***
There he was. Again. Standing right by the far right doors on the cafeteria, by the cooler where the lunch ladies kept the drinks for the deli line. His lunch was on the cooler, spread out neatly. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, sliced into two pieces. An apple. A large bottle of Dean’s milk. As usual. And he had not eaten a crumb. As usual.
Every day he stood there by the cooler alone. Every day he had his lunch out, and he never ate it. Every day he stood there, silently looking down while the rest of Hinsdale Central went about their business. Every day he made it his aim to go about unnoticed by everyone. Every day he failed, because I noticed him. And every day I would feel that nudge in my head, urging me to do something to help him.
Today had been a normal day. Thankfully, because yesterday was not normal. Yesterday, a girl had come up to me. She had snapped in my face. I hated that. Cody had done it all the time at my old school. I didn’t know what I was thinking, but my arm just lashed out at her face. She ducked as if she was some kind of Matrix actor, and then came up yelling, “Whoa! He responds!” He responds. As if I was some person who everyone could look at and notice.
And when they noticed me, they could make fun of me.
I couldn’t let that happen. I ran away from there before she could get anyone to notice, thankfully.
A car nearly ran into me while I was running. I could have died. I got out of that guy’s way, but I was contemplating that, dying. Maybe if I’d died in some secluded place, no one would find me. And then, no one would be able to notice me or make fun of me or throw crap at me. Or snap in my face.
I couldn’t get that out of my mind today. But otherwise today had been a normal day. Now it was lunchtime. I couldn’t eat. I was too busy contemplating dying.
From the middle of the room, among a plethora of old and new friends, I could see him. His name was Mark. Mark Knight. I knew that because he was in band with me. We played the same instrument, trumpet. There were eleven of us. It was marching season, and all of us either played first, second, or third parts. I played first since I love playing trumpet. Mark played third. He wasn’t awful, but he had no idea how to articulate. Perhaps that was because he never talked. Ever. Not even to himself. There were quiet people in band; I tried to be quiet but people kept on noticing me. But he never said a word to anyone. He hardly even responded when people talked to him. I’d never seen him nod, nor shake his head, nor smile. He just kept his head down, played when he had to, and sat there while everyone else had fun.
There was a kid in my band class. His name was Murray, and he looked like Cody. Both had dark brown eyes, and both would sometimes look out of the corners of them at someone, and then turn to that someone and talk to them right then and there. Both had wide, confident grins, with perfect teeth. Both were shorter than me—Cody was 5’7’’, this kid wasn’t any taller than 5’6’’—but they both carried themselves in a manner that said, “Yeah, I’m confident. You’re wasting your time making fun of me, because I’m confident.” But this kid was more dangerous. Cody was outright mean to me. He and his friends wouldn’t stop bullying me for five years. But this kid was much more smooth. He played the piano a lot in band, and he had a way of making that enticing, pleasing sound. His voice was lower than Cody’s, and he spoke a little less. Cody was a typical jock, but this boy was a virtuoso, playing trumpet and piano and four other instruments. He was popular without even trying to be. He seemed nice, he talked nice, he acted nice. But under his skin, I assumed that he was very mean. He hadn’t done anything yet that I knew of, but I knew that if I let him notice me, he could bully me in ways that Cody’s peabrain could have never dreamed of. From my place by the deli line, I could see him with his friends. He kept on looking back towards the deli line. Every time his head turned, I looked down.
You could never get his face to change from that solemn expression. He never smiled, never even let the shadow of a smile penetrate his face. He never really frowned too much either. He just kept that solemn expression and didn’t look at people most of the time. No one, including me, had a sliver of an idea what he was thinking. He could have been thinking of nice things or bombing the entire school. He could’ve been addicted to something, or in general just doing bad things. I was stepping into completely uncharted territory when I went up to him. It had been my excuse for the last few weeks, this fear of the unknown.
And yet I knew that was a lame excuse. Mark was taller than me by at least four inches, but his head drooped, his shoulders sagged, and he looked almost bent over. He wore glasses, but I had seen him take them off to clean them once, and he’d noticed me. That was the only time he’d ever looked at me, and about the second time he had ever looked at anyone besides Mr. Kurinsky, our band teacher. His eyes were grey-blue, and even in that short glare, they betrayed a sea of deep sadness and a clearly broken heart.
I thought of the Bible verse, the one in Isaiah that talked about the Spirit of the Lord. As my friends ate lunch, I remembered the specific verse, Isaiah 61:1, which said, “The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me. He sent me to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken…” Heal the heartbroken. Heal the heartbroken. It played in my head over and over again. The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me…to heal the heartbroken.
There was a heartbroken person a good forty feet away from me. I was a Christian. I believed in all of that stuff.
If I didn’t go up to Mark, maybe God would forgive me, but I would have never forgiven myself. I got out of my lunch table and started making my way towards that cooler.
