The rescuer

I had a recurring fantasy when I was in sixth grade that took place every morning as the entire student body ushered into the building from the buses. There was a boy that to my girlish eyes must have seemed a marvel but in my memory now I see a lumbering neanderthal, backpack swung over his shoulder, the days first kill. Shuffling amongst the crowd, silent and small, I imagined him turning behind in a flash of movement, quick steps bringing him directly to me, slipping his arm around the small of my back and bending me into an impassioned kiss. I never undestood this fantasy until this weekend. I thought it was sillyness, but it was a call to be seen, to stop being invisible. I wasn't a passionate girl, I didn't generally long to be kissed, the opposite really. Perhaps this boy with the brutish expression physically symbolized what the world began to look like to me. A big brute that overlooked me completely. I didn't realize then that my grief was this sensation of insignificance and that I longed desperately to matter, to have some value. I had become one indistiguishable domestic beast in a mass herd. It was the first time in my life that my surroundings forced me to disappear. I didn't choose to, it couldn't be controlled. My nature and physical stature predisposed me not to distinguish myself. I was quiet and retreating, I had a calm spirit. My friends looked like me, small, slender, gentle and unassuming. Together we silently tried to survive sixth grade. My hardest year of school, a quick, harsh preperation for the rest of my grade-school education.