Star Eyed (Chapter One of Five)
Chapter One
I can't see with the porcelain stars in my eyes,
I walk about glass eyed
Constellations in my eyes.
Bumping into furniture,
Savoring sweet, tinkling, elation
I look to my legs, my arms,
"What are these purple things I see?"
"Do you not remember, you careless thing?
Has glitter all-blinded you to sense entirely?"
I cannot see with these porcelain stars in my eyes.
-S.J.D. Howson
Andrew’s that one person who could make rounds across lunch tables and blend into any throng of people. Ever blend, ever smiling. He likes to consider himself a chameleon; and although he’s only seen one once, at the zoo when he was six, the memory is still vivid enough that he thinks it validates his belief. He had had pressed his face pressed against the glass of the reptile house, eyes raking the inside of the habitat for the distinguished lizard pictured on the plaque. The excitement of seeing the exotic animal fluttering in his tummy - reacting with the sugar from the cotton candy and a giant red slushy - and making for a euphoric experience when, after a glance, he had spotted the lizard crudely hidden among a patch of leaves.
It’s this memory that strikes a chord with him later in his teen years. The way that the camouflage was effective enough to completely conceal the lizard from view to its predators, but was obvious to a six year old’s imperceptive eyes. He feels that if you study him closely you’ll notice the same inconsistencies. He can laugh at all of the right jokes and knows how to say the right things, but if you scrutinize him, you’ll notice he’s not quite in sync. He’s the wrong texture, the slightly off shade, and ultimately only ostensibly fitting into the groups, never entirely.
It’s not that he’s not letting people get close to him, because he does. He loves the process of growing attached to someone. Learning the boundaries of their personal bubble, the reasons why they write their ‘a’s the way they do, their anecdotes from that awkward stage of constant prepubescent embarrassment... it’s great to see past the body and see the soul- vibrant and undoubtably real- lying underneath. But, no matter how he reciprocates, no one seems to ever see him in return.
Sometimes, Andrew tries to delude himself into thinking that this whole ‘outsider,” idea is just a natural part of the quintessential teenage, angst ridden, high school life; but upon further observation, it becomes obvious that it’s just him. Universally recognized, but not universally content. He names himself, “The Last Unicorn,” and lets his wild inner-monologue run free, documenting his life as he switches from clique to clique...
Apart from that, Andrew has no complaints about his life. Even with his different, syncopated, rhythm he can sit anywhere he wants in the cafeteria, and knows at least one group of people in all of his classes, so he considers his chameleon inclinations to be only a slight blip of a personality flaw, and really unworthy of any special thought. After all, it’s the reason he’s able to sit with Robert and Robert in their usual smoking hole behind the school.
“I’m just saying man...” Robert says as he inhales a drag. “I’m all for the touchy-feely, but unless we’re going to do the dirty-thrusty right then or soon after I’m just like: What’s the point?” The smoke surrounds his mouth in a vicious vapor, and Andrew occupies himself with watching the white tendrils swirl around and around upward into the trees. “How does my hand in your hand feel any better than my genitals in your genitals?”
“The point,” Robert says, the other Robert, the blonde one, the one everyone calls Rob as a way to differentiate between the two. “is intimacy, you tosser.”
“And you would know about intimacy, wouldn’t you?” Andrew finally contributes to the conversation. He grins wider behind his cigarette as Rob glowers at him.
“Fuck off.” Rob says as Robert keels over from the force of his incessant giggles. Small twigs and greenery becoming ensnared in his dark curls as he laughs into the brush.
Perhaps that was a bit over the line, but the remark was too good to resist. Rob’s reputation at the California International High School was one marred by gossip about his romantic escapades. When he transferred into CIHS, girls had seen his brooding, grungy exterior and wanted to claim his heart. Rumors about his sensitive and tender ways had the halls lined with swooning romantic prospects as he went to pre-calc. Rob hadn’t really minded, because it meant that he always had one girl willing to ‘be a companion to Spunk Ransom,’ but the worship was short lived as the gossip soon turned against him. The rumors grew and grew then ultimately belittled his legacy into an emotionally unstable hipster with overly reactive tear ducts. Rob Pattinson cries during sex because he’s feeling too much sensation, was scrawled on the bathroom stalls, and below it, Amazing he can feel anything at all with his small dick.
“Don’t you have somewhere to go, anyway?” Rob suggested.
Andrew checked his watch. Shit. He only had ten minutes to meet Carey and scout out seats in their first literature analysis class. From smoking with known truants to attending an extra college course, a chameleon indeed. “Well,” he threw down his cigarette, stamping out the glowing embers with one TOMs clad foot, “this has been absolutely lovely, gentlemen, but it seems I must leave you here.” He haphazardly brushed the shrubbery off of his pants, turned, and walked towards the clearing, waving a hand behind him when Robert let out a squealed, “BYYYYEEE!” to his back.
