I can still remember the day I first met him. The day my hellish life in Wakefield High changed forever. It was the beginning of my senior year, and it began in much the same way as the years that preceded it – with a bang.
"THEODORE!" My name fired from the mouth of Kevin Bates like a gunshot and I braced myself for what I knew was to come. My annual welcome – Bates' style. Before I knew it, my body had slammed sideways into my locker, the tinny sound of the collision ringing harshly in my ears. I managed to maintain my footing, somehow, but everything in my arms crashed to the floor – two textbooks and a pencil case, the contents of which flew in every direction about the narrow, crowded hallway.
Kevin and his buddies let out a lackadaisical, yet pointed laugh, taking some strange pleasure in the sight of my fumbling. I watched as they turned and lumbered away, moving as they always did with sloth-like speed and enthusiasm.
Moments later the bell rang, as if to signal my demise, sending my more agile peers stampeding down the hallway like a herd of angry buffalo, trampling my pens and pencils along the way.
My shoulders slumped. Deflated, I looked on as each of the tiny cylinders rolled further and further away from me. It wasn't long until they appeared to be nothing more than distant ships adrift in an ocean of feet.
Not a single soul noticed my floundering or my scattered belongings, and soon they had all disappeared into their respective classrooms, which meant I was finally as alone as I nearly always felt.
This was the sort of aloneness I preferred - the absence of others. There was nothing worse than its counterpart - to experience that same feeling of aloneness in a place clamouring and buzzing with people. People who seemed to want nothing to do with me. People who never seemed to see me at all. That feeling, I was sure, was the most horrid, soul crushing feeling on the planet. And so I cherished rare moments of relief like these when there were simply no people around at all.
I crouched down and began gathering the scattered contents of my pencil case, which now lay strewn about the white tile floor, like some bizarre piece of modern art.
One more year, I repeated to myself. One more year and I would be able to escape this place forever.
It was in moments like this that I cursed my parents for having given me the name they did. Theodore Schmidt. How was I ever supposed to survive in a place like this with a name like that? Had there been one measly little ounce of charm or cleverness or wit running through my veins, I may have been able to manage it, but as it was, I had thus far failed to remove the cloak of invisibility that had clung to my shoulders ever since I first entered this place.
I couldn't really blame them though. I was completely and utterly socially inept; incapable of carrying on a conversation without trembling and stuttering about like a fool. Even eye contact, something which seemed so simple, so easy, so natural for everyone else, was a constant struggle for me; something I had to force myself to engage in, and even then there were times my eyes refused to cooperate.
I must sound terribly anti-social, but the truth is, I love people, which I guess is why it hurt so much to feel so alone amongst them. Each time I gathered the courage to reach out to someone, to connect, they only ever seemed to respond in one of two ways: with blindness or with outright cruelty.
As you might imagine, I spent a great deal of time retreating inward, living almost entirely within the confines of my mind. There I could lose myself in a world of dreams and fantasy, far kinder and gentler than my lonely, invisible life.
I had made a comfortable home there, burrowed in my mind, while my hands busied themselves refilling my pencil case, when suddenly, an unfamiliar voice sliced through my thoughts.
"Here you go", it said. In my peripheral vision, I saw a hand reach out toward me, the fingers of which were tightly clasped around three of my pencils.
It took me a moment to realise that I wasn't alone any longer and that there was, in fact, a person attached to that outstretched hand. The realization made my heart thunder within my chest and the only word I could think to utter was "sorry."
It was this word which left my mouth more often than any other. Most of the time I wasn't even sure what I was actually apologizing for, although the list of possibilities was endless - being too boring, being too quiet, too awkward, too ugly, sometimes just for being.
More often than not, this single word was enough to halt any further conversation. The person would leave, and I would return to the haven of safety that was my mind.
On this day, however, something almost miraculous happened. The person didn't leave, and the voice spoke again, two little words which nearly made my speeding heart stop.
"It's okay."
At first I thought it had to be prank, something Kevin and his buddies had surely orchestrated as some vile attempt to further my humiliation. Or perhaps I was still dreaming, and this was some kind, gentle moment my brain had created to sooth my anxieties. This could not, I was certain, be real.
A few seconds passed, and my eyes were still fixed on the outstretched hand before me. I hadn't yet looked up at the person to whom it was attached, but if this was indeed happening, I thought I better force my mouth to say something more.
"Th-thank you. Thanks. Thank you." I mumbled and fumbled through my gratitude, uttering it in every possible configuration my panic riddled mind could muster.
As I reached to take my pencils from the grasping set of fingers, the voice spoke once again.
"No problem".
This time I could hear a slight chuckle accompanying the words and instinctively, I wanted to disappear. Prior to this moment, any laughter I had experienced within these walls was drenched in cruelty, pointed directly at me like a weapon, and never intended to illicit anything other than shame and degradation.
I snapped my head even further downward, my gaze coming to rest on the tile floor, and two feet planted there, turned toward mine. I watched and waited, thinking surely they would move, and the person would leave, and I could finally look up at the barren hallway and breathe again. But it never happened, and I was thoroughly unprepared for what the voice would say next.
"Are you okay?"
I listened this time for laughter or any hints of insincerity, but there were none. Still, I couldn't find the courage to lift my head or my gaze. I just stood there, focusing on the floor, my mouth muted by the presence of this person who seemed, for some strange reason, not to want to walk away.
It was only after a few more moments of staring at the floor that realised I had been asked a question, and according to the rules of conventional conversation, it required an answer. In an instant, my head catapulted upward and my eyes began darting around like two insects in search of daylight. I willed them to focus, but they continued to dance from side to side within their sockets, so much so that I was unable to gain a clear image of the person standing in front of me.
