Recommending, 17 Missing Girls.

How To Be Liked?

Typing away on his laptop, again.

Oh, oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! No. Keep your eyes on your fries. Don't be weird. Don't spook him.

I don't wanna go back to the life of 5 empty chairs, again.

For the next few weeks that followed,

We sat quietly, eating our own lunch, well, I ate lunch. He worked on something, on his laptop.

As though we had signed a secret social contract, to sit at the same table, opposite side, opposite end...but never speaking to one another.

A month passed, my curiosity grew. What was he typing away on his laptop?

I dared not ask. Must not violate our secret social contract, the one he didn't even know that he was a part of.

"How to start a conversation" podcast began playing via my headphones.

I'm smart, you see. Straight A's. Not by the blessing of genetics, only by doing my homework, staying up to 3AM studying the same 5 lines of human anatomy until it made sense.

I just wanted to be good at something. Finding a reason to be proud of myself.

But that boy, Ero, the one hiding behind his laptop.

He's something else.

I was 13, so was he.

I was in 7th grade.

Ero was a senior.

You heard that right.

Senior, 12th grade, 13 years old.

Smarter than the teachers. His brilliance probably was the reason he sat alone, un-relatable to the rest of kids his age. Well, and kids above his age.

An intelligence that came across as a threat, an unfair advantage in life, to other kids. His existence made them feel inadequate. Limited by the flaws of their own designs.

So they found ways to make him feel inferior.

It's probably the reason for the bruises, peaking out below his long sleeves. I've seen other older guys, shoving him around the locker room, when teachers weren't looking.

I didn't know it then either.

Once in a lifetime, an extraordinary person comes by. Someone who'd change the lives of people across the world. I...happened to sit, at the opposite end, opposite side, same table...as that person.

Whatever he was working on that laptop...8 years from now, will go into changing lives, across the world.

It would change mine.

And the lives of 17 bodies, the police will uncover, 8 years from now.

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One month later,

We had not said a word to one another. I kept my eyes, on my fries and he on his laptop.

But...his glasses had a crack. Someone broke it.

There was a cut on his eyebrow and cheek.

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The next day, I ran to the cafeteria early,

To leave a box of bandaid, where he'd sit. I thought about it, what if he thinks someone else just forgot it there.

I wrote "To Ero" on the bandaid box...Dashed off to my seat.

Ero arrived. Staring at the box.

Scanning the room, bewildered.

Then smiled.
It made me happy.