I

I am a normal teenaged girl, possibly the most normal teenager you’ll ever meet.  It’s a fact I cling to, repeat over and over again in my head, reassuring myself that everything really is okay.  I am a normal teenaged girl, very normal.

We’re walking home from school, chatting merrily.  We’re talking about normal teenage girl things.  My comments are typical teenager comments.  I’m not special in any way.  I am exactly where I want to be.

None of my friends are really that special to the other people on the street who are maybe throwing us a casual glance.  None of us five sticks out in any particular way.  We’re all wearing jeans and sweaters, some in hoodies, others in zip-ups.  A few of us have ballet flats, others sneakers, one girl a pair of boots.  Some of us have straight hair, others curly, some have it pulled back into a ponytail, others have it hanging loose around our shoulders.

We smile and talk, chatting about classes, teachers, other people in our grade.  School is over for the day and we’re on our way home, just like most of the other students who don’t have sports or theater.

Normally I take an active part in the conversation, just as active as everyone else.  But right now I have to admit that I’m sick of their endless chatter.  More and more, this side of me is starting to come out.  I wish it wouldn’t.  I don’t know what to do with it.

“Hello?  Earth to Mandi?”  Katie, Elizabeth, Rachel, and Charlotte are all staring at me.  They’re my best friends but right now I wish that I was at home and didn’t have to listen to them.  Early in the morning and late in the afternoon is when the wrong side of me comes out too much, when I’m the most tired.

***

“So Mandi, who do you like?” Rachel asks.  We’re sitting on a bench in Central Park.  It’s our first day of real friendship and our binders are spread out in our laps, though we’re hanging out, not doing homework.

“No one,” I say honestly.  If I liked someone, I would tell them.  They all told me, just a minute ago.  So I’m being honest.

“Oh, come on,” Katie prompts.  She elbows me and winks.  “Tell us, come on, we won’t tell anyone.”

“I’m being honest,” I say, looking into her eyes.  She looks steadily back.  Katie has such a steady gaze.

“We all like someone,” says Elizabeth, hoping peer pressure will get to me.  It doesn’t.  I stand firm.  I don’t like anyone.  I’m too afraid to get involved with a boy.  Even a crush is getting involved.

They cajole and plead for me to tell them which boy I think is cute, at least.  But I don’t say anything.  I repeat that I don’t like anyone.  And they accept that.

***

“Sorry, I spaced out,” I tell Katie, smiling at her.  It’s lucky we’ve reached the point where we separate.  I really can’t last much longer.

We hug each other goodbye and promise to call, email, and Facebook one another.  Katie and Rachel turn left.  Elizabeth and Charlotte continue walking uptown.  I cross Broadway and turn right.

The street is mostly filled with normal people, people just like me.  They’re average.  They don’t stand out.  They could mold themselves to fit in to most places, just like me.

A few of the people you pass when walking on Broadway are complete nutcases.  There’s this one guy who’s trying to sell Bibles, stepping heavily down the street in his beat-up brown suit, shouting some sort of religious jargon.  Then the tall bald lady with the horrible makeup job and the leopard-print dress.  I dodge her and quickly enter my apartment building.

I enter my lobby and push the elevator button.  No one is around, which is good.  I’m already slipping.  My parents won’t be home yet.  They normally get home around six.  That’s good.  It means I can just relax, be the other me.  I push the elevator button.

I, Mandi Roberts, walk into the empty elevator.

II

And I, Amanda Roberts, walk out.

I shiver instantly.  I’m exposed out here in my tight, tight jeans and ballet flats, in my North Face fleece jacket.

The fluorescent light bulb in the hallway glares down at me and makes me cringe.
I take out my keys and unlock the apartment door, my hand shaking.  It’s cold out here.  The fluorescent light and my North Face fleece are making me cold.  They’re making me afraid.

***

“It’s our new apartment, Mandi,” my mother says, smiling down at me.  “Here, try unlocking the door.”

I take the keys and slide them into the lock and try to turn it.  It turns the wrong way.  It turns to the left.  In our old apartment in Brooklyn, the doorknob turned to the right.

I push the door open and welcome myself to the new apartment.  To a new building in a new neighborhood.  To a new school.  To new friends.  To a new life.
To a new me.

***

My shoulders tense up as I slip into my dark apartment, and then I relax a little.  I’m not shivering quite as much now.  I kick off my ballet flats and rush into my bedroom, shutting the door behind me.  I turn on my desk light.  The overhead makes the room too bright.