The boy who looked like Cody got up. He was still looking towards the deli table. I was hoping that maybe he wanted a sandwich or something. I didn’t know how much virtuosos ate, but Cody and his friends had eaten at least two sandwiches a day. He walked, in that smooth way, towards the deli tables. I looked down again.
But instead of hearing that low, glib voice ordering something, I heard footsteps growing louder and louder. They stopped, and I felt the presence of a person in front of me.
“Mark?” I turned. It was him.
I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t run behind the deli line and make a scene. There was no way I could get him away from me.
Unless I told him to go away.
But if I told him to go away, he would hear me. He would hear me stutter. Because I was so nervous, it was certain I would stutter. And once he heard my stutter, that would be the end. He would turn the masses against me.
So I stood there, staring at him, my neck tight, my eyes wide, waiting for some kind of glib confrontation. But then he looked down.
He was scared of me. When I said his name, he looked around, and when he saw me, instantly his neck muscles tightened and his big blue eyes widened. He could not move, he was so scared. As if I would attack him or something. It was an unexpected response. I looked down, pondering. I thought of my friend Emma, a very pretty and nice girl who sat at my lunch table. Why hadn’t God sent her? I wondered. Maybe he’ll be much less scared of a girl. And yet God chose to pick on me. The thought lingered in my head but I had no time to develop it; I had to talk to Mark. When I looked up, he was still scared, but his muscles weren’t so tight anymore.
He had looked down. There was a huge difference from Cody. Cody never looked down, unless it was on someone. Like me for stuttering, or my sister Niamh for being clumsy. He always had his eyes on the target with that perfect grin, sure of victory. This kid did not look so sure. He was thinking and rethinking, uncertain of the outcome of this talk. He did not look like a glib mastermind when he looked down. My tension went down, but I was still suspicious. Maybe he was an actor too.
I smiled, though a little nervously, on seeing him in that manner. “Hey, Mark,” I said, failing to hide my nervousness.
No response, as usual. He stared at me, scanned me. As if he would find anything other than a scared, short freshman who was doing this because of a guilt trip.
When he greeted me, he sounded as if he was trying to hide his nervousness. I’d never dared to act before, but I knew that it was hard to act like an unnerved person pretending to be a nervous person who was pretending not to be nervous.
He then asked me, almost stuttering himself, “Do you sit—I mean stand—here every day?”
What the heck? I thought. You know I sit here every day…don’t you? I nodded slowly.
He gave me a very slow nod, his eyes never moving from my eyes, his expression never changing. I had made a tiny little dent in his wall. I had to follow up, but what was there to say?
I racked my brain. “Yeah…this cafeteria’s really big,” I said. And then, all of a sudden, I was on a haphazard, yet fairly fluid rant. “You look kind of lonely sitting—I mean standing—here all alone. I mean, I don’t know if you enjoy it or not, but…”
“I just wanted to say, in case you want to sit with people, you can sit with me and my friends. We sit over there”—he pointed to a long table right next to the snack bar—“by the snack bar. None of my friends are mean people. I sit with Jack Bruin, remember him? From band? And also…”
There was no slyness in his voice, no hidden smirk, nothing that would identify him as a bully or even a cold person. He went on about his friends. I knew all of them; Jack Bruin, Emma Christensen, Vince Porreca, Roy Morrison. None of those people seemed mean either.
My instincts wanted to nail me to the ground, keep me safe from this intruder and his friends. And yet there was also a lingering possibility, that made my heart jump. This kid may really want to be my friend.
“I’m not making you do what you don’t want to, Mark,” I continued. I looked at my watch; the lunch period was about to end. “And honestly, I don’t know what you think about standing over here every day, but it seems kind of lonely over here. So, if you want to come sit with us, you can come tomorrow. Remember, we sit right there, by the snack bar. OK?”
He nodded. His facial expression never varied.
The bell rang, and everyone dispersed. Mark gathered his lunch and slipped away. I sighed. Urgh, that was so disorganized! I thought angrily. And yet I heard what I’m pretty sure was God saying to me, That’ll work just fine. You’ve done well, Murray.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned around to see Emma. She looked serious. “You saw me, didn’t you?” I asked.
She nodded. “What did you say to him?”
“I…asked him if he would like to sit with us. Tomorrow,” I said, stammering almost.
She smiled. “That was really brave of you. He didn’t seem to react, though. Do you think he appreciated it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think I convinced him that much. Whatever, though. If he wants to sit with us, then he’ll come. If he doesn’t, let him be a hermit. It’s up to God now.”
On the way to class, I remembered having been to church once, and hearing a story about some guy. The guy had felt a gust of wind, felt an earthquake, saw a huge fire. But God was not in any of those, according to the story. He had been a still, small voice. I thought of Murray. His voice was very still, calm, and unimposing. There had been nothing grand about his rant, nothing slick, nothing that would win a forensics contest. And yet it had obviously gotten to me, for I could not stop thinking about it.
I wondered (way in the back of my mind, because I thought church was baloney) if God had used Murray as his still, small voice.
