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  ****

  “What are you doing?” an unfamiliar voice to my right asked me. I turned to see a girl standing next to me, her knees slightly bent as she crouched down to see what was in my hands. She had dark-brown hair, straight-cut bangs over her forehead, and bright brown eyes that I thought might’ve been unblinking. I’d seen her before in school, talking and playing with the other kids, but not once had she ever spoken to me.

  “I’m tying buttons to twigs,” I told her.

  “But why?”

  I looked back down at my latest creation— a colorful piece of art comprised of yellow string, pink, black, and green buttons that hung down in assorted lengths from the twig.

  “Because I’m going to hang it up in my bedroom window, and every time I open the window and the breeze flows through, I’ll hear the buttons snap against each other.”

  “That’s weird,” she replied. “You’re weird.”

  She wasn’t wrong, and it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before. The other kids called me names to my face. I understood why they thought I was weird. I didn’t look like the other kids my age. I was smaller and slighter than the other boys in my class, and my dark-red hair was unlike any natural hair color most people had seen before. At least that’s what my mom said. In the summer, the sun kissed my skin and brought out light brown freckles all over my face, and in the winter, my skin was fair and pale like the color of icing on a cake. I knew my odd looks coupled with my unpopular hobbies had earned me a bit of a reputation.

  Still, I was surprised this girl was talking to me.

  “Why are you talking to me?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I think you’re kind of interesting.”

  “You’ve never talked to me before.”

  “Well, that’s because I don’t want to get picked on. The other kids think you’re weird.”

  “I am weird,” I replied without a hint of sarcasm.

  “Can I watch you make your stick thing?”

  “Sure.” I shrugged. “What’s your name?”

  “Beth.”

  “Okay.”

  I went back to wrapping the bits of string around the stick. I had plans for it once I got home. There were a few small rocks my father had carefully drilled holes through for me to put on necklaces or whatever I liked. I was going to add them to my newest piece of artwork, along with a few of my other prized possessions.

  Beth sat there watching me in silence, her keen eyes never wandering from where my hands were lacing the string together into tight little knots.

  I wondered if Beth would become my friend, but I doubted it. Beth seemed nice enough, not that being nice was a criteria of mine for friendship. Really all I looked for in a friend was someone who wouldn’t disturb the work I was doing, or the letters I was writing.

  We sat quietly as I continued to work on my new piece of art, until the back of my neck began to tingle. I wasn’t sure why, but I lifted my head. When I looked off into the distance, I saw Ancel walking out from the school parking lot with a few other kids. They were all laughing and joking, shoving each other and tossing things between them. Ancel kept his head down, hands in his pockets, staring at the concrete, even though people swarmed around him like bugs to a light, trying to grab his attention.

  I knew they’d never grab Ancel’s attention, just like I never would. At least not while Ancel was so busy staring at the ground.

  I spent the rest of the school day thinking about how those other kids at school seemed drawn to him. What was it about him that drew people in? Was it his long, dark eyelashes that formed small points at the ends? Was it the gentle slump of his wide shoulders? Was it the way he never seemed to notice anyone around him?

  Sometimes I wondered if he ever saw any of us at all.

  Since the first day I’d laid eyes on him, I’d been watching him, studying his movements, embedding the curves of his face to my memory. And each time I looked at him, he wasn’t looking at anyone else. We were all ghosts to him, figments of his imagination, maybe, just blurs on the surface of the planet that he had to move around and weave through.

  But that was all right. I didn’t mind being invisible to him as long as I was still allowed to watch him walk through the field and run his fingers through the grass.