I open my closet and dig out a pair of loose sweatpants and a wool sweater that used to belong to my grandfather.  I put them on, throwing my jeans and t-shirt into the laundry, hanging up my North Face fleece.  Then I slide my feet into slippers, remove my earrings, and take the elastic out of my hair, letting it fall into my face.

It sticks to my lips.  My lipstick.  I run into my bathroom and scrub my face with cold cream, then rinse it in the sink.  I wash my hands, scrubbing them hard, getting them clean.

I sit down on my bedroom floor and try to relax completely for the first time today.

For the first time today, I don’t care how I look.  I don’t care what I say.  I’m alone in here, safe and alone, not being judged.  No one is watching me.  I can do whatever I want, no matter how strange, and it won’t matter.  I can have opinions, opinions that are completely my own, not at all based on other people.  Katie, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Rachel are gone.  I don’t have to see their faces again for another fifteen hours or so.

It’s not that I dislike them.  They’re perfectly nice to me.  It’s just that they’re not very smart, and every time I have to talk to them I feel my brain cells dying.  I can’t think at all when I’m in their company.  They’re just like everybody else, the same clear skin, the well-done hair, the fashionable clothes.  I didn’t pick them to be my friends.  I didn’t care who were my friends, as long as they were normal, average teenagers.  I just found someone willing to hang out with me.

***

Seventh grade.  First day of the second week of seventh grade.  Elizabeth has talked to me twice.  We’ve laughed about stuff.  I think we’re kind of friends now.  I ask her if she would mind getting lunch with me.

“Let me ask my friend,” she says.  She goes over to Katie.  Katie just shrugs.  Elizabeth beckons me over and introduces me and Katie.

“We’re trying out a couple of people that I found,” Katie says, “so you’re welcome to come along.”

That’s good enough for me.  Any normal girl will work for me.  We pick up our sweaters and leave the building, Katie and Elizabeth being followed by Rachel, Charlotte, and me.  It was the beginning of our group.  Of us five.  Of Mandi’s new life.

***

They’re boring.  They’re stupid.  They have no real cares.  No real interests.  They’re fake, just like Mandi.  But they’re like that all the time, unlike me.

It’s always when I first get home that I hate myself the most for being Mandi.  For being friends with insipid conformists.  For feeling the need to hide myself like this.

I snatch up my journal and a pen and start writing.

Why do I put up with them?  What is wrong with me?

I’ve read plenty of stories about people who are screwed up,  but half the time it’s because some family member died. I hate it when writers think that.  It’s like some family member has to die for people to feel this way.  That’s complete crap.  You can feel like shit without anyone dying.

Why am I like this?

It’s so much work, being both Amanda and Mandi.  I’m amazed I haven’t been caught yet.  Ever since I moved to Manhattan from Brooklyn the summer before seventh grade, I’ve been like this.  After all the jokes, the teasing, after me being the nerdy girl, the one who only cared about school, the one with the weird clothes, the nerd, the geek, someone Different.

I never had a problem being different until popularity got important and took away all my friends.  They went one by one, the most normal ones first, then the ones who were almost as weird as me.  They all started wearing jeans and tank tops, showing as much skin as they possibly could, flirting with boys they didn’t even like.

***

Standing in a hallway in sixth grade.  Melanie Cole is batting her eyelashes at some guy.

“Why are you doing that?” I ask her, my best friend throughout all of elementary school.  “You told me you couldn’t stand him.”

“Yeah, but he’s really cute and popular and is just about the hottest basketball player in our entire school,” Melanie says.  She wiggles up to him and smiles adoringly, soppily.  I turn around and leave.  She doesn’t even notice.

***

A few weeks later, the cute popular boy asked her out.  He called her Mel, so everyone else called her Mel.  She started wearing makeup and showing even more skin.  She never called me again.

I didn’t give up quite that easily.  I called her.  She never picked up and never returned my messages.  She started avoiding me at school too.  One day I went up to her and she whispered that right now her boyfriend was her top priority, but if that relationship didn’t last, she would come back to me.  

She never spoke to me again.

Melanie Cole, the girl who promised me we’d be best friends forever.  When we were in second grade, we cut each other’s fingers and rubbed our blood together, copying some fantasy book, thinking it made us sisters.  Melanie Cole, the last friend who ditched me for a boy, the only friend I thought would never, ever do that.  Melanie Cole, the person in my life who hurt me the most.

