David's Face

For as long as David could remember, people had been telling him to cheer up.

Even when he felt happy, people said it.

“You are allowed to smile, you know,” they said.

“Cheer up, mate. Might never happen,” they said.

“Who died?” they said.

And what that meant was that David—the real David, David’s soul, or whatever you wanted to call it, the David that lived somewhere just behind his eyes and looked out at the world—was not the same David as the one people saw on his face.

His face just couldn’t be counted on.

One particularly frustrating afternoon, when Lily White told him that girls would like him more if he smiled, David decided it was time for a change.

He bought a mirror and nailed it to his bedroom wall.

He would look at the mirror day and night—hours, if that was what it took–and practise.

Practise until the muscles in his cheeks were sore.

Practise until this other David—the David that people called miserable—was a smiling, happy, friendly David.

A few weeks later he saw Lily White helping an elderly, decrepit woman step off a bus.

Lily White caught David looking and said, “What are you smirking at?”

“I’m not smirking at anything.”

“Think it’s funny, do you, someone less fortunate than you needing help.”

David didn’t know what to say.

Lily White scowled at him. “Well as long as you’re happy.”

Things like this were happening all the time now.

When David was completely innocent, teachers would ask him what was so funny and send him to the headmaster’s office. Then the headmaster, having given him a long lecture about respect, would ask him how he had the gall to smile at a time like this.

People would get nervous around David; they’d check their hair, their faces, their breath. What on earth was David smirking at? they all seemed to be thinking.

When David failed to appear grave and respectful at his grandmother’s funeral, he knew it was time for the mirror again.

He would practise and practise and in time, they would all see the real David.

Not the smirking David, not the miserable David from before: the real David.

This time, he contorted his face - tortured it - so that it was neither smirk nor frown. So that it was nothing at all.

If his face was a blank, surely peiople would think nothing of him. They would just leave him alone. Wouldn't they?

The next morning, as he sat in Double Physics, feeling his bum ache on his seat, he looked across the room at Lily White.

He was subtle, but not as subtle as he thought, for after a while she noticed him looking. At first she whispered to her friend behind her hand, and her friend laughed. David felt his face flush.

The next time she caught him looking, she stopped and turned.

'What?' she said across the classroom.

The teacher broke off his lesson. 'Excuse me. Did I say you could -'

'Mr Creep over there's staring at me,' Lily White said.

Everyone turned to look at him. When David looked back, he thought he was the picture of wounded innocence, but everyone seemed strangely unsettled by him. Even the teacher.

This was the way it went for him now, with girls. A single look and they would tell him he was a creep. A starer. His eyes didn't blink.

With boys, a single look meant an invitation to fight. 'What you looking at?' they said. 'Wanna start something?'

One time, when he was sitting his Physics exam, he overheard the invigilators playing a game: Stand next to the child you think is mostly likely to become a serial killer.

He was struggling through Question 12 when both of their shadows loomed over him.

He found his parents' internet searches: 'signs of autism in children', 'no emotions teenager', 'unloving child'.

The mirror had brought him no luck again, it seemed.

Still no one knew the real David.

This time, when he went to the mirror, he knew he was done with practising.