Walking back into the school, Andrew made his way to classroom 217, wandering through winding hallways until he found the largest classroom. It was a room that, according to school legend, the architect just pencilled in after much deliberation. Simply a giant rectangle placed on the second floor only to make more narrow pathways for lockers and to fill up empty space, it looks out of place and has two glass windows looking into the class that serve no purpose other than distract the students inside it. Nevertheless, it was the largest classroom the school had and was always used for college classes.
When he walked through the door, he scanned around for his blonde, pixie-like friend. He spotted her chatting with a red haired girl he’d never seen before, and made his way over, careful to maneuver around the random combination of desks. Carey was animatedly using her hands, flapping them about, trying to indicate intense emotion.
“So then,” she was saying, her chipper voice threatening to entice woodland creatures to come forth, “I’m sitting there, and he starts singing that damn song! How am I supposed to compose myself? We both basically collapse from laughter, and the waiter is just sitting there, obviously very sorry for asking, and - oh, there he is now! Andrew I was just talking about you to Emma here!”
The Redhead, Emma, looks to him and sticks out a hand, one corner of her mouth tugged upwards in a bold smirk, obviously a firecracker “Please tell me you take requests.” Oh, and also American. That was surprising. It’s not that the different nationalities at the school never mixed, the entire purpose of the institution was to expose the students to the ways of other countries. But, overall, Americans hung out with Americans, Britons with fellow Britons, and so on. Cliques are always based on common interests, after all. ‘You say bloody and think football is the one with the round sphere instead of that oval thing? Let’s be friends!’ But, Carey was universally lovely, so on second though it would make sense for her to break stigmas and befriend anyone and everyone no matter how little they had in common.
“Uh... What?” Andrew said, staring at Carey.
“I was just telling Emma about the time you sang ‘Bed Intruder’ in Panera.” Carey explained, her overly kind, bovine eyes sparkling at the memory.
“Well, that’s a lovely first impression.” Andrew sighed, enveloping Emma’s hand and slightly surprised at the confident, strong grip she held it in while she shook it.
“Oh, you have no idea. I don’t even know you, but I already have more respect for you than, like, anyone else. Ever.” Emma’s voice was layered with dry humor. It’s hoarse tone inflected with genuine playfulness, and Andrew made a mental note to remember her. She seemed awesome.
“Oh, there’s my friend. I should leave you here. To be continued?” She smirked at them before walking towards a gangly boy whose head was taken over by a spew of tightly wound curls.
Andrew turned to Carey, “So, did you find any good seats?” He said, sheepish over his tardiness.
Carey just gives him an exasperated smile and leads him over to two desks where she had draped her purse and jacket, wrinkling her pert nose at him. “You smell like smoke.”
“You’re very astute, today.”
And somehow with that comment, something breaks. This is the part where he doesn’t blend in fully, sometimes screws up in his camouflage. Carey has always been concerned with who he sees and talks to. Out of everyone though, he spends his time with most of it is with Carey. Carey who has such a large heart and such a greenness about her. She’s so universally liked and yet still vulnerable. Andrew sometimes thinks that she’s the one person with whom he shares the most similarities. But, he still manages to find a way to screw it up. Like now. Carey gives him a worried look, where her eyes go too wide and her mouth becomes squared in a puckered pout. Her voice goes all high and Disney-Princess-esque as she utters ‘I don’t want you hanging out with that crowed.’ Completely unfair.
Andrew sinks into the desk and heaves a sigh in her direction, a silent exhalation of breath that begs for the subject to be dropped. Carey just purses her lips and moves on, “So I heard that this class is really difficult, apparently Professor Fincher is a complete perfectionist about getting exactly the right kind of interpretation on the works...”
~
Andrew’s so excited by the time the first class is done and over with that he’s practically vibrating with the force of resisting bursting into an interpretive dance. He’s always been amazed by words, the way they formed in a fluid continuation, the way the writers’ skillfully put them in the precise formation, expressing the emotions that normally left people like him groping blindly. It’s in this class, Fincher said, that we will look a way these tools are used to structure the exact image the author wants. Every letter, every parentheses has a purpose.
He wasted no time in talking about their assignments and forewarned them about the impending amount of work with an almost manic glee. Andrew was happy to find that his assigned partner in their group discussions would be Emma, who turned around in her seat and gave him an enthusiastic fist pump in her own celebratory right. They exchange numbers after class, after Emma promises not to text ‘anything too frisky.’
Carey bid him goodbye with a friendly peck on the cheek and went off with her assigned project partner, and close long-time friend, Keira, to discuss whatever it is girls talk about. Leaving him to walk to his dorm by himself, he wonders if he can talk about his abandonment issues the next time she decides to smother him in maternal affections. When he finally got to his door he wasted no time in throwing himself onto the bed- excited, but tired. It groaned under the sudden force of his weight, but otherwise stays sturdy and reliable under him.