I haven’t thought about Melanie for months.

I don’t want another Melanie Cole.  I want to protect myself, I write.

And my parents gave me the perfect opportunity.  They moved to Manhattan.  They put me in a different school, closer to home.  In the weeks before school started, I built Mandi.  And I practiced being Mandi.  I fooled my parents into thinking I had finally turned normal.  And then I fooled everyone at school.

I don’t give a shit about Katie, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Rachel.  They can get boyfriends, I don’t care.  Katie’s already been with three different guys since eighth grade, and Rachel’s been with two.  They stopped hanging out with us for a couple of weeks and I couldn’t have cared less.

The only awkward moment was when Charlotte decided she and I were closer now that Rachel was temporarily gone.  She told me all of her secrets, who she liked and what she thought about this person and what she said to Rachel about this other person.  Then she made me swear not to tell anyone.  I found her secrets pathetic, but Mandi didn’t.  Mandi giggled and made incredulous faces and thought it was all intensely interesting.  And I hated Mandi even more.

Thinking about all this stuff makes it even worse.

I go into my bathroom, bringing my journal with me, and scrub my hands.

I’m stuck here now.

I don’t want to be made fun of by those I thought were friends.  But even more than that, I don’t want to become like them.  Melanie was almost as weird as I was, and the world changed her to be a bland, driveling conformist.  I don’t want to be tainted like that.

Bland, driveling, insipid, inane, vapid, watery, subdued, pointless.  Katie, Elizabeth, Rachel, and Charlotte are bland, driveling, insipid, inane, vapid, watery, subdued, pointless.  Melanie is just as bad as them, but she used to be okay.  Were Katie, Elizabeth, Rachel, and Charlotte okay once?  Were they contaminated by the outside world, just like Melanie?

I put my journal down on the floor, turn on the sink, and shove my hands underneath the constant stream of clean, clean water.

III

I walk into the bathroom before first period and see Lily Fowler in there, compulsively washing her hands.

This catches me off guard.  I’m getting worse and worse at being Mandi.  I used to be really good at it, but now I’m constantly working to keep Amanda out.  And seeing geeky Lily Fowler makes it much harder.

Seeing her washing her hands just like me, Amanda, takes me by surprise.

“Hi,” Lily says, smiling a little, watching me stare at her.

“Hi,” I say quietly.  I hope no one comes in now.  Please, please let no one come in now.

***

Fall of this year, tenth grade.  I’m in the library, getting a book for my social studies paper.  I glance around nervously.  No one I care about is in here, only a bunch of freshmen and a group of nerdy juniors and seniors.

And Lily Fowler.  She’s in line behind me, waiting to check out some huge sci-fi novel.


“What?” she asks brashly, watching me looking at her.
“Nothing,” I say quickly.

“If I’m doing something weird and you’re wondering why, I can always explain it,” Lily says frankly.  “I’m almost always doing something weird, and I don’t mind explaining it.”  She looks at me expectantly.

“I don’t think you’re doing anything weird,” I say.  “I was just noticing who’s in the library and who’s not.”

“Oh,” she says.  She completely understands my train of thought.  I’ve noticed, in my desperation to get a book for my social studies paper, that I’ve wandered into Geek City.  “Why are you in the library?” she asks.

I mutely show her the book.  She nods her understanding, then reads the title more closely.  “That’s a pretty tough topic to write about,” she says.  “You must be pretty smart.”

For some reason, her comment doesn’t bother me.  It doesn’t insult me at all.  It actually makes me feel pretty good about myself, even though I’ve spent the last four years of my life trying to stop people from thinking about me that way.  Smart and studious is not average, not normal.

“You should come here more often,” Lily says, smiling slightly.

I just nod once and check out my book, carefully keeping my back turned towards her.  But something has changed between us.

***

“How’s it going?” I ask Lily.  We’re not close, mostly because I try to avoid her whenever possible.  But when I do run into her, we’ll talk.  It’s kind of a relief, especially now that my Mandi disguise is getting harder to keep together. When I talk to Lily, I get inspired.  She makes me think, the only person in this school who has that kind of an effect on me.

“I’m okay,” she says.  “You look pretty tired, though.”

“Oh, it’s just hard to keep everything going,” I say casually.  Keeping everything going, meaning keeping Mandi going.  My heart is pounding.  That’s the closest I’ve ever come to even giving anyone a mere hint of Amanda’s presence.

