Jake Adams March 15th, 20XX

There was an odd guy in my class.

He wasn’t weird enough to be dislikable, nor did he stand out enough for anyone to hate or like him. No matter how I turned it around, odd was the best term I could use to describe him.

From the little I knew about him, I knew that he should have been amongst the most popular people at the school. He got great grades, his looks were above average, and he was even in the business management program. Usually, all the aspiring artists and athletes like myself clung tightly to people like him, since they usually ended up being pretty successful in the future.

That was why it was so strange that he flew as low on the radar as he did.

For all his looks he never stood out, and for all his brains he didn’t have any followers or even friends. He seamlessly faded into the background of any setting he was in and always had a detached expression on his face.

It was all bad to begin with, but he also wore slightly oversized uniforms that made him look smaller than he actually was. He kept his black hair long and slicked back with a thick and shiny gel, and hid his features behind large glasses that made it hard to see anything beyond them. It was strange, though. His lack of presence went beyond just not being popular. Even his name would fade out in the attendance list, and teachers would often forget to call on him during attendance.

I snapped back to attention as the teacher began a half-hearted explanation of the partner assignment and sighed in annoyance as she quickly sat back down and got to work on an independent project. I couldn’t believe that someone so dispassionate about their job could teach at a prestigious school like this one.

The class was a non-credit one I had chosen at random, so none of my usual friends were in it with me. The class quickly divided into pairs predetermined by outside friendships, and it soon left me on my own. I scanned the class for anyone else that might have gotten left out and locked eyes with the subject of my previous boredom driven thoughts. Finn.

We nodded in acknowledgment as our eyes met, and he gathered his things to come over and join me at my larger table. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, but we somehow always sought assurance from each other on our willingness to work together.

To call us friends was a bit of a stretch, but I could say with some certainty that I was the only one at this school that had seen him outside of a school setting, but that had been last year and was for a term-end project.

A leg suddenly stuck out in front of him and I flinched as he let out a surprised yelp and crashed down toward the floor. His glasses flew off his face during the momentum of his fall. I quickly got out of my seat and went to help him up.

As I lifted him up, I couldn’t help but notice how light he was. Even though he temporarily leaned his entire weight on my arm, it felt about as burdensome as when my younger sister did the same.

I bent over to grab his glasses off the floor as he patted himself off from his fall and quickly handed them over when I noticed he squinted.

“You okay?”

He nodded and took the glasses from me. Before he could shove them onto his face, I caught sight of his eyes for the first time. They were large for one, much larger than the thick glasses would make one believe. For the second, they were a clear, sparkling and analyzing blue that clearly did not need glasses of any kind.

Could they be fake?

I quickly dismissed the thought; after all, who would wear fake glasses as uncool as those?

Finn coughed to get my attention back from my train of thought. He looked embarrassed by the fall and probably wanted to move on from the scene as quickly as possible.

“Shall we get to work?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Convenient time skip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My friends intercepted me in the halls as I walked to the cafeteria, and one of them took the time to download all the gossip she had gathered across her day. The rest of the group slowly joined us on the long walk down to the cafeteria and tried their best to keep up with the steady stream of chatter.

I’d always thought it was a pity that she was in acting classes instead of journalism, but there was no way she would have risked being alone in any of her classes. She thrived off of gossip but only existed in relation to her friends.

She finally got to a piece of news that caught my interest, so I tuned back in.

“So, you remember the guy from this morning?”

“You mean the one with the bike?”

She empathetically nodded and continued to speak,

“Well, I did some research and turns out his name is Finley Hall, but he goes by Finn. He’s been here since middle school.”

Alice, who was the leader of the group and my girlfriend, joined us with her usual entourage behind her and leaned in to talk to me in her usual quiet voice.

“What’s the topic this time?”

“Apparently Finn hall.”

“Who?”

I shrugged in response; even though I knew who he was, I didn’t know why he was a topic of conversation.

“I’m not too sure myself, but I’m sure she’ll get there.”

She turned back to Vanessa, who had momentarily stopped her chatter and nodded for her to continue.

