Surrounded by a halo of frizzy red hair, Mary had an angelic face, but you only noticed if you really looked, a nearly impossible feat as Mary was usually bent over her notebook writing avidly the contents of that evasive mind she had. In one of the few classes I shared with Mary, Mr. Guildon had one day called on her to explain some irrelevant passage of an obscure novel he thought of as literary genius. As she looked up to mumble a barely coherent response I caught sight of her face. Pale skin disrupted by crowds of freckles canvased wide innocent eyes. Her lips were thin with a sad curve and her nose was surprisingly delicate. Her face held no known expression. She was a completely perfected shield.
Most of us are frightened by that which we can not understand. Mary was something none of us could even begin to comprehend. She was an outsider by her own doing. She never reached out to us, laughed with us, shared the nauseating cafeteria food with us. She was hardly a student, even less an actual person. I believe we avoided her because she was our insecurities walking in the flesh and we couldn't face our fears in dreams never mind in the form of this misunderstood peer we couldn't seem to get out of the backs of our minds.