“You know, I think you make things hard for yourself,” Lily says.  Over the months that we’ve gotten to know each other, I’m pretty sure she’s gotten an inkling that I’m not completely normal, not completely average.  Maybe because I’ll talk to her.

“Let me tell you something,” Lily says.  “I am weird and I’m proud of it!”  She raises her hands above her head and smiles.  “Whee!”  She puts her hands down.  She often spews out random, spontaneous stuff like this.  “People will never accidentally think I’m normal.”

“But why don’t you want people to think you’re normal?” I ask her.

“What’s so great about being normal?” she asks, clearly wondering.  She picks up her huge backpack and continues looking at me.  “Can I ask you something?” she asks.

“Go ahead,” I say.

“Why do you work so hard on your homework and do so badly on tests?” she asks.
I freeze.  I didn’t think anyone had ever noticed that.  Amanda does the homework.  Mandi takes the tests.  Amanda wants good grades.  Mandi wants to fit in.  Mandi wants to be average.  Mandi makes sure to always get average scores, and average test scores aren’t always good grades.

I can’t explain this to anyone, not even Lily Fowler.

I can’t say anything, so I come up with a lame runaway tactic.  I look at my watch.  “Oh, I really have to go to class,” I say, pretending to be anxious.  I don’t want her to guess the truth about me.  I don’t want her to know.  I’m panicking slightly as I rush off to first period English, hoping Lily won’t guess.  Please, Lily, don’t guess.

Katie and Elizabeth are sitting in our normal corner in the back of the room, giggling about something.  I don’t ask them what’s so funny.  I don’t have the slightest interest.

I should, though.  Right now I should be Mandi.  Mandi would be interested in whatever gossip they’re swapping now.

But I don’t dwell on that.  Instead I think about talking to Lily in the bathroom.  Her voice keeps echoing in my head, What’s so great about being normal?

She always makes me think.  But I don’t know why that comment spurred such a reaction.  Normally she’ll mention something about an English novel that gets my mind spinning, or how life can relate to geometry proofs, things that sound ridiculous until you realize they actually fit together really nicely.  But this question is making me think in such a different way, think about life rather than something school related, and I’m not sure if I like this.  Because Amanda is doing the thinking, not Mandi, and I’m sitting right next to Katie and Elizabeth.

I don’t want them to know.  I don’t know what to do.

“Mandi, are you okay?” Elizabeth asks.  “You’re all pale and stuff.”

“Oh,” I say, wildly fishing for normal excuses.  “Um...I was...this morning...I mean, last night...I didn’t, um, sleep that well last night.  I mean, I didn’t sleep that much last night.”

“Oh, really?” Katie asks.  “You weren’t on Facebook.”

I roll my eyes.  I can’t help it.  Facebook strikes me as infinitely pathetic.  Where are the brains in setting up a profile and posting pictures?  I wish it wasn’t popular, because then I wouldn’t have to do it.

“Mandi, what the hell’s going on?” Katie asks.

“Nothing,” I say quickly. “I had some, um, parental issue that kept me up.”

Katie continues looking suspicious.  She starts scribbling on the margins of her paper, writing a note to Elizabeth, undoubtedly about me.  I want to smack her for gossiping about me when I’m right there.

But I’m not only angry.  I’m sweating a little and my heart is beating hard.  Lately it’s been harder to keep myself in control than seventh grade, but never this hard.  I’m even starting to feel uncomfortable in my jeans.  That’s never happened to me before during school.

My English teacher comes in and starts class.  Hopefully our class discussion will distract me.

Something must be going wrong.  I’m getting worse at being only Mandi, at keeping Amanda out when I’m at school.  People are going to start to notice.  Katie already has.

I don’t want Amanda to show up when I’m trying to be Mandi.  I am Amanda when I’m at home, at night, Mandi during the day.  Why is this so hard to keep up lately?

I keep hearing her voice, her bemused voice, What’s so great about being normal?

IV

Home again, the safety of my bedroom where only my parents can get in and find me sitting on the floor, my journal open beside me, my pen in my hand, but nothing written on the white, white page.

What’s so great about being normal?

I can’t get her voice out of my head.

My dad’s playing his oboe, the sweet, reedy music flying throughout the apartment.  I love his oboe.  I love it when he doesn’t have too much work and has time to play.

I stare at my journal one last time and then give up for now.  I can’t put my confusion into words.  Nothing makes sense, and there’s nothing to write down.

