Rewind

IV: Friendship

I meet Sam for lunch so we go to the cafeteria together. As I’ve been busy with my classes I haven’t had time to think of what happened this morning. However, once I walk inside the cafeteria and see Butch, the big guy, I remember that fight. I never noticed before if things like these happened. I never noticed anything, which is quite wrong because a person who’s in science as much as I am should notice these kinds of phenomena. But I didn’t. I was blinded. Now I wonder how often this guy gets into trouble.

Sam walks by my side but I stop when I see Butch picking on some guy. He’s short and skinny, he almost seems fragile, like he could break if the wind blows too strong. His hair is jet black and perfectly combed. He wears regular glasses, like the ones I wear when my head hurts because I’ve been reading for too long. But he looks fragile, like a wounded gazelle and Butch is the hungry Lion. He’s bullying the kid, I can see that.

I’ve always heard of bullying, but I never saw it. It never happened to me. Despite everything, no one ever bothered me. I assume it was because I was just as invisible for them as they were for me.

But this kid, this wounded gazelle, is clever and when Butch corners him, he drops the tray and uses the moment of surprise to run away. He didn’t get lunch, but he escaped the bully. I smile as I see the scene, especially because Butch doesn’t go after him. He just shrugs and goes back to his friends. I don’t know why he was bothering the other boy, but I know it wasn’t that relevant for him.

If Butch was bullying another boy, I don’t feel that bad about him getting hit by the other guy, Zeke. I’m not condoning the Zeke, but I don’t feel sorry for Butch, either.

I look away, ignoring Butch and his friends and notice Sam kept walking and now she’s waiting for me on a table. I hurry with my tray in my hands, careful not to drop anything. She is looking at me with a quizzical expression so I smile at her as I take my seat across the girl.

“What caught you back there?” Sam asks opening her bottle of Ginger Ale.

“I was just watching. Butch was nagging a boy,” I reply and Sam turns to look at Butch’s table.

“Unsurprised,” mumbles Sam. “It’s frequent of him. He does that just to have a laugh, I guess. I’ve never seen him following a boy or something, like in all those American movies, you know?”

I nod as I open my sandwich to start eating.

“You notice many things, don’t you?” I ask because I’m sure Sam is not friends with Butch, yet she knows things about him. Things I have no idea.

“I see them. I’m not one for the gossips, you know? But if things are happening right in front of my eyes, I see and remember. I’m studying music, I like seeing the world. I need to get ideas from somewhere, right?” Sam muses and I smile. “Mum says that you need to watch the experiment to see all the stages. You can’t get distracted. I like to believe the world is my experiment and I need to pay attention to portray an accurate description in my music.”

I look at her impressed at how she sees things. The way she sees the world. Whilst I was focused only on my own little world, with my eyes closed to everyone else, she was seeing it all. How different from me.

Once again, I’m so glad I had that dream because it allowed me to open my eyes. I know dreams mean nothing, that they are just waves from our subconscious, but those weaves are from thoughts and things we see during the day, information that is already in our brains. Information we haven’t processed. And it wasn’t the dream what made me suddenly open my eyes; It was the terror, that paralysing fear and possibility that I might die today. It was that the dream could have been easily any day. I bet if the dream had been just a bit surreal I wouldn’t have reacted the way I did. But it felt like any other day, not like a dream. And it filled me with panic. And that made me react. Not the dream. The feeling that it left in me.