Recommending, 17 Missing Girls.

How To Be Liked?

2024:
Police have uncovered another body of the 16 Missing Girls. Will there be more?

I am the 17th Missing Girl. Here is my story.
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2016:
How to be liked!?"

The Youtube video finishing playing. Autoplaying into

"How to talk to someone?"

I turned down the volume, double checking that...you can't hear what I'm listening to, via my head phones. Hiding behind my round golden rimmed glasses were big droopy black eyes that sat a tad far apart from each other...the windows to my insecurities.

A baby cousin once showed me a photo, "you look like my favorite cartoon character, Yuser!" She gleefully flashed a photo of Sid from Ice Age. That was it. I wore glasses, even with 20/20 vision to hide my spaced apart eyes.

I kept my red carrot hair short. Falling just below my round jaws, thin sharp Cupid's bow lips. The less flashy, the less eyes on my short-squished face. The better.

The kind of un-memorable face that fade into the background. The one people could sit next to, for over a year but couldn't describe how I look. So invisible other girls didn't view me as a threat. Boys forgot I breathed. So invisible, no one picked on me. They didn't even know I was there.

Even janitors sometimes mindlessly cleared my table, while I was still eating. Then flinched, apologizing, realizing that I was there. I might as well have been a chair...stacked on top of these empty chairs.

I glanced across a busy cafeteria, of kids, who'd already formed pairs or groups, at this point. Transferring school, in the middle of October, made it hard to self-insert into these pre-existing social circle. The ones whose bond, had been forged, by the fire of being stuck from 1-6th grades together.

I did need to self-insert. Or I'm stuck at this table for six, with 5 empty chairs. 4 empty chairs, if you count my bag, occupying 1 seat. For the rest of 7th grade.

It's been this way for a week. But today, I had a plan.

A table, across from me, sat another kid. Thick rimmed glasses, messy gray-hair, curtained over half of his face. Lost in another galaxy, typing away in his laptop. The world was between the two of them.

He won't notice me if I just...sneakily, quietly, pull out this chair, at the opposite side of his table, on the opposite end. And just sit down with my lunch.

See. Perfect. Table of 6, 2 chairs occupied.

To my surprise. He looked over at me, like one would, at a spider that suddenly popped out during their shower,

closed his laptop. Packed his things. Left.

Left me knee deep in embarrassment. Wishing to exit this cafeteria. Exit this entire universe, altogether.

"How to make friends" podcast played quietly, through my headphones.

It was the moment, I decided, that was the last time I tried talking to a person.

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The next day,

I kept intense eye-contact with my fries. Afraid of looking up, seeing a cafeteria, full of people. While the 5 chairs, beside me, remain emptied.

I brought a different books each day, to look busy, like these chairs were empty by choice. I'm not really reading them. Just zoning out to another "How to be charismatic video."

Scrapeee. Thud.

To my surprise, the nerd—the boy with the laptop sat down. The opposite end of the table, on the opposite side of me. But the same table!