"Hey, mind if I sit with you?" a soft, lilting voice said as the stool scraped against the ground next to me.
She already sat down before I could reply, so I merely shrugged.
"What's your name?" she went on, and, in my peripherals, I could see her bending her head, trying to get a look at me.
I tilted my face further away from her as I opened my science book, not wanting her to get a look at my eyes. "Indigo," I mumbled back.
"Ooo, Indigo. It's such a pretty colour, too."
You'd think I'd be used to the comment by now... but it still hurt when people said that.
When I didn't say anything back, she went on. "Well, I'm Carys. And before you ask, it's Welsh. Are my parents Welsh? Nope. But they saw the name in a book of baby names and decided, 'hey, let's give our daughter the weirdest name we can find that would cause endless questions for the rest of her life. No biggie.'"
As she continued to prattle, I couldn't help but slowly lift my head, wanting to see what the face to the voice looked like.
Ever so hesitantly, I let my hair fall out of my sight as I let my eyes flicker her way. Round face, chubby cheeks, she grinned at me from ear to ear as she shoved her thick-framed glasses up her nose.
But just as quickly as the smile had appeared, it dropped. Then she leaned in.
I careened away, but she followed, gaze narrowing as she studied me.
"Woah," she said. "Your eyes are red. Are they contacts?"
"Yeah," I mumbled, turning my face back down and hiding behind my safety curtain.
"Going for a newborn vampire cosplay, hey?" she then asked. "I should totally start rocking my contacts, too. Good thinking, Indi. Hope you don't mind if I call you that."
I glanced back up at her. "Vampire cosplay?"
"Like in Twilight, no? Or is it some other show you're going for?"
My brows furrowed. "Twilight is ancient."
"It's a classic for paranormal literature."
"And it is full of toxic, anti-feminist messages." But my mind was brooding in the fact that I looked like a newborn vampire with these contacts. Great... Yeah, they're totally subtle, mum...
One side of her mouth tilted up as she crossed her arms over her chest in a satisfied manner. "So you've read it, hey?"
Rolling my eyes, I said, "I've read everything in my mum's collection and judged her accordingly."
Carys barked a laugh before pushing her glasses up her nose once more. "I like you. You're a crack up."
My face flushed momentarily as I turned back towards my book, not sure what to do with her sudden statement. "Th-thanks," I said.
"Hey, I know it's rough being new. I only moved here last year and never really found anyone I fit in with. You're welcome to hang with me if you'd like?"
I glanced back up at her in shock and awe that someone would want to hang out with me. But, as she continued to grin at me from ear to ear, I gave her a slightly eager nod.
"Settled."
And just as I opened my mouth, prepared to correct her on her statement earlier, the teacher called the class to attention.
•❃°•°❀°•°❃•
"So, Indi, where are you from?" Carys said as we took a seat at the benches by the science block.
"Here," I muttered back.
"Oh. Which school did you transfer from?"
"Er... I've been homeschooled since grade two."
"Homeschooled?" she exclaimed, mouth full of food. "Why?"
"Lots of... surgeries. And school was rough back then for me."
Her lips pursed together as she paused in eating, gaze searching my face. But it only lasted a moment. That friendly smile stole her cheeks again as she continued to eat and yabber. "Well, this must be quite the shock being at school again. What made you decide to go here?"
"The parents concluded it was time... and that my last two years should be 'normal'." I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, already recalling the fight with mum.
"I won't go," I had screamed at her.
"You will," mum had ordered back. "You will have to go to university one day where you will face people, and you need to prepare for human interaction somehow."
"I can do uni online."
"You can't lock yourself away from the world forever, Indi. You need to get used to people staring at you and know it's not because you look strange or anything but it's just that you're slightly different. Besides, it's barely noticeable with the contacts."
"I still have to wear sunglasses outside though! Mum, please... I will go to uni in person. Just don't make me go to high school."
But then dad joined in. "I'm sorry, Indigo, but your mum and I already discussed this. It's time you rejoin your peers and do it now while you're young. We should have made you go back ages ago, to be honest, but..."
"Please don't do this," I begged.
But here I was.
"Normal?" Carys laughed. "Yeah, because high school is normal... I swear, sometimes I think parents weren't ever young. Like they're just born these old people, and that's why they don't understand what it's like to be a teenager."
