It’s your first day of kindergarten, and you are screaming. Tears 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 alone 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 was to feel it, and you let them. They’re being gentle about something though, and they all think it’s super soft. There were a few in the corner whispering about something though, and at lunch they come and tell you that you’re a freak, that you’re destined to be alone forever and die right before your cats eat you, because people don’t have floating blue hair. They just don’t.

Your new friend Antalya sticks up for you, and you know then you’ll be friends forever. She screams that your soulmate is going to be the coolest, prettiest person anyone has 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 Antalya, even if you don’t understand why she is 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 a police car.

Elementary school comes and goes, and you and Antalya are as inseparable as the day you first met. One of your favorite games is seeing what kind of stuff you can balance and hand on your hair. The thing that’s made it sink so far is a dictionary, and it was super heavy. Most of the girls decide Antalya 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 Antalya has your back.

In middle school, though, something changes. A blonde boy named Nathan asks Antalya 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 ask Antalya to stop hanging out with you so much. She tells you she won’t, 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 isn’t 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 aren’t great, they plan sleepovers and don’t invite you, but they let you sit with then at lunch and sometimes the 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. Antalya 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 the 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. Antalya squeezes mystery girl’s hand tighter and it clicks. Mystery girl is her soulmate. You finally see the frizzy black hair tight above the girls temple. You run away, tears in your eyes, and you hear someone run after you, but you don’t stop. Not until you’re locked safely in a bathroom stall. Antalya knocks on the door and asks of 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 about it. You unlock the stall door, and step out, a little unsure, but immediately, Antalya squeezes the life right out of yo, wrapping you in the best jhug of your life. She missed you as much as you missed her.

After that you officially meet Mave - Antalya’s soulmate - and you really like her. She’s charming and funny, and she want to be around you. She doesn’t push you away like Nathan did. She and Antalya convince you to grow your soul streak back out, and the rest of high school is much better. The three of you are attached at the hip, and you don’t even feel like you’re third wheeling.

By the end of freshman year, you understand why you didn’t  chase after boys. You’re as gay as Antalya, which 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 no reason to. The problem is, no one matches you. Maybe you are destined to be alone.

In sophmore 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 starting onto the sky, memorizing constellation.

Junior year, the biggest meteor shower in 50 years happens ( and it’s right in your neighborhood!). You plan to sit until the sun comes up watching. You force Antalya and Mave 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 park of you is scared - that it 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 hit 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 aren’t really sure how to handle this, and you certainly don’t have the proper safety equipment, but you don’t 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 hair, 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?”