Middle school came. When Mikasa walked through the campus gate, she became Asian. Kids would pull their eyes into tight creases at her and speak gibberish. She began wearing thick black eyeliner from her mother's purse when she turned twelve. She also became a woman, according to her mom.
Armin became a nerd instead of star student. Reiner… he just got taller still. And Eren became a low-achiever. A slacker, a delinquent. Their classes multiplied into seven; the four only shared homeroom and lunch together. Then they went along on their separate tracks, Armin to the bright new building with lots of glass and a library, Eren to the trailers with broken A/C.
Homeroom was Science class. For the past week, they'd been preparing for a cephalopod dissection. Mikasa was partnered with Armin. They worked well together, following the teacher's lead scrupulously as they took apart their preserved squid.
Reiner and Eren had partnered at the lab next to Armin and Mikasa's. They discussed the Superbowl in undertones and Eren stabbed his squid's orbital eye through his forceps to waggle at Reiner.
Armin was talking about vocabulary terms for the upcoming quiz. Mikasa wasn't paying attention. She was watching Eren in her periphery.
Eren had a life cycle to him. He'd go through phases of metamorphosis during the school day. He tried on new colors as they suited him. Mornings were infused with a sense of wild excitement, as though something new would find him from the mundane everyday. By afternoon, his wildness had gotten him into trouble, and he trudged home from his bus stop despondent. Mikasa wanted to be the weird new thing for him to see today.
Mikasa took the ink sac from her tray.
"Mikasa? We're not supposed to touch those yet."
She turned around in her seat.
"Eren," she said.
Eren and Reiner looked at her.
Mikasa pinched the ink sac and stuck out her tongue, letting the black bleed all over her mouth. She closed her lips and a black droplet pattered her chin and eked down like a tear.
Eren's eyebrows were furrowed, confused, not understanding. Reiner looked at Eren, waiting on a reaction. The classroom was staring at Mikasa.
Then the teacher saw her and sent her to the principal's office. She was served a single lunch detention and a call home to her mother.
Mikasa sat in the empty classroom they used for lunch detention, feeling sick to her stomach. She wished she would disappear. She felt like the ink was blooming dark on her white wrists and snaking up her arms as words for everyone to see, forever and ever.
The classroom door opened to the outside, where cicadas droned. Fifteen minutes late, Eren trudged along the aisle, his navy backpack slung over one shoulder. Mikasa lifted her head up from her arms and watched him carefully. He sank into the seat adjacent to her.
A minute ticked by. Eren leaned over and whispered, "I can't believe you have lunch detention. I never thought I'd see Mikasa Ackerman here."
Mikasa was quiet. She felt nauseous.
"Is this the first time you've gotten in—"
"No talking," the monitor said from the front of the room, glancing up from his grade book.
Mikasa and Eren's heads snapped straight to the chalkboard.
Another couple of minutes and Mikasa heard restless paper movements fluttering at Eren's desk. Something stung her neck. She turned. Eren had seemingly not moved. She picked a crumpled ball of paper from the floor.
"u r squid? xD"
Mikasa thought about this. Stealthily, she slid a mechanical pencil from her art supplies case and slotted in a new 0.5 lead. She wrote below Eren's sloppy scrawl in neat bubbly script.
"I am squid."
She dropped it back on the floor. Eren exaggerated a stretch and swooped it up. He wrote.
"squid gurl lololol"
Mikasa drew a tiny pictograph of a squid with eyelashes and a lipstick pucker.
Eren snorted. He turned it into a coughing fit. Mikasa fought to contain her smile.
They passed notes until the end of lunch.
Middle school passed too. Three summers came and went. The four friends floated in the waves of change, drifting apart from one another, then always colliding again, never not friends for too long. Eren began to surf in local tournaments. Armin, Mikasa and Reiner would support him from the beach, underneath the same old rainbow umbrella and picnicking on the same Spongebob Squarepants towel. Eren's skin got tan. Reiner turned bronze. Mikasa's was still bleached. Genetics, Armin told her.
Art was Mikasa's first high school elective. She was sketching a portrait of the senior girl who sat across from her. Pieck Finger, Mikasa had never seen awake. She was always in the classroom, sleeping, before anyone else. Her long black hair was a tumble of waves and bedhead frizz over her face. She went to school in flannel pajama bottoms.
Mikasa got up to use the bathroom. When she came back, Pieck was sitting on Mikasa's stool with the drawing in her hands.
Mikasa hovered awkwardly by the table.
"Oh, hi!" Pieck said. "Did you draw this?"
Mikasa nodded. Her face was hot.
"It's really good!"
"Thank you," Mikasa said shyly. She had never spoken to a senior before.
Pieck let Mikasa sit back down. She rummaged around her leather-spiked backpack and pulled a neon pink flyer from its recesses.
"Here's the form for monthly student artist submissions. You should really finish that piece and enter it."
Mikasa looked down. She only saw a loose unfinished mess.
"I-It's not that good…"
"Of course it is! You're seriously talented!"
