It’s your first day of kindergarten, and you are screaming. Tears are running down your face, and the day couldn’t get any worse. Your mother is trying to gel your soul streak down, but now it’s just a goopy spike, still sticking straight up, as always. You don’t understand why it’s a problem - your blue spike is super cool. Everyone else’s is black and kinky, blonde and wavy, or brown and bone straight. Yours is blue, and it floats. Your mother has tried everything: barrettes, bobby pins, even the dreaded tight bun, but nothing works. It always wiggles it’s way out, and back into the air. Eventually, she gives up. Thankfully, you have just enough time to rinse the disgusting goop out of your hair, but you have to go to school with it wet. She braids it down your back and leaves the blue streak sticking up, sighing heavily. You’re not sure why she thought she could make it go down today, she never has before.
School is mostly awful. You sit on the bus by yourself, because everyone looks scared of you. The moment you walk in, boys flock to pull your streak. You’ve always drawn extra attention, but nobody’s ever hurt you. Most of the girls want to feel it, and you let them. They’re being gentle and they all think it’s super soft. There were a few in the corner whispering about something though, and at lunch they come tell you that you’re a freak, that you’re destined to be forever alone and die right before your cats eat you, because people don’t have floating blue hair. They just don’t.
Your new friend Sam sticks up for you, and you know then you’ll be friends forever. She screams that your soulmate is gonna be the coolest, prettiest person anyone’s ever seen! She gets in trouble for using her outside voice inside, but she says it was worth it. Those girls were meanies. You really like Sam, even if you don’t understand why she’s sticking up for you. She’s normal. She has pretty black hair styled into poofy pigtails that look like pompoms, and she has a soft blonde streak. No one looks at her funny, no one calls her police car.
Elementary school comes and goes, and you and Sam are as inseparable as the day you met. One of your favorite games is seeing what kinds of stuff you can balance and hand on your hair. The only thing that’s made it sink so far is a dictionary, and it was super heavy. Most of the girls decide Sam is too weird to hang out with too, but she doesn’t mind. It’s way too fun to braid your streak into your hair and watch it all stick up. People are mean every now and then, but Sam has your back.
In middle school, though, something changes. A blonde boy named Nathan asks Sam out, and she says yes. Their streaks match up, so they must be soulmates. Nathan doesn’t like you. He thinks you’re a freak and you’re clingy, and he asks Sam to stop hanging out with you so much. She tells you she won’t, but she does. You understand. She shouldn’t put her soulmate at risk for you, but it still hurts. You sit next to her in class, and she avoids your gaze. She doesn’t sit next to you next year.
You decide it’s time to get rid of the blue streak. That’s what makes you a freak right? You buy some hair dye, it looks close enough to your color, and you pray the dye weighs it down some too. It doesn’t. The dye doesn’t even stay in. When you wash it out, it’s the same menacing electric blue it’s always been, so you make a decision. You cut it off. Your streak is on the top of your head, so it isnt like it’s an easily hideable bald spot. The rest of middle school is filled with beanies and high buns, and for the first time, you get a few friends. They arent great, they plan sleepovers and don’t invite you, but they let you sit with them at lunch and sometimes they even go to the mall with you.
Around 8th grade, you realize that other girls like boys. Like, they like them a lot more than you do. The only thing you’ve noticed about them is they’re rude and forget deodorant most days. You don’t understand why the other girls are so obsessed, but to each their own, you guess. It’s confusing, and you don’t like to think about it, so you don’t.
High school starts, and you’re more alone than ever. Sam broke up with Nathan, but now she’s hanging out with another girl. They’re always holding hands and whispering, and you feel so jealous. One day, you snap. You march right over to her locker, right in front of mystery girl, and ask her. You ask her what happened, why she’s replaced you. You make a pretty big scene in the hallway, but you can’t bring yourself to care. Sam squeezes mystery girl’s hand tighter and it clicks. Mystery girl is her soulmate. You finally see the lock of frizzy black hair right above the girls temple. You run away, tears in your eyes, and you hear someone run after you, but you dont stop. Not until you’re locked safely in a bathroom stall. Sam knocks on the door and asks if you’re alright. You tell her to go away. She doesn’t, she’s always been too stubborn to listen to you. She tells you about your middle school friends, how she thought you’d left her for them. She tells you about the nights she spent crying over her sexuality, and how she didn’t even have her best friend to talk to about it. You unlock the stall door, and step out, a little unsure, but immediately, Sam squeezes the life out of you, wrapping you in the best hug of your life. She missed you as much as you missed her.
After that, you officially meet Mallory - Sam’s soulmate - and you really like her. She’s charming and funny, and she wants to be around you. She doesn’t push you away like Nathan did. She and Sam convince you to grow your soul streak back out, and the rest of high school is so much better. The three of you are attached at the hip, and you don’t even feel like you’re 3rd wheeling.
By the end of freshman year, you understand why you didn’t chase after boys. You’re as gay as Sam, which is to say, incredibly gay. Still you worry. Who in hell would have blue floaty hair? Almost no one dates outside of soul streak matches, because there’s just no reason to. The problem is, no one matches you. Maybe you really are destined to be alone.
In sophomore year, you take an astronomy class, and you fall in love. The stars are beautiful, and you beg your parents for a telescope. Christmas morning, your wish comes true, and you spend night after night staring into the sky, memorizing constellations.
Junior year, the biggest meteor shower in 50 years happens (and it’s right in your neighborhood!). You plan sit until the sun comes up just watching. You forced Sam and Mallory to come too, but they got bored by 11:30 and went home. There was only a meteor every 15 minutes or so, but it was the most exhilarated you’d ever felt. Around 3 am, one meteor looks like it’s getting a little too close for comfort. The sensible part of you is scared - that thing might hit you, or the house - but there was another part that prayed it landed in your yard, even though it’d probably burn up before ever getting here. The thought of an actual meteorite, in your yard was just too exciting. It didn’t land in your yard, but it definitely landed. You felt it in the ground. Naturally, you drove toward the smoke.
It doesn’t take long to find your meteorite, and you hop out of the car, just parking on the curb. You arent really sure how to handle this, and you certainly dont have the proper safety equipment, but you dont care. Off into the field you go, coughing and waving smoke out of your face. After what feels like weeks, you find your meteorite. Well, meteorite isn’t the right word. Whatever the thing was, it wasn’t natural. You stare at it in confusion for a bit, before something pops out. A girl (you think) with blue skin, and blue hair. Floaty blue hair. The only thing out of place is a single lock of brown, behaving itself just as it should. She tumbles out of the spacecraft (?) and shouts “catch me!” as she floats towards you, and you do. “Your planet is so tiny. How do you even handle such a lack of gravity here?”
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