PEERING INTO the large ornate mirror, Noel stared fervently through the cracks, his face displayed in seven different scattered images, but each showed the same one - large pus filled spots ranging from his forehead all the way down to his chin. To top it all off his face was bright red and painful and on some days (particularly the bad ones) it hurt to talk.

Noel turned away from the mirror angrily and without thinking he dived head first into his power rangers pillow, curling his fingers against the duvet as he moaned out in frustration.

"Noel?"

His mom pushed open the door to his room, a large mug of hot chocolate placed in her hands as she sat on his bed.

Noel grimaced at the mug - that was the bad news mug. When his favorite bike had been smashed into pieces, or when he had to move schools in the middle of the year, or when his Dad left seven years ago, his mom would come into his room with a mug of steaming hot chocolate and everything would be okay, no matter what.

He took a glance at his mom, her night black hair was scraped into her usual tight ponytail and her lips painted raspberry red. Noel's mom, Kim, was Japanese making Noel half, yet the feature that separated Noel from his mom the most was his eyes, a mix between blue and green, which Kim secretly envied and hated as they were the exact same color as Noel's father.

"What is it mom?"

"Well, y-you know Ron?"

"Yeah, your boyfriend."

"He's moving in."

Noel stared straight into his mother's eyes, before casting his gaze up to the ceiling. He met Ron a few times, he was a nice guy, but what was so nice about him was whenever his mom would come back from a date with him, she'd be glowing. Her face would be flushed and her eyes would light up and she'd be floating around the house singing and smiling and it made Noel happy. Really, really happy.

So with this, he shot his mom the most sincere smile he could muster. "That's really good. I'm happy for you."

His mom smiled at him, but made no effort to offer him the mug and leave the room. "There's more."

"Oh. Okay."

"His daughter is moving in too."

Noel had never met Ron's daughter, but for some reason he never got a good vibe whenever she was mentioned, he always felt uneasy and uncomfortable, as there was always a reason they couldn't meet, he wasn't even sure if he wanted to meet her.

But of course Noel looked at his mother's hopeful expression, her brown eyes softening as she silently pleaded with Noel to accept these changes.

And with that Noel took his mother's mug of hot chocolate and took a large sip.

"That's okay too."

______________

Noel was on his way to the library as he usually did every lunchtime. He had his hoodie pulled over his face, this one was his large black one, his favorite one as it covered his face so well, you could barely see him.

But he was stopped by the same girl that had approached him yesterday. Her hair was scraped into two bunches and she was dressed in all black. She shot Noel a bright smile, but Noel noted on the fact that she could never quite look at him right.

"Hey Noel. Do you want eat lunch in the cafeteria with me?"

Noel was almost going to say no, but then he remembered he forgot to pack any sandwiches with him and today the cafeteria were selling tacos - and Noel loved tacos.

"Sure." His reply came out nothing short of a whisper, but it was all May needed to help her feel better over the debacle of yesterday.

Entering the cafeteria was like entering a food jungle. There was always a faint smell of meatloaf lingering in the air. But more importantly were the animals in the jungle, or in this case the different groups people were placed in. No matter how many times people would protest about cliques you tended to hang around people who were similar to you.

Noel used to have friends, but that was before, before he let his skin condition take over his life.

May guided Noel to a table at the back of the cafeteria. There were two boys and a girl sitting there already, biting into the tacos while ensuing in pointless small talk.

May sat down confidently, passing a smile at them. "Hey guys, this is Noel." "Noel, this is Bethany-" Noel passed a look at Bethany. Her skin was dark and she had long box braids slipped into a low ponytail. Aside from that her eyebrows seemed to be painted into a permanent frown, and her gaze looked disinterested at Noel.

"Thomas-" Thomas had wild unruly blonde hair and muddy brown eyes and seemed to be in an arm wrestling competition with the other boy who May said was called Dylan. Dylan had a shaved buzz cut and a large skull tattoo on his neck, he looked like a terrifying criminal, yet he acted like a ten year old kid.

Noel wasn't sure whether or not he liked May's friends. The taco didn't even taste nice and the atmosphere was uncomfortable and awkward.

"You're that kid with all the acne right?" Dylan blurted out untactfully. Noel felt his face go even more red and uncomfortable.

"Dylan! You can't say that!" May reprimanded.

"Have you tried using-" Thomas started, but as soon as Noel heard those words he stood up abruptly from his chair. He hadn't expected it to make such a loud noise as the whole of the cafeteria turned to look at him in confusion.

"Oh, it's just Pizzaface." He heard someone say, he was pretty sure it originated from the gaggle of cheerleaders sitting in the middle of the hall, there football oafs surrounding them. If things couldn't even get anymore weirder or humiliating his gaze caught one red headed cheerleader - Cheryl Baker (everybody knew of the notorious Cheryl Baker), Noel couldn't even decipher the look she gave him, but it made him feel uneasy, spurring him to sprint out of the cafeteria as fast as he could.

Noel made a quick note to himself : Never forget your sandwiches.

____________

After Noel's disastrous attempt at trying to integrate into high school civilization, he really wasn't in the mood for English class.

The disgruntled seating order that Miss Mulroy had implemented and the fact that one of the meatheads was sitting next to him made Noel's stomach churn, or it could have been the tacos, Noel wasn't entirely sure.

As Noel sat down, the oaf flashed him another grin. Noel never got a chance to drink in his appearance before, but he wasn't too surprised at what he saw. He was tanned, but not white boy tanned, he was tanned liked he was mixed race, yet what with was ambiguous to Noel. He had really nice trimmed hair and bushy eyebrows that would have looked hideous on anyone else but seemed to somehow suit him. Of course he was dressed in a thick varsity jacket, but he had a nice smell, like fresh cut pine trees and sweets. Noel thought he smelled like way too many acne products mixed together in a blender, he didn't suspect it smelled very pleasant.

"You're Noel, right?" He said. Noel was shocked to hear that his voice wasn't harsh or grating to the ears, but was calm and soothing. His voice reminded him of the library.

"Y-yeah..."

"You don't know my name, do you?"

Noel shrugged through his hoodie, he made sure to pull it over his face in such a way that a shadow cast over it, making it impossible to see his face unless you yanked his hoodie off.

"I'm Myron. Myron Akil."

Noel bit his lip to hold back a smart remark. He may have stereotyped Myron to be part of those football oafs, but the fact of the matter is he still hung around those type of people and Noel didn't know whether or not he had said something horrible about his skin or not. The thought left him writhing in his seat uncomfortably.

It seemed Noel was always uncomfortable.

Finally his erratic teacher swanned through the doors, her hair still in a deranged mess, yet the class seemed to go quiet when she walked in. They respected her.

"We're going to move on from Shakespeare 11th grade. We are going to do a novel called Black Wings by Elly Tootle."

So far, the book made Noel's head ache, the language used was completely unnecessary and it seemed like every word which should have been simple was swapped with a random word they got from a thesaurus . Despite this the novel was about a fantasy land called 'Alsastasia', the land was seen as a beautiful utopia on the outside, with beautiful fairies who all had white wings, except for the main character, Teala, who used to have white wings but they slowly turned black as she got older. Because the townspeople were terrified of this, they berated her until she was eventually exiled.

"I want you guys to write an essay, or monologue or a diary entry on something that makes you feel different or set apart from others. Really try to grasp the emotions, so you can fully understand just how Teala felt. I'm going to give you guys till the end of term to complete this, so I want it to be good." Just as Miss Mulroy finished talking, the bell rang and Noel quickly stuffed his books into his bag.

He knew exactly what he was going to write about.

He just wasn't ready to write about it yet.