't feel prepared to tell you. I also promised... that I would find you again. I just don't know where to look.

Or I won't let myself believe that I know.

Because I probably do.