Untitled, Chapter 2

Mary was seven the first time she became aware of her status.   For most little girls, you aren’t aware of much of that at seven.  There is some teasing and name-calling but for the most part, you play with the people you like and you don’t play with the people you don’t like.  Who those people are often changes every day. “Suzy wouldn’t share, so she’s not my friend.” “Hannah called me weird, I don’t want to play with her anymore.”

Mary, like many girls had a new best friend every week.  In her town, there was definitely enough to go around.  They weren’t hurting for seven year old little girls, especially in her class. 

She was put into a work group in her class at school, where she met Page.  They became instant friends.  Immediately they were planning to play after school. They didn’t live far from each other.  Close enough that they could meet each other in the middle without having their mom’s drive them. 

They would often meet in the park near by after they checked in at home.  They had been playing together for about 2 weeks with no friendship altering moments.  They shared well together without name-calling.   They both loved to play kitchen in the dirt at the park, using the fountain nearby to make all sorts of treats.  Each took turns being Mom, the most coveted role.

They had been happy friends until Page’s older sister, Phoebe came to get Page for dinner. 

“Who’s your friend, Page?”

Untitled, Chapter 1

Mary was your average teenager.  She had average looks, average intelligence, and average personality.  There was nothing about Mary that seemed to stand out to anyone other then her parents.  Mary spent her childhood and now high school career under the radar.  To many, Mary wasn’t even near the radar. 

Mary was OK with her status, for the most part.  In her school and community, to go unnoticed was a good thing.  There seemed to be two classes: the perfect and the unwanted.  There was the underground class of the invisibles.  Mary, fortunately, was in that group.  The perfects were the rich, talented, over-achievers who knew what they wanted, knew how to get it and nothing ever stopped them.  The Unwanteds were often the poor, marginalized, under-achievers.  They were often viewed as the dirt on the feet of the Perfects.  Something they stepped on, on their way to success. It was rare that the two ever mixed and even more rare when they switched places.  Being in the unclassifiable class wasn’t an issue for Mary and she planned to keep it that way.  That was until her invisibleness became not so invisible.

It all started the day that Mark Everstein moved into their classified town.  He was an instant Perfect but you’d never hear him call himself that.  Mark’s dad had been a New York City Defense Attorney but after a high profile case ended badly, Mark’s dad decided it was time to move his family to a less “high profile” town.  Little did he know that Lawrence, PA was a high profile community living in a low profile city.

Mark had an eye for the unnoticed.  The obvious and the cliché were like bright colors to a colorblind man.  He saw them but didn’t see what others saw.  What Mark did see was the blacks and whites and especially the grays.  He went out of his way to figure out what made them tick, what put them on the level they were at.  He found Mary pretty quickly.  To him, she was the brightest start.

The day they first met was forever stuck in Mary’s memory.  It would take her a while to figure out if this had become a good memory or a bad one.