DISCLAIMER: I don't own Stargirl. I don't profit from this story. I'm not the almighty Jerry Spinelli.

Fluttering, by Djorlcc

Hillari Kimble's POV

I didn't know what to make of her. Her. Stargirl Caraway.

She was weird. Strange. Unnatural, abnormal, crazy, goofy. She was a freak.

Nobody knew what to make of her. She certainly didn't belong, with her skipping and flouncing and sashaying and strumming and singing. She didn't belong in Mica. She didn't belong in the state. She didn't belong in the country, the world. She simply did not belong.

Who is she? What is she?, we asked both ourselves and each other when she first came. A wannabe starving for attention? A weirdo with no sense of style? An outcast who didn't care what their peers thought of them? It turned out she was none of those. We couldn't make sense of who she truly was. I do not think we can even now.

For she was a fluttering person with fluttering tendencies. Fluttering from one place to the next. Fluttering from one thought to another. Fluttering too fast for us to catch and label her.

But for all her unusual behavior, she was fascinating, a specimen to examine under a microscope.

Some of us, however, did not want to examine her. Some of us wanted to crush her. Crush the freak out of her.

Why did she have to disrupt the normality? Why did she have to be so unique? What was wrong with being normal? I was confused. I was resentful. I wanted to shut off the light in her eyes, to snap her damn ukulele in half. The day I dangled her filthy rat over the stairwell, I wanted her to scream, to plead, to sob. Anything that a normal person would do.

But she didn't. Instead she just stared at me with those enormous, eerie eyes.

You can say I hated her. And I did. I hated how I couldn't understand her.

But I've moved on since then. A fire will eventually burn out when there is no oxygen left, and my own raging hate snuffed out without Stargirl. Nowadays, I don't think of her very often, and my memories of her have dimmed. A time back, I relocated to the East Coast. I haven't contacted anybody from my high school years for a while, least of all Stargirl after the brilliant goodbye I gave her at the Ocotillo Ball.

But I bet she's still fluttering. Fluttering to New York and dancing in Times Square as the rain falls. Fluttering to Hawaii and playing her ukulele in tune to hula music. Fluttering to the Arctic and offering free back scratches to polar bears. Fluttering to another ridiculous name.

I never took the opportunity to get to know her well, but I can guarantee you she'll be forever fluttering.

note: I understand Hillari seems out of character, but that is because this little piece takes place years after Stargirl moved. Hillari is no longer the same hot-tempered, nasty person she was while in high school.

No flames, please. Thanks for reading! (And remember to review!)