These Unseeing Eyes.

I watched as the bus pulled up, every seat empty as I walked on. Riding the bus used to be hard, until the bus driver finally got tired of me sitting on people and assigned me the seat right behind him.

I sat in my seat and set my books on the seat beside me. I stared out the window.

I wish I were homeschooled, it would be so much more easy, not tripping over people, people not tripping over me. It sucks to not see the living.

Well, it only consists of people, animals are sort of visible, blurs like someone took a painting and wiped the colors across the canvas. The dead are completely visible. I don't know why this happened, and I don't know why they come to me to help, but it sure as hell ensures that I have no friends. No social life to speak of.

About as bad as my old school.

The bus wheezes and coughs up to the high school and I get off before anyone else's shoes begin stomping towards the front of the bus. I pretend to use the wall as a guide as I walk through the hall.

Nature Coast Technical High School. How wonderful. I've been here for three years, I'm a junior and have been for a semester, I still have about four months left of school.

I "follow the wall" to my first class, pretend to read the braille on the name tag, and walk into the class. Algebra. No one's here yet, but that's understandable, considering there was about ten minute until the tardy bell.

I sit back in my seat an await the invisible people to arrive.
---
Classes are kind of easy for me, once I learned how to get used to the floating voices from no one. I am in my third class, stomach almost strangling me with hunger for food. Lunch was just 53--wait, 52-- minutes away. I couldn't help but stare at the clock, oblivious to the fact that people were supposed to believe I was blind.

The teacher of my Honors English class wrote sloppily on the board. She had a gangly, awkward voice when she spoke to the class. I saw a picture of her one time, she had frizzy brown hair that had split ends up to her scalp, it looked like. A cheesy smile, tired eyes, and wore brown clothes most of the time. I called her Baglady.

Papers floated back to desks, and one drifted through a line of invisible hands to the blind girl's desk in the back of the class. I was given a sheet with braille. Oh, well. I'd learned braille early in my childhood, a necessity when you're pretending to not be able to see. I ran my fingers over the poky bumps, writing on a clean sheet of notebook paper.

I finished as the rest of the class did. Baglady began to talk about a game she wanted to play with the class. I tuned her out. I never got to play games with my classmates.

I stared at the clock as my class turned into baboons from the jungle. They hooted like wild owls, made loud monkey sounds in a debate over who's was better.

I watched the red hand move sluggishly towards the numbers like she didn't want to do what she was expected to do. But she was almost there. . .

The bell rang. I walked slowly towards the door, getting hit by hurried bodies towards the lunchroom. Hanging back was smartest in school. I had an escort during lunch, but not in the hallways. I had to work my ears to death, listening for footsteps coming near. Because then I would have to move to the side of the hall to avoid being hit by invisible children.

Lunch was always a madhouse. For me, it was worse, because trays would be floating around, flying towards tables. Food would disappear as it went into mouths, vanish as if vapor being blown away by wind.

My escorts name was Beth. She was a chipper girl, always hugging and chattering on. I recall seeing her in the yearbook as well. She wore flashy, colorful clothes, her hair cut short, about three inches long. But that was last years' picture. For all I knew, she could have it down to her shoulders.

Mirrors always came in handy as well as pictures. Because when in a reflection, the person was just a picture, not a living thing. Which made my life easier, but barely.

Beth talked happily about her boyfriend as she led me through the line, a hand at my elbow, another holding her gliding tray. She asked me what I wanted, then named off the dishes being displayed today. I pretended not to see the macaroni and cheese, popcorn chicken, mashed potatoes, fried broccoli, and sugar cookies.

"Popcorn chicken, and honey mustard if they have any. Oh, and a sugar cookie, please." I looked at the white wall vacantly.

I saw the food and sauce be put on my tray out of the corner of my eye. Beth put her food onto her tray and led us to the end of the line, to the loud, beeping receivers of our lunch codes. She set her tray down and typed in both of our numbers, then led us to her table. I sat in my regular seat, all the way at the end. Beth might be considered one of my friends, but her friends were not. One time, Beth tried to introduce me to them, but apparently her friends felt the same way I did. I nodded at every name, but stayed silent, didn't answer any of their questions, and forgot all the names five minutes after wards.