I reach into my book bag and pull out my math homework.  Math is always a good distractor, homework that I can completely immerse myself in.  Most of the time I only think about the problems and how to solve them.  Math is straightforward.  There are no complications.  Every problem has a solution.

Math and I are opposites.  Math problems are solvable.  I am not.  I don’t know what to do, how to stop Amanda from appearing when she’s not wanted.

What’s so great about being normal?

Maybe nothing.  But it’s sure better than the alternatives.

My dad is playing an oboe sonata.  He’s reached the slow movement, the part with the beautiful melody.  This is my favorite part of the entire piece.

I love music.  I wish I could play an instrument, serenade myself whenever I wanted, but I can’t.  That would just be an added complication.  It would mean more time spent out of my bedroom at lessons, while practicing, or at orchestra practice if I joined an orchestra.  Other people would hear me play.  I’ve always thought of music as being sort of private.  It wouldn’t be the kind of thing I’d like to share to a bunch of random strangers.  I don’t understand people who give concerts.  Why do they enjoy spilling out their soul to an audience?

My father plays his oboe in our living room while my mother goes to her study and I sit in my bedroom, either on the floor or on the bed.  My father is not a professional musician.  He only plays at home when he wants to, because he enjoys it.  That’s exactly what I would like to do when I grow up.  Learn to play an instrument, maybe flute, and play for myself whenever I want.

An interesting thought grips me.  I reach for my journal and put it on top of my abandoned math problems.  What if I never grow up properly? I write.  I always thought when I grew up I would have fixed it, have found another solution to the Amanda-Mandi problem.  But I can’t think of a solution.  And maybe I never will.  What if I’m stuck like this forever?

***

Christmas, eighth grade, at my aunt’s house in Connecticut.

“Amanda-” my aunt begins.

“Mandi,” I correct her.

“Oh, right, sorry,” she says, blushing slightly.  “Mandi.  I keep forgetting.  So Mandi, what’s your favorite subject at school?”

“I don’t have a favorite subject,” I say.  It’s not true, I like English, but I’m just being crabby.  My stupid relatives can’t remember to call me Mandi rather than Amanda.

“So what do you want to be when you grow up?” my grandfather asks.

That one takes some thinking.  I haven’t thought about it since I was six, and the answer has probably changed since then.

“Well, I don’t know what job,” I say slowly, “but I’d like to be someone else.”

***

I stop writing in my journal and stare up at the ceiling.  Be smart.  I’ll never get anything done if I dwell on things like this.  I just have to keep going.  Just take one day at a time.  I won’t think in the long term.  Eventually, all the days of my life will pass and I’ll die and then I’ll decompose.

Life sucks.  Then you die.

I don’t even remember who actually said that.

What’s so great about being normal?

Why can’t I get this out of my head?  Lily says wacky stuff all the time.  Amanda is sort of friends with her while Mandi would never go near her, but both Amanda and Mandi think she’s weird.  She’s crazy.  Well, Mandi finds her more crazy than Amanda.  But Amanda doesn’t understand Lily.  Amanda doesn’t understand why Lily lets herself be open.  How Lily can relish in her strangeness.  How Lily can just be Lily, and not be Lil or something while she’s not in her bedroom.

Mandi thinks Lily is crazy because Lily is weird and different and because everybody else thinks Lily is crazy.  Amanda thinks Lily is crazy because she admires Lily for doing something that to Amanda is so utterly impossible.  So wonderfully amazing.  So real.  So fearless.

Because Lily is not like Melanie.  Lily shows herself, yet Lily is not changed by the world around her.

I don’t understand how that’s possible.  How does the world not affect Lily?  I don’t get it.  I don’t get her.

***

I see Lily again.  I’m back in the library, returning my social studies book.  Three weeks have passed since that first conversation.

“How’s your paper?” Lily asks.

“Oh, it’s okay,” I say casually, my automatic response to that question.  Mandi does not work that hard, and Mandi would not write an amazing paper.  Amanda did write an amazing paper, but I’m keeping that quiet.

But Lily seems to know.  She raises her eyebrows at me.  “Come on, you actually read the book, not just looked at the blurb on Amazon like everyone else,” she says.

“True,” I say.  I’m seized by spontaneity.  I’m never spontaneous, but I say, without debating, without planning, without making any sort of decision, “It was actually a pretty good paper.”

Lily looks at me and laughs.  “So why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” she says.

