Clusterfuck

xii

She had long, golden hair that was often twisted into a pair of neat French braids that extended down to just above her shoulder blades. When she wore her hair down, though, it was longer and shinier, wavy, falling in loose strands around her neck and shoulders and arms, bouncing when she walked, swaying with the air around her when she stood stagnant, whipping around her face when she ran or danced or jumped or twirled.

One of her eyes was cornflower blue, and the other chestnut brown. Toby doesn't remember which was which. But even though—even though he didn't like her in the way she probably hoped, he still constantly found himself staring into them—into those eyes—and unable to look away. They were probably one of the main reasons he felt so drawn to her in the first place. Because there was something different about her, something that set her apart from the rest—and she owned it. And he wanted to own it too.

Not his identity. Not then, at least. When he met her, he hadn't quite figured that part out about himself just yet. But there's something else about Toby that he knew—knows—makes him unique, a bit different from all the others even if, most of the time, nobody could see it.

The splotches down his back started out small, barely a shade paler than his normal skin, way back when he was in elementary school. He hadn't thought much of it then. He barely even knew it was there. But, then again, he didn't really feel the need to stare at his one back in the mirror as a prepubescent child.

But over time, the splotches grew in size and morphed in color, stretching across the skin on his back like ice freezing over a lake, taking on a pinkish-whitish-peachish hue. After one of the guys pointed it out in the locker room during seventh grade—"Yo, dude, what the heck is on your back?"—Toby made it a habit to go home and twist and turn and stare at himself in the mirror of his bathroom, that one comment never leaving his mind. As the days, months, and years passed, he'd just stare at himself, stare at the spots, never noticing how they continued to expand in size because he went back every day, and every day they always looked the same as they did that first time. Until he finally realized that they weren't.

Lily had different eyes, and Toby had different skin.

The way she carried herself, the way she smiled, the way she lived—it was as if everything was normal, everything was ordinary about her. As if both of her eyes were the same color. Or, as if both of her eyes had no color, and neither did anyone else's.

She made Toby feel normal. Ordinary. Colorless when it came to the skin on his back. And that's probably why he felt so drawn to her.

Toby's alarm rings out from his phone, which rests on the bathroom counter, alerting him that he has class in half an hour. He reaches over, shuts it off, and pulls his shirt on over his head with a final glance at the pinkish-whitish-peachish blotches of skin that now expand from the small of his back all the way up to his shoulders and neck.

~ ~ ~

On the napkin is a drawing. The ink is smudged in some places, and the feeble paper is slightly torn in others, but the overall image is clear nonetheless.

A mermaid.

Her face is indistinct because of scale factor, but that doesn't really even matter because everything else about her is beautiful and majestic and mesmerizing. The way her hair flairs out below the water, the meticulous cross hatched shading of the scales on her tail, the webbed fin that looks translucent even against its brown, crinkled background.

Scrawled on the back, in loopy, semi-messy handwriting, is a note:

Confession: I may or may not have been reading your paper over your shoulder for longer than you realized. But it's fine. Because it was really good. Like, really. If you're open to it, I'd love to read the finished product.