The Touch

When classes ended, I left school as fast as possible so I could walk home alone. I didn't want to run into any of my classmates. I hated when they made jokes about my size, my weight, my glasses, my acne, and my seriousness, which apparently was the trait they hated most about me. I tried to be serious and responsible. The noise and chaos that usually ruled my classroom stressed me out. Everyone talked, shouted, played, and fought all the time. Their energy seemed endless, but, unfortunately, they only used it to do stupid things.

I never felt superior to my classmates, but they thought I did. They hated my face, that I didn't laugh, my overly formal and frank way of speaking. They hated me. I could tell by the disdainful looks they gave me every time I was near or when, for some reason, I spoke in class. Unfortunately, I used to talk a lot in literature class. The teacher loved my voice and how I read. She didn't hesitate to confess, in front of the whole class, that she liked my voice. That made everyone laugh and then they invented a romance between the teacher and me. I wasn't surprised; I couldn't expect anything less from them. They hated me.

Most of them ignored me, and if anyone talked to me, it was only because they wanted me to help them understand a lesson. If I didn't have any problems with the group assignments they gave, it was only because I'm smart and the others thought I was a necessary evil, because, in the end, I was useful to them. Physical education classes were a different story, where always, always, I was the last one to be picked. And when I was chosen, because there was no other option, I heard the murmurs of discontent from my team and the laughter from the other one.

I admit I wasn't good at sports, but that didn't give them any right to make fun of me and make me feel so bad. That's why I liked it more when I could be invisible to them. I preferred a thousand times that they ignored me rather than laughed at me.

I tried so hard to go unnoticed that, most of the time, I managed to make them forget I was even there. And so, in silence, my days at school slowly went by.
What allowed me to survive that time was the big library they had there. So I could go read a bit during recess. By doing so, I felt it was less obvious that I was completely alone and that no one talked to me.

But one day, someone talked to me.

His name was Gustavo.

One afternoon, while I was walking home alone, I felt a touch on my shoulder. I turned around and no one was there, but on the opposite side was Gustavo. I remember seeing him there smiling, greeting me with a "Hey, how are you?" and I just froze, speechless, unable to react because I couldn't remember the last time someone who wasn't a family member had asked me how I was.

I don't remember what he said to me. I don't know if I answered him at any point or if I just listened while he talked. He walked with me for a few blocks and then went off in another direction, smiling and saying goodbye as if I'd given him the confidence to get that close to me. As if we were friends.

We were in the same year, but he was in another classroom. In other years we'd been together, but he had never spoken to me. We'd never done a group project, and I don't remember ever seeing him laugh at me the way I remember the looks of contempt and the jokes from the others.

He was the best friend of a handsome and popular guy in our year, so he wasn't a nobody like me. He was athletic, friendly, and calm. He used to laugh, though he was a bit serious too, just not as much as I was. He wasn't like me at all. He was the opposite.

After he touched me, I started watching him discreetly out of the corner of my eye whenever he was nearby. On my way to the library, while crossing the courtyard, I'd see what he was doing. He was usually playing ball or chatting with the others. At that time I was reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. I read through the entire recess while, at the same time, Gustavo played and talked with his friends. He wasn't like me at all. He was the opposite.