The Perfect Silence Of The Stars (También en Español)

Chapter 3. I Exist. I Exist. I Exist.💫

The United States of America doesn't require philosophy as a standard feature of the secondary school curriculum, unlike Europe and Latin America, where my favorite subject is treated with the respect it deserves.

Philosophy teaches students how to pose meaningful questions, inspect and scrutinize our held beliefs, and work out our own ideas with care and rigor. You must wonder how I know this. The answer lies within a name: Professor Kevin White and his extra-curricular club. The one I joined last year, two weeks after learning about my disorder.

My diagnosis ignited this domino effect palooza, triggering one shitty event after another.

First one being the demise of my social life as I knew it. Maybe it was the way I spoke now, as if I made my words out of cotton; fluffy staple fibers threaded in them. They grow in a protective case—my wacko mind. My classmates are at a loss as to what to say next if I burst them out without careful filtering.

Next in line came the massive weight loss situation, which resulted in loads of time spent listening to Anamathea's advice on how black was the new me. She droned on and on inside my head; I listened and obliged.

This new 'diagnosed', washed-out version of myself looks like an episode of "What Not to Wear" reality show gone wrong where Stacy London and Clinton Kelly bail on my insane ass. The girl who wore colorful, patterned tees, and skirts, disappeared one day. An unkempt, oversized doppelgänger replaced her. No one knows where Imogen went to or why.

After a while, my former friends understood that's how it was going to be from now on, and they never asked questions or cared to follow me down that path. Kass did because she's a sunshine and special and I love her, okay? The rest of the high school universe wasn't that diplomatic.

Whenever I walk into a class, I'm looked at as if I were that oily, dark goo that ships dump in the ocean. Liquid poison. Too sticky to get your hands dirty in helping to clean out that mess.

If I didn't know better, I'd say being an outcast is pretty cool. But I know better. I can't help but think I've missed the how-to-be-normal memo, and that's why my life went bananas.

Before I knew it, I had loads of time in my hands. Free periods were about hanging out with your friends, making out in bathroom stalls or hiding in the library also to make out. I was doing zero of those things, hence why after fifteen days of wandering the hallways I found a pamphlet, stuck to the notice board with a yellow, twisted pin. I ignored the winged, scarlet lizard chewing bits of its left corner. I don't even bother double checking if it's real. A reptile nomming on the school's pin board papers is the exact sort of thing my freakish mind loves cooking up.

From the second I walked in on Professor White talking about 'free will' and the appreciation of life, I knew I'd found my pond. Plenty of weird tadpoles in it, too.

Thomas Stevenson, for instances. He wears shorts when it's freezing outside and has a massive crush on his fungi garden, which he grows on his father's beer fridge. How is he not homeless by now? A total mystery. Cringey as hell, yet alluring. The guy can go hours praising damn spores.

Leia Martinez is another cool one. She needs to count the steps she takes anywhere and do her rituals every time she gets in the classroom. Today is no different. Lights go on and off three times and we know she's arrived a bit late—seven minutes to be precise—to the club gathering in the former now forgotten art's room.

The place is perfect for us. A combination of half-assed statues in impossible postures, some even wearing strange attire, plus a sofa area with cushions for days and an eating area where we share Professor's White famous banana bread and Timothy's cinnamon buns.