Love Song for Ayumi

Ayumi never spoke in class, never responded to anyone who talked to her, and I tried talking to her once, no reply, but I loved her fleecy hair, her pants too short, not in fashion, ahead of her time in her high-waisted cropped trousers, and I envied the way she drew cartoon figures expertly on a piece of notebook paper, and I was new to Biddle City, and the year before I got there, she’d had lice, had already been considered dirty, infectious, contagious, a virus, so when I arrived, the White Kids of Biddle City with the frosted tips asked if I was lice-infested too, and I said no—but the truth was I’d had lice a few years back while visiting the Philippines, and if I’m being honest, I remembered that period fondly (my mother’s warm fingers on my head carefully pushing her nails onto the white insect eggs on my scalp until they snapped), but I didn’t tell anyone that I enjoyed having lice because that’s weird, creepy even, because who likes lice, maybe Ayumi, perhaps she would’ve spoken to me if I’d told her, but she responded to no one, not even the teacher, not even the principal, and she was the only other Asian girl at my school, people claimed she knew no English, but they were wrong because she was a rebel, this was silence as protest, she never said a word, except one time in seventh-grade health class, when the teacher said “Ayumi, what do you say if someone offers you drugs,” she replied “Just say no,” the words as clear as the Biddle City sky in springtime, when it unbuttons its winter shirt to reveal the sky’s bare chest: blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, and I loved the sound of her voice so much I wanted to hug her then, but she would’ve kicked me, I’d seen her kick other kids when they touched her, and I was a loser without a single friend, and she was a powerful girl, a fighter, never lowering herself, and

                                                         I loved her, really
                                                                    I loved her, but I didn’t
                                                         want to be her.