By Sahasra Nistala
You know what they say about me? They say I’m…strange. “Quirky.” Their lips turn up with disgust as I cross them in the hallway. In the tumultuous landscape that is Ocean Sides High School, I don’t fit in anywhere. Not the popular girls with enough rizz and Stanley Cups to last them a lifetime, not the athletic girls recruited into D1 schools, not the overachiever girls with their fancy internships and LinkedIn profiles.
“What do you like to do?” you, the reader, might ask. For one, I love to break the fourth wall. But when I’m not doing that, I’m parading around the neighborhood wearing my Count Dracula Halloween costume (again, I’m quirky), writing poetry in my dog-eared journal, and pining over my childhood-friend-turned-popular-golden-boy.
My ex-bestie’s name is Dragonius Delgado, and he’s the talk of the town. “Dragonius!” they say, crowding around him like moths to a shimmering flame. “Go to homecoming with me! Accept the MVP trophy! Act as honorary mayor of our city because our real mayor has been kidnapped by the enigmatic-but-all-controlling government!” It makes me sick to my weak, brittle stomach. Every day, I become paler and more petite, my ghostly complexion hollow with overwhelm. When I’m feeling this way, the only thing I can do is gaze at my reflection in a puddle on the sidewalk, thankful that I’m naturally pretty even without makeup. Makeup is for rich snobs whose parents didn’t fall asleep in The Great Asleepening, anyway.
I cautiously turn around the corner, making sure no one’s there. I couldn’t bear to take yet another insult. Slowly, I tiptoe down the hallway—and slam face-first into a towering, muscular boy who is at least two feet taller than me. I fumble around on the floor for my glasses before stumbling back onto my clumsy feet.
The tall male figure chuckles. “Looking for these?” He holds the glasses in front of my face.
I grab them and put them on—it’s Dragonius, in the flesh. Immediately, color rises into my pale, ghostly face, accentuating my hollow cheekbones.
“You look very nice,” Dragonius says, maintaining his usual gentlemanly demeanor. “Did you get your delicate-but-calloused hands on some makeup, by any chance?”
This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. The moment I prove myself—not just to Dragonius, but to me. I steel myself and push up on the balls of my feet so that I am stronger and taller—a whopping five-foot-two. The world looks different from up here.
I crane my neck seventy-five degrees to look Dragonius in the eye. “No,” I assert. “There’s one thing you should know about me.”
A storm brews behind Dragonius’s stormy blue-green-gray eyes. His heavy brow is twinged with concern. It’s time.
“I’m not like the other girls.”
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