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A crush this intense had to be a sign that it was completely worth it, right? There was no way Travis could feel so strongly about this boy and him not being able to even vaguely share those feelings.
Travis had crushes over the years other than this boy but they had surpassed after a few months, this however was different, it had been years since he first lay eyes on this blue haired, masking wearing boy and yet his feelings only got stronger, the room they took up in his head got bigger till it only left very little space for anything else which would begin to bring Travis struggle.
It was the end of maths class, Travis, once again had spent most of that time looking at the boy, reminding himself of every detail of his covered face. Most days he found himself wondering what was underneath, he believed it was something beautiful, that if he were to see it Travis would immediately fall head over heels for this boy and confess everything, something that would make him forget any of his worries about doing so.
But first Travis wanted to know why exactly the boy felt the need to wear such a thing, the thing that lay underneath was known, his face of course.
Travis had observed the scars on his neck, leaking out from under the mask. Whenever Travis would take a strike at the boy, his face was always the place that bled the most.
As much as Travis wanted this boy, Sal to suffer he couldn’t bring himself to take that mask off. He had seen other kids try it, Sal wasn’t shy around them he would happily attack them the second they lay a hand on that precious mask of his. It wasn’t that Travis was afraid of Sal, he told himself that but rather he wanted his mask to remain there, the layer that prevented Travis from taking this boy and betraying everything he had ever known.
But all Travis had known was that mask, Sal’s unordinary face he wondered sometimes if anything was underneath it, if the mask wasn’t what he thought it was.
In his nightmares, there was nothing under it, which also meant to Travis that the one-sided relationship he was having with this boy meant nothing. The end goal had been taken from him.
Again Travis sat alone at lunch, he would peer over at the table to his left where Sal and his fairly large friend group sat, talking about god knows what, as hard as Travis tried he could never pick up Sal’s voice over the blabling crowd.
The more Travis thought about it, he didn’t actually know Sal. Sometimes he wondered if he was even actually in love with him or if he was in love with someone he had made up in his head with the looks of Sal Fisher, but what was appealing about Sal’s appearance? The mystery behind it? Was it the unusual look that drew Travis in? That kept him from moving on from the crush?
The space that Sal took up in Travis’s head grew the more he questioned it.
Sal walked past, he was with Larry as always. They both gave him looks with startled Travis
He said something he did not mean, he shouted it loud enough for the whole school to know that he deep down hated Sal Fisher and anyone associated with him as he did everyday, it was a routine that Travis could not grow out of.
To Travis, he and Sal had many conversations about many things. He would imagine himself telling Sal about his day, about his homelife, about the things he could tell no one else. That Travis would only allow him to hear. Sal would say what he wanted him too, it was the perfect life, Travis had control, he could say whatever he wanted and Sal wouldn’t ever question it unless Travis had made up a question for him to ask.
He wondered how long this could go on for, before he would snap. Sal was like his imaginary friend but instead of being there to listen and play, Sal only haunted every part of his life. Travis could not remember an hour in the past three years where Sal had not been there in some form, in his head or next to him.
There was no way Travis could have a diary and keep it secret from his overlooking father, so he had resorted to angrily writing on ripped out pieces of paper from his school jotters whilst using a toilet seat to lean on at lunch times whenever the space that Sal took up in his head needed to shrink.
He couldn’t read what he had written anymore, the ink was running down the page, soaked with tears. This only took Travis to boiling point, he wanted to read it back to himself, in his head he would be talking to Sal, really reading it out to him.
If that was true, there would be no need for these tear soak papers of fake conversations.
Travis had thought of it many times before, everytime he did the more it seemed to be true.
He asked himself, Am I just in love with the idea of having this boy?