Firsts by Julia Ahn {Inklings Book Contest 2021 Finalist}

 Today we are featuring Inklings Book Contest 2021 finalist Julia Ahn! Julia finished 8th grade this past school year. Her story is called “Firsts.” Enjoy!

Firsts
by Julia Ahn

In a place that wasn’t quite home lived a girl with dark hair, and, hidden behind her wavy locks, copper penny eyes that lit up when she laughed. Though you never really got to see them.

She wasn’t particularly inclined to smiling.

Rather, a pensive look furrowed her brows most of the time, a look almost too old for her twelve-year age.

If you looked closely, you might’ve been able to catch a flash of fear in her gaze.

She’d lived in so many places that moving was a chore, much like taking out the trash, or washing the dishes. Only it was more tedious, and involved more tears and block-letter words echoing around one’s head.

If you looked close enough, you might see wishes and wants flash beneath her coppery irises like fish below the glimmering surface of a pond. Fleeting, hidden, but there nonetheless.

And what she wished for most was one thing she’d never had, not in any of the places she’d lived.

Someone to laugh with, talk with, cry with.

Someone to be there when her mother was out.

Someone to whisper to at a slumber party with the lights off.

What she wished for most was a friend.

My name is Callie Faye and I hate firsts.

That was how Callie would have liked to introduce herself, if those sorts of declarations didn’t draw so many whispers.

It was true, though. Callie thought firsts were the worst things in the world, right up there next to mushrooms and spiders and public bathrooms.

“I should know,” she said aloud, staring at one of the many curls of white paint peeling off the ceiling of her new room. There were more than the last apartment, she mused, and there was a patch on the wall where the drab beige color had completely flaked off, revealing a dingy white.

The bed squealed beneath her as Callie turned, attempting to find a comfortable place to lay on her scratchy sheets with no luck. She pulled the covers higher, shivering as another early spring draft seeped through the window that wouldn’t close, situated on the other end of the room.

Tomorrow was another first.

One that Callie had LOTS of experience with.

First days at school, she knew, were not things to be taken lightly.

Especially since this was probably everyone else’s sixty-third day. They already had their groups, their friends, no doubt, she thought, knotting her fingers together. Her stomach turned.

“Callie, I’m going to be at work early tomorrow morning, so you’ll have to walk to school. Is that okay?”

Her mother stood in the doorway, the tired, overworked sag of her shoulders framed by the dim glow of the hallway lights.

“Mhm,” Callie nodded as best she could from where she lay beneath the covers. She squished her disappointment until it was pebble-small and tucked it in the back of her mind where it couldn’t show on her face. Her mother was busy and she hadn’t expected to be driven, anyway. There was no use making anyone feel bad. 

“Good night, Mama.”

“Good night.”

Callie set her watch alarm to seven o’clock—her clock was likely still buried somewhere in one of the moving packages—and laid it on one of the cardboard boxes near her head. It was nine-thirty; if she could fall asleep soon, Callie thought, she would get at least nine hours of sleep.

She shifted again, turning to face the cardboard boxes piled against the walls, trying to envision what her room would look like when all her stuff was unpacked and the peeling walls repainted. If that happened. Callie knew she might not get to finish organizing her room before they had to leave again.

The thought didn’t hold her attention for long.

First.

First.

First.

The word echoed, rattling around like a copper in an empty soup can. Empty. That was how she felt, and how her “lucky penny” eyes looked every time Callie looked in the bathroom mirror. Nothing like the shiny new coins her mother compared them to. Her eyes were more like the nineteen-eighteen penny that she’d found while unpacking—dull, tarnished, with the memories of a thousand places weighing her down.

Firstfirstfirstfirstfirst.

She hated it—hated the sharp taste of the word on her tongue, how it clanged around in her head.

But it was better than the voices.

Anything was better than the voices.

Callie wondered, briefly, if a person’s nervousness could affect the scratchiness of one’s bedspread.

It was a long time before she finally fell asleep.

Callie did not, in fact, get to introduce herself. At all. Which was fine by her.

