To be honest, I'm not sure why Kendra and I were ever enemies. There were never two people who had more in common than we do. We even look exactly alike! Well, mostly. Kendra and I are like twins. Almost.
We aren't the same size, but we have so much in common that you hardly even notice a minor detail like that. If you looked at pictures of Andrea, Kendra and I, you would probably pick out Andrea as the one who wasn't related to us. She is far too glamorous. And Kendra and I really are practically twins, we are so similar.
First of all, we both have curly blonde hair. Granted, it's not the same length, but that's not the point, is it? My hair is really, really long (too long, actually), and it falls in soft waves of loose spiral curls. Kendra's hair is pretty short. It doesn't quite come to her shoulders, and her curls are tight and frizzy, which makes her hair look even shorter than it really is.
People often tell Kendra that her hair is really cute, like a poodle's. I know that it's a compliment, but Kendra really hates it when people say that. But other than the length and type of curl, our hair is exactly alike. We even have the exact same shade of blonde hair – except for the natural auburn highlights that I have in my hair, of course.
Kendra and I both have fair skin, freckles and green eyes. She has more freckles than I do, but they look really cute on her. They actually fit her so well that no one really ever even notices her freckles any more. I'm not so lucky. I only have 5 little freckles on my nose, but everyone notices them.
Jarod loves to point out the way that my freckles get darker whenever I'm embarrassed. I don't know if he's just teasing me or if it really happens, but it makes me feel like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer every time I start to blush! No one ever picks on Kendra about her freckles!
Our eyes aren't the exact same shade of green either. Actually, Kendra's eyes are closer to Andrea's eyes than mine. They both have amazingly vivid and bright green eyes that catch your attention even from across the room. My green eyes also have flecks of brown and blue in them, and sometimes, depending on my mood, the brown or the blue color comes out more. This makes it look like my eyes have changed color. I don't usually think much about it, because it's just the way I have always been, but I guess it must be pretty freaky, because people are always pointing out my strange eyes.
When I went to the DMV to get my driver's license on my 16th birthday, I filled out the height, weight, hair color and eye color sections on the application. When I turned it in, the lady behind the counter almost wouldn't give me my license, because she kept insisting that I put down the wrong color for my eyes!
It was so embarrassing. I had to pretend that I had accidentally checked the wrong box because I was nervous about my driving test, and I let her check the "right" box for me. Then I had to wait until I got my driver's license in the mail to find out what color my eyes are officially! (They're brown, according to my driver's license, by the way.)
Of course, if that were the extent of it, I wouldn't mind my freaky eyes. I mean, how often do you have to renew your driver's license anyway? But apparently, my weird eyes must really bother all of the guys I know. It is so frustrating! As if I don't have enough trouble getting them to notice me, now I can add "freak" to the list of reasons that I can never get a date!
Every single day, when I go into work, my manager, Doug, stops me to check out my eyes. He's always saying things like, "Hey, how come your eyes are brown? Weren't they green yesterday?" or "Wow! I never noticed what pretty blue eyes you have. How did I never see that before?"
Even worse, though, is the fact that Shane thinks I'm a freak too. He points out my freaky eyes every single morning! I think that I could get used to being weird if only Shane Crawford wasn't so disturbed by it. But I guess it's a lost cause.
Every morning, I get to school early, and I eat my breakfast (one cup of nonfat strawberry yogurt and a cinnamon rice cake) in the cafeteria while I wait for the day to start. Every morning, Shane and Rachel join me, and Shane checks his chemistry homework against my answers while Rachel and I talk.
I always wonder why Rachel bothers to talk to me. I mean, we were friends in grade school, but we don't have anything in common any more. Rachel is a cliché – the perfect head cheerleader. She is pretty and popular and talented and graceful. She has a gorgeous boyfriend, and every other boy in school wants to be near her. And she has beautiful, deep, dark brown eyes that never change color. I am everything Rachel is not. But she still talks to me for exactly 5 minutes every morning while Shane works on his chemistry homework.
Every morning, when Rachel kisses Shane goodbye and hurries off to her early-morning cheer practice, he closes his books and we find something to talk about. Sometimes, we talk about Rachel or our other friends. Sometimes, we talk about our classes or our teachers.
