Miss Notorious Attention ***.

By third lunch, word of Blaine had circulated among fellow eleven-graders. Curious eyes shied away from his conspicuous demeanor when he would walk by them, only to glance fleetingly at his receding figure.

Blaine’s poise was waned to inexistence by fourth period, and he proceeded with a cautious self-consciousness, his wandering eyes open like a lost orphan’s. The hallways were as broad as rivers, the vaulted ceilings beyond the outstretched arm of a giant, and the large double doors linking hallways together were constructed for large elephant herds. But Blaine never ceased to feel a daunting sense of the claustrophobia of unfamiliar things; closing all around him, he found them everywhere his orphan eyes flitted to.

And how they stared.

They say sticks and stones would break some bones,
But names will never maim.
But do ugly leers and chafing stares
Also count towards the same?

In the cafeteria, Blaine’s line wound past the maze of the serving line and snaked around nearby tables. He began to feel the pinch and pressured ache of the lower muscles of his ankles as they battled between gravity and his viciously steep stilettos. His corset was beginning to become bothersome as it dug into his ribs and restricted movement. Along with his attire, his mood grew pessimistic. Raking a tired hand through his usually perfectly maintained marble-blonde hair, he found that he didn’t care as much of his appearance as he did earlier that morning. He didn’t need to; others seemed to care enough for him, based from the way they stared.

Fifteen minutes wasted away before he was able to order from generic public school lunch food. The cheese from the pizza was baked to indigestible hardness, and the crust was tough enough to scrape at the insides of his cheeks as he tried to chew. The chicken sandwich tasted as processed as pure fructose corn syrup. The carton of two percent milk was a solid block of ice.

And then there was the dilemma of finding an available seat. Third lunch was incredibly crowded; there was a myriad of cafeteria food and the strange, clashing scent of individual people in the air. The secondhand oxygen seemed impossibly thin.

Blaine skirted among various round, rectangular, and pedestal-like tables hosting various cliques as they chatted idly. The air was warbling with intermingling voices of the student body. It all seemed so familiar but at the same time, he felt so helplessly lost. Intruding, almost.

And though the cafeteria was so crowded, he couldn’t help but feel unnervingly exposed to curious eyes that watched as his stilettos directed him to dim, less-populated areas on the outskirts of the cafeteria that Blaine of the shallow, uninhabited ends of lagoon pools. He was a tiny, flashy goldfish meandering, searchingly, for acceptance in the vast, strange lands of the deep ocean ridge where there were foul garden-variety predators that would eat him alive.

He was an outsider, that much was obvious, and if it didn’t radiate from his shy demeanor, it was announced from his chattering stilettos and loud makeup. His masculinity disappeared, hidden from the pinching stays of the corset that was tight enough to squeeze a lung. His corset didn’t only hide the masculinity, it mutated it; after months of wearing corsets, the taut material insured that his ribs and hipbones were shaped and altered to fit its curves. He couldn’t turn it back.

After spotting a quiet round table that was farthest from the serving lines, he chose a seat and plucked his tray down. Nearby heads turned. Attention followed him like glowing phosphorescence, but it was spoiled and unwanted.

For once, he didn’t want it. He wanted to disappear.

Blaine was ill at ease as he picked at an excuse of a salad consisting of limp lettuce leaves and tomatoes, covered with runny buttermilk ranch. It tasted almost as bad as he felt.

It got worse as the name-calling began.

After retrieving the latest Harry Potter novel and pushing his blocky reading glasses on, he was leafing through the pages to find his dog-eared stopping point when a group of upperclassmen brushed past him to discard their trays at the yellow trash bin nearby. They were the bulky type, with corded muscles and intimidating statures, wearing matching varsity wrestling team jackets. He could almost smell the hostility of an A-type bully radiating from them as strong as their masculine colognes that were causing Blaine to gag as he burrowed his nose deeper into the novel. Peering from his peripheral view, he tried his best to be as undetectable as possible.

He had no such luck.

As they turned to leave, one of the wrestlers, the tall one from his pre-calculus class, pivoted around, his black eyes scrutinizing surrounding tables until his eyes connected with Blaine’s peeking doleful eyes magnified by thick reading glasses. He taps his friend’s shoulder. The blonde one’s eyes followed his pointed direction, and a slow smirk materialized on his unremarkable face. They found miss red-and-black clad Waldo. He snickered something that Blaine couldn’t pick up, causing the tall one to laugh. When the other wrestlers didn’t catch on, the two friends regaled them, and soon they were all laughing.

Soon his face matched his crimson red shoes.

Discarding the half-eaten granny smith apple onto his tray, he hastily dog-eared the single page he’d read and stood up on wobbling legs, his ankles renewing their battle with gravity. He needed out.

Precariously, Blaine shrugged on his plush, oversized purse and carried his tray to the trash bin, trying his best to snake around the wrestlers nonchalantly.

It was all fine until he turned his back to leave, and one of them called to him, “Hey, where’re you off to, faggot?”

His saunter faltered and the tip of his cartilage-pierced ears burned.

Ignore it, his conscious murmured.

He suddenly felt all wrong, and awkward, as he fumbled his way through the hodge-podge of tables and wandering people. Inevitably, he felt eyes following him and his prominent phosphorescence. He could feel their disproval drilling pinpricks into the back of his neck.

“Wait up!” another one quipped as they pursued him, laughing. He realized that his quickened pace was obvious retreat.

