She arrived in the February of my junior year.

I didn’t think much of her at first. My outlook on humanity was as such that I paid little attention to anyone outside my family— and even then, there was little for me to look into. She was like everyone else, no more than an empty face. I do remember once that she said hi and asked me my name.

I looked at her cooly without really seeing her, my pulse quickening as it normally did on the rare occasion I spoke to someone.

Mara, was my answer.

Her eyes lit up briefly. “Mara? Is that like short for ‘Sumara’? Like on The Ring?”

No.

“Oh.” She flushed prettily, sweet metal and sparkles.

I looked over her shoulder, seeing her newly made friends waiting with baited breath. I knew what they were thinking: Newbie talking to the Ice Queen; how dangerous. She’d cast her lot with the punkers, the deadbeats, the to-be drugdealers and lethal emos . But for all their bad-ass attitude, they looked quickly away from me, Medusa, and my glacial gaze.

I made some remark about her expectant friends and turned heel, walking across the school’s pristine dew-chilly lawn and disappearing inside the building.

It didn’t trouble me that I didn’t know her name or that I had acted like a bitch. I didn’t to want to know her. It was as simple as that.

And yet, somehow, at the end of the year, last day of school, through a pounding headache and a blatant show of disdain for the carrying on around me, I ended up with her phone number. In exchange she got my email address and my autograph on her arm in green sharpie marker, sloppy tattoo on her skin. If I had known that I was signing a pact, a contract, the basis upon which a new era of my life was to be formed. . .

Yeah. What if?

She smiled as I gave back the marker, sweet metal and sparkles.

I curled a lip.

And the crowd of hormones sucked her back in like the ocean tide to a world on the other side of the looking glass. She was a mermaid; I was the Wicked Witch of the West. There was never an intention to cross the line.

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