“Your desk is over there,” her teacher, Mrs. Adel had said, indicating a seat in the back with her beakish nose. Callie thought it looked rather like a vulture’s. “That’s Wren, over there—she’ll be sharing your desk.”

Wren had waved; with a start, Callie had realized that she’d seen her deskmate walking to school just minutes earlier from the same direction she’d come.

Callie had waited, waited until the last possible second to approach, but the teacher was calling roll now, and she knew that Mrs. Adel wouldn’t be happy if she stayed standing. Fiddling nervously with the short ends of her dark hair, Callie shuffled over to her seat and sat.

Her deskmate had cropped brown hair streaked with sunset colors—purple, red, orange, yellow—and a sort of not-quite-smile that suggested she knew something that no one else did. It was a secretive look, Callie thought, but not particularly unlikeable. She seemed like someone who didn’t mind odd facts. Someone… Callie couldn’t quite think of the word to describe Wren.

“Did Mrs. Adel call me a girl again?” Wren asked, huffing when Callie nodded.

Her deskmate regarded Callie with jade green eyes and that secretive expression, then smiled wryly, eyes laughing. “She always gets it wrong… I’m nonbinary, actually; it’s they-them, not she-her.”

“Oh,” Callie said, wishing she had something better to say.

She was too caught up in her thoughts to think of the words.

No one had ever smiled at her; certainly not on her first day.

It was a first, but not entirely unpleasant.

Callie turned away from Wren, who frowned slightly. She and Wren were just classmates. They were just two students sitting at the same desk.

A smile didn’t mean anything.

“Friends? You thought we were friends?”

“I was only talking to you because the teacher made me.”

They were harsh words, white-lettering-against-black words. Words from the sort of memories you would bury in deep-deep-deep in a locked box in the corner of your mind but would find a way to taunt you anyway. Words from the past that cut through the walls she’d stacked up like shards of broken glass. Clear as if they had been spoken just then, only they hadn’t—they were just echoes from a different place and time, that was it, but it felt like they were enough to drown her. Callie could feel her eyes stinging.

No—No. She couldn’t cry. Not now, not like this, not here next to this not-friend of hers and all her classmates around her and the teacher watching her with a sharp-eyed glare.

“—ey.” A hand touched her arm, warm and reassuring. Wren. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Ah, yeah,” Callie stammered, blinking and looking down at her desk. There was a piece of tape stuck on the edge of the table, and she fixed her eyes on it. “My name is Callie, Callie Faye, I’m, um, a girl, and I…” she snuck a look at Wren, who gave her another small smile.

It struck her then, in that glance that lasted just half a moment: Different. That was the word Callie was looking for.

Wren was different.

But… not in a bad way. It was a good kind of different: the laughing kind, the quirky kind. The open-to-new-ideas kind. Maybe, Callie thought, ‘unique’ was a better word.

Or maybe that was what she wanted to believe.

However much she wanted a friend… she wasn’t going to try this time. Callie had enough words, enough memories—a whole five schools worth of them, whispering around in her head.

“You honestly think I want to know all that stupid stuff?”

The words of another of Callie’s not-friends from a year and two months ago. What was her name again?

Catching sight of Wren’s inquisitive gaze again, she mumbled, “That’s all,” fingernails leaving little white half-moons in her palms. The chair was staticky and her normally smooth waves were frizzing from the morning mist on her walk to the school.

April? No… Ada. The brown-haired girl from her previous school had seemed so welcoming, but… Callie gave an involuntary shake at the thought, then hurriedly glanced over at her deskmate, who to Callie’s relief didn’t seem to have noticed anything wrong.

“That’s it? No favorite color or anything?” Wren tapped their chin with one finger, then shrugged good-naturedly. “Oh, well I guess that’s fair, since that’s all I—”

“Girls—” Wren shot a pointed look at Mrs. Adel, who coughed loudly and hastily amended her words. “Students, quiet down—Yes, you two in the back! And Martin—” she glared at another student, who had pulled a bright green kazoo out of his backpack “—stop, or I’m confiscating that—”

“Now, I know this is your first day, but that’s not an excuse to act up.”