I just shrug.  “Didn’t want to go around telling people that, I guess,” I say.

“You shouldn’t be embarrassed about telling people that,” Lily says.  “Are you ashamed of admitting that?  That you worked hard on something?”

“I’m not ashamed,” I say.  Another automatic response.  Someone gets into dangerous territory, I close up.  Shut down.  I don’t even think about it anymore.

Lily is eyeing me strangely.  Then she takes out a sheet of paper and scribbles something on it.  “That’s my email,” she says.  “Email me sometime.”

I pocket the sheet of paper and try to forget that I have it.

***

But now I remember.  I went home that day and threw it on my desk, hoping it would get buried in the mess that was already there.  Now I hope it didn’t get too buried.  I begin rifling through papers.

If I make friends with Lily, it’ll be even harder for me.  Because Lily won’t be friends with Mandi, and Mandi won’t be friends with Lily.  Amanda will have to be brought into the picture.  It’ll complicate things.  But I find Lily’s email address anyway.  lilyf724@gmail.com.

I pick up my journal and write: I can’t be Amanda and Mandi forever.  Eventually I want to only be one.  I don’t know which one, though.  I guess that’s the problem.

I can’t combine them.  They are incompatible.  They are opposites.  I made Mandi that way so I wouldn’t confuse anything about them.  They even wear their hair in different ways, Mandi in that ponytail, Amanda with those blonde strands falling all about her head.

My father’s oboe slides up a chromatic scale and holds a piercing high note, a wavering shriek that sounds throughout the whole apartment, maybe the whole building, maybe even the entire block.

Good thing not a lot of people play the oboe.  Good thing my neighbors only have to hear one screeching instrument.  I feel bad for the little kids in the apartment next to ours that are trying to sleep.

Wait.  Good thing not a lot of people play the oboe. I just thought that.  That exact thought came into my head without me realizing what it meant. Good thing not a lot of people play the oboe.  I thought that.  Amanda Roberts thought that.

Good thing my dad is unique, not average, in that way at least.

What’s so great about being normal?

Lily said that.  She is the smartest girl I have ever met, and I just realized that now.  

I open my email and click the Compose Mail button.  I type lilyf724@gmail.com into the To slot.  I subject it Hi, from Amanda.  Then I start writing my message.


Hey Lily, it’s Amanda.  I just found your email address - I put it on your desk when you first gave it to me and then I couldn’t find it for awhile.

I know this is really random, that I’m emailing you and then this question, but have you ever wondered if you’re going to grow up or not?  Or if you’ll be stuck as how you are forever and therefore never grow up?  I was thinking about that earlier and I thought it was pretty interesting, so I wanted to see what you thought, because you always tell me when you think of interesting things.  I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.

Amanda


I sound awkward.  Amanda always sounds awkward when she writes emails.  She sounds awkward when she talks to people who she doesn’t know well.  She completely freezes up when strangers talk to her.  That is probably one reason why she was made fun of in sixth grade.  The girl who always says weird things, who voices her dislike for the world in which she lives.

A new message pops up in my inbox.  I click it open.


Amanda!!
During our past conversations over this year, I’ve noticed that you are trying very hard to come across as yourself.  You are very emphatic about your identity.

That’s weird.

No one knows who they are exactly.  I have no idea.  I think you need to loosen up.

You’ll probably change by the time you grow up.  And if not, so what?

Lily


I read it and laugh.  Lily sounds almost as awkward as I do.  Even though my entire goal in my new life was to make friends with normal people, I wish I had made friends with Lily.  I wish the two of us were very close.

She could be my new Melanie Cole.  Well, not exactly.  Because I don’t think Lily will ever become normal.

Lily’s right.  There’s nothing great about being normal.  Well, maybe truly being normal is okay.  But I was never truly normal.

I get up and go into my bathroom, looking at my reflection in the mirror.

My blonde hair is falling down around my shoulders.  I pick up a scrunchie and wrap it around my hair.  Amanda with a ponytail.  Weird.

But I leave the ponytail in while I go back into my bedroom and sit down on my bedroom floor.  I think it’ll be okay.

I won’t be tainted.  After hating the world for the past five years, ever since I first saw it on the first day of sixth grade, I can promise myself at least that much.

My dad’s oboe finishes the sonata, ending a strong passage with a triumphant note.  He puts the oboe down and claps for himself, chuckling a little.  The applause rings in my ears.  I, not Mandi, not Amanda, but me, smile and take a bow.