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She sits on the floor and looks up at the several sweaters stapled to her wall. The impossibly intricate patterns swim and make her vision blur. She sees them moving, dancing, forming figures that call out to her and say scary things like “I am Cornflake Bear.” She knows it’s not real. She keeps watching.
She hears a voice, calling out her name, but when she turns around, all she sees is her empty room. It was just in her head. Of course. Nobody wants to talk to her. Nobody ever will, no matter what she does.
She’s not very good at getting people to like her, even though she tries very hard. Her very best friend—though they assign that title to someone else—does so without even putting in any effort. That’s great for them, she supposes. They get to have their oddities viewed as endearing. But they also get to stay in their room all day and not talk to anybody unless they want to. She doesn’t get to do that. She has to go to school. People there think she’s weird—in a bad way. She can’t figure out what the difference is between good-weird and bad-weird, and anyone that might know is either one of those people that know things but just don’t know how to explain them, or they’re someone that would never tell her anything. Someone that wants to watch her suffer and struggle and try so hard, yet fail every time.
Those people are the type that love her friend. All they have to do is smile and say something and suddenly they’re the cutest little thing in the world. She’s affected by that. She doesn’t know if she’s angry at them or those mean kids or herself or nothing in particular, or if she’s proud, or if she’s jealous, or if she’s confused, or if she’s completely indifferent and simply acknowledging a strange fact of the world she lives in.
She’s supposed to have gotten better at recognising feelings. The psychologist makes her look at pictures of faces and sort them, and she’s repeated the activity often enough that she’s started remembering what eyebrows mean.
Fish don’t have eyebrows. That’s weird. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t know how she feels. Maybe that’s why nobody likes her.
But… plenty of people like her mom, so it can’t possibly be a matter of appearance. Plenty of people like her dad, so it isn’t a matter of having grown up somewhere else, alone, either. And of course, everyone loves her best friend, even though they act just like she does.
It’s just her. Something about the way she is. Something about the things she sees.
Something’s wrong.