How to Paint Our Skies

How to Be Misfits

Dear Fin,

This is stupid. I have no idea why I'm writing to you right now. I started this several days ago, filling good as I scrawled the finishing words onto the page. But now, as the words flow from me, falling onto the now blemished paper, I can't help but filling like this is a waste. It's not like you're going to read this.

But . . . I've already started. I mean, I've already wasted this page. I might as well continue. Although, at this moment I'm wasting words and page space and time by writing to you about how much of a waste this is.

Anyways.

I started this so I could find where our predetermined fate together was meant to end, so here I go . . . this is the story of you and I. Of Fin and Annalise.

The first time I met you, I was seventeen years old and suffered from extreme social anxiety. My social anxiety was so bad that just speaking was enough to send me shuddering and my speech quivering, promising an eventual panic attack. To make matters worse, I was bullied, but you knew that. People found it funny that they could make me shake and cry by just asking me a few questions.

When I met you . . . you're the first person in my life, besides my family, that treated me like a regular human being. You're my first friend and my best friend. I would be lying if I said meeting you wasn't most the most important day of my life. And the one that would end up eventually ruining it.

Encounter Number One:

The hot words of those surrounding me pounded my ears. The tones were harsh, meaning unkindness, hitting me with a force that caused me to flinch away from them. I jolted into a locker, a meek physical pain combed over my shoulder, but I barely noticed it. I slid down the lockers, curled up on the ground, blocking out their voices to no avail.

My whole body was trembling, the ferocity of it causing my mind to collapse in on itself, and I lost myself. The tears came before I could stop them, flooding my eyes like a tsunami wave, flowing down my cheeks. I tried to breathe, but my lungs were filled, drowning with their voices and I . . . can't . . . breathe.

I took a moment to catch it, causing the voices to fill my ears once more.

"What's wrong with you?"

"Why are you such a freak?"

"She's such a loser."

"She? More like he . . . have you seen his chest?"

Laughter.

I was f

a

l

l

i

n

g

apart.

Here in public, I was breaking, shattering into a million fragments. I was like a broken mirror, struggling to find myself and piece it back together.

The tears were still coming and I covered my face, trying to hold in the tears and block my view from the guys before me. A sob left me lips, causing me to shake more, and I heard laughter. Laughter.

I peeked through my fingers to see these guys before me, the ones from before, who had asked me all those intense questions just to get under my skin. They're laughing, watching me and laughing, enjoying my agony.