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“Just ignore them,” I mutter.

As we make our way to our cars, he asks, “Why do they call you Cricket, anyway?”

“Don’t ask.”

“I just did, so spill it.”

“In eighth grade science, our teacher had these lizards and we had to take turns cleaning their cage and feeding them these nasty crickets.” We stop when we get to our cars, and I slip my bag from my shoulder to fish for my keys. “I didn’t want to draw attention to myself so I never told my teacher that I was deathly afraid of insects.”

“What happened?”

“I was able to keep my cool while scooping them out with a cup from the tank they were kept in. But, before I could transfer them to the lizards, I tripped over a book that was on the ground and the crickets went flying. They literally got tangled in my hair, and I freaked.”

Noah starts laughing.

“Like, screaming and flailing around like a maniac. By lunchtime, the whole school had heard about it, and that’s when they started calling me Cricket.” I find my keys and click the fob to unlock the doors.

“I would’ve paid good money to have seen that.”

I slap his arm. “You’re so mean. Seriously, it was traumatizing.”

“They’re just crickets,” he says with a shrug, as if they were harmless cotton balls.

“Yeah, nasty, brown crickets that have more legs than I do.”

We get into our cars, and I follow him to the record shop so he can buy the album he won’t stop talking about. After we arrive, he finds it quickly, but we linger, flipping through the records.

“I love this album,” I say, holding up the vinyl from an old nineties grunge band.

““Garden” is my favorite song from that one.”

I slip it back and continue exploring. It’s been a long time since I’ve hung out with a friend like this. These past few years have been really lonely, and I’m enjoying the distraction that Noah is able to offer me.

“Check out that one up there,” he says, pointing to a bootleg that’s displayed on a shelf. “I wonder what tracks are on it.”

Reaching up, my fingers barely graze the bottom, and I have to stretch farther, lifting onto the balls of my feet. Finally, I’m able to pluck it from the shelf, but when I turn to hand it to Noah, there’s a look of shock written on his face. As I’m holding out the vinyl for him I notice the sleeve of my sweatshirt has ridden up, exposing my horrid scar that I’m always so careful about hiding.

I shove my sleeve down, gripping the hem between my palm and fingers as a current of heat spirals around me.

The moment he opens his mouth, I’m quick to shut him down. “I have to go.”

Shoving the album against his chest, I bolt.

“Low,” he calls after me, but I’m already pushing through the door.

When I’m in my car and throwing it into reverse, I look up to see him staring at me through the large windows of the store, confusion clear in his expression. I step on the gas and pull out of the lot, leaving him to wonder about the freak I am.

Turning right instead of left, I head to the beach. Embarrassment floods me, causing my breathing to grow uneven as I speed away. But beneath that lies the sadness, and before I know it, my eyes are puddled with tears. When they spill over, I wipe my face with my sleeve, all the while panicking.

What if Noah tells someone at school and then everyone finds out about it, that it wasn’t because I was pregnant that I missed last semester but because I was locked away like the mutant I am.

By the time I park, the mist has thickened, and I reach into the backseat to grab my raincoat. Stepping out of the car with my notebook in hand, I flip the hood over my head and walk down to the sand. A strong wind kicks off the water, sending a light sea spray my way as I sit on a big piece of driftwood, close my eyes, and allow the salty water droplets to collect on my face. After a moment, I pull the pencil out from the wired spiral of my notebook and open it to the last page I was writing on.

It’s a rambling poem I scribbled down a few nights ago after my father left for London. My bones were heavier than normal that day, and I’d given up on feigning strength.

I cried silently while words poured out and onto the page. Words that expose my truth, a truth that’s so enigmatic that it’s entirely unexplainable. So, I wrote, not in sentences, but rather, in fragments that don’t connect in a way that would make sense to others.

But they make sense to me.