The boy across the table

It was about halfway through my eighth-grade year. This was the third middle school I had been to, for really no reason at all. After we moved to Texas, my stepmom switched me to a different school because I wasn’t doing well at the first one. I was a quiet kid. I didn’t have many friends, but I had a few, and honestly, that was good enough for me. I never really cared about being popular or having a huge group of people around me. I was comfortable keeping to myself. At least, I thought I was. I remember this day very well. It was the first time I ever really saw him. I was sitting at a table in the cafeteria, barely paying attention to anything around me. The cafeteria was loud, like it always was—chairs scraping against the floor, people yelling across tables, trays being dropped, and hundreds of conversations happening all at once. None of it really mattered to me. Not until I looked up. And then I saw him. I don’t know what made me look over. Maybe it was just coincidence. Maybe I was bored. Whatever the reason, the second I saw him, I couldn’t seem to look away. He had perfectly tan skin covered in the cutest freckles, super curly black hair, and the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. I didn’t know his name. I didn’t know anything about him. But for some reason, I couldn’t stop looking. I eventually forced myself to look away, pretending like I hadn’t been staring at him at all. After that day, I only noticed him a few more times. Usually, it was when people were trying to fight him. I never understood why. They didn’t seem to have a real reason for it. From what I could tell, they just wanted to see if they could beat him. It was like fighting him was some challenge to them. He never seemed like someone who was looking for trouble. But somehow, trouble always seemed to find him. There was one time I remember hearing the nurses talking about him. I wasn’t trying to listen. I just happened to be close enough to hear them. “That poor kid really has it bad. He’s a good kid, but he can’t stay in school,” Nurse Katy said. The other nurse sighed. “He’s always getting himself in trouble. His home life is even worse than here.” I remember feeling confused. I didn’t know him. I had barely even spoken to him. But hearing them talk about him like that made me wonder what could have happened to him. Then Nurse Bell said something that I never forgot. “I wish we could do more to help, but he’s already going into a foster home soon.” I don’t remember what happened after that. Maybe I walked away. Maybe the bell rang. Maybe I just stopped listening. What I do remember is that it was the last time I ever saw or heard about him. From what I remember, he was expelled. But I can’t be sure. Rumors can always be lies. And at the time, I never imagined that years later, I would think about that boy again. I never imagined I’d wonder where he went. Or who he became. And I definitely never imagined that one day, I’d be sitting across a table from him again.