HOW TO DISAPPEAR Sarah O’Connor
I
t was when the Timmie’s cashier didn’t say good morning to me that I realized I had become invisible. I don’t know when it happened or how it happened; all I know is that it did happen, and now I’m an invisible girl wandering around the basement of TSH. Thinking back to it, the whole process must have started at least a month ago. But that doesn’t make sense; a month isn’t that long. It seems longer than that. Maybe it was longer than a month… I had strayed away from my usual haunts, which primarily consisted of the Student Centre and going into the buildings my classes required me to. When my classes finished, I scurried out and hid on the sixth floor of Mills, an empty table at ABB, anywhere secluded and scarce. For those first few weeks after…after, I didn’t want to see anyone. I feared their soft voices, their
guarded eyes, and their fear of what to say to me. I wanted to shoot the elephant in the room, screw endangered species. So I didn’t see a lot of my friends, or anyone I really knew, except when I had classes with them, and let’s be honest, you
I was working? Check out my syllabi to see when my assignments were due? Well, I’m just starting to realize how stupid that was, and now I’m invisible. I didn’t mean for it to happen, it just did. I mean, I could text my friends saying I want to hang out, but I’ve forgotten how to speak. I don’t know what’s gone on in their lives; I’ve been too preoccupied with my seclusion. It would be weird to send a text out of the blue. They wouldn’t be interested. So now I’m invisible, even in the Student Centre. I’ve come back just to see if… just to see. I watch the students scatter and scurry around like ants as they hurry to their next classes. They don’t notice me. I watch as their eyes oh so casually slide away from mine, how they look through me. I have become a background character, a ghost to those who knew me. And I don’t know how to reappear.
I didn’t want to see anyone. don’t have classes with all your friends. University doesn’t work like that. Sure, they’d send the odd text here and there saying that we just had to get together soon for coffee, that we just had to get caught up, but I avoided it. They were texts after all, easy to avoid. I didn’t ignore them, don’t think that. I replied, but I always said I was too busy to hang out, or I got an extra shift at work, or some other crap. How would they know? Were they going to go to my work to see if
ARTWORK BY SAM GODFREY
VOLUME 17, ISSUE 6
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