“As a person he isn’t all that interesting, he entered as a *benefit student, but he’s maintained a pretty decent average. He’s a year younger than us, so he skipped a grade somewhere. He also took a course with four years’ worth of information at a university this summer and passed at the top of the class!”

Yet all of that information didn’t qualify as interesting.

Alice slightly frowned in passive curiosity. It wasn’t enough to put me on guard, but it was more than she usually gave to Vanessa’s person of the day segment.

“If he isn’t all that interesting, then why is he a topic of conversation?”

This was apparently the question Vanessa had been waiting for because she lit up like a lightbulb. The rest of the group had joined by this point and listened with varying levels of interest.

“There’s a rumour going around that he found a sponsor of some sort and is in line for a sizeable amount of money after he graduates. I haven’t been able to solidify anything yet, but if it’s true, shouldn’t we get closer to him?”

I could bet that everyone knew about this rumour but the person himself. I could also take a reasonable guess that even if it was true, he would be horrified to find himself a prominent point of interest to so many people. Although I knew so much more than the others, I remained silent. I wasn’t a big fan of gossip and I didn’t dislike or like Finn enough to put him under the spotlight of people’s attention.

Alice tapped her nose like a cartoon character as she thought,

“Where have I heard that last name before?”

Probably during attendance… he’s in multiple of your classes. In fact, he’s in all of them but the performance-related ones.

I thought, but once again I stayed quiet.

Vanessa suddenly squealed at a pitch I didn’t know was humanly possible and pointed across the room to where Finn sat. I tried to look at him from Vanessa’s point of view but couldn’t make the connection between the kid I saw and the legendary figure Vanessa had spoken about. He sat by himself at a decent-sized table that stayed empty despite the otherwise full cafeteria. He looked to be reading what looked like a business magazine.

Because I’d brought my lunch from home, I alone continued to watch Finn as the rest of the group bought theirs and saw what I could only describe as a spectacle.

A pen dangled off his ears as he read, which placed his glasses at an awkward, lopsided position on his face. His hair gel had loosened to a point where he had to tie it back with a pink scrunchie he’d probably borrowed off someone.

All was well until his pen suddenly fell out of his hair and onto his lap.

He tried to catch it as it fell, which caused the myriad of books precariously balanced on him to crash onto the floor along with the pen. I stifled a laugh as he glanced around and set himself back up before anyone noticed.

Andrew, having finished buying his meal, leaned closer to me and talked in an amused whisper

“Is that a business magazine? What could he possibly be doing; checking the stocks? Looks like a poser.”

I shrugged in reply and followed the crowd until I found myself standing behind Vanessa, who was asking permission for us to sit down in front of his table.

Finn slowly lifted his glasses over his eyes, though they did nothing to hide their intensity, and made eye-contact with each of ours. A shiver ran down my spine as his gaze connected with mine, and after a long minute of quiet thought, he nodded and went back to his magazine.

The group filled the rest of the lunch period with meaningless gossip and failed attempts to include Finn in the conversation; even Alice tried, which surprised all of us, yet Finley took no notice. Slightly before the bell, he stood up and gathered his things with his head low, but once he was done, he lifted his head and spoke in a soft voice.

“Today was…. Pleasant. Thank you.”

He then gave us a small but dazzling smile before walking away. We all watched him walk away and out of the room before the group resumed the conversation. It was like they needed the permission of his absence before they could resume the conversation.

I shook my head to rid those thoughts from my head. Whenever he got involved, I would start to think more than necessary and I felt an urge to get to know more about him as if it would change my usual mundane life.

Our walk out of the cafeteria was suddenly interrupted by a sudden and loud shriek from the end of the halls followed by a ...chicken squawk?

A figure flew past us in the halls, followed by a swarm of chickens running after it. I vaguely wondered who the figure was until when I caught sight of the shoes. They belonged to the pair of legs that had tripped Finn in class.

Right before I could solidify my theory, Finn stepped into my line of vision with his hair back down and significantly emptier backpack. All was right with him except for a single white feather dangling off the ends of his blazer.

As I discreetly pulled it off him and put it into the trash, I felt like my earlier thoughts were confirmed.

He was an odd guy.