Chapter 2 Saw You At Your Worst

On that evening I was feeding street kittens when I spotted him at the Dumpster. I held my breath and watched as he quickly filled his backpack with bruised apples, bananas with too many spots, sprouted potatoes. Just as he zipped them up, he seemed to notice me.

He froze in his place. He stared back.

I felt like I had witnessed something I shouldn't have, but I didn't understand.

Before I could stop myself, my words were out, tentative, unfurling down the alley to him.

"Mike," I said. "Hey. Hi."

That seemed to break the spell of silence. He turned and ran down the alley, into the unknown and away from me.

I didn't see him at school the next day. Or the next.

I was growing more and more certain that I had done something terribly wrong. Everyday I walked into the homeroom hoping that he would be there but praying that he wouldn't.

On the third day he was back.

His eyes were hollow as if he'd been awake all night and he looked shabbier, thinner than I had last seen him.

During lunch I watched him hunched over an empty table, his plain white T-shirt doing little to cover his bony figure. He didn't buy any food, instead ate something from a plastic bag. I couldn't see what it was, but I could guess that it wasn't the kind of mommy's made-with-love homemade lunchbox.

I felt ashamed for not noticing him before. But then I scanned around the cafeteria and realized nobody else noticed him even now. I couldn't really blame them.

After lunch I couldn't find him in any of my classes. Even during the after-school activities he was absent. Later when everyone huddled by the entrance since it began to pour, Mike was nowhere to be seen.

Riley came to pick me up in his red lamborghini. He was a senior and the richest guy in school, as anyone would expect. His hair was dyed flaring red and he was the kind of guy who wore striped trousers instead of jeans and Oxford shoes instead of sneakers. He didn't participate in any after-schools but always appeared wherever I was, ready to drive me home.

We didn't even live nearby. He never confessed to me, and I was never his official girlfriend. But I rode his car home, sniffed the flowers he mailed, and ate the chocolates he offered, so maybe I was his girlfriend after all.

Riley was handsome, brawny and heavily built. He could flirt with a wink of an eye or a snap of his fingers.

But on that rainy day, I didn't wait for him by the entrance. Instead I slipped back into the school, my umbrella bouncing behind me.

Because I think I knew.

I think I knew where Mike had been all along.

The very next moment, I was running up the stairs to the school rooftop.

The door was already opened. I stopped when I saw him. Rain was pouring on us heavily.

He had his back towards me, already over the railings, his feet perched on the very edge of the roof.

At that moment I learned that he had no family, no home, nobody in his life.

There was nothing to hold him back.

Nothing except a girl he met three days ago.

The girl who told him her full name. The girl who loved his smile.

And the girl flung herself to him and desperately grasped his arm. She made him twirl around and fall, but not to death below, but fall back onto the wet rooftop together.