4 | You Can't Hide

THE SUN CAME DOWN in small infrequent rays that afternoon but Iris was happy for the short waves of warmth. She had sat under the same chestnut tree everyday at lunch for four days; sitting down and eating there had become a habit, much like seeking out the sight of Joey. Iris had never known such simple pleasures to be so fulfilling as they were now. A lot of times that week Iris had caught the eye of Joey and her body reacted in such a strange way. He would smile or wave in greeting towards her, and she never knew how to react. Oftentimes Cecelia was with him, making it even more awkward. To avoid certain embarrassment, Iris hid herself in plain sight. She tensed, controlling the spasm in her muscles until she was sure that nobody could see her. She was comfortable like this and took to eating her sandwich in peace and quiet.

Her surroundings were calming, nothing was out of the ordinary but a strange young man stood out from the crowd. He was hunched over much like Iris was, sitting on a bench and he sat with his hood pulled far over his forehead. The boy's rare movements were noticeably slow, wary and cautious. He looked around, like an owl in the night before closing back into himself again. He was looking for something, but Iris could not tell what. She scoped the area around him for anything that may have helped her but nothing was of use.

Back at the boy Iris noticed he had taken down his hood and she was shocked to see how he really looked. After the realisation of not recognising who he was, a layer of intrigue settled. There was something about this boy - something strange and darkly alluring. This boy reflected the same vibes he did at the nurses office, and it was just as haunting despite the increased distance. The Boy from The Nurse's Office had very pale - nearing on translucent - skin. His aura was bold and varying, so much so that Iris was surprised that nobody else seemed to notice. Maybe they knew that the boy was different. Maybe that was why he seemed to be isolated and alone. It would explain the conflict that put him in the nurse's office and the reason why people walked passed him like he wasn't there. It was ironic, because Iris would have never been able to miss him.

Times like these Iris would tell herself that there couldn't possibly be anybody else like her. If there was it meant danger or change - two things Iris couldn't handle at the moment. What if he had noticed her like she had with him? Why hadn't she noticed this the first time she saw him? Questions were running through her mind, many that she thought he may be able to answer. Fear kept her rooted at the bottom of the tree, however. She wouldn't approach him. She couldn't.

So Iris watched in tense silence, waiting to be caught staring. Despite the fact that she was literally invisible, she had a feeling that if the boy looked, he'd spot her in an instant. She couldn't control her flurry of thoughts, she didn't know what to do to stop the silent panic from setting in. With curiosity, Iris took a deep breath, prepared her mind and delved into his psyche. She swam through and looked around, disturbing images flashing up at her. One with blood all over and unrecognisable bodies. One with a bright white light and a silhouette. Many images spun of people screaming and crying. Iris left as soon as she could and regained her composure but she couldn't erase the dreadful images from her mind.

The boy had to be disturbed, especially after what he'd experienced. Nobody ever spoke to him, and Iris wished that people would. She had strong feelings that the boy was in the same position as her, and a friend, although silent, was a friend all the same.

"Hey, can I sit with you?"

Iris snapped her head up a captured the eye of Joey, who was smiling in the most endearing way she had ever seen. At first she couldn't think of what to say, but subconsciously she nodded and he sat down next to her. He could obviously see her, which was the stem of her initial shock. Being invisible meant that nobody could catch her off guard. But Joey had succeeded. She couldn't question it, maybe she just hadn't turned invisible like she thought. A problem with her powers was a problem for tomorrow because Joey was settling himself next to her now under the tree.

"Are you okay? You look confused," Joey asked.

"I'm fine," Iris nodded slowly. She shivered again, regaining visibility, or not. "I'm just a little cold."

She sat by uncomfortably taking little bites of her sandwich and trying not to make eye contact with Joey. He, on the other hand, was taking large bites of his sloppy Joe and wiping the corners of his mouth after each one. He seemed much more relaxed around her than she did around him and she knew it was testament to how different they appeared to be. Yet she didn't mind when Joey spoke to her or smiled at her. In fact she rather liked it. She couldn't help but be curious though - why her? Why now?

There was another thing she had noticed. Talking with Joey, just being in his company, felt warm, comforting and in no way forced. In her mind it seemed wrong; why would he choose her? She didn't need the attention that the school's soccer captain brought. However, Iris couldn't fight the feeling of acceptance. He was the first person who had been nice to her since she had arrived. In her situation, any friend was welcome - no matter the intention.

A quick thought would have been that Joey was becoming bored of Cecelia (much like the entire school) and decided his time may be better spent elsewhere. It may have been true but Iris believed his intent was not quite so malicious. He was a boy after all and probably didn't get how his distance from Cece would be perceived, especially to teenage girls with clear rules about boyfriends and boundaries. Despite the good vibrations they shared, Iris was hesitant to get too close.

