The boy glances at the girl, quickly allowing himself the small bit of light he needed before his day began. Every moment of his day lacked definition except this. Everything else was a fog of pain mixed with something half regret and half relief, jagged. Every time they met outside, in the sun and sky where the happier walked, he was insane and proud of it. With a constant smile, a mellow attitude and a penchant for freaking people the f*** out, he seemed at worst content with himself and at best actually and truly happy.

What a lot of people dont know is that being insane was a lot of work,he had to talk to the voices in his head and laugh at their jokes nonexistent. He had to speak without filter and learn not only to tolerate the distaste of other but also to cause it and draw it towards himself. He had to be a character who could never be forgotten. Like Castiligones courtier he had to balance it with the person he was talking to because there a difference between a freak and being a threat. Within the former lies his place in the world and in the latter the worst of his nightmares. Lies take a lot of work and this one the most of all because he had to lie to himself constantly and without any loss of conviction; his entire world was his conviction. Sometimes he feels like sleeping on the job, slipping of the mask that is his face only to remind himself that underneath he has nothing but the boy who loves to read, the boy who fights, the boy who cant look at himself in the mirror because he is the ugliest thing his eyes had ever had the displeasure of looking upon. So he wakes only with the thought of her, because she and only she sees him and doesnt flinch. He doesnt dare hope for more, not when the love of his life (more often than not) was the grill of the E train which passes him by. Certainly not when he knows it could never be. She said "hi" today..........