The Year I Stopped Being Invisible - 1. Chapter 1

"Some people have tragedy in their blood."

I looked up from my notes in Mrs. Colby's freshman English class to see who had said it, and my eyes lighted on the new kid, Taine Maxwell.

Taine and his father, the Formula 1 racer Sylvester Maxwell, had moved to San Antonio from New York a couple of weeks before, following the death of Taine's mother in a tragic accident. I had a couple of classes with him, but in the three days since school had started, I hadn't really paid him much attention.

This was partly by his own design. Taine was a loner, and seemed to be desperately trying to make himself invisible. He was tall and slim, but other than that, it was hard to say. He always wore his father's oversized army jacket and a large-brimmed No Fear baseball cap, with the brim usually obscuring the parts of his face which weren't already hidden by his shag haircut, worn over his eyes in a loose and scruffy pile.

His attempts at self-concealment seemed to be working. No matter what you (or I, in my fear-stricken months leading up to the first day of class) have probably heard about the high school experience in Texas, San Antonio-Polk tended to be a fairly easygoing place. The various groups and cliques mostly kept to themselves, and there was rarely any friction between jocks, rednecks, stoners, socials, or geeks. It was "live and let live."

In another school -- say in notoriously roughneck West Texas -- there may have been some harassment of the new kid, but at Polk, Taine just blended into the background, which was presumably where he wanted to be.

I hadn't even thought about why that might be the case, nor given him any real thought at all, until he spoke those words in Mrs. Colby's class that Wednesday in September. They were the first words he'd said in the three days of our freshman year, and I found them deep and intriguing.

"Some people have tragedy in the blood."

I felt like I did, and I felt like he had put my life into words as no one had before him. I felt tears begin to well up and blinked my eyes to dispel them before anyone noticed. Mrs. Colby, who had a reputation for cutting sarcasm, simply lowered her horn-rimmed glasses and looked at him with something like pity in her eyes.

"Tragedy can strike any one of us, Mr. Maxwell," she said, and continued on with her lecture about Romeo and Juliet.

It was obvious that -- quiet as he was -- he had read the play, which I had only skimmed, and took it very seriously. It was also pretty obvious that he was still grieving his mother. I was grieving mine as well, although she wasn't dead. She was just my older sister now, and she was in the Army a thousand miles away.

Even though I couldn't really see what he looked like, or gauge the tone of his words, I decided I had to get to know this kid. I focused my attention on his slim legs, clad in baggy cargo pants, and the new shoes tapping to a silent rhythm. The shoes bore a Jegs logo, which I took to be some obscure East Coast shoe company. I would later learn that Jegs was a manufacturer of high-performance auto parts, and one of the sponsors of Taine's racecar-driving father.

Other than the pale artistic hands with long, tapered fingers -- perfect, perfect hands -- Taine was covered up from hat to Jegs, and his actual appearance remained a mystery.

The bell rang and Mrs. Colby gave us our assignment: we had to write a thousand words on Romeo and Juliet. Damn. Now I'd have to read the thing more carefully and try to extract some meaning from it, when all I saw were strange verses and indecipherable old-school expressions.

Unless...

I got up from my desk and followed Taine as he shuffled out into the hallway, his head down, almost shrinking into himself to avoid being noticed. The seven words he'd spoken in class seemed to have taken a lot out of him.

I followed him for a few steps, trying to get up the courage to talk to him. I had just turned fifteen, and wasn't exactly the shy type, but I found myself strangely intimidated and nervous about this mysterious stranger and the shell he had put up around himself.

I was slim like Taine, and we were both tall for our ages. I considered myself fairly good-looking, with a healthy tan, chestnut-brown hair, and large eyes which were a rich, deep brown that was almost black in the dim fluorescent lights of the school hallway I thought my best feature was my full, soft lips, which the few girls I'd dated always seemed to enjoy kissing, but had earned me a rather unflattering nickname -- "n____-lips" -- among the two or three jealous bullies of the school. Not only was it racist, it was also dumb, because, despite my tan, I was as white as white could be. Then I caught a glimpse of Taine's slim, graceful neck, which was as pale and smooth as alabaster, and decided that I wasn't quite as white as him.

Anyway, I screwed up my courage and quickened my pace to catch up to him as he slouched slowly toward his locker.

"Taine?" I ventured.

