ABYSS ✓

Remember Me

Taj Mendes used to love many things.

He had an underlying passion for learning and knowing the answers to questions he had formulated. School was his heaven.

Until sophomore year.

During sophomore year, every single table turned. Gone was the world of intelligence-based conversation and instead arose the teenage social hierarchy. It was no longer what Taj knew, rather who he knew.

He struggled to stay afloat amidst a high tide of obstacles, trying to make friends with people he had never thought he would ever talk to; people who had the right connections.

A part of Taj died during sophomore year.

He rarely questioned his parents at the dinner table, choosing to remain in his room and like his "friends'" photos on Instagram with uncharacteristic comments like "nice bod in that jumper, Samantha" or "bros before hoes, am I right?" when a "friend" of his broke up with their girlfriend. Every single day of sophomore year was like an exam he had cheated on.

Until March of sophomore year.

Taj distinctly remembered that day. After all, it was the first time he had been caught being uncharacteristically fake.

He had waited on the line at the cafe for a crepe that one of his jock buddies asked for before walking up to the boy behind the counter, Rye and sympathizing with him over his job at the cafe. The two were supposedly friends, so that was exactly what Taj acted like-his friend. But actions spoke louder than words, after all.

As he stood in the queue for the crepe, the curly-haired girl in front of him spoke in snippets to the cashier before turning to Taj and murmuring in a jagged tone, "Either you have Bell's palsy or you're an excellent actor."

Taj blinked, before realization dawned on his face, quite literally. He understood then that half of his face had been quirked upwards into a smile, and the other half had been neutral all that time. As she had quite bluntly stated, anyone could mistaken him for a hormonal teenager diagnosed with Bell's palsy.

Yet, it was another of Taj's realizations that turned the tables that day: she saw straight through him, as if he was completely transparent and there were no limbs attached to his body. Taj suddenly felt naked and exposed, a sheer embarrassment blushing his cheeks a deep red.

As she grabbed her cinnamon roll and stuffed it into the paper bag she had received from the cashier, Taj's mind was clouded with curiosity. Her actions represented an aura of invisibility: the way she quickly moved with sharp movements so as not to be seen doing anything, the manner in which she looked both ways before taking a bite of her cinnamon roll; just like a child caught eating smuggled sweets. Taj was fascinated by her being, and he felt a sense of obsession with this girl already.

Taj stepped up next to her, only to be beckoned by the middle-aged cashier behind the counter, who waved his crepe bag in the air so as to catch Taj's attention. Much to Taj's dismay, the mystery girl strode outside, hoisting her yellow cross-body bag over her shoulders so that it rested against her hip as the door to the cafe shut swiftly behind her.

Taj quickly grabbed the crepe bag, dumping it hastily on a shocked Rye's table before running back after the mystery girl with flailing arms on the sidewalk outside of the cafe. He was quickly discouraged as he watched the last of her curly dark hair disappear into the Greyhound bus at the end of the cobblestone block, the doors shutting when Taj was just three yards away.

A surge of passion surged up Taj's arms, and for the first time in months, Taj felt a sense of purpose as he stood there, the Greyhound bus growing smaller in the distance.

He would be somebody's reason.