Never Noticed Novels & Stories

I couldn’t take the smile off my face. This is what being invisible for years had kept me from experiencing. Attention! The truth was, I liked this— being noticed. I liked the power of it. The way people responded.

No one knows about that. Well I think it's obvious because I feel very uncomfortable when everyone's attention is on me. But no one pointed out this before or may be no one noticed it. But He noticed and he is not anybody. We ate our breakfast in silent but siddharth stealing glance to me. I can feel it.

I slow slightly without meaning to, watching the way she doesn’t look up, doesn’t shift her attention, doesn’t acknowledge anything beyond where she’s going. Usually there’s something, even if it’s small, even if it’s just a brief glance that disappears as quickly as it comes, but this time there’s nothing at all, no pause, no hesitation, no sign that she’s even aware I’m there. That’s new, and it sits wrong in a way I can’t immediately explain, because ignoring people isn’t unusual, but this doesn’t feel like that.

Not rehearsed. Not strategic. Ours. She didn’t correct him. *** It happened slowly. Not in a single moment. But in accumulation. He noticed when she was cold before she did. He noticed when she avoided mirrors after reading articles. He noticed when she deleted drafts of emails to her mother because she didn’t want to worry her. He noticed when she pretended not to hear microaggressions in social settings. He noticed when she braced before entering rooms filled with his surname. He noticed everything.

He had fixed the light fitting in the hallway that had been loose for three weeks because she had mentioned it once in passing and he had noticed she mentioned it and had gone and fixed it without making anything of the fixing. She had noticed that he noticed things. That was the part she had not been prepared for. She had been prepared for someone who was present. She had been prepared for someone who listened. Marcus had been listening to her since a grocery store on a Sunday morning months ago and she had known from early on that he was the kind of person who paid attention. What she had not been prepared for was the specific quality of his attention. The way it landed on small things. Th

My vision was already a blur from my fever, and when I finally managed to shamble my way home, I took some medicine and quickly fell asleep. It was not until late at night when I was woken up by footsteps. I knew it was Mark, but my body hurt all over and I wasn't in the mood to entertain him, so I kept pretending to sleep. Still, even though my eyes were closed, I could still sense his piercing glare. I knew he was upset with me for not keeping the lights, waiting for him to come home, and greeting him But when I used to do it, we used to get in fights, and he would call me annoying, telling me nonchalantly that I should be more understanding.

Her mother had always been good at the kind of silence that gave questions room. "I didn't know," she said finally. "I noticed. There's a difference. Knowing is afterward. Noticing is just — paying attention." "What did you notice?" "That I was paying attention in the first place. Usually I don't. Usually people go past and you register them the way you register traffic. When you notice that you're noticing" a small pause. "That's the thing." Nora sat with that for a moment. "It's just dinner," she said. "Of course it is," her mother said, exactly as Jade had, with precisely the same weight in exactly the same four words.

More like the expression of someone who has just encountered the look of someone who had just found the missing piece of a puzzle she hadn't admitted she was solving, and who is deciding how to handle it before anyone else in the room notices they've noticed. I noticed. I'd been watching for it since we'd arrived. I'd known this moment was coming when Eleanor's attention would find Leo and lock on. I'd hoped it wouldn't happen until after the legal meeting, maybe not until after the funeral itself. Eleanor had never been slow about anything that interested her.

He didn't say a word, just turned and walked away. I didn't chase after him or say anything. At that moment, the last bit of resentment I had been holding onto seemed to vanish. I turned and looked into the distance. This life of mine? I realized there were still so many pursuits and challenges ahead. I didn't need to rely solely on family or love to keep moving forward. I looked ahead, and the road before me was still full of promise.

Just as she was truly about to, however, she noticed something peculiar. From the corner of her eyes, she noticed that the spot that was previously occupied by that familiar man was now suddenly empty. As for where the high schooler was, she noticed as blur, one that she would have missed had she blinked at that moment. The next second when the truck had passed and everyone else was focusing on it, she noticed a familiar figure on the other side of the road, leaving the scene as if it had nothing to do with him. Behind him, she noticed that the previously rushing high schooler was now sitting on the floor with a confused expression.