Confidence. That’s all you ever needed.

They found alternative routes around the tables, and other people parted for them like they were the damn Red Sea.

“Not so fast, newbie.”

They surrounded him before too long.

“You don’t have to run from us. Grow some balls and be a…man.” The end of his sentence was lost in peals of sniggers. They proceeded to shove him back and forth between them, like a ping-pong ball, and were amused as he lurched in his unforgivable shoes.

“The faggot probably doesn’t have any,” piped a wrestler he recognized- Trevor from Latin.

“Don’t call me that,” Blaine mumbled ineffectually.

“There’re other things we could call you,” the tall one admonished with a wave of the hand. “Let’s see…There’s ‘queer’, ‘fairy’, ‘Nancy Boy’ or ‘homo’,” he listed off of his fingers mockingly, “Or if you don’t like those, there’s always ‘emo’, ‘slut’ and ‘man-whore’-.”

“You’re a lot of things that we don’t like,” the one with the crooked nose remarked.

The rest of the wrestlers guffawed at his words.

“-And Harry Potter geek,” he finished, reaching out and swiping the thick novel out of Blaine’s spindly fingers. With a solid thud, it landed on the ground, the jacket cover sliding off. It was kicked beneath the nearest table, among spilt milk and chunks of sliced peaches. Gritting his teeth as he crouched down to retrieve it, he staggered awkwardly to his knees as his stilettos gave way. His thick, black-framed glasses slid down the bridge of his nose and teetered on the tip before clattering to the concrete floor and skittering to the blonde one’s feet.

Aghast, Blaine could only watch as the athlete’s size ten foot hovered inches above the pair of glasses before unceremoniously crashing down. Smash! The bridge snapped in half. And again- smash! The lenses cracked like gravel under his feet. Book in hand he inched away, crawling backwards before stumbling to his feet and taking flight, lip quivering furiously.

They laughed at him like ravens.

***

His purse bashed against his side and the stilettos boomed click-clack-clack-clack in a heated tempo while he sprinted towards the bathrooms nearby.

He didn’t deserve it.

He was Blaine Adam Wolfe. He was funny, he was intelligent, and he could play the viola with remarkable skill. He was considerate to you if you let him, and you could never be bored in his company.

He was just like everyone else, only they didn’t see. Their perspective was only skin-deep, and their judgmental eyes tucked him away in a box labeled ‘freak,’ isolating him solely on his looks. They never gave him a chance to explain himself.

If racism and sexism were deemed wrong, then why was lookism reacted with indifference? All his life he was taught ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, but it seemed that he was an exception to this maxim. And, God, did they judge him. It wasn’t fair.

He deserved courtesy, he deserved respect, goddamnit.

And whatever happened to ‘treat those the way you would like to be treated’? Or maybe he didn’t deserve it; he was being such a child, wallowing about petty things. They were bastards, all of them. He didn’t need them.

Frustration welled up inside his stomach like a tight fist.

Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.

Blaine hated crying. Other than ruining his toiled-over makeup, it created a sticky residue on his face and it was completely incontrollable; once the faucets started running, they never seemed to stop until he would exhaust himself.

He skidded to a haphazard stop in front of the two bathrooms. By habit, Blaine automatically started walking towards the left; the boys’ bathroom. But, he stopped midway in his third step when he realized his dilemma.

Boy or girl- which one are you?

He didn’t even know what he was anymore. It was truly the saddest cliché that he ever realized about himself. His indecision ballooned pressure into his chest until he was sure he would explode if he didn’t expel it soon.

He was crying now.

Making a hasty decision, Blaine veered to the right and made a beeline to the girls’ restroom, rubbing his eyes furiously as if he wished to cram his tears back in where they belonged.

Inside, the bathroom was vacant, and as he rushed towards the floor-length mirror, he cried more freely knowing that there was no one in sight. He glowered at his reflection with sudden fierce hatred. Black rivulets of mascara and tears trickled down his face. His eyes were hard with aggravation as his reflection glared back. Outside, he could hear the faint sound of the lunch bell ringing. Third lunch was over. Fifth period was starting in five minutes.

What the hell is wrong with you? Stop crying! Stop crying!

Blaine turned away, unable to stare at the ghastly train wreck before him. He snagged a fistful of brown paper towels and scoured his face with them until his tears dried up and he stopped shuddering.

What are you? What are you?

He wished he could stop thinking for at least once.

What are y-

Footsteps. Blaine shrank away from them, turning to hide his face.

His clothes betrayed him.

“Blaine? What are you doing here?” He didn’t need to look to see that it was his pre-calculus teacher. He didn’t reply.

Her next words were gentle. “You can’t be in here, Blaine. This is the girls’ bathroom.”

And you aren’t a girl, she didn’t need to add.

Nodding, he obeyed and rose without a word. Shamefaced, he couldn’t look his teacher in the eyes as he turned and left.

It was to the boys’ bathroom, then.

Blaine paused at the threshold when he heard the squeak of sneakers against the tile floor. Tentatively, he slipped into the bathroom, cringing as his shoes announced his entry for him.

There were four upperclassmen. Three pairs of eyes were upon him; the last pair was facing a urinal at the left wall.

One of them began, “You must be lost,” when another interrupted him.

He grabbed his sleeve and whispered, “Dude- it’s him!”

They needed no elaboration.

Moments later, Blaine found himself running away from the boys’ bathroom, the late bell for fifth period screeching and a bruise forming on his face.