Often, we talk about our poetry and he lets me read his latest poems. (I don't usually let him read mine, though, because I'm not nearly as talented as he is. I don't want to give him another reason to laugh at me.) Sometimes, we talk about nothing at all. But every morning, Shane stares intently at my eyes throughout our conversation. I finally told him that it makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable when he stares at me that way.
"Alaina," he replied, "I can't help myself. You have the most interesting eyes I have ever seen. They are so mysterious. I swear they are different every time I talk to you. Believe me, I've tried, but I can't stop staring at your eyes!"
"So what you're saying is that you are staring at me because my eyes are too weird to ignore?" I wished I had some dark glasses to wear. If I could find some way to hide my eyes, it wouldn't always be such an issue.
Shane smiled. "Yeah, I guess you could say that. I wouldn't call them weird, though. Interesting. Mysterious. Fascinating. Your eyes are kind of like one of those optical illusion puzzles where you have to keep staring at it until you can see what it's supposed to be. Sometimes, it takes me ten minutes just to figure out what color your eyes are."
I shook my head and let my hair fall across my eyes. "Maybe I don't want to be an optical illusion, Shane. Did it ever occur to you that I would rather be a real person?"
He reached over and swept my hair out of my face. My skin tingled as his fingers traced the contours of my cheek. "Don't hide your eyes, Laina. Not from me. I kind of like trying to figure you out. I don't think that there is another person in this entire world quite like you."
I wanted to close my eyes forever so that no one could see how weird they are, but Shane told me not to hide them from him, so I couldn't do it, even if it did mean letting him stare at my deformity.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the way that Shane will sit and stare at me. Kind of. I mean, I wish that he was staring at me for different reasons, but I do like having his attention. It gives me a chance to stare back at him, and he is so gorgeous! But I want Shane to think that my eyes are "beautiful" or "vibrant," not "interesting"! If only he was looking at me because he likes me, and not because he's trying to figure out which category of freak that I fit into!
I usually try to play it off like it's no big deal. In fact, I have made a big joke of the whole issue. You see, I have this "mood ring" that I always wear. It was my mom's in high school, and she gave it to me for my 12th birthday. I wear it every day. People are always asking me what color my ring is in order to get an indication of my mood. (Blue is "full of energy," turquoise is "calm," green means that I am "ready to try something new," etc.)
Actually, it's usually not very accurate. I'm sure that most people know that, but it's still a fun conversation starter, and everyone at school knows that I wear that silly little mood ring. So now, when guys start to stare and to make a big deal about my "interesting" (translation: "really weird") eyes, I laugh and tell them that I have "mood eyes" to match my "mood ring!" I always tell them that anyone who really knows me can tell exactly how I'm feeling by paying attention to the color of my eyes.
It's kind of funny, but that really is true. When I'm happy or excited, my eyes are green. The happier or more excited I am, the brighter the green in my eyes. When I am really excited about something, my eyes are almost even as vividly green as Andrea and Kendra's eyes are! When I am relaxed and mellow, my eyes are a rich, chocolate brown. Again, the intensity of the color varies in relation to the intensity of the emotion behind it, but when I am really, really relaxed, my eyes are so dark that they're almost black!
Ironically, when I am really sad, when I am feeling lonely and out-of-place, when I feel like I'm just an outsider looking in, when I want to find a quiet place to cry, my eyes are a pale, smoky blue. When you stop to think about it, I guess that there is something a little bit humorous in the fact that my eyes are blue when I'm "blue," isn't it?
I think that the blue is the prettiest mood for my eyes. It really goes well with my golden hair. But I don't like the emotion that comes with it, so I try really hard not to keep those gorgeous blue eyes when they pop up. As soon as someone says "I never noticed that you had blue eyes," I know that I need to do something to cheer myself up. Usually, I find Jarod, and we have a silly conversation that gets me laughing hard enough that I forget to be sad.
Kendra always tells me that she wishes she had eyes like mine. Andrea says the same thing. I think that's the only thing that they ever agree on. Of course, I know that they aren't really agreeing. They don't really want freaky eyes like mine. They would hate it if I ever found a way to trade eye color with them. But I think it's so sweet that they try to make me feel better about my "interesting" eyes by pretending to envy them! That is the measure of real friendship.
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