"I don't know how to finish it, though."
"Well how about I help you?"
Pieck leaned over, her black hair brushing the tabletop. Mikasa could see down her shirt. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt that had a skull wreathed with black roses on it.
Mikasa said, "I like your shirt."
"I like your eyeliner. Where'd you get it from?"
Mikasa glanced at her toes. "It's my mom's."
"Aww," Pieck cooed.
Later, Pieck told her the name of the band the logo was from. Mikasa went home and downloaded some songs and listened to them on her iPod shuffle.
She liked them, a lot. She replayed them over and over, lying on her bed and letting the sad haunted vocals wisp her thoughts up towards her revolving ceiling fan to dissipate into gray fog. Techno-beats thrummed her soul like ghosts in the machine.
The next day, Mikasa came back and told Pieck how much she loved the band. Pieck fist-bumped her.
"Yes! Indoctrination complete!"
Pieck gave her more bands. Mikasa loved them all. She began to wear lipstick, rose-red at first, but she incrementally darkened the shade until she only used black from her makeup arsenal. Black was her color, now. She liked all the colors, but black was hers.
Mikasa climbed the ladder from freshman to sophomore, and the waves of change swept Pieck away to her life. "Keep in touch!" her only female friend in the school said before leaving forever.
Eren was competing in state tournaments now. Key West would host his first-ever championship. Eren wouldn't have missed it for the world. Mikasa, Eren and Reiner's parents pooled their money to rent a house on the beach there. Armin's grandfather got sick, so he couldn't make it.
The night before the meet, Eren, Mikasa and Reiner sat on the cold concrete floor of the beach house garage. Mikasa dimmed the fluorescent lights and placed a candle in the center of the room. She balanced a pencil on an eraser between a fold. On one side of the paper, she'd written no. On the other side, yes.
"This is so creepy." Reiner was whispering so as to not disturb the spirits in the room.
"Scaredy-cat." Eren elbowed him. He was whispering too.
Mikasa took a breath. "I've never told anyone this, but," she took another breath. "My mom had a miscarriage when I was nine years old."
"Jesus, Mikasa," Reiner said.
"I wanna try to talk to my brother's spirit."
Eren didn't believe in things he couldn't see, touch or hear. Reiner only believed in one, the big One.
They held hands. The candlelight's breathing filled and thinned their faces. Eren's hand was freezing, like he'd dipped it in ice water before taking Mikasa's fingers.
Mikasa asked politely if there were any spirits in the room with them. Yes. Were they related to her? Nothing. Were they related to Mikasa Ackerman? Nothing. Did they live in Key West? Yes. Were they married? No. Did they live life as a criminal? Nothing… nothing… nothing.
"Might have spooked him off with that last question," Eren said.
"I thought they might have been a pirate of the Keys in their last life," Mikasa said, disappointed.
She strained her eardrums until she could hear the thumping of her blood, trying to detect a presence.
"That's okay," Eren said. Mikasa could tell by his tone that he still didn't believe. "Reiner was blowing on it while you weren't looking anyway."
"No I wasn't! I swear!"
Mikasa packed up her seance kit and they showered. Mrs. Carla, their chaperone, told Mikasa where her room was. She walked in, her towel over her shoulders, and Eren was naked on one of the quilted twin beds, his boxers loose at his ankle. She slammed the door shut and heard a muffled cry. She sank down the wall beside the door frame. Her face was hot.
Reiner came down the hall, his bristled hair dewy from the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist.
"Eren's in there getting changed," Mikasa said.
Reiner knocked twice. "Dude! You done?"
Eren emerged. When he saw Mikasa, a sunburn roasted his cheeks.
"Yeah, uh, this stupid door doesn't have a lock."
They all got ready for bed then had a pillow fight when they were supposed to be sleeping. It ended when Mikasa disarmed Reiner and combo-ed Eren hard enough for feathers to fly from the pillows. Reiner fell asleep after that. Eren and Mikasa were still awake.
"Eren?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you—"
"Wait! Don't say something funny, or else I won't be able to go to sleep 'cause I'll be laughing at it every two minutes."
"I wasn't gonna say something funny."
"Okay," Eren said, shifting and lacing his fingers behind his head on the top bunk. "Proceed."
"Do you really not believe in an afterlife?"
"Well," Eren said. "Do you believe in Santa Claus?"
Mikasa was quiet. Between the softly swinging curtains, moonlight came down and yellowed the sandy floorboards.
Eren sometimes said things without thinking about what he was saying.
"Okay, sorry, that was a jerk thing to say. It's just— I mean, I believe you believe in it."
"So you don't think there's anything on the other side?"
Eren was quiet. The waves teethed on the shore outside their window.
"Y'know," he said at last. "I think maybe I'll just have to get there to believe it."
When she was sure everyone had gone to sleep, including the ever-vigilant Mrs. Carla, Mikasa went to the backyard ocean and stared far into the black sea and black night.
She imagined that she could see a ghostly galleon ship winking in between the panes of an otherworld veil.