Andrew has an official roommate, according to the school’s registration. He still remembers the first day of school when he walked into his room, two garbage bags stuffed with his belongings overflowing at his side, when he saw him. Justin Timbersomething, but he’s only met the guy that one time, and that was a short meeting. Consisting only of Justin talking and telling him that ‘Hey, man. Look, you seem awesome, but I normally sleep at... friends’ places and I’ll really never be in here... so. Yeah. So, do what you gotta do, dude.” Ever since then the bunk above him has been bare and Andrew’s taken upon himself to spread his influence around the room. Arcade Fire and Old 97’s posters adorning the walls and speakers blasting his music freely.
He moves his head to the side so his face is no longer pressed into the pillow. His gaze follows the remnants on his desk, which was set across from his bed and therefore directly in his line of vision, straying until they are captured by the stack of neon colored waifs of paper.
The post-its were all collected and in order from the first to the last, which was somewhat idiosyncratic for Andrew because of his proclivity towards untidiness. The many different colors amalgamated in a loudly hued hoard of blue, pink, orange, and yellow. The Mecca of organization among the hodgepodge of food wrappers, scrap paper, and disarray of books.
He had found the first post-it on a Friday near the end of winter (it could get chilly in California, much to Andrew’s surprise, not enough to break out his heavy coat, but enough that he had to wear his scarves and other assorted layers). It was covertly stuck under the bench he was sitting on while waiting for Carey so they could go out for dinner. Itchy fingers had curled under the seat, wandering with woolen covered digits. His glove clad hands finding the change in the rough texture of the wood in favor of a smooth patch. He had peeled the post-it and held the cerulean paper to his face, reading the message hastily scrawled in black pen:
There was once an explosion exactly where you are now sitting.
It was caused from the pressure of holding back an influx of expletives.
You see, the person who exploded was quite upset.
The description was written around a crude drawing of a mushroom cloud. In the middle of the drawing a scribble of, ‘BOOM!’ was traced over and over on the last imprint of itself in bolded ink.
Before he even contemplated exactly what he was doing, Andrew found himself digging through his messenger bag, past an empty thermos, a toy dinosaur, two books (vocabulary and US History), and a pack of cigarettes-- rummaging until he pulled out his pencil bag and the stack of mini-post-its within it. Writing a small message on it, he stuck it back under the bench.
My condolences on your emotional/expletive explosion.
I’m sure it was quite a horrible experience.
Cheer up, though, it’s almost spring!
=D
And with that, Andrew initiated first contact with the Mysterious Post-It Person (as Andrew named them). After that first instance, they had kept correspondence by passing post-it notes in the bottom of the bench every chance they got. Andrew found that he took every detour or excuse to go to the bench and see if there was another post-it waiting for him. The rest of winter, towards the end of spring was spent collecting the papers. The manageable tongue twisters, the socialist-marxist jokes, the seemingly random tangents were rescued from the bench and were now stacked purposefully on his desk. It was strange, the idea that only conversing with someone a few times a day over the course of a few months could have such an impact, but they did. It wasn’t everyday Andrew ‘met’ someone who could make him laugh with the way they’re ‘n’s were scribbled in an what appeared to be an extra frustrated fervor. Or who could make him cry from a short love letter between coffee and a thermos.
The last post-it he had received from his Mysterious Post-It Person was from two weeks ago. And Andrew hated that, of all things, he had screwed that relationship up. It was one stupid decision. One spring day when the birds chirped loudly and the early morning light enveloped everything in a gray-blue blanket. When he stuck his pink mini-post-it under the bench, the haphazard scrawl proclaiming, “Will I ever get to actually meet you?” and everything went downhill. His pen-pal had refused to respond, and although Andrew had spent the rest of the mini-pad writing various notes, he found he could never try and initiate contact again without the reassurance of the other person. He just couldn’t bear the thought of the Mysterious Post-It Person ignoring his letters, or, shit, mocking him for being too eager to continue their banter into the real world. So Andrew just kept that stack of post-its he was lucky enough to get. Untouched and pristinely piled on his desk.
It was slightly pathetic. Andrew knew. He had no misconceptions over that. Becoming so deeply depressed about a superficial loss wasn’t something he had thought he would come to. But, he has questions that he wanted them to answer. Were they the person that would always have something to say? What clique did they belong to? What did they look like? What bloody fucking gender were they, anyway? Not that that really mattered it was just... no, personal dignity was definitely not the point anymore.
He could go on. For days and months and years. Trying to figure out exactly why this measly relationship impacted him like a radio-active spider. But, Andrew had other homework to attend to. Geometry was backwards, inverted Greek, and US History was a class invented to try and torture all foreign juniors. So he got up and padded towards the desk, pushing his shoes off with his feet, and tried to focus on the world of academics for a while. Tried to focus on the degrees of Suzy's triangular garden and the something theorem, and definitely trying very hard not to think about the idea slowly forming in his head. Turning wheels and working gages until perfectly formed by the time in his studies when was America trying to ignore the impending second World War. Tried not to lie awake in his bed that night anticipating the execution of it, and how he might get to meet the mysterious post-it person if it’s successful.