CHAPTER ONE
Let me tell you something about being albino in a school full of people who completely failed the basic prerequisites of human decency.
It builds character.
At least... that's what my dad says. My dad also microwaves fish in the office break room and genuinely cannot understand why his colleagues look at him like he's committed a crime against nature every Friday afternoon, so I tend to take his life philosophy with approximately zero grams of salt.
My name is Fredrick Wilbert. Fred to the people who actually like me… which is, admittedly, a very short list and *ghost boy, freak, bleach head,* and my personal all-time favourite, *the human printer paper,* to essentially everyone else. I've been called all of those things before eight AM on a Monday morning. Personally I think that says considerably more about them than it does about me... but nobody asked.
I'm seventeen. Junior year at Hallow Creek High, which sounds like the name of a school from a horror movie and trust me, the resemblance does not end at the name. White hair. Amber eyes. A face that could generously be described as *interestingly average* on a good day.
The point is... I am not what you'd call the popular type.
Which is fine. Genuinely, completely fine. Popularity is a social construct invented by people who peaked at seventeen and I intend to — well. Anyway.
I have exactly —
Actually. Let's not start there.
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You know, life is like a dick.
...Don't give me that look. Let me finish.
Life is like a dick, sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's soft, but either way you've just got to stay focused and make sure it doesn't screw you over.
Words of wisdom. I know. I should be charging for this.
Unfortunately I've had the distinct pleasure of being screwed over by life in essentially every position imaginable. Bent, folded, thrown sideways and not in any of the fun ways. At this point I'm fairly convinced life looked at Fredrick Wilbert specifically and thought *yes, him, let's really go to work.*
Which brings me to right now.
Specifically, to the locker.
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The metal met my back before I even processed that Marcus had moved.
One second I was walking. The next I was airborne. Then I wasn't, because the wall of lockers at the end of the hallway had very firm opinions about my momentum and expressed them immediately and loudly.
*CRASH. BAM.*
I hit the floor in a graceless heap, my spine screaming at me, my skull throbbing from where it had clipped the locker on the way down. I reached back and touched it out of morbid curiosity.
Wet. Sticky.
I pulled my hand back and looked at it.
Blood.
"Just great," I said, to no one in particular, in the flattest tone I could manage given the circumstances.
I considered getting up. I genuinely did. I ran a quick assessment, spine intact, legs functional, dignity already long gone…and then my body submitted its own opinion on the matter which was a firm and unanimous *absolutely not.* So I did what any self respecting person in my position would do.
I stayed on the floor.
Back against the locker, legs out in front of me, bleeding quietly onto the linoleum of Hallow Creek High's main hallway on a Monday morning. Living the dream.
The shadows arrived before the voices did.
I looked up.
Seven of them. Four boys, three girls, arranged in the specific formation of people who have done this before and intend to keep doing it. And at the front naturally, inevitably, like a recurring nightmare that had learned to lift weights was Marcus Reeves.
Six foot four. Black hair swept sideways. The kind of jaw that gets you voted prom king and the kind of eyes that make everyone around you very careful about what they say.
He reached down, grabbed my collar with one hand, and lifted me off the floor with the casual effort of someone picking up a jacket. My feet left the ground entirely. He pinned me against the locker and grinned wide, satisfied, the expression of a man who genuinely enjoys his work.
"Hey bleach face," he said. "What was that you said again? Couldn't quite hear you. Want to repeat it?"
I looked at him. Then I looked at my feet, which were currently several inches off the ground. Then back at him.
'Wow,' I thought privately. 'He's actually strong. That's inconvenient.'
Out loud I said "Sure, why not."
I said it with a shrug, which is a difficult physical gesture to execute when someone is holding you off the ground by your collar but I managed. I have range.
"I was saying," I continued pleasantly, "that you should really give up on trying to make me do your homework. Because I'm not going to do it. One would think after all this time you'd have understood that by now, Marcus."
I paused. Then, as if something had just occurred to me I said.
"Although..." I covered my mouth briefly, then let my hand drop. "I suppose I should factor in that understanding things isn't exactly your strong suit, is it? The doctors put your brain cell count somewhere in the negatives last I heard. Medically speaking that's not your fault. You were just born that way."
I shook my head slowly. Solemnly.
"It'll be okay, man. I genuinely mean that."
For exactly one second the hallway was silent.
Then it wasn't.
