The Boy Behind the Mask

His eyes were stories waiting to be told.

Photo by Hamid Tajik from Pexels

You’d know him if you saw him.

The eyes, someone might say. Those eyes just speak to you, don’t they?

I wouldn’t nod — no, too telling, I’ve made that mistake before — but my own gaze would still trail after him. His gait loped as if he were on a trek across a savanna instead of an ordinary school in the suburbs.

Then I’d close my eyes and swallow, thinking how it was such a shame I knew him only by little things like his eyes and his walk. Everything else could have fallen by the wayside, but I would still know him by such trite tells of personhood.

You’d think I would have talked to him.

But I liked the mystery of him. I could conjure a shadow self of him up in my mind and make an adventure for him to walk. It would be like creating an avatar for a video game. Safe, distant, wordless. I worked best in those realms of being.

We crossed paths more than once, silhouettes overlapping for one moment while he went on with his life and I stood still.

There were other boys. There always had been. But back then we hadn’t had the luxury of masks to hide the more vulnerable pieces of our expressions. I didn’t find it easy to tell when someone smiled behind a mask…