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descent, with straight
black hair that fell nearly to his waist and fingernails that seemed almost as
long. He was what some would call different, but then, so was I, and though
others tended to give him odd looks, I had decided I liked him.
    John took the desk next to mine and
began pulling supplies out of his backpack. Michael gave me a smile and turned
back toward the front of the class.
    “You write those four poems?” John
asked.
    I nodded. “Yeah, luh-last night. Did
you?”
    He snorted. “Yeah, in the class before
this one. What kind of writing instructor thinks that any real poet can produce four good poems in two days? She’s so stupid. Oh, and that was really
shitty of Professor Johnson to call you out like that this morning.”
    John was a Lit major, like me, and the
two classes we shared were this one and the one before it. What I liked most
about John was not that he didn’t talk much, but that he talked so much
that I didn’t have to. I smiled. “Yeah. I guh-got-got a little embarrassed.”
    John laughed. “No shit. You were all
like ‘s-s-s-s-sorry, muh-muh-muh-Ma’am,” he teased.
    I laughed in return. This was another
thing about John that I found refreshing. He didn’t pretend that he didn’t
notice my stutter. Other people will listen to what I say and try to act as
though my speech impediment doesn’t make them uncomfortable, and while some
really didn’t mind, most did. It makes them feel the same way as when they see
someone with an enormous deformity on their face. They can’t ignore it, and yet
it would be considered rude to mention it. John had no such qualms.
    “I only s-st-stutter when yuh-you’re
around because those-those-those fingernails are so duh-distracting,” I
replied.
    John thought this was hilarious.
Watching him laugh made my heart sink. This was what college life should be, jokes
and laughs and carefree. I looked around the classroom, which was now pretty
much full. The teacher hadn’t arrived just yet, and everyone seemed to be in
light moods. They were all so young, so full of life. Why shouldn’t their
outlook be light?
    Because I knew that it wasn’t.
    One of the greatest mercies of life: not
knowing what’s going to happen next.

Chapter
Six
    John
    “So
what are you about to do?” John asked.
    Joe shrugged. “Go huh-home, I guess.”
    John looked over at the strange girl as
he walked alongside her. Her raven hair fell in a way that blocked most of her
face from view, but between the cracks of it he could see the odd silver-blue
color of her eyes, even as they stared downward. John had found the girl
interesting the moment he saw her, not beautiful or pretty, but interesting. He
supposed that was because he was strange himself, and birds of his feather were
rare. Mostly, though, her otherness had an allure.
    “Hey, check this out,” John said,
removing a small orange ball from his pocket. He held his right hand out in
front of him and set the orange ball atop the back of his outstretched hand.
His left arm returned to his side. He rolled the ball up his forearm, balanced
it there, and rolled it back down, then repeated it twice more. “I’m not that
good at it yet, but I will be,” he continued, returning the orange ball to his
pocket.
    “Pretty cool,” Joe replied.
    John smiled. She thought he was pretty
cool. He wasn’t used to talking to girls, but this semester had been going
really well for him in that area. He’d not only made friends with the
strange-eyed, interesting girl beside him, but he’d gotten a pretty little lab
partner in biology as well. Claire, her name was. Now, there was a hottie.
    “Huh-hey, I puh-parked over there. See
ya,” Joe said, splitting off down the path toward the east-campus parking
garage. John thought she seemed to be in a hurry for some reason. She’d seemed
anxious all day, in fact.
    “All right,” he replied. “Hey, you
okay?”
    Joe was already twenty feet in the
opposite direction, her back to him. She