I walked by myself to dump my tray, running my pinky of my right hand along the wall as I headed towards the enclave that you left your trays at.

I like this little room, because only lunch ladies roamed there and even then, they were behind a counter.

I used the wall as my guide as I roamed back, and Beth yelled for me, despite the fact that I knew where her table was.

I sat down and got my things ready for when the bell rang.

I waited, staring at the indents between the painted cement blocks on the lunchroom wall. They weren't very fascinating.

The bell rang.
---
Home. What a comforting word, you think? No. Home is not comforting. Home is dead. It is quiet as I walk in. Quiet as death. Mom is at work, as well as Dad. They come and go as separate times. They sleep in different rooms, Mom in the guest, Dad in the master.

My room is alienated. It belongs to a foreigner, one who is obsessed with purple, who loves stuffed bunnies with beady eyes that follow you across the room. I last decorated when I was five. My mother "showed" me what she thought was cool.

I can't remember what happened that time, but I can at least remember specks of happy family love, mushy kisses every now and then, smiles in their voices.

I will be their divorce. I know it.

I flopped down onto the bed and was out instantly.
---
Get up. Get dressed. Make breakfast. Brush teeth. Go outside, get on the bus. Got to school. I never did anything outside that order. I was doing the same routine over and over again, but I didn't care. I didn't crave the feeling of difference in my life, I was content with what I did now.

It is fourth block, and I sat in the back, as usual. My forearm began to drift to sleep from the pinched nerve on my elbow. I think the only thing out of the ordinary today was the fact that we were getting a new student. I didn't care. My eyes began to grow heavy as the teacher rambled on, the lecture causing more than half of the students yawn and struggle to lift their lids after blinking.

The screaming from the other class danced energetically through the walls from the class beside ours. I yawned once more, my jaw opening, causing my hand to slip back from my chin, and my head pitched down towards the desk, but I corrected it and looked around my dazedly. I heard the teacher yawn and footsteps shuffled where the teacher switched feet, writing classwork up upon the board. The door opened.

I heard every body shift to look behind them to the oak door, standing open. I wrote down the work onto my paper, then opened my braille text book, and began my work, not turning to look at something I couldn't see. People gasp. Titters came from girly mouths, and footsteps drifted lazily down an aisle. The teacher introduced the new student as Schuyler Mirrikh.

My face remain vacant, eyes as well, as I ran my fingers over the soft, tender, comforting words on the paper. I closed my eyes, wrote down answers, read more. I didn't open my eyes after I finished, I just closed my book, and rested my head upon it. My paper remained on the desk. A tap on my shoulder.

"Can I see your paper?" a whisper from behind me. My eyes opened groggily. I looked to the vacant seat behind me, and shook my head.

I went back to sleep.

About fifteen minutes later, the bell rang.

I got up and went to rush to the door, but ran into a solid body who beat me to it. I stumbled backwards, my ankle clipped a desk leg. I turned around to correct my mistake of footing, but ran into another person. My body pitched backwards, and I swung my arms to grab something, to catch myself.

Two warms arms slid around mine and pulled me back up.

"Thank you." I said without turning around. I looked down at my arms, where others grasped mine. My eyes widened and I looked up quickly. I turned around.

I could see! There was a boy behind me, and I could see him! Though his body was more like a wisp of colored smoke, transparent, like a ghost. The dead were solid, like human's should be, not like this. I reached out to touch his chest, keeping my eyes away from his, even though I could see him, I couldn't blow my cover.

His hand reached up as well, and reached for mine. Someone slammed into my shoulder, but not hard enough to cause me to fall. I woke from the dream. My eyes blinked rapidly. End of the day. Bus. I had to get home.

I turned to the door, and reached for the archway, then let the wall actually guide me, because my feet were in a stupor, my legs awkward and clumsy from shock. I could see him.

But as I rode the bus home, I realized one horrible truth that I forgot to remember earlier.

I could only see the dead. Which meant that Schuyler Mirrikh was dead.