Act As If They Didn't Exist

On the way to school the next morning, P. Martin couldn’t shake off his mother’s words. Act as if they didn’t even exist.

Act as if they didn’t even exist, he repeated, then caught himself, swallowing the words mid-sentence.  Quickly, he glanced in both directions, hoping no one was in earshot and hunched up his shoulders to readjust his backpack.  

It’d be just his luck that a someone from school would have heard him and spread the word. A match tossed into grass.  P. Martin talks to himself!  P. Martin talks to himself! He imagined his classmates buzzing around him like a swarm of mosquitoes, chanting Sp-ham, Sp-ham, the Repertory Man.  Just the thought of it made him shutter.  

And, then, he thought of Skye Bunting.  New to the class,  small, and didn’t even flinch when Jaeger hovered over him.  Just whistled like he had all the time in the day.  P. Martin wondered how he could be so -- so nonchalant, as his mother would say.  Probably never felt an itch in his life, he thought and hiked his backpack onto his shoulders again.