My mouth opened and my voice began to tremble as my mind tried desperately to recall just what it was I had been asked.
Was I okay?
My chest tightened, and I knew then that I must have appeared insane; some muttering fool unable to grapple with the notion of a simple, human conversation. I thought maybe this question was really a polite way of gauging just how far I had slipped from the realms of sanity.
I tried, in vein, to compose myself and summon at least some vague appearance of normalcy. "Oh, sure" I stammered. "Yeah. Yup. I'm alright."
I turned away as the last syllable left my mouth, plunging my face deep into my locker, fearing that I was nowhere near as composed as I ought to have been.
I was in my mind again. Walk away. Just walk away, I pleaded.
And then, another question.
"No broken bones or anything?"
For a moment I was puzzled by it. Why on earth would my bones be broken? And then I realised - whoever it was that was standing next to me had seen it. The whole embarrassing thing. Kevin and his buddies, my body slamming into the very locker which now shielded my face from the world, not to mention my pathetic floundering as I scrambled to gather my belongings from the floor beneath my feet.
But what did it matter if my bones were broken? Why did this person care to know? Surely I could come to school the following morning in a full body cast and no one would have known the difference. I would have still been the same invisible loser I always had been, albeit slightly less mobile, slightly more pathetic, and covered from head to toe in plaster.
I took a deep breath knowing that, like it or not, this question too, required an answer. Closing my eyes, I prepared them for the inevitable moment when I would actually have to look at the person who still stood waiting patiently for my face to emerge from the confines of my locker.
It was like climbing a mountain. Each movement was planned, and carefully, cautiously executed. I stepped backward, and pulled my face from that narrow, dark, safe little spot. As I did, time seemed to travel slower and slower, and when I finally turned my head, it seemed to stop altogether.
It may sound silly, ridiculous even, but I had never seen a person quite like him before. My eyes widened, and with astonishingly little effort, focused in on his. They were the sort of colour which filled the sky on a bright, cloudless day. The sort colour which made me regret every single pair of eyes I had not had the courage to gaze into.
My mind was quick to interrupt, however, issuing an order which roared between my ears with deafening power. ANSWER HIS QUESTION ALREADY!
I jumped to attention in an instant, like a puppet on the end of a string. "No, no" I blurted out, the words finally escaping from between my lips. "I'm durable" I told him, and for some ridiculous reason, I felt the need to rap my knuckles against my head as I said it.
By the time my arm returned to my side, I was flooded with a wave of embarrassment and my eyes slammed shut. Had I really just attempted to display the remarkable durability of my own skull?
I wanted to shove my face in that locker again, but before I could turn away, he laughed this small, sweet laugh that made my eyelids fling open. I was shocked by it, that sound. There was no cruelty in it whatsoever, no questionable intentions, no scorn or belittlement. It didn't hit me like a dagger. It wasn't used as a weapon like all the other laughter had been.
I breathed a heavy sigh of relief, and in the breath of that sigh, he told me his name. "I'm Blake", he said.
Blake.
He said it with this smile that was filled with an almost impossible amount of joy and brightness. It seemed to radiate from his face with the light and warmth of a thousand suns. Soon, and without even realising it, my own face began echoing the brightness in his.
Unfortunately, the moment was dulled somewhat by the mention of my own hideous, loathsome name.
"It's Theodore, right?" he asked with complete innocence, having no doubt heard it trumpet from Kevin's mouth a few minutes earlier.
I was almost ready to go along with it. He was so completely unaware of just how much I detested the sound of those eight little letters, and I wasn't sure I had the heart or the courage, for that matter, to correct him.
As I looked at him though, something within me felt compelled to tell him the truth, even if it did require me to force a few extra words from my mouth. There was something about him that gave me the courage I needed to find my voice.
Only it wasn't quite as strong a voice as I had hoped for. "Actually it's um...well I mean, yes, it's Theodore, but Ted...I go by Ted." I had to stop myself from wincing as the jumbled mess of words and pauses filled the air.
But he seemed strangely unaffected by my awkwardness, and dare I say it, almost charmed by it. He continued to smile, despite my fumbled correction, and then he said it - my name – along with four little words which, to this day, I have never forgotten.
"Well, Ted" he began. "I'm glad you're okay."
It felt as if every circuit in my brain had suddenly overloaded and the voice I had only just found was caught and held firmly in my throat.
His words spun endlessly, round and round inside my mind. I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you're okay.
But he had no reason to be glad. No reason at all. No reason to help me gather my things, no reason to be standing there in front of me, no reason to be kind. And yet, he was.
I knew then that this couldn't be a prank after all. None of Kevin's accomplices could ever smile the way he did. Of course, this still could have been some wondrous creation of my imagination, but I was sure that even my mind, with all of its creative powers, lacked the ability to conjure up someone quite so charming and sweet.
Looking back, if I was to describe him using only a single word, it would be this: disarming. He was completely and utterly disarming, so much so that whatever suspicions I may have had about his character or his intentions vanished in the wake of that smile.
I was so stunned by his words, his kindness, and his joy that for a moment, I actually forgot where I was – the school, the classes, the students, even Kevin – all of it. Gone.
I barely noticed when he told me he had better get to class, but I do remember that he smiled at me once more before turning away.
I suppose the trouble with living in your mind is that you never fully realise the immensity of a moment until it passes, nor the immensity of a person until that person is gone. The world inside you gets so terribly loud; it drowns out the beauty of the present. Our meeting seemed so infinitesimal then, little more than a blip, a mere few seconds in an ocean of time. But I can tell you now that my life was made different by him. I was made different by him. On that day, and for many more, I walked through those hallways a lighter person, a freer person, a happier person, all because he saw me when no one else did.