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          It is the perfect scar.
          It runs down her face, from cheekbone to jawline, one fluid, milky line. It's the color of bone, or maybe the sky on early March mornings when the rain has just stopped and will start again soon. It's only about as wide as a line made by ink; sometimes, sitting here in English, bored to tears because I read these books years ago, the thought has come to me that it was drawn with a white Prismacolor pencil, an indelible mark of some sort of pain. She doesn't seem to obsess over it; in English (and geoscience and history, the three classes we have together), her hand is always up, and she always has the right answer. I'm always caught not paying attention. I'm usually too busy furiously sketching her.
          Call me obsessed, 'cause I am. I know it.
          It started when I transferred into this school. They realized pretty early on at my old school that I didn't belong there. Every class was ridiculously basic. It wasn't that uncommon for a student to transfer out, but still, I was the only kid who came to this school in junior year from Kenmore, and I felt just as left out as I ever did amid a throng of kids who wouldn't know what a diphthong was if it slapped them on the ass.
          She stood out. Everyone else--including me--is always dressed in their geeky best. Pinstripes, button-down shirts, lots and lots of checkered apparel. She wears bright and dark, psychotic Pucci prints and blocks of solid colors. her hair falls to her chin in a straight flowing mass of black, or sometimes magenta, and her eyes are just unnatural. They're shaped like sunflower seeds and tilted at forty-five degree angles. They're blue, this perfect blue that sometimes changes to green or grey. When the light hits them, I start to think I'm in a cathedral.
          This all leads back to the scar. It distracts me, obviously. It must mean something if I'm sitting here at home, alone in my bed, and thinking about how something can be that perfect. My sketchbook--the contents of which no one has ever seen--has a picture of her on nearly every other page. Strangely, the right side of her face isn't marred by the scar. That's because, again, it is the perfect scar.
          I used to have an obsession with scars. Not other people's. My own. I wanted them. I thought they made me human, not just some geeky girl in the front of the classroom, alien and alienated.
          After a few years of therapy, I realize how sick that is. That doesn't mean I don't still want to see my skin form thin clear lines; it just means that I stopped. A part of it is that I now believe that scars one makes aren't as valid as the scars one acquires, from surgery or accident or another person. I'm pretty sure no female in her right mind would cut herself on her face, so the scar is legit. Not like the futile ones up and down my shoulders, calves, and back. My scars are all lies. Hers is real.
          I can't say I love her. Maybe I love her scar...?
          That was a futile attempt at humor. Sorry.
          I often think I'm in love with her. I'm not sure if she would understand my obsession with scar tissue. No one would, I don't think, though if anyone would, she might get it. One of my major daydreams is running a finger down the length of the scar and kissing her. maybe she would understand that.
          I can see her face in the shadows of my ceiling and the glass between me and the night sky. I want to draw her.
          Rummaging through my stuff, I can't find my sketchbook.
          Oh. Oh, no. No, no, no. Shit.
          I left it in English class.
          My sketchbook, filled with her, with her scar, with my scars, is sitting in a schoolroom. Or maybe worse. Maybe someone picked it up. It has my name all over it.
          I'll go find it tomorrow, and then I'll burn it, like I once burned my thigh to see if that would result in a perfect scar.