Cordelia bent down and took Zeith’s scrawny wrist in her hand to feel for a pulse. “He’s unconscious.” She looked up at the mysterious figure who was still holding the needle in hand. “Why, pray tell, are you carrying a tranquilizer around school?”

“…Protection,” the figure said flatly and turned around.

“Against what?”

The lights in the room dimmed, darkening the figure’s already dark face. “…Them.”

“Butthead, stop playing with the lights!” the Ram yelled. “I need help mixing these two compounds together!”

“Them?” Cordelia echoed, plopping down on a wooden stool and setting her handbag on the desk next to her among Zeith’s many notebooks.

The figure didn’t move. “They’re always watching, even when they’re not.”

“That makes about as much sense as everything else that’s happened in the last two days.”

“Expect the unexpected, pretty lady. Do not be so surprised when strange days do come your way.”

Cordelia raised an eyebrow. “You talk as if you know me.”

“The most popular girl in school. Of course I know you. It’s you who do not see me. None of them see me. Look now, before your very eyes, the way they see right through me.” He waved his shady hand to the rest of the classroom, who, sure enough were absorbed in their own activities. Butthead had slipped a pair of goggles over his buttocks for reasons unknown to the rational mind and was amusing himself by shaking his cheeks over the open flame of a Bunsen burner that the Ram was feeding with various mixed chemicals. Brad and Ruby, who were coincidentally in the same classroom as it works out nice for the plot of this story, were making out on their lab table, knocking off beakers and chemicals alike. Cordelia kept looking. Her eyes finally landed on her best friend Liz and her arch nemesis (and Liz’s boyfriend) Happy sitting together at a station in the far corner.

Liz looked up from her test tube and waved. “Cori! What are you doing over there all alone? Come over here and join us!”

“You see?” the mysterious figure said, stepping between Cordelia and Liz, but Liz only continued to wave and converse with Cordelia as if he was both transparent and invisible. “She sees nothing. We are the unseen, the unwanted, the unneeded. Popular girls like you neither see nor hear us.”

Cordelia blinked. “I’m sorry, have you been speaking all this time?”

“How very droll,” the figure muttered. “But remember, as a wise man once said, ‘Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good an' they die out. But we keep a'comin'. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Cordelia, 'cause we're the people.’ Know what I means?”

“I haven’t the faintest.”

“That is for certain. Perhaps it’s time you saw my face for the first time…” He stepped into the light, revealing dark eyes like shadows and a mullet, just as dark, that streamed down his neck. His skin was as smooth as a glass desert with a sad attempt at growing a moustache, most likely penciled in, and an obvious Mexican facade that made his whole body—eyes, shoulders, even stature and stance—slump. His white t-shirt and silver chained necklace lined with shrunken skulls and black beads only made his skin appear all the darker, all the more ominous.

Cordelia looked him up and down. “What are you? Sixteen?”

“…I will be seventeen next month.”

“Why are you in a senior class?”

“I skipped fifth grade and all of middle school.”

“You’re been in our class since we were freshmen?”

“…Yes. I made that clear by the whole ‘you don’t see me, but I see you’ episode, remember? I belong to an elite group of inconspicuous loners that you princesses of the hallways are too high and mighty to deal with. You trod upon us as if you are goddesses and we must submit to your superiority. Is it any wonder we fantasize the way we do? Zeith—the one laying at your precious feet—was one of us before he…came out of the closet. Once you reveal yourself to the light, there is no going back. That is why I choose to stay in the darkness. I am my own.”

“Why are you talking to this coat rack that I’m too shallow to regard as a real person?” Liz asked, walking over to Cordelia.

“He’s helping me to see the light,” Cordelia answered.

Liz looked over at the ‘coat rack’. “The light is right above us in the ceiling! God put it there. You don’t need to be a rock psychiatrist to figure that one out.”

The figure glared at her. “That’s ‘rocket scientist’, you twit.”

“How come I’ve never seen you before?”

“I’ve sat next to you in almost every class since 9th grade!” he simmered.

“Empty desk seat? …It is you! Empty desk seat! How are you?”

“Fine. Dealing with some overpowering urges to bludgeon someone with a rusty shovel, but other than that, I'm just fine.”

Liz squealed. “That’s fabulous, empty desk seat! Hope that works out for you.”

“…Damn you people. I wish I liked guys so I wouldn’t grow a circus tent in my pants whenever I’m around members of the opposite sex.”

“Does he have a name?” Cordelia asked Liz.

“Empty desk seat?”

“Yes, I have a name!” he shouted, and then straightened himself out. “Ahem. My friends call me Alex… You can call me Freak Boy. That’s all you see me as anyway.”

“Got that right,” Liz snapped.

“Yeah, he does,” Cordelia agreed.

“Last time I cameo with rich people,” Alex muttered. “I'll take peasants any day.”

Liz looked up. “What was that, empty desk seat?”

“Nothing. Just a fourth wall breach, that's all. Where was I? …Oh, right, you see nothing but a freak in me, where you should see a fellow human being. Your group ‘posses’ divide this world. Your high school niches will leave you a poor tramp in the real world, rotting on the streets of hell, too thick in the head to earn yourself a decent and successful living and too thin in your views to accept those of another kind. We are all humans. It is time that you—”

“You’re boring.”

“…And you, ma’am, are a troglodyte. Your very presence here lowers the intelligence in this room by an amount greater than you could ever hope to summarize.”

“How do I make you disappear again?” Liz asked, licking her lip as she tried waving her hands in hope of making Alex ‘the Freak Boy’ become an empty desk seat again.

“I don’t have time for this,” Cordelia sighed, opening her handbag. “Both of you have a seat. I have something very…strange to show you.”

“Stranger than him?” Liz asked.

“Stranger than her?” Alex asked at the same time.