The laughter hit like a wave, sudden, uncontrollable, spreading from one end of the corridor to the other in about three seconds flat. Students doubled over. Someone actually fell against the opposite lockers. Even two of the guys in Marcus's own group had their fists pressed to their mouths, shoulders shaking, desperately trying and failing to hold it together.
"Did bleach face actually just say that to Marcus?!" someone wheezed somewhere to my left.
"I can't — my stomach — "
"Every single time, I swear — "
Marcus's grin had disappeared.
In its place was something considerably less pleasant.
"You think this is funny?" he said, very quietly. The quiet was worse than the shouting, if I'm honest. "You think you're funny?"
I considered the question with genuine sincerity.
"Statistically," I said, "the laughing suggests — "
His fist connected with the left side of my jaw.
My head snapped sideways. The hallway tilted. For a brief and genuinely spectacular moment I was fairly certain I could see individual stars floating in my peripheral vision which was impressive given that we were indoors.
Then everything settled back into regular painful reality.
I worked my jaw slowly. Checked that it was still attached. It was, which I counted as a win.
Around me the laughter had died. The hallway had gone the specific quiet of a crowd that has just remembered this isn't actually funny.
Marcus still had me by the collar.
I looked at him.
He looked at me.
"You done?" I asked.
He wasn't.
What followed was approximately seven minutes of Marcus Reeves expressing his feelings about Fredrick Wilbert in the most physically direct way available to him. I won't describe it in detail because honestly it's embarrassing for both of us, him for needing seven full minutes to make his point, and me for being the canvas he made it on.
I'll say this much, he avoided my face for most of it which I genuinely appreciated. My face is not my strongest feature but it's the one I've got and I'd prefer to keep it in roughly its current configuration.
My ribs, on the other hand, had some notes.
Eventually it stopped as it always eventually stops not because Marcus ran out of enthusiasm but because of a voice.
"That's enough, Marcus."
Flat. Bored. The specific tone of someone whose interest in the proceedings had expired about three minutes ago.
"This is getting old. There are still people in the building."
I knew the voice before I found her in the crowd. Madison Goldfarb had a way of occupying space that made her impossible to miss, the squad arranged loosely behind her, the particular stillness of someone who has never once in their life had to raise their voice to be heard.
She didn't look at me. She was looking at Marcus with the patient expression of someone explaining something to a person who should already understand it.
"A teacher could walk by any minute," she said simply. "He's not worth it."
Marcus considered this for approximately one second. Then he looked back at me, let go of my collar, and I dropped.
My legs had opinions about the landing that I chose not to voice out loud.
"Lucky day, snow white," Marcus said, already turning away. His group fell into formation behind him like water finding a drain.
Then they were gone around the corner.
This wasn't the first time, for what it's worth. Madison had pulled the same move before, different excuse each time, same bored delivery, same result. I'd never worked out whether she did it out of something approaching conscience or simply because watching Marcus beat on the albino kid had genuinely become tedious to her.
Probably the second one.
It didn't matter either way. The outcome was the same and I wasn't sentimental enough to read meaning into it.
She turned to follow her group.
And that's when I saw it.
It lasted maybe half a second. Less, maybe. The kind of thing you'd miss entirely if you weren't already watching, but I was watching, not for any particular reason, just because I notice things, it's a habit, it costs me nothing.
Her expression, in the moment before she rounded the corner and disappeared did something.
Not the boredom. Not the careful disdain. Something underneath both of those things, something she hadn't performed for the crowd or for Marcus or for me. Something that was just there. For half a second. Real in the way that only accidental things are real.
I couldn't name it exactly.
I filed it anyway. In the back somewhere, behind more pressing concerns.
Then I turned my attention to the considerably more immediate project of getting myself off the floor.
It took a while.
My bag was where I'd dropped it three lockers down, contents slightly scattered. I gathered everything with the slow economy of movement that comes from ribs that have recently lodged a formal complaint. Slung the strap over one shoulder. Straightened up by degrees.
The hallway was empty now. Just me and the fluorescent lights and the faint soundtrack of my own breathing.
"Long hot shower," I said to no one, my voice coming out rougher than intended. "Definitely a long hot shower."
I limped toward the exit.
Outside, the afternoon was aggressively normal, blue sky, light wind, the parking lot emptying as the after school crowd dispersed. The world entirely unbothered by the events of the last ten minutes.
I appreciated that about the world, actually.
It never made a big deal out of anything.
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Chapter One — End