The corners of my lips turned up at her comment as I nodded in agreement.
Then, a brief moment of silence overcame us as Carys finished her lunch and I nibbled at my wrap.
But, as per usual, she didn't seem capable of not talking for too long. "So are you going to tell me what cosplay it is?"
Heaving a sigh, I mumbled, "It... it's not a cosplay."
"No? A stan thing? Some K-pop group trend I'm not in on yet?"
I shook my head.
"Then what? The suspense is killing me!"
"I... They're... It's..." I took a deep breath to calm my racing heart, clamped my eyes shut, then blurted, "They're prescription contacts."
She didn't say anything for a while. And, ever so slowly, I opened my eyes to get a look at her.
Brows furrowed, her gaze searched my face for a few silent moments before she said, "They make prescription contacts in all sorts of colours?"
"I mean... well... of course. But these ones... They allow me to see in the day."
"To see in the... What?"
I peeled off a fleck of skin on my lip before I responded. "I have pretty bad photophobia... which means I can't see in the daylight too well. It's extremely bright to my eyes."
"Oh... that must be annoying!" she said. "Can they fix it?"
I shook my head. "It's... part of another condition I have. The reason I was homeschooled. They tried though... I had heaps of surgeries when I was young to fix my vision."
She was quiet again, her face the most serious I had ever seen it.
"I have this rare eye disease called Achromatopsia," I continued to blabber when she didn't speak. "It's a kind of colour-blindness where... well... I can't see any colour."
"None?"
"Nope."
"Like... your world is just black and white?"
"Indeed."
"So you're constantly living in an old movie?"
The corners of my lips turned up. "I guess? But... I don't really know what that means. All movies are black and white to me."
She blinked as my words slowly sunk in. Then, at once, her brows shot up as her hand clamped over her mouth. "Oh my gosh, of course! Duh. So you've been like this since birth?"
"Yup. Parents realised something was up when I was squinting a lot when they took me outside. Basically, my cones in my eyes don't work. The rods do, but they're very sensitive to light. So, at night, I'm fine. But bright rooms and the sun are a lot. The red contacts reduce glare and make everything almost normal. But when it's really bright, like when I'm outside or in the full sun, I need to slip on my sunglasses as well otherwise I can't see detail."
"That is... That must suck, Indi. I'm sorry to hear that."
Shrugging, I finished the last bite of my lunch. "It's always been like this," I mumbled after I swallowed.
But then my mind whispered back, Until today.
No, I thought back. That was surely a trick of the eye or something... Surely I was hallucinating the colour as a result of him being the first boy my age to ever really talk to me.
I bit my tongue from telling Carys. Because, while she seemed trustworthy, I wasn't ready to spill everything to her. Especially considering it may just be an anomaly.
"So, why didn't you go to school all this time? Were kids jerks?" she then asked.
"Kind of. It was more the surgery part that kept me out. But the other kids did make fun of my glasses a lot because, before the contacts, I had these red glasses that I wore over my eyes. They used to say I was wearing 3D glasses and that normal people already saw in 3D..."
She was already shaking her head before I finished my sentence. "Gosh, some people are such dickheads."
My eyes went wide at her word as I flinched back.
"What?"
"I just... my parents don't swear. So I don't ever really hear—"
"Homeschool kids are weird," she concluded as she leaned in, studying my face now for a completely different reason... as though she were looking for other abnormalities.
"Am not," I mumbled. Though I knew she was right.
"Eh, I'm also weird. Probably weirder. And here I was hoping you had a really cool cosplay hobby." She sighed. "Guess I'm forever alone in that one."
"I mean... I guess... I wouldn't mind joining you in it? I don't know what's involved and I don't have the courage to really go out in public where normal people are dressed up in cosplay, but like—"
Next I knew, her arms were around me, pulling me tight into her. "Ahh, you're the best," she squealed way too loudly into my ear before pushing back.
"Am I?" I whispered.
"Oh, for sure." But then the joy softened on her face, a genuine smile taking hold. "I'm glad you came here, Indi. I know we don't know each other too well yet, but... I feel like this is the start of a great friendship, you know?"
Corners of my lips tugging up, I gave her a nod, all the while my brain whispered in delight, I made a friend...
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