Another conclusion, and one that she never drew often, was that Joey actually enjoyed her company. Since the first time they had met, He never ceased to smile, to laugh or to study her face, her eyes and her odd-coloured hair. Her obvious quirks was what drew him to her. She was just interesting, enticing and he himself was surprised that he had the confidence to talk to her.

"So, how is Payton's doing?"

"They're good, I guess. I'm not too sure business-wise, seeing as it's not too much of my concern but if there were money problems, I wouldn't know."

"Right, yeah... That was a terrible question," Joey admitted, fidgeting in his hair. "I don't know why I said that."

"It's okay, don't worry," she didn't know what Joey's intentions were. She didn't know much about him in general, apart from fractions of passing quips and the short conversation she had had with him in the coffee shop. He liked video games and soccer, and the banana milkshake at Payton's. The last one was a fact that she had discovered at the coffee shop - along with other small details she would have difficulty forgetting.

"How is your leg?" Iris asked to fill the silence between them.

"It's getting a little better, actually. I've been icing it and resting it like the doctor says," Joey answered with a nod. He subconsciously gave his calf a light squeeze, relieving some of the tension. "It was just a pulled muscle though so I should be fine. How is yours?"

"I'm doing well. It doesn't hurt as much now," she relayed the same thing she had said to Payton and Mark and the nurse. She hated how generic their snippets of conversations were, especially when she wanted to know him more. She just didn't know how to get to the good bits, without totally disintegrating everything they had naturally built up.

"I've been watching this new show on tv, I forget the name but it's about these lawyers... Have you seen it?" Joey asked.

Iris tensed up a little, "No, I'm not much of a television watcher. I read more."

"Oh, well I've been listening to some audiobooks recently to and from our away games. What type of books do you like?" He smiled, shifting his body to face her.

Iris joined him with a short grin, "I tried to get into the classics, so I just finished Jane Eyre."

"Oh really? I've never had an affinity for those types of books. You know, Shakespeare and stuff."

"The genre is an acquired taste," she replied.

"I just thought of the weirdest thing to say but I won't ruin this and make you feel uncomfortable," Joey chuckled, covering his face in embarrassment.

"Okay," she began, "but how do you know I'm not already uncomfortable?"

"Are you?" Joey pulled back.

Iris pursed her lips with a coy expression, "No."

"Well then, let's carry on like this." And with a final large bite of his sloppy Joe, he gave Iris and her big blue eyes, his full attention.

The conversation flowed nicely, they learned about each other, their great loves and their great hates. But despite their fulfilling conversation, there was still the air of mystery that surrounded Iris. The mystery she knew she couldn't give up. She felt resentment for this reason, because she couldn't share herself fully with Joey. She felt especially guilty as she could tell he had hidden nothing, and she was shielding everything. No matter how comforting and calm their talk was, she knew that phases of it were facadical. It didn't seem real. And that was more unfortunate for her than for Joey. After all, in the moment, he had Cecelia to bring him back to a tangible reality - a real friendship that she couldn't give him. Sadly, they couldn't carry on like this, and soon it would all be over.

And as Iris expected, Cecelia had stolen Joey from under the tree some time after. She was left to finish her lunch alone. By the time she had gotten back to it there was not much time left to finish her stale sandwich, so she just packed up her book and her rubbish separately, throwing one in her bag and the latter in a nearby trashcan. Despite it being none of her business in any sense, she put frequent thought towards Joey's girlfriend, and their relationship as a whole. Honestly, there was not much weight to it, as with Iris' thoughts about everybody she observed. After all, before they had taken notice of her, Iris had not paid very much attention to anybody in particular — except for Joey... and The Boy From The Nurses Office. The two of them were equally intriguing to her in such varying contrast and juxtaposition, to the extent when she felt an itching push to investigate further. With all of her actions though, there was the underlying danger that never seemed to leave her alone. She knew it would have been stupid to venture out of her temporary comfort zone: her current cycle of home, school and the coffee shop. There were no guarantees of her safety regarding these two boys but a question her subconscious asked her was whether the way she had been living was in any way healthy or fair to herself. Would her parents have wanted a life like this for her in their absence? On the spectrum of possibility her existence was bleak and limited. On the other hand, the spectrum was vast and scary, the risk was way too high.

So Iris tried unsuccessfully to shake thoughts of the two boys from her head. On a grand scale, she told herself, they were insignificant. She had much more pressing issues facing her at the moment. Like how unsafe where she was staying was becoming, how alarmingly settled she had become and how she'd even begin to break herself out of it. In actuality she knew that she had to do so. She had to pull away but she couldn't bring herself around to the idea. She couldn't envision going back to the vagabond lifestyle she was forced into. Again, it wasn't fair. Sometimes Iris would look at her life and see normalcy in Marston Springs, with Payton and Mark... and possibly even Joey.