Seth
I can feel Kaden staring at me. He’s been doing that for a while now. I don’t know if he knows that I can feel it, or that I’ve got peripheral vision—most of us do, though.
“Dude! What?” I eventually ask, dropping the sketchpad in my lap. I’m on the couch in the studio and he’s by the counter, leaning his elbows on it.
“What?” he inquires, like he hasn’t been ogling me for the last twenty minutes.
“I can feel you staring at me, so what is it? Do I have something on my face, or…?”
He walks over, drops down on the couch opposite me, leaning back, crossing an ankle over the other knee.
“I wanna know what you’ve done,” he says.
I frown. “What?”
“You’ve done something, and I wanna know what it is, ‘cause it’s driving me insane. So, what’ve you done?”
“Are you being vague on purpose?”
“What have you done to your face?” he half-yells, throwing an arm out.
“This again? Are we sure you didn’t have COVID, ‘cause you’re—”
“Don’t joke about that!” he says, shaking his head.
“Fine. But what’s up with you, then?”
“What’s up with you?” He narrows his eyes at me, roaming them all over my face, and then down over my body.
“Nothing! Dude, I’ve told you. I look the same as I have for years.”
“Then why do you look different?”
“Different how?”
He licks his bottom lip. “I can’t explain it,” he mumbles.
“Well…” I say, throwing my arms out.
I’m not a fan of this conversation. I don’t like the feeling of being scrutinized like this.
Like he’s looking for something I’ve hidden.
Or maybe it’s that he saw something on my face the other night on his balcony.
When we talked about prom. Maybe I didn’t hide it as well as I thought.
He probably feels sorry for me and I hate it.
I pick up my sketchpad, but I feel him still staring at me. Dropping my shoulders, I look up, and stare back.
“What?” I snap.
“Are you wearing contacts?”
“No!”
“Then why are your eyes so blue?” he snaps back.
“They’ve always been blue? Dude, have you been colorblind this whole time? Is that why you’ve specialized in black and grey?”
“Shut up!” he says, pointing at me. “I’m not fucking colorblind. I feel like you’re gaslighting me.”
“Uno reverse! You’re the gaslighter. I feel all ogled at.”
He makes a frustrated sound from the back of his throat as he stands and marches away.
If it wasn’t COVID, then it must have been one hell of a cold to make him this crazy.