Pretty Little Bones

Should I Write Myself Out of the History Books

Should I Write Myself Out of the History Books

Ava had trouble acting normal when she was nervous, and she was always nervous. She was more than just a little misunderstood, but that was one of the most charming things about her. You never knew what her normal was.

Sometimes I really wasn't sure about Ava, but one thing was certain: she kept everyone on their toes. She was just straight up, flat out, weird. People tried to cover it and call her quirky or unique, but there was no hiding from the truth. Ava was weird and we all knew it.

But she could pull it off. That was never a point of ostracism for her, because she was always just an awkward, weird girl everyone grew to know and love in the way her parents did. For all her life, she'd done odd things so much, they became a part of her. The way she twisted her rings and snapped her hair ties. The way she rocked back and forth on her heels or tapped her foot restlessly. The way she smiled politely at her hands when she didn't have anything to say. Everything she did was weird, but somehow normal. That was just Ava. That was just how she was.

When we were little, she developed the habit of refusing to meet anyone's eyes. Instead, she started at their chin, concentrating so hard on looking normal that she sometimes forgot to listen. Then, as we got old, she stopped being able to look at people. She'd look beside them, behind them, through them, but never at them.

She was sixteen when she finally came to terms with the fact that she would never be normal, and after that, she started enjoying herself a little more. Even though she hated almost everything about the childhood she always said she couldn't remember, she started finding joy in the fact that she didn't know how to be normal. Even she entertained herself with how strange she was.

There were nights when she'd sit on my couch, making strange noises she'd heard on a television commercial, or repeating lines she'd heard at school with so much conviction, you'd swear she really believed she was someone else. She had started imitating noises before she could even talk, meowing at her cat, barking at the family dog, alerting her mom the TV dinners were ready to be taken out of the microwave. When she stopped sleeping at five, she started imitating her dad's alarm clock at four thirty every morning and for a long time he didn't know. She did it so well, it took him almost a year to realize the actual alarm was broken.

She would imitate everything and it made her feel like she could be anything. One moment she could be the dripping faucet and the next she was the wind blowing through the pine trees in front of her house. When the kids at school realized this talent, they made requests. They'd drop gravel on the playground and shriek in delight when she made the same noise without the use of a rock or gravity. They'd pop their gum and she'd pop back. They'd roll their pencil across the floor and watch her carefully, making sure her imitation came from her mouth and not a hidden pen under her foot. She never disappointed. And she never made eye contact.

By middle school the everyday noises became too easy so Ava took a fascination in imitating people. Then she could be anything and anyone. Before long, she could impersonate all the football coaches, making them sound as though they were sucking on helium the same way my dad nursed drinks. She could sing songs from the radio with the same tone and style as nearly any artist, only making changes to octaves when she had to. The lunch room would crowd around her, listening to her impressions of our teachers, barking about prepositions like the English teacher, and droning on about ratios like the math teacher. After school she even made them swear. Nothing was quite as exciting to a seventh grader as hearing the voice of their Ancient Civilizations teacher tell them to go fuck themselves.

Around the beginning of eighth grade, Ava took a keen interest in accents, because then, not only could she be anything or anyone, but she could be anywhere. It was like she'd traveled the globe, when she'd barely traveled the States. When we started high school, Ava could do and say anything, and convice anyone she wasn't herself. Once I watched her convince a substitute from out of town that she was a foreign exchange student from England only to turn around and convince a different substitute she was from Ireland the next week.