Day 13: Challenge

Challenge #6


Incorporate the themes of failure, conformity and a character that is a cloudcuckoolander*.


*someone who is strangely oblivious to things that everyone else takes for granted such as social conventions like wearing clothing, being polite or obeying the law. However, cloudcukoolanders are very rarely malicious.

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He looks like a kaleidoscope in watercolour. Blue, purple, pink, green sliding and bleeding into snowflake patterns. It’s beautiful. The words press against the back of my teeth but he wouldn’t understand.

          Tonight I have to be different. Tonight I have to be like Them so he takes me seriously.

          My clothes feel strange and stiff and they smell Not Like Me, but the store-lady said it was Just The Thing. He gave me A Look when he saw them, but he didn’t say anything, so I guess she was right.

          I am a spy deep undercover about the infiltrate enemy lines.

          Thinking it makes me feel better.

          I just need to control my hands. They feel naked without something in them. A brush. A pen. A crayon. Anything would do. I would be a happier spy if I could draw but They don’t walk around drawing kaleidoscope boys so tonight I can’t either.

          He glides into the restaurant like he owns the world. The hostess smiles and flirts. Everyone stares. I wonder if They know I’m a spy, but he ignores Them so I do, too. He would know if They were suspicious; these are his people. His minions. His acolytes.

          I don’t understand the menu, but I think if I stare at it long enough it might make sense. He pretends he’s reading his, but he’s watching me over the top. This is a different Look and I don’t know what it means.

          ‘This doesn’t seem like a very you place,’ he says.

          It’s glass and metal and soft light and money money money. Even my skin feels uncomfortable here and I have to clench the menu to keep my hands from dancing across the table. I could sculpt his face in the cream candle between us. I probably shouldn’t.

          ‘I thought you’d like it.’

          ‘I’ve been here before.’

          That should be a good thing, but I have a sinking feeling that this was not the Right Decision and he’s trying to be nice. He’s never really nice, so that should make me feel better, but it really doesn’t.

          I try to talk about things They talk about but the subjects flounder on half-formed wings. I rode the bus twenty times yesterday to listen to the things They say but I must have got it wrong somehow.

          The glass and the metal and the soft light make his kaleidoscope colours brighter and I don’t know how They don’t see that he isn’t one of Them. But maybe they just get blinded by the shine and the smile and All The Right Words at Exactly the Right Time and don’t notice.

          I wonder if he knows he’s not a They.

          I wonder if maybe he’s a secret spy, too.

          The walk home takes forever, and he keeps giving me Looks – I think they want something but it’s not a him-look so I’m not sure – until we get Almost There and then he just smokes his cigarettes. By the time we get back he has the Just Getting Off Work Look which is Not Good.

          He smiles, but his smiles can’t be trusted. He only smiles when he doesn’t mean it.

          I wonder if I’m allowed to draw him now since none of Them are watching, but I keep my hands in my pockets where they can twitch away unseen. I’m dying to escape upstairs and rip every inch of Not Like Me from my skin. Then I’ll smear my body in all the colours, and keep inventing new ones until I become a kaleidoscope, too.

          His cigarette is burnt down to the end, but he isn’t paying attention.

          ‘I did something wrong.’

          ‘No, no.’ The Lying Smile. The Them Smile. ‘You did everything just… right.’

          I wish he wouldn’t make me connect things on my own. I want to tell him I don’t know the Rules yet and I don’t understand, but that would be a Not Them thing to do and tonight I have to be just like Them. I have to. ‘You’re not happy.’

          He flicks the butt into the yard and lights another cigarette. After two exhales, he goes into the yard and picks it back up again. ‘I guess I was expecting a little more slightly skewed,’ he says. He looks at me. Right at me, but only for a moment. He doesn’t like other people’s eyes. He explained it to me once, the science of counting seconds of eye contact before he could break away to get the right effect. ‘I get enough of Just Right at work. I think I might like slightly skewed better.’ He gets the Frowny-Thinky Look. I’m used to that one. I see it a lot. That and the Dealing-With-The-Loony-Bird Look. ‘Didn’t see that one coming.’

          He puts out his cigarette and goes upstairs to his Just Right apartment filled with Just Right furniture and Just Right pictures and Just Right clothes.

          I should have told him he looked like a kaleidoscope.