KNOW IT ALL

PLAIN TOAST

I hate the smell of toast, something about it reminds me of depression. Obviously, I'm talking about plain toast - jam, jelly, and peanut butter masks the smell of sadness a lot more thoroughly than salted butter.

Rachel walks by my desk and pauses, looking down at my empty exam paper with her hands clasped together behind her back, nails digging into her wrists. Her lips are pursed with lip filler, puckered like an asshole and similarly colourless. Briefly, I wonder if she's going to pull me up out of my seat and in for one of those closed-mouth-chicken-peck kisses you see on elementary school playgrounds or in loveless marriages - but I think twice before I chuckle at the thought.

"The exam is over in ten minutes, sweetheart," she says, her voice so loud in the silent room that several students look up from their papers to glare. To her credit, she is trying. Maybe if I were normal, I wouldn't catch the slightly-higher pitch of her voice, or her nails digging into the flesh of her wrists, or her flared nostrils and shrinking pupils.

But I'm not normal, and Rachel hates me twice as much as she hates every other child in this exam hall. "I know, Rachel," I say purposely, just to get her mad enough to go away. "I'm just stuck."

Her eyes narrow slightly and her breathing catches on the rage in her throat. "Please," she tries to smile, but it's so tight it just looks like she's baring her teeth, "call me Ms. Mulligan." Her nails dig in deeper, palms flexing involuntarily. She wants to hit me.

Now I know why it's Ms. and not Mrs. "Okay."

Rachel strides away like she's making a dramatic exit, her too-big flats flopping against the floor as she goes and forcing every student still writing to pause and look up in muted annoyance. I never understood why they insisted on complete silence (does it help?), but I kept my bored pen-tapping and thing-counting to a minimum. Did you know the exam hall has 137 ceiling tiles? Each row itself is even, which bothers me - why do I keep coming up with an odd number?

I suppose it doesn't matter - it won't bother me until I count them again.

"Quiet," Rachel hisses from three rows ahead of me at a boy who clicked his pen twice, nervously, as she approached. "Some people are trying to concentrate."

Maybe I'd call her Ms. Mulligan if she weren't such a raging cunt. Maybe I'd like the smell of warm stale-bread if it weren't the saddest breakfast I'd ever seen in my life.

Maybe none of these things would bother me if I were normal.

***

"How was your exam?" Nyx asks, falling into step beside me as I turn the corner past the library. "Where are we going?"

Yes, you heard that right: Nyx. Possibly the dumbest name she could have picked. I tried to tell her it was terrible, but she wouldn't listen to me - moreover, she changed her last name to a noun. 'Pen' as in the writing instrument. If she were 13 I would be apathetic, but as she's about to turn 18 and she's not at all bothered by her full beard, it becomes me to fear for both the trans community and the general public. What a ridiculous fucking name - at least I'll remember it.

"Locker," I say simply, and she laughs.

"Your locker's upstairs, genius," she says, starting up the nearest stairwell.

I hide the hurt I feel underneath an expression of apathy, walking ahead of her. "I know," I lie through my teeth, "I was looking for you."

I'm almost sure this hasn't happened in a while - usually I find her while I'm still upstairs (which I know because we pass the kid in full cosplay by the science labs that's always trying to reach up into the vending machine to grab a free snack) and as such she assumes we're going to my locker and inadvertently leads me there. That and the fact that I can remember her name are the primary reason I kept her around, before I actually grew to enjoy her company and was forced to tell her about my grades. Obviously, that's as far as our friendship will ever go.