He kept walking as if he hadn't heard me, so I said his name again. He jumped as if electrocuted, spinning his head to see where the sound had come from. As he did so, some of the silken, golden-brown hair blew from his eyes, revealing wide-eyed fear, hurt, and a haunted look which spoke of his recent tragedy. He looked like a frightened rabbit, and my heart instantly broke into a million pieces in sympathy, pain and...something else.

I know what you're thinking, and it wasn't that. At least, not at that moment. What that "something else" was...it was like I finally found a soul that was like my own. Different, sure, but like a raven and an eagle are both birds at base, I felt like our souls were the same once you got through the surface. I couldn't possibly know that from one look at Taine's frightened eyes, but somehow I did.

There was something there, and I don't think it was just shared pain. I think it was a way of looking at the world. Compassionate, wise beyond our years, afraid and bearing the scars of the past, but willing to explore the future with an open and loving heart. Or maybe I was just hoping that was true and was reading too much into one startled look.

"Hey," Taine said softly.

His voice was tremulous but gentle, like that of a child. My nervousness began to fade as I smiled shyly at him.

"Hey," I replied. "I really like what you said in class."

Taine lowered his head, and I saw his pale ear turn pink.

"Thanks," he mumbled quietly. "I didn't think anyone would notice."

I found that hard to believe, because he acted as if the world was casting a bright spotlight on his every move, when all he wanted to do was hide in a dark corner somewhere. I may have played it off better than him by that year, because I had pretty much decided that nothing anyone ever said or did to me again could match what I had already endured, but it was a feeling that I could recognize, and it made me feel warmly protective of him.

"My name's Rick," I said, extending my hand. Taine was still looking at the ground, making hesitant beginnings of a turn which I surmised would allow him to bolt away at any second. I dropped my hand and peered under the brim of his hat, which was pointing straight down at the ground in his shyness and embarrassment.

"Your name's Taine," I continued. I wanted to crack a joke like "Is that short for plantain?" but I knew that it wasn't the time. I had always used humor to get myself through the hard times in my life, but there was something very serious and still about Taine Maxwell, and I surmised that my joke would not be appreciated.

"I'm new here too," I said instead, balancing the awkwardness between us and the fact that Taine still stood in front of me rather than fleeing.

"My mom joined the Army and had her parents adopt m..." I stopped, wishing I hadn't mentioned my mom.

Taine looked up at me then, one pale blue-grey eye visible between the strands of hair. It was welling with tears.

"My mom died," he said in a hoarse, flat whisper. Then he turned and walked quickly away, cutting a tragic and heartbreaking figure in the oversized army jacket and baggy brown cargo pants.

I thought, "He looks like a sad, melting candle," and my own eyes began to fill with tears, which I wiped away on the sleeve of my new blue sweater.

It was a nice sweater. As grumpy as Rex, my new dad, was toward me, he and my new mom were not about to let me start a new school in their neighborhood looking like a dissolute ragamuffin.

My new mom -- whom we called Tynah for no apparent reason -- had taken me shopping at the local mall on the Saturday before school started, and I felt like I was in style for the first time in my young life.

I went to Algebra class, which completely left me mystified. My dumb-ass school a few miles away hadn't prepared me for multiple variables and quadratic equations, let alone parabolas and hyperbolas, and -- although I was an honor-roll student -- every grading period in middle school and found the rest of my freshman classes at Polk to be a breeze, Algebra would be the bane of my scholastic existence that year.

I couldn't wait for Mr. Andrews to finish his alternately boring and confusing lecture, and practically tripped over myself to get to the lunchroom when the bell rang. I stood in line patiently to get my tray, still amazed that I had money in my pocket on the third day of school.

When I had lived with my biological mother, our poverty had necessitated my working with the cafeteria lady at lunchtime to pay for my food, but now there was a crisp five-dollar bill on the kitchen table every morning when I woke up. I felt like a Rockefeller as I paid for my tray of food, and even though the rest of the kids grumbled at the shapeless, grayish Salisbury steak drowned in brown gravy, it looked like fine dining to me.

I took my tray and scanned the cafeteria for some other freshmen to sit with. It was only the third day, I told myself, and I would hopefully make some friends soon, but -- with my newfound lack of giving a shit about rejection -- I figured I would force my way into some lunch group or another. Just as I had settled on a group of three kids I recognized from my afternoon drama class, I saw Taine Maxwell sitting alone at the end of a long table.

