Perfectly Normal

            The fire enveloped my hand, tender and loving like a mother embracing her newborn. It was warm--not hot--warm. I withdrew my hand from the flame, noticing the hungry way the tongues of fire lick at my hand as the wisps sweep the length of my hand, creeping from my palm to my fingertips. Lifting my hand, I examined the damage. A bit of flaking and a few patches of angry red blotches along the back. Why? Why can't I feel what they feel? A black glove reclaimed its place on my right hand, chafing against my burnt skin. Disappointed, I suffocated the controlled flame with the lid of a pot and slid it underneath my bed. I crawled on the bed and creaked open the window. Waving my arms like an inhospitable host, I dismissed the fumes of the fire that I had so painstakingly created.

            When I was thirteen years old, my family moved from Vietnam to Colorado. I couldn't speak English well, so I was teased. The teacher, who held no sympathy for, as she called them, "yellow" people, turned a blind eye. My classmates were delighted. They took pleasure in poking me with sharp sticks, pulling on my braid and stepping on my sandal-covered feet. I never cried. I never complained. But they became more daring, more vicious. Sometimes, my backpack would disappear, found days later in a trash can. Tacks constantly covered my seat. I always made sure to check before sitting, but one time I forgot. As soon as I sat down, they started howling, but it gradually faded to horrified whispers. They expected me to jump up and yelp with pain, but I just sat there, a crimson pool forming underneath my skirt. Someone screamed.

         I left that school soon afterwards, not because of the teasing and the pranks, but because of the whispers and the glances that would follow me, an endless shadow. I couldn't stand the way they looked at me, like I was a freak. I'm not a freak, just your average seventeen year old Vietnamese girl. I shop at the mall, listen to One Direction and gossip about cute boys. I'm normal. I wear a bow in my hair, a butterfly so pale blue that it could flutter away at any moment and be a part of the sky. I'm normal. But I know that's not true, I'm not like everybody else. No matter what I do, I'll never be like my peers. I won't feel what they feel: the soft, smooth skin of a baby's bottom, the coarse fibers of a familiar carpet, the warmth of another human being. I can't stand it, I can't stand being different. I need to feel what others feel. I need to be normal.

           I stand over the well, staring down its open maw, hungry to consume me. It's too dark to see the bottom. The darkness dares me to jump; it beckons me to abandon my fear and lunge down its seemingly endless throat, to fall for what must be hours and fill its stomach. But I don't.