The Illusion of Us

Chapter 3

Khalil thought he had imagined her face when he walked into the room, there were too many new faces, too many new smells, too many news sounds to focus on one thing at a time. But when her name was called aloud, there was no denying that it was her. He hadn't meant to stare so intently, but he couldn't help but satisfy his curiosity. She still looked the same as she had that night on the street, her dark ebony black hair twirling in the wind, her red tear-stained cheeks, the combined lights of the police car and the ambulance reflected in her watery eyes.

From the frightened expression he had left on her face in homeroom he was convinced that she didn't remember him, though he wasn't sure why she would. It had been years since they had even been in the same room, she had moved on with her life after the fire it seemed.

All day he could barely focus, the image of Mina's face burnt into the back of his mind. He wished he could talk to her, to ask about her, to ask about her parents but the looks he was receiving warned him to stay far away.

He wasn't sure if the students at Palm Valley knew that he was aware of all their rumors circulating through their school or if maybe they just didn't care, though, judging by their lack of secrecy he assumed it was the latter.

Every classroom he entered and every hall he walked down, he was met with looks of disgust and un-hushed whispers. None of it was true, and yet everyone seemed to take the rumors in stride, never wondering if the words they were whispering had any inclination of falsity.

He couldn't even eat lunch in peace without being stared at by every person at every table.

He felt like a caged animal, everyone around him was free to do and say whatever they wanted about him, but he just had to sit back peacefully and try not to get himself in trouble. Even when a group of broad and burly looking boys, all proudly clad from head to toe in the dark emerald green of the school colors, poured an abstract lump of food over his pressed uniform. He had had to clench his fingernails into the palm of his hand to keep from punching all of them.

The only thing calming him, the cold piece of metal hanging from around his neck, and it took all of his will not to run out of the school, pushing people out of the way, when the final bell rang.

"Khalil!"

Khalil jumped at the sound of Donna's light, airy, voice, in his face as he stepped through the threshold of the front door.

Sahil pushed through the door past him, as usual paying no attention to Khalil's existence whatsoever. His "nicety" act the first day was just that: an act.

"How was your-" Donna paused, her eyes finding the miscellaneous stain of light orange trailing down the shoulder of his shirt and running down his arm.

Khalil had been hoping that Donna would have been out when he arrived home from school and he have could slipped by with his stained shirt and sulk in his terrible day unbothered. Of course his entire life had never gone the way he had planned, so he wasn't sure why he had gotten his hopes up this time.

"Y-your shirt!" she spluttered, her mouth gaping like that of a fish.

"What happened?"

Sahil paused in his plight up the oak staircase, and even from where he was standing Khalil could spot his flashy white grin, no doubt waiting to witness the awkward conversation that was to follow.

"They gave him a Palm Valley welcome!" He snickered from the steps. Khalil shot him a dirty glare from across the room, only causing him to smile harder.

"What?" Donna looked between the two of them confusedly, soaking in Khalil's ruined uniform and Sahil's malicious grin. "What does that mean? Who did this to you Khalil?"