So, you know how I just said I didn't give a shit about rejection? Well, as I watched Taine gazing dejectedly at his food, long fingers drumming on the table, head down, and only the cap indicating that he had a head under there, I suddenly worried about rejection again.

Steeling myself, I walked over to his table, my hands shaking a little as I held the lime-green plastic tray in front of me. I stopped about five feet away and stood there, hoping he would look up, notice me, and invite me to sit with him. The cap stayed down, and I thought to myself, "this isn't going to be that easy."

That was when one of those perfect hands stopped its languorous drumming next to his food tray, and the cap tilted slightly as he became aware of my presence. Maybe he could see my shoes from under the cap, but I doubted it because of the angles involved. It was more like he sensed me there, sensed my eyes staring at the cap, trying to signal to the eyes which, presumably, still lived underneath it.

"Sit down," the cap said, so softly that at first I wasn't sure I heard anything over the din of the lunchroom. The cap tilted up slightly when I didn't move, and I saw a perfect chin, complete with the sexiest dimple I'd ever seen.

Then I saw the lips, full like mine but hanging slightly open.

Not in a dumb, slack jawed way, but just slightly parted, as if too shocked and horrified by the world around them to close.

The cap lifted slowly, and that one eye peeked out from his hair again, neutral but guarded.

"What do you want?" he asked.

I moved forward a little, gripping my tray tightly.

"Can...can I shit with you?" I stammered, my eyes widening in horror when I realized which words had just tumbled from my lips.

That was when it happened. The lips closed, the teeth gritted, and then the lips turned up at the corners, revealing the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. Yes, more beautiful than Jay's. The cap lowered, and I could just see the lips move into an amused smirk, holding back laughter.

"No," said Taine, a little louder than he'd spoken before. "That would be too messy. But you can sit with me, like I just said."

I gave a nervous grin. Looks like there's a little bit of a wise-ass under that serious exterior, I thought, and quickly moved to join him at the table. I scooted my chair in and began struggling with my chocolate milk carton, which appeared to be welded shut. When it ripped open, spattering a few wild drops onto the table, Taine lost it and began giggling. The sound was so sweet and innocent that I forgot to be embarrassed and joined in with him myself. It felt good to laugh. It had been a while since I had even smiled, let alone laughed.

We stopped laughing suddenly, as our eyes met, and it seemed as if our inner pains were reaching out to each other across the two feet or so which separated us. Then the cap abruptly lowered again, shutting off the moment. I looked at his tray, with the food barely touched.

"You're not hungry?" I asked stupidly.

The cap shook "no" with an almost imperceptible side to side motion, and then offered, "I don't eat much."

I figured that Taine's lack of appetite probably had to do with his mother's recent death, so I didn't push the matter further. As for myself, however, the absence of my own ex-mother hadn't done anything to staunch my voracious teenaged boy's appetite, and I tore into my food like a starving wolf.

As I inhaled the Salisbury steak, the watery mashed potatoes, the limp string beans and the impossibly lame lump of dark dough which the school menu had hopefully labeled "Rich chocolate brownie," I felt eyes on me. I looked up from my ravaged lunch tray, dipping the cold bread roll into what remained of the gravy as if savoring the remnants of a kingly feast.

Taine's head was tilted back, allowing me to see most of his face all at once for the first time. He was smirking again, and his eyes were no longer steely, but were actually twinkling! I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and a strange fluttery feeling in my stomach. It wasn't fear exactly, and it wasn't embarrassment or guilt or anything negative, really.

It was a feeling I had never experienced before, and it was being caused by that amused, perfect, slightly mocking face in front of me. When this sad, sullen boy opened up and smiled, and beamed and freakin' twinkled, as he was doing now, he looked like an angel. Or, at least, what I imagined an angel might look like.

I bit my lower lip, looked down at my empty tray, and muttered, "What are you smirking at?"

The cap lowered again.

"You can go get seconds if you want," Taine said quietly from beneath its shielding brim. "They don't care if the line's gone. At least my old school didn't."

"No time," I replied, pointing at the wall clock. We only got thirty minutes for lunch at Polk, and I had spent most of it waiting in the cafeteria line.

Without a word, Taine slid his untouched tray over to me, then got up and slouched away.

"Thanks," I called after him, but he had already blended into the throng of kids making their way from the lunchroom.

Debating my options with three minutes left, I wolfed down what I could of my bonus meal, then placed both trays onto the nearly-full cart, remembering my awful days on lunch duty. With my good deed done for the day, I hurried to my next class.