Lunch was stupid. Well, the first part of lunch. The part with the eating, and sitting. The part when talking and laughing, etc. was supposed to take place.

The second part wasn’t so bad, when Jeffrey could stroll as if on his way to meet someone or engage in something fun or worthwhile, but secretly sneak (back) to the restrooms to consume more content hidden alone.

Today, though, before any of his normal lunch routines could begin, as he waited silently somewhere in the middle of the long line outside the cafeteria, inhaling a waft of fried and baked smells far, far more pleasant than Finnel’s smoke, he noticed a girl he’d never seen before seated at the only bench and table in the shade.

She was staring at him.

In fact, her eyes were so fixed and intense he shook his head at first and looked behind, sure that she must be peering at someone else. But there was no one.

Her gaze stayed locked like a sniper scope on Jeffrey, studying him.

He felt like an insect trapped mid-flight in a net, jarred, and then stuck in a room to be watched for entertainment or whatever reasons people look at bugs in jars, fish in tanks, or animals at zoos.

He forced his eyes forward, took a few breaths to gage time passing, then looked back a little.

But the expression on the girl’s face had somehow grown even more urgent and pressing . . . more resolute and serious . . . as if she had the most important news in the world to share with Jeffrey only, and it had to be now. She appeared to be staring straight through him, x-raying his organs, blood, and bones. Her unchanging expression might as well have told him she’d detected something life-threatening beneath the surface to diagnose and get a team dedicated to removing or reversing right away.

Out of nowhere, she beckoned him over, raising her left arm up straight with fingers locked out, then snapping her hand toward her by bending her elbow.

He shot his eyes ahead again, pretending not to have seen her as he willed the line to move so he could escape her weird attention and invitation.

Once inside, he grabbed and loaded a tray full of breaded chicken, steaming potato circles, and shiny corn. He set a milk box beside his food, balanced it carefully, and wandered toward the exit door, intending to occupy one of the empty tables at the farthest side of the courtyard, nowhere near the mysterious girl and her unyielding eyes.

Yet as he beelined toward a safe spot to stop and scarf down his meal before disappearing, there she was rushing his same table from the outside, cutting him off so he’d be forced to make a massive scene should he try to pivot (probably spill his lunch) and get away.

“You need to talk to me,” she said flatly. Not: I need to talk to you… No, it was: YOU need to talk to ME.

“Why?” he managed, setting down his tray as if in surrender. “Who are you?”

“You don’t know me?” she asked, her stern face showing the slimmest glimmer of disturbance.

“No.”

“I’m Gel. I’m . . . I’m in your math class, english, and PE. You’ve never seen me before?”

“I don’t think so.”

He let himself glance up from his food some to study her face. But there was still no recollection. In fact, he would have found it difficult to describe her appearance at all.

She had shortish black hair and darkish skin, but no real features to differentiate her that much from others or draw attention. Normal eyes (despite their intensity), nose, ears, and height. She was thin, but not too thin. She wore dark-blue jeans and a black shirt with no shown logos or other decor.

Now, if held hostage and threatened or tortured to the point of total mental and sensory depletion, Jeffrey probably would have come close to considering the possibility of maybe admitting he might have almost noticed how Gel could one day be likely considered attractive in a very indistinct, Oh yeah, of course, but doesn’t matter! sort of way.

But that was certainly nowhere near anything he thought consciously as he worked to figure out who she could be.

He felt pretty sure he’d really never noticed her before . . . though it wasn’t like he paid much attention to anyone at school (or anywhere else), anyway.

She wasn’t someone whose videos he watched online. So, she might as well have been no one.

“I guess that doesn’t surprise me,” said Gel, obviously a little surprised. “I saw the picture you drew today. And I’ve seen when it’s happened before.”

Jeffrey gleefully envisioned stuffing down the rest from his tray while speeding to the restrooms.

“I need to put that a different way,” she continued, “but I don’t want it to freak you out.”

“Ok,” he hazarded.

“I saw what you were looking at when you drew that face today in math.”

“I wasn’t looking at anything,” he replied, wondering how many others were fixing to call out his secret shame before the day was done.

Sure, Gel was better than Finnel to find himself blindsided by…

But did literally everyone know the what, how, and why behind Jeffrey’s peculiar tendencies (more than he did)?

“Yes, you were,” she corrected. “I saw it too.”

“Saw what?”

“First, what did the Mad Doctor tell you?”

“The . . . Mad Doctor?” 

“The Mad Doctor Finnel,” she huffed, impatient, as if everyone should know their school principal by that title.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he responded, spooning a spud wheel into his mouth so as to make discussing today’s Finnel incident less viable.

“Don’t believe anything he says!” she warned, a flame-like twinkle flashing across the width of her piercing stare. “The Mad Doctor will tell you whatever he thinks he needs to. Trust me, he has no idea what’s going on. He might see the . . . the results . . . things like your drawings or my…” She trailed off, but then picked up again. “...anyway, he doesn’t know. He can’t!”

“He told me the opposite. Like, he wasn’t aware of my drawings, but knows all about the way I see things. He said he knows everything that goes on like that in the school.”

“It’s a lie,” she barked. “He can’t know. He wants to control it. But he has no idea what he’s messing with!”

“What are you talking about?” Jeffrey mumbled, his mouth again freshly full. 

“You have a power,” Gel explained slowly. “I have it too. I can teach you to use it so you won’t get in trouble. But it’s the power to see through to the true nature of things.”

The way her shoulders appeared to quiver made him wonder if perhaps she’d been holding strong just as long as she could to get her message across, and was now breaking under the weight of her own shared words.

“No thanks,” he answered, taking a swig from his milk.

He noticed then she had no food.

“What do you mean, ‘no thanks’?!” she demanded. “That’s why we’re here. I’m supposed to teach you. It’s no accident the way you see things. You’re here for a reason. We both are.”

Jeffrey thought for a moment as he swallowed the last of his lunch, then responded, “Finnel said something like that about special people in the school. I didn’t really get it. But it’s stupid. Yeah, I get distracted sometimes. I draw, or I say things I didn’t think of saying. There’s no reason behind it, though. That’s crazy.”

Gel held so still she became a thoughtful statue.

He wished he hadn’t used (or ended with) the word crazy. Replaying his phrasing over like a recording in his mind, he regretted the slight razor’s edge he heard his tone had taken.

It wasn’t like he wanted to make this strange girl feel dumb or unhinged. He just longed to leave and quit thinking about all this silly stuff, and to go spend more quality screen time alone before his next class after lunch.

“It sounds crazy, I know,” she answered at last. “I thought so too when my cousin told me. He used to go here, like us. He’s in college now . . . almost graduated. But he taught me how to go with the things I see instead of always fighting not to see them. Believe me, I was just the same as you. I hated being different. But now I’m so glad to…”

“Sorry,” Jeffrey interrupted, something he almost never did. “I don’t believe it. I draw sometimes, that’s all. I don’t think there’s anything special about me. I think Finnel’s just, like, this old guy from another time or something, not any kind of mad scientist or evil ruler. No, it’s not that I think you’re literally crazy. I don’t. I just…”

Not knowing how to finish, he simply stood, tried not to look back into her flaming eyes (failing at least a couple times), and made his way back inside toward darkness and ease.