Different

M. was different. She thought this every time she caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror, her dark curls tumbling recklessly down her back. She thought about it as she looked for tree frogs out in the marsh beyond her backyard with her best friend Chris. She thought about it as she lay splayed out on her bed in her room, her head dangling over the edge, popping blue sweet tarts into her mouth. That was one of the problems, she thought. She thought too much. Any emotion she felt was done so with the utmost of intensity, leaving her helpless until the wave of whatever it was ebbed into something more manageable. Sometimes it took her by surprise- a wave of worry and hopelessness would hold her under far too long and spit her back out, panicking and gasping for air. Her large, doll-like eyes would appear to cloud over, and her mouth would twist to the side as she began to chew thoughtfully on her bottom lip.

Chris always told her this was not a big deal, but for Chris nothing was ever a big deal. A natural charmer and eternal optimist, he was always filled with a laid-back enthusiasm that made him appear the picture of confidence as he loped along side M. on whatever quest she was on. M., on the other hand, struggled to keep up. She was tiny by any standards, although even more so when standing next to Chris. Despite his voracious appetite, he maintained a bony lankiness that made him appear to loom even larger than he already did. Chris was a licorice whip while M. was a tootsie pop. She was curvy and petite and constantly mistaken for a high schooler, although she'd graduated more than 3 years earlier. Together they made quite the pair.

"Look," he was saying to her now, as they sat in Chris' pickup truck outside the abandoned 7-11, "I wouldn't kill you. I could never. But if you were to... expire... for any reason, would I eat you to stay alive? Yes. Wouldn't you want me to?"

M. kept steady eye contact with him as she slowly sipped her blue slurpee. She enjoyed watching him squirm at her surprise hypothetical questions, whether she would approve of his answers or not.

"You disgust me." she said finally. He snorted and ran a hand over his face, but she could see he was smiling.

"Do you think he even noticed it's gone yet?" She asked him, craning her neck to look in the truck bed, where their friend Simon's moped was propped up gently.

"I should say so, he's here." Chris reported, taking a quick sip of his own slurpee, cherry red, before flicking his headlights twice at the form of a young man approaching. "Hey! Sparky!"

M. could tell by the way Simon's hair was standing up in blonde wisps around his head that he was flustered. Angry would've been the correct word, if it was anyone but Simon. Simon never got angry. His face would redden and his voice might go stern and, at his wits end, the hair would stick up and out from his scalp from his hands raking through it.

"Don't call me that!" he yelled, as he jogged over to them. He reached them panting, leaning a forearm on Chris' drivers side window. He looked over at his moped, safe and accounted for, looked back at Chris, then M., and shook his head.

"I hate you guys." he said, half-smiling.

"Yeah well we love you too but get that thing out I have to get M. home." Chris announced, getting out of the truck to help Simon.

M. finished her slurpee as she waited for the thud of Simon's moped hitting the ground and Chris' re-entry into the truck. He started the ignition as she fiddled with the radio, she liked having music on to anchor her thoughts into the present and not ten steps ahead, as it usually was. She found a 90's pop song on one of the lower channels and turned the volume up, looking at her blue stained tongue in the rearview mirror as they sang the whole way home.