What does it mean to be alone? Looking at the word structure , Mari traces out imaginary boundaries on the diary page where the word written "alone" now is split into "a" "l" and "one".

This is the only thing written on the page, she cannot write anymore as she ponders how she can write the definition.

She is sitting alone herself, against the school building wall, lost in the thought of what it really means to be alone, while her classmates are outside playing at recess. The universe itself is made of many celestial bodies, and our body is built on symbiotic bacteria, cells, and organs, but when you condense everything into any one catergory everything can be "one" or alone. Everything is contained in one infinite holding space. Every. Thing. What is some, what is one, and what is many?

Mari is stuck between complex thought and just accepting the way things are supposed to be, simple minded and fun for a fourth grader, until her parents start worrying about boys and she learns about politics, paying her taxes, and not knowing whether her feelings are justified or not.

Until then, Mari should enjoy her elementary school years. But her self-exclusion from the rest of her peers will soon set her on a mentally exhausting journey of identity, and whether or not "friends" are worthwhile.

Mari hadn't sat with anyone at lunch for three years, the seats next to her remaining empty; void of the friends everyone else in her class seemed to have. Her journal sat open on the lunch table next to her, the word 'alone' scribbled on the page over and over and over again. Connor, the new boy who sat next to her in English yesterday, walked up to her slowly. Before the whispers started. Another boy tapped him on the arm before he was within a few metres, whispering something into his ear while Connor's face slowly morphed into one of contemplation, then pure, abject horror.

Mari could only imagine what they were saying about her,

"She hasn't said a word in two years."

"She's the weird girl."

"Don't talk to Mari, she's insane."

Her classmates were all more silent as she passed them, walking out of the crouded lunchroom, journal still in hand. The page was open, black with inked words that overlapped each other. The door to the empty classroom swung open once when Mari walked into it, then shut before open again as Connor walked inside.

"Hi."

He said carefully, but with a smile.

"I'm Connor."

꧁🙟⎯Mari's Diary ♡✩ ⎯🙜꧂

August 17th, 2018

*oh yeah, and to the crappy narrator or Creator of my "story", here's where the first page of my diary ACTUALLY begins. I

know what people say about me. Here's the first person point of view you're looking for. If this book is open, I know you're reading.

Dear Diary, today I met a boy. Connor. No this isn't one of those stupid journal entries you see in movies where the girl has a crush on the guy. I met a boy, and I'm surprised if anything that he approached me first. All of my peers simply ignore me or talk about me but not TO me. I don't know what's so unlikeable about being realistic, or having interests in my studies so much. I mean, Mama always told me I wouldn't amount to anything if I wasn't advanced, that the kids around me had more to enjoy. Money, stable homes, they can focus on being children. It's sad how much I think about my future, it's sad how I'm scared to talk to kids, LIKE a kid. I want to fit in socially, but really, I'm different. I know Mama got screwed over, I don't blame her. What her "friends" and my father did to her is terrible, but I'm not writing about that today.

Why would Connor want to talk to me? Doesn't he take hints? People call me emo, depressing, and "teacher's pet". Any smart new kid would know to take the warning not to talk to "the quiet kid", after all, my classmates know the whole social hierarchy of the school. So when Connor introduced himself, here's how it went.

"Hi, I'm Connor." he said. He did look a bit scared, almost like he took a bet or something to talk to me and that he would run off and laugh later.

I responded, monotone "Mari, can I help you?" "Oh, you must be new, if you're looking for a tour guide I'm sorry but your best bet is probably someone more talkative and outgoing than me."

"That's not--"

"Dude it's okay, I'm just saying can't you see I'm trying to read here?" I hid my face in one of our assigned books, "Holes", which I had already read before, but used as an excuse to shoo him away."

"Geez, sorry for bothering, I just wanted to get to know some new people, be... cordial? Y'know?"

I pretended to read for a minute until he left.

Most adults think I'm just a 9 year old who's overly socially awkward. Or that I have a speech disability of some sort. I have so much to say, just not to people who reach out a hand and say they want to be friends. I've already seen that fakeness in the adult world. You can't trust anybody. I know what my mother went through. It's especially irrelevant to make friends with 4th graders who have no moral values nor core intelligence. That famous psychologist Freud said something about ages 6-10 being when we pause development psychosexually and enter a latency period, start focusing on making friends or whatever. Such nonsensical bullcrap. Freud? More like Fraud. This age is scary when kids gain consciousness of how to use physical traits and social roles to bully others, to spoil themselves rotten, and get whatever they want. And that continues into adulthood. I'm focused on surviving on my own, I can't stop.

Or at least that's what I feel right now.

I'm no brag, my life is just more complex than I can share. I isolate because there's no reason for me to socialize. There's nobody in my school that would understand.

But I will admit, naturally, I want to talk to Connor again. Guess you can't stop yourself from being a social species after all. Well, Good Night Diary.

August 18, 2018

It's Saturday. Nothing of note has transpired. I ate peanut butter toast for breakfast then spent the morning reading. I've been reading Dostoyevsky's White Nights, and I'm not quite sure what to think about it. In the afternoon, Mama and I went to the grocery store then stopped for ice cream on the way home. Oh, I also had a weird dream about that boy who approached me yesterday. Connor. Connor Armstrong. Curly black hair, Spiderman T-shirt, grey shorts, and Converse sneakers. In the dream, Connor was sitting next to me in class when he passed me a note. I unfolded it gingerly. It read, in his barely-legible blocky print, "wanna be friends?" Then we were suddenly sitting by the playground talking about bugs. He mentioned something about black widows that I found vaguely interesting, then somehow the conversation topic pivoted to types of biological mimicry. I was just beginning to tell him about Batesian mimicry when the ringing of my alarm woke me up.

In Batesian mimicry, a harmless species mimics a more dangerous species to avoid predators. For instance, hoverflies mimic wasps to avoid being preyed upon by birds. Their black and yellow patterns scream "I will sting you" when in reality, they are incapable of doing any real harm. Perhaps this has some parallels to a typical elementary school social environment. There are predators, bullies, who seem to exist solely for the purpose of tormenting those they perceive as weaker than them. There are wasp-like personalities who will treat others nicely until provoked...once provoked, however, they can inflict more harm than the bullies. And then there are people like me, helpless animals who are continually preyed upon and lack the courage and/or skills to defend themselves.

I don't think I really want to be "accepted" per se, I don't think I can make myself care about the superficial gossip that most of my classmates are obsessed with. But I do know that I don't want to be bullied, preyed upon. I don't want to be called "the weird girl" by slightly overweight boys who don't even know that the use of word 'weird' in contemporary English comes from The Weird Sisters in Shakespeare's Macbeth. (Yes, I'm talking about you, Samuel.) I don't want to overhear conversations where people speculate about what makes me so different. (No, I wasn't born on another planet. No, I don't have brain cancer. No, I'm not a mutant grown in a lab.) Even though I know I should just ignore these things, I can't. I cannot overcome the fundamental human desire to obtain social connection, hence my foolish enduring interest in Connor.

Maybe the solution is Batesian mimicry. I need to emulate a wasp, somehow convince my bullies that I can clap back at them, even though I really can't. How to do that, how to do that....