One Shots 3.0 [boyxboy]

Tears

A/N: This isn't called Tears because it's sad, promise.

I'm one of the Invisible People.

I'm not mad about it.

There are a group of people like me in every high school in the world; kinda average, boring, not fat or ugly enough to get picked on by everyone else, but not fun or interesting enough to be engaged by them either.

We muddle through with decent, but not exceptional, grades, and when we bother to turn up to reunions everyone else thinks we're somebody's date, because they can't remember having a single class with us.

But like I said, I'm okay with this set up.

That's because I live directly across the street from Caleb Cassidy, who is The Most Popular Boy At School, and my bedroom faces right out onto Acorn Drive, and when he decides to throw a party - which is roughly twice a month or so during the school year and what feels like every goddamn day over the summer - it lasts long into the night and I get little to no sleep. It was on one of these nights that I decided that everybody who attends Caleb Cassidy's parties is an obnoxious fuckperson, and that I'm not sorry that I don't get to spend any quality time getting to know them, or drink with them, or fuck them, or whatever.

My parents, who sleep at the other side of the house, do not have to suffer this bi-monthly slumber suspension, and think that Caleb Cassidy is A Nice Boy. They ask why I don't get a ride to school with him. They ask why I don't sit with him at lunch. They tell me that after all he's been through, I could do with being a little kinder to Caleb Cassidy.

Like kindness is in short supply for Caleb Cassidy.

I guess when we were little kids, Caleb Cassidy and I used to play together. That's not super weird, considering we live so close and were both into Transformers and baseball. But when we got to middle school the popularity fairies sprinkled their magic dust all over him and not me, and we kind of drifted apart. I started reading non-fiction books about physics and history and psychology, and he started going to parties and kissing girls on the mouth.

Then when we were thirteen, he was on vacation with his family out in Ontario and I guess the guest house they were staying in caught on fire. Everyone got out okay, but not before Caleb sustained third degree burns all down the left side of his body. He had them on his arm and his chest and his shoulder and his face.

That's why he keeps his hair all shaved off now. Because there are parts on his scalp where it just won't grow.

Anyway it's bullshit what they say about kids treating you different if you're hideously disfigured, because Caleb Cassidy came back to school later that year and he was as popular as ever.

Not that he's hideously disfigured, I guess. I mean, the burns are there. They're obvious, because he never got skin grafts or anything, and they left some pretty gnarly scars, but it turns out even a house fire can't erase good genetics, because he's still got his dad's six-foot-two height and his mom's bright blue eyes and he's still fit and athletic and funny and interesting. And it's not like the popularity fairies took back their magic dust.

So that's what my parents are talking about, I guess, when they say he's been through a lot. Surviving a house fire and everything.

But it's not like he's sitting around on a Saturday night eating Cheerios and binge-watching Mr Robot episodes and wondering why the Invisible Kid across the street doesn't ride with him to school or sit with him at lunch.