When I was too little to remember, my older brother, Taylor, died. The doctors told my family that it was a rare disorder of the lungs. He was four at the time. Thirteen years later, my dad convinced my mother that moving out to the country would be good for our family. He got a contract doing whatever it is he does with the refinery, and I got to deal with the culture shock of a middle school one tenth the size of my old school.

I was never super great at making friends, but that first year here was… well let’s just say I got a lot of reading done.

I didn’t think I would get very far with complaints, and besides, if my dad thought that living here would help, then I was all for it. They tried to hide it from me as well as they could, but I wasn’t sure if our family would ever get away from Taylor’s ghost. I guessed that life only worked out really well for people in stories.

Everything got better for me when I met Mia. We didn’t have any kind of magical instant connection when we first saw each other. Instead we happened to be in most of each others classes, both always sitting near the back of the room, the two quiet nerds. Maybe a month into the year, one of the more simpleminded of our classmates, Martin Suparello, identified our similarities--loudly.

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“Oh look, guys, the goth kids are sitting in the back again. What a shocker!” His fellow pubescent neanderthals chuckled sycophantically.

Neither of us are even wearing black clothes, moron.

I didn’t say anything. I had learned from smarter bullies than he not to feed the trolls. But I tried to smile encouragingly at my partner in abuse and she grinned back seeming as unbothered as I was. My stomach felt strange. After the bell rang, while I was distracted gathering my things, she walked up to me.

“We’re not even wearing black!” she said with a glance towards Martin that said what a moron. Then she looked back at me and smiled fully and it was like sunshine pierced through the ceiling and sucked away all the brain-numbing fluorescence. “I’m Mia.” Of course we’d heard each other’s name before a dozen times in class, but she held out her hand like she was the mayor of Pleasantville. I melted a little.

I only hesitated for a second before I took her hand. Her smooth, olive skin made me aware of how pale and freckly mine was. But she continued her mayor impression and pumped my hand with ridiculous enthusiasm and I couldn’t hold back laughter.

“I’m Max. It’s great to meet a fellow goth!” I tried to fill my voice with as much saccharine as possible.

We were just about inseparable after that. I suppose I could be thankful to Martin Suparello. But then again, our meeting was obviously destiny and Martin Suparello can suck it.