once upon a time
there was a nothing who knew everything, but not. not at all.

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You are a precocious child, you are told by an employee, who had been eavesdropping into your idle rambling. This is not the first time you are told so. You are barely six, and you're the tiniest kid in your first grade class, and your fingers may be an accurate representation of your already lanky build, but there is no doubt in the world that your brain is larger than the rest of them combined. Takes after your father, your mother says while eyeing the latest edition that Prada has to offer her (his father's) platinum. It will soon line the pretentious designer collectible aesthetic in her walk in closet, propped right in between Louis and Coco.

She pries the purse open to study the interior pattern and count the compartments, simply pretending to size it up when even you know she'll spend thousands in a heartbeat.

But it's okay to deduct from his nonexistent college fund—the boy's a killer genius; full rides are guaranteed. Because according to her, knowing about astronomical statistics (thank you, bottle cap facts) at age six is enough evidence to know that her kid will be offered a gallery of scholarships when the time comes. And maybe she's right.

Mother knows best, right?

What do you know anyway?

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Your father misses your birthday once. It's alright, though. It's just one day. It's nothing.

Two classmates of twenty-seven show up to your party. One is named Riley, another Maya. They are a duo, attached to the hip, and when they are the only ones to greet you on your day, atop your doorstep in all their ballet flats and jelly sandals and sundresses glory, you smile so wide that it hurts. When had been the last time you let yourself show the world the gaps the baby teeth had left in your mouth?

The two girls stay longer than the duration, and the blonde one smears cake frosting on your nose for kicks and giggles and the brunette girl's laugh that erupts shortly after warms your stomach.

You wonder why you have never had the pleasure of feeling this way before and you're not sure how to distinguish how exactly they make you feel (yet)—whether it is liked or loved, or what-have-you. It isn't a false admiration or some sort of shallow respect based off the numbers you have no problem accumulating in point blank seconds. It is something new, genuine. Happy.

You decide you will devote the rest of your life to make sure you make them feel how they make you feel and better.

And you fall in love.

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Your mother sips wine when her neck wears pearls and shoots vodka tonics in diamond earrings. Your father is not a big fan of alcohol, so she only entertains herself when he is out on business trips, which happens more frequently as you get older. You don't want to notice that these trips happen after arguments involving rings to the head and endless, taunting profanity. Regardless, he brings her a bottle of wine every time he comes home.

He doesn't forget you, though. He'd given you an abacus, a hard cover copy of Great Expectations, and a collection of scripts—whether they'd been Shakespeare or of pertaining to Broadway. Pippin becomes your favorite.

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You're a nerd, according to the sharpie print scrawled along your locker.

It is easy to be labelled, especially when you have weak arms, lack height, and raise the average of quizzes (to the entirety of the class's dismay) because you have always scored in the highest level percentile. Whether it be a blessing or a curse, it is what it is. However, you come to realize that it is easier to accept it, rather than denydenydeny, vocally, publicly, personally, because you find that it hurts to continue believing in something that nobody else believes in.

You figure, what's the point?

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And then you're Nothing. Adjective. Definition: of no interest, no value, no importance. You aren't anything or anyone, you slowly start to believe. Because you may have things: infinite knowledge and people that know your name and speak to you and parents and a house to live in, turtlenecks in variations of colours, functioning body parts and (although they are rather small) you have hands, you have the ability to speak and see and hear. You should be grateful.

But your mind runs haywire, infected with words that sting much more than they should by someone of complete irrelevance to you. Not only aren't you anyone, but you don't deserve to have those you love because they are picture perfect and normal and you're a fucked up piece lost in the wrong puzzle. You don't fit, Billy Ross insinuates. You will never fit.

You are nothing, and this is the part where you begin to question everything.

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You see the light sometimes, reflecting off Riley's amber gaze or shining her brown waves and bouncing off the words she consoles you with. You really wish that you had the power to grasp the hope (she radiates all too easily) within the spaces of your fingers for yours to keep. She dances in words of reassurance and hums optimism into your slowly decaying self esteem and some way, somehow, she makes you think that if you wanted to touch the sky and steal the stars, you could. With her, you think that maybe, you can do the impossible—that you are capable of surrealism.

So you thank her.

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"I'm Donnie Barnes."

Donnie Barnes is cool, the perfect amount. He wears his hair slicked back in a dark beanie that matches his even darker wardrobe. He's not mean, but he's not sweet—a balance with some sort of fresh, apathetic exterior coated with an implicated elitist mind. He is better, he is normal, he is swooned over. He's smart, wittily-so, but he is not obnoxious, nor loud. He is no nuisance to his schoolmates, his friends, and his family. So you keep him around.

