The silliest thing she would do.

Chapter one: The grey mouse.

She had always been the grey mouse. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Although when you did look more closely at her, her skin did seem sort of grey. Her wardrobe consisted of different shades of the wonderfully, colourfully colour of grey. Clothes that in no way: would, could or should stand out in a crowd. Not that she had ever been in many. Crowds, that was.

The mouse part, she wasn’t entirely sure about. Her front teeth had never particularly stood out, at least not after some painful years of braces, she had noted while looking at herself in a mirror. She’d never noticed a tail, although to be fair, she did have some difficulties turning properly around to get a good glance at her bum, so she couldn’t rule that one completely out. She hoped she didn’t have a tail in any case. What else could there be to justify the mouse part of her, she wondered. Her face wasn’t any more hairy than most faces. Well, of the female population.

Fran had never been the girl who got the most attention in class. Even her parents had secretly labelled her the silent one. Competing for attention in a big family, as the second youngest was hard. Fran supposed she had always been too lazy to give it a try. Having brothers and sisters who refused to be ignored by their parents, or anyone really, had always shoved her in the background. Her hobbies had never been acting, singing, playing, sports or anything that would put her as the centre of attention.

Heck, she would be surprised if they had any film on the family videos of her doing anything but sitting in the background with a good book. Except perhaps of the time when a young teacher had decided that by the school year’s end, the whole class would contribute with something in a show for their parents. Fran had been assigned to read a poem, as she had seemed the type to the teacher. Her father had let the video camera film for the first two minutes of the empty stage, before the teacher had rushed someone in a pig costume onto stage. Fran had stayed away for the rest of the show. The book she had brought along for the time before and after her act was too good to put away to go on stage in front of a lot of people and read a stupid poem.

Her life as a person in the shadows – not the exciting, interesting, and mystical shadows that more alternative people would claim to be part of, but the shadows of the people in her life – would now end, she had decided.

It all happened the year she turned 21. The morning after Fran had had her heart broken yet another time. Now, Fran would have loved to tell the tale of how a guy she had been dating for years and years had broken her heart. Sadly this was merely a tale; he hadn’t shown any interest in dating her. And while it was true that she had liked him for years, he hadn’t known of her existence. None of her crushes ever had. Guys she had taken classes with had wondered who she was as she had subtly asked if they wanted to see a movie “or something” sometime.

After years of hearing people exclaim how horrid their lives are while still being virgins at the shockingly high age of 14, Fran, who was still at 21 unkissed and certainly untouched in most ways, couldn’t help but feel embarrassed. If it was for them or for her, she had never been quite clear about, but she was generous enough to be embarrassed for both.

Fran had had it with being the grey mouse. It was now or never, she decided. She could easily have continued as always, but after 21 years of nothing but blandness, she wanting something more. Something else.

Her idea of something completely else struck her as frightening, but wasn’t that always what had stopped her? She was 21, a student far from home, friendless, unnoticeable, and bored. Perhaps if the bookstores close by would update their content every now and then, Fran would never have gone through with this, but oh well, who knew?

It was time to do something else and all it would take was a lot of courage and a trip to a shopping centre with a credit card. The courage bit was taken care of by draining half the vodka bottle one of her older brothers had provided as a birthday present some weeks before. It was intended as a joke, of course. “On the off chance that you might actually look away from your books and invite someone into your flat, at least they will have something to drink.” Apparently tea wasn’t cool enough for guests, even if it worked perfectly fine for Fran herself.

As Fran had never tasted alcohol before, she took her precautions and made herself swear not to remove the bottle from her mouth until at least half was gone. After all, who knew how little the effect would be if she only took a mouthful and spit it out? She didn’t drink anymore after that half bottle, of course. Just shook her head at how people could enjoy this stuff. Then she walked towards her door, to go out and wait for her taxi. She admitted loudly to herself how hard it was to avoid bumping into things suddenly. Had her flat always been this full of furniture and why were all the furniture right in front of her on her way to the door?

Fran thought her taxi driver took a double look at her, which few people did. Apparently he wasn’t used to driving drunkenly grey mice anywhere. Or drunk people alone somewhere either and especially not to a shopping centre.

Her first action at the centre was to go to a hairdresser. It took her surprisingly long to find it, but when she first did she went and sat down in one of the chairs and ordered the surprised girl behind the counter, who claimed she needed to order an appointment first, that she didn’t have time. “Just dye it as blonde as possible and do whatever else you want with it” Fran shouted, before starting to dance along to the shop’s background music, ignoring everything else.