5 Weird

Zachary was really weird.

He entered our high school during one early Fall. He had thick glasses arched above his slender nose. His nitpicked, uptight uniform always becomes the center of attention in a sea of students across the school. A dark, shined pair of shoes covered his feet and a digital watch quasi-suffocated his wrist. He was a nobody until he introduced in front of the class, a nobody until our eyes met.

"My name is Zachary Mallari. It is very nice to meet you all." He said in a formal tone. The noise of and intonation were without thins and cracks and full-blown. His face as blank as a slate as the whole classroom went awfully quiet that a pin dropping could be heard from afar.

His short, ash-darkened, and thin hair flowed with the wind coming inside the classroom as the sunlight's beam flashed his smooth, milk-toned, fair-matted skin. He had dark eyes that flickered, darker than the night, and an incredible length of lashes. They were piercing, his eyes, yet soft at the same time. His thin lips were seemingly moist and rosy and plump, cheeks almost beet red, and tiny freckles ran across the arch of his nose's skin up to the sides of his face.

And the feeling of unfamiliar familiarity exuded all around him.

He bowed and went to his seat on a third row, almost in front of the board, and in front of me. He was more slender than when I saw him in front, thinner. He carried a bag-like brown satchel, almost overflowing, and placed it beside his desk.

And then the class had formally begun.

Everyone stared at him as if he's some kind of alien from another planet. I couldn't blame them for the way they looked at him back then, though. His whole appearance shouted "come at me and bully me at my own expense" type of person ironically mixed with a semi-authoritarian school student body president trope.

We were almost in our transitioning phase of becoming young-adults, but little did anyone know that our minds are as child-like as infant-holding baby rockers. And when we were suddenly met with someone unordinary in front of us, we were absolutely gobsmacked.

But as the saying goes: first impressions never lasts. Though some of them endured.

Zachary was appointed as a class representative after a few weeks, and not the way we expected him to be. He was dutiful and hardworking in his role, being a class model and all, but he was extremely meek. He was as organized as we thought of him, but only speaks when needed. A greeting from a classmate or two would make his face slightly flush in red, eyes averting the formalities, and he'd slowly run silly in the opposite direction as soon as he finished his broken replies.

Although he was somehow an embodiment of a conundrum, he did make a few friends. One of them was his closest comrade named Juli Carson, a schoolmate of ours. Their personalities don't match at all, but both of them seemed very compatible with working together.

I had my own group of friends that time that would sometimes make fun of them or tried to bring them on a very low level. I partook in some of the annoyances during those times: being noisy, obnoxious little brats.

He'd often catch us slinging toilet paper rolls on a nearby tree within the campus, or creating "graffiti" art on the comfort room walls and doors. Borderline bullying and public humiliation of others, though, is something our class and group did not condone. We'd get a bunch of slaps on the wrists after that and we'll just laugh it off and repeat the same thing on another day as if nothing had happened.

"You're really going to be in so much trouble if you kept on doing your shenanigans." He said. He was writing on a piece of a notebook during an after-class. I sat in front of him wearing a goofy smile, annoying him in every possible way I can.

"And those goons in the office would just let us off the hook," I replied nonchalantly. The joyous tones of my voice somehow agitated him.

The way he stroked his writing slightly pressed harder than it was before, and his blank slate of a composure twitched. He was a volcano ready to erupt and I'm an enabler of such a diabolical act.

"Those 'goons,'" he emphasized, "And the misdeeds you had done are the reasons why you're almost being held back for a year." He said, turning a page from his notebook. "Please... don't make matters worst than it is already."

"But why?" I sang. I spoke like some spoiled kid talking to his mom whose toy cannot be bought for him from a store.

"Because," his grip tightened on the pen he was holding that it looked like it was going to break. "Your parents and the next generation of classes are going to carry the burden of having you around for another school year." His semi-composed, angry-looking face made me almost laugh at it. He wore this smile that I couldn't describe, a smile you'd often see to people that don't like you that much.

"But why is it my fault?" I said, playfully kicking a leg off of his table. It rocked as though a low-magnitude earthquake shook it to its core. He stopped for a brief second and wrote once more, with every stroke more painfully harder than the last. I kind of felt bad for the paper he was writing on like he's imagining my face on it and murdering it because of treason.

"You really dare ask me that?" He said, his voice cracking and slightly raised. The facade of his smile almost faded, with teeth-gritting each other. Zachary continued writing with a frowned look, a twitching face, and eyebrows that screamed "I'm really going to kill this person."

I really didn't know how or when it happened, that kind of relationship we had. It was as if a salad mixture of being friends with your enemies and being enemies with your friends. One overpowers the other from time-to-time, and one submits until it gets the upper hand.

We became a close-not so close classmates of the school within a short span of weeks. No one knew who acted first, and no one really cared. Our wavelengths didn't even meet half-way, and yet our relationship blossomed into a tragedy worth to be romanticized.

At least, that's how he treats our "friendship": a tragedy. And I exploited the chaos for my mere self-enjoyment and fun.

"What are you working on, anyway?" I asked him while trying to peek at his notebook. I also tried looking directly at his goofy-looking glasses and tried reading the reflection of the notes. He avoided as I leaned and wore a disgusted face as if I was some kind of garbage from the trash cans or some kind of disease he must not get.

"None. Of. Your. Business." He said. The monotony of his voice pierced the air. He extended his arms, opened his palms, touched my chest, and carefully pushed it away. "Why don't you find some tree outside the campus to decorate toilet paper on?"

"Ah!" I exclaimed, lifting both my arms up and waving it like the goofball idiot I was. "So you were astonished by my amazing works of art!" I continued. The gleeful tone from my voice scattered across the semi-noisy classroom. Our classmates had their own worlds to manage before coming into ours.

"I often treat them as war atrocities towards nature, don't be so full of yourself." He said. He looked at me like he had been watching a clown perform at one of my many friend's birthday parties.

"And yet you are committing the same acts of war towards the products that came from your so-called nature," I said, pointing mercilessly at his paper-filled notebook.

"You..." Just as he was about to (figuratively) kill me, someone shouted at the classroom door. It was a familiar voice because it came from a banshee: Juli.

Zachary was being called to their office for their important "meeting." He shot a look above our classroom clock and realized that he had been in the company of a goon (me) that made him very late. He ran as fast as a thunder striking a hard, open land, leaving behind his notebook on the table.

That had been perfect timing.

I stood up, walked towards his chair, took a seat, and read his notebook. That guy wasn't writing some nonsense that could be used for their administration; he was writing stories.

I read every story he had written in the notebook. The penmanship screamed poignancy, and the pages shouted diligence in such organization. Without a doubt, I accidentally began reading his words.

I laughed, at first, but then I realized that I was completely immersed. It's as if I was standing on a quicksand of words, pulling me down under slowly and comfortably, until I was transported into another world.

I laughed at the way he wrote, and then I felt the tears slowly falling away from my eyes. I felt all the emotions I had never thought that I would be feeling. I stopped at an unfinished work and asked for more, craved for the enjoyment of reading. I never even enjoyed reading, let alone reading someone's work.

And then I thought of Zachary. Who knew someone uptight and quiet all the time would create such incredible pieces of art on paper. I have a thing for beauty, and his creations had blown me away.

I felt a faint smile being painted across my mouth.

Zachary really was weird.