Your friends aren't too fond of this side of you, and it's discouraging. You don't want to be seen as a one dimensional character in their every day lives. You do not just want to be "Farkle", "their weird, normal Farkle". You are a person, just as they are, with a wide range of emotions and a spectrum you can't seem to pinpoint yourself on yet. You are multidimensional. You are more. And they will learn to accept that with time.

(You try not to let the way Riley's somber eyes look at your new persona affect you.)

You don't regret coming up with Donnie Barnes. Your entire life, people have labelled you: whether it had been everyone's Farkley Farkle, Stewart Minkus's kid, Nerd, Nothing, Autistic, Freak. For the first time, you take a stand, calling yourself someone you would rather be. And goddammit, you are proud.

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Although you are you, and you know more than the human brain could even contain, there are still things you can't understand.

Like why people insist on calling you names that are supposed to stab at you—offensive, derogatory terms that shouldn't leave anyone's mouth. But high school has shitheads, blinded with ignorance that talk more trash than critics. You don't remember the exact time and place it started, but you are called "Faggot" on multiple occasions, which seems to have a nice ring to it, apparently, since Faggot Farkle becomes your new nickname. You are also told to kill yourself. It happens twice: once, when you correct your Calculus teacher over an error in the grading of your midterm, and secondly, when members of the football team "accidentally" knock you into the lockers. You don't understand why they do this to you, how they find pleasure in telling someone to die by their own hands. It's morbid, twisted, and feeling defeated becomes as common as breathing.

They hurt you, emotionally and physically. And when Lucas steps in with a fist, you hurt him out of anger, jealousy rotting your bones.

"I was only trying to help," Lucas says. This is what they all say.

"You think that just because you're popular and stronger and have status in this school that I can't stand up for myself?" You retaliate, distancing yourself from the Prettyboy Star Basketball player, the typical school hearthrob. "I don't need your help."

(You'll apologize soon enough. Not yet, though.)

You also definitely cannot comprehend how series of boys have it in them to hurt Riley Matthews. She is cheated on their junior year of high school and when she cries to your group of friends (again and again and again), you deem this world a truly fucked up place. She will always deserve better than she gets.

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She doesn't catch you in the act.

That would be too cliché, and although she loves those (apparent in the novels that line her shelves), you're not a fan.

Instead, it happens like this: she is simply on the look for band-aids due to a stupid paper cut gone wrong in his bathroom. When she opens the second drawer to her left, her eyes catch sight of something that disintegrates her natural, cheerful aura. She picks it up carefully, and tears spring to her eyes when she barges out to face you.

You look up from your homework, colour draining from your face when you see the razor blade held delicately between her fingers.

You struggle to find some sort of explanation, anything that could make her stop looking at you as if she'd just witnessed an animal die, like you're some awful tragedy. It isn't as if you still do it. You've stopped. You have. She places the blade onto your desk before pulling your arms. You don't resist her touch. She slowly pries your long sleeves up to your elbows before she breaks down.

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The times she spends the night, she always slings her arm around you to hold you into her. She is protective, she is warm, and she is everything.

(And you still don't understand this—how someone so angelic, so unconventionally perfect, can love someone like you.)

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Your mother dies of breast cancer before you graduate.

Your father stays at home most of his days, fiddling with a ring all too familiar.

When he states that your family must stay strong and that he will work at it every inch to be there for you, you tell him that you are bisexual.

He doesn't talk to you for two days, but when he does, he nods, pats you on the back, and smiles a soft smile.

"I'm proud of you, son."

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Leaving for Brown is a difficult process. Especially while having to say good bye to those who had taught you what love was.

Maya is the first to cry. There is no doubt in your mind that she would deny it, but you and Lucas both are eyewitnesses of the waterworks in the corners of her orbs. Lucas tells you that he's only a phone call away. Zay continues by saying to expect company here and there to distract you from your studies, arguing that sooner or later, you're gonna need one (or four). And Riley? She hasn't let go of your hand since the car ride over to the airport. When you smile at her—a curve so, so bittersweet, she drops your palm and rummages through her purse to give you the second identical stuffed animal you'd given her in the seventh grade way back when.

"I found the first one you gave me..." she hesitates, honey sweet. She gulps, trying her hardest not to cry. She's always hated good byes. "So keep this one. We'll both have one."

Then, you thank her again—this time, for everything.

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You know a lot, question a lot, miss a lot, but above all, you learn much more with every step of the way.

(And life goes on.)

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fin.

_a/n: riarkle is my everything...and this was plotless (sorry)

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