The day was as ordinary as any other. The teens mingled and scoffed amidst their own cliques, confident and insecure as only teens can be. Darren looked up from the safety of his own circle of friends to see John standing at the periphery staring out across the school’s parking lot.
“Hey, John, see something you like?” This elicited a few giggles from the group but no response from John. He was a million miles away, and his gaze was fixed. Darren was half sure he could figure the stare to be set on the lovely red VW Jetta owned by John’s girlfriend, a girl, in Darren’s opinion, too cute to be with such a character as John.
John spent the rest of the lunch hour aloof and removed from the group. His girlfriend, his usual link to normalcy and socialization was nowhere to be seen. A few more half-hearted attempts were made to break John out of his fixation on the parking lot, on the cars but all to no avail. The more they tried, the more they failed, the more they all realized that no one understood John.