Only Differently Designed // ODD

1. Only Sweater Weather

Breath.

I need breath.

There is no breath. No breath at all. Not just that – I need light. It's dark in here. Unbelievably dark. Darker than the back of my eyelids. I'd rather keep my eyes screwed shut than watch the endless darkness swirl before me.

The darkness – it's almost... palpable. I can feel it, rubbing against my skin. It scares me. It's scaring me now because I'm flailing helplessly right in the very heart of it. It's closing in on me and I'm starting to sweat because of the heat.

Boom boom boom. Can't my heart shut up? And my breath. If I keep breathing this heavily I won't have a drop of air left. I'm running out of air. I'm suffocating. All the air is being sucked in by the heat, by the dark. I flail I push, push, push. It only wraps around me tighter. So narrow. Getting narrower even. Suffocating.

Frustrating.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate – it's slipping away. I feel it scrape along my neck. Pressure. There's a large amount of pressure against my head. And then, finally, beautifully – air. I can breathe. I drink the sweet air in. I taste it and sigh with relief.

Light. I have light. When my eyes adjust to this new light, I see a girl before me. Scarlet. A classmate. I refuse to say "my" classmate. It just doesn't work that way. I don't feel it. I don't feel any intimacy towards my so-called peers.

But Scarlet is alright. She says good morning most of the time. She asked to borrow a pencil once. Not that she returned it. So it wasn't really "borrowing" as much as it was polite stealing. Still, I don't resent her. She's genuinely nice, and not many girls possess such ability.

And so I observe this Scarlet for a moment or two before fully comprehending what just happened. It's only when she holds up my wrinkled sweater that I understand.

"You seemed to be struggling," she chuckles.

Ah, so she saved me from nearly getting suffocated by my own sweater. It wasn't the first time I had to go through a seizure while taking it off. It's quite likely that someday newspaper headlines would read something along the lines of,

"Sweater Confirmed Guilty of Murdering Teenager."

I attempt to say thank you to my savior, but unfortunately, as usual, I stutter and spit out unreasonable letters before actually uttering my thanks. What a reliable mouth. Scarlet doesn't seem to mind my stuttering, though.

I expect her to hand my sweater back at this point. There isn't anything left to say after all. But she doesn't. For a moment I think she might want to "borrow" it the way she had "borrowed" my pencil. It takes me by surprise when she actually puts the sweater on.

Did she just boldly claim it as her own? The way a dog might pee on a tree to mark it as its territory? I wasn't exactly very fond of this particular sweater, but I found it fairly offensive, watching someone steal my belongings so openly like that.

I continue watching Scarlet with confusion as she, immediately after putting my sweater on, starts taking it off. I don't understand. Was she backing down? She slips one arm out of a sleeve, then the other. Then she smoothly slinks her head out.

"Try taking it off like this next time," she says. "It's how my father taught me to do it."

Ah, so it was only a demonstration. Not an attempt at robbery. I nod blunderingly when I receive my sweater. I want to say something, but I have nothing to say, really. When Scarlet sees I have no comment, she walks away, blending into the other girls, becoming once more a faceless classmate.

I feel slightly irritated at myself for not coming up with a smart comeback on her sweater tutorial. But how am I supposed to react to something like that? If it were another person, would they have known what to say?

Maybe if I had said something, she would still be here, and we would be talking. I would tell her how my mother accidently gave me a fork for my cereal this morning, and she would laugh, and we would become.... Become what? Friends? Hah! I don't need any of those. I have Mark.

Yes, Mark and I. Best friends. Soul mates. I know everything about him, from his favorite hobby to the hairs of his eyebrows. And he knows me too. We share everything. We are everything. We are one. Yes, Mark and I.

Throughout the next few lessons, I compile a list of the things I want to tell Mark about during break time – including the fork thing. I allow the humans around me to buzz here and there. I pay them no heed. I don't need any of them. Not one of them. Not when I have Mark.

Finally I hear it. The bell. Break time.

It's Mark and I time.