Notice Me

19

Time is a strange thing.

Months- well, they seem long when you're in them, don't they? When the calendar turns fresh once again, and is hard to fathom that you'll greet a new month in only thirty days.

But, at some point, you look back and you can't see where the last six months have gone. Like they were simply a magic trick, they've disappeared. You can't see time when it's behind you, sometimes you wonder if it ever existed in the first place.

Time seems infinite when you're looking ahead, yet you can only see how wrong you are when you're looking back.

My first few months at West Bridge seemed to move in slow motion. Everything was new and everything needed to be looked at twice. The people, especially. I protested being here, maybe not actively, but subconsciously. I was living in two places, here in the present but also in the past. When you're living in the past, your sense of time complicates.

But now- I'm looking back and wondering where the hell the last year and a half has gone.

I guess it's to be expected when you fall into a routine, and fall into a routine I did. Every day was similar. I drove to school, and we all met at the water fountain in the hall. I went to class, and then I went to the cafeteria and sat with the same people that I did every day.

It was all the same. It was always the same. Olivia was always attached to Noah, in some way or another. Trinity was never far from Olivia, always ready to whisper gossip into her ear. Benji, Jax and Tyler always sat on one side so they could see the girls as they walked through the cafeteria. Cain and I sat at the other, we mostly kept to ourselves. We talked about whatever we felt like talking about, whether it was music or cars, maybe even girls.

And then there was Seren, stuck in the middle of it all.

Seren was always the same, too, except she wasn't. She was the same yet ever changing. She did the same things but with the life in her eyes fading further and further. She talked about the same things, yet she did it with less and less enthusiasm. She left the table to go smoke, but she was starting to do it earlier and earlier each day.

She was the same, yet completely different. In the worst way possible.

I hadn't spoken to her since the night that Cain and I drove her home from that party. The night that she rambled something to me that I would never forget. I'd never forget it for two reasons.

She said she saw me. Seren said she saw me, that was the first reason. The second reason I'll never forget it, was because she said everything was black.

And if that wasn't a hint to her depression, I don't know what else could be.

I stood there after she said those words, just paralyzed. I was stunned by them completely, but it seemed she wasn't stunned by them at all. She had fallen back asleep in the next second, as if they had never left her mouth.

I went to school that Monday intent on talking to her. I was going to do it, I was. I ran through what I was going to say in my mind. I practiced on my drive to school.

But- she didn't see me that day because it didn't look like she had seen anything at all. She was blanker than I had ever seen her before.

Something changed that night- but what?

She wore the same look most of the time that she was wearing right now. I shifted my eyes to her as if to confirm my thoughts, not that I needed to. She looked exactly how I expected her to look- a million miles away while Olivia spoke to her. The longer she went without blinking, the more I knew she wasn't hearing anything that she had to say at all.