“You there, please stay behind to talk with me during recess.”

“Insolent—I don’t think you understand, young lady.”

She could recall with striking clarity the heat of the embarrassed flush that spread across her face. The chattering of her classmates. The laughter. The disapproving stares of her teachers.

And the whispers.

So, so many whispers.

A finger tapped her shoulder twice, making Callie jump. Wren smiled, again, and pointed to a hastily scribbled message on a scrap of notebook paper:

Mrs. Adel is a snake. Don’t let her bother you.

And has anyone ever told you your name sounds like a fairy’s?

Wren’s handwriting was small, wispy, slightly uneven, like it was trying to float right off the paper. There was something about it, something hopeful, that made Callie flip the note over and scribble a message back in her neat, round script.

Thanks.

And… she seems more like a vulture to me.

Callie fiddled with her watch, staring closely at Wren’s face. Scanning for any hint of disgust, condescension—and nearly bit her tongue.

Nothing. Wren only grinned at her again as they read the note, shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

Hesitantly, Callie smiled back.

By the time school let out, the pair had gone through almost a whole sheet of lined paper, ripped into little scraps so as to be less conspicuous as they passed the notes back and forth. Callie had all fourteen of them, shuffling around and probably getting wrinkled in the mostly empty top compartment of her backpack. She wondered if it would seem strange if she strung the notes together with string and clothespins and hung them around her room. Wren chattered as they strolled from the school building.

“I saw you walking here, this morning,” Callie stammered, suddenly, unsure what had prompted her to speak. The words came out hesitant. Halting. Wren tilted their head towards her, but kept walking.

She bit her lip, memories flashing through her mind, and she put a hand to her head.

Was she… going too far?

“Stop acting like you know me.”

Callie flinched, voice dying in her throat. No… no, this would be different. And she wouldn’t assume anything. She was just asking a question, Callie told herself. Just a question.

Still, she tripped over her words as she continued. “I—I was wondering, if I could walk with you a little? Back home, I mean—my house is that way, too—”

Wren grinned. “Well, why not? We are friends, aren’t we?”

Friends?

She stopped, and Wren turned in surprise. “Callie?”

“Ugh, just go away! No wonder no one—”

Shut UP, she told the voice, and miraculously, it stopped. Callie blinked. Wondered why she’d never thought to do it before, although she already knew the answer; it had been fear, keeping her from letting those memories go. Fear that if she did, she would make the same mistakes, that her hope for friendship would be squashed again and again and again.

Fear to try again.

But Callie could see it now, how the voices had been more than just a reminder; they had been a hindrance, an obstacle she had set up for herself to prevent her from hurt but also had in the process prevented her from seeing any good.

And, having a clear head was in fact an extraordinary thing. Cool and clean, like the spring breeze tousling her dark hair.

No more words inside her head. No more of those memories. No more doubts.

Just… now. The present.

And her friend.

It was, Callie thought, another first.

“I’m fine,” she told Wren. The words didn’t feel like enough. Callie beamed; the expression was becoming less and less foreign on her face. “Better than fine.”

It felt good to smile. Even better when Wren smiled back.

She supposed some firsts weren’t so bad, after all.

In a place that was slowly becoming her home lived a girl with lucky penny eyes no longer hidden and a name like a fairy’s. Her dark waves were almost always tucked behind her ears, which in turn were usually studded with sea glass earrings.

Her mother liked to joke that the girl’s smile, however unused, could light up the house at midnight, and promised that she would try her best to make their current apartment their last big move.

The bedroom the copper-eyed girl occupied was self-painted pastel yellow, her favorite color, and held two bean bag chairs. A pale blue one, hers, and a navy one—which was all but constantly occupied by a slim figure with sunset-streaked hair, secretive eyes, and a near-perpetual grin.

They, too, had sea-smoothed glass adorning their ears.

Along the walls hung a colorful string of wooden clothespins.

Torn scraps of notebook paper, words crammed onto every inch of them, were clasped in each pin.