One phrase. So simple yet so complex.

Its meaning: born without hands. Born without the ability to feed yourself, dress yourself without some sort of assistance.

Born without knowing you'll never be normal.

Born without understanding that no one will ever see you as someone lovable.

Except for a little boy, seven years ago, when you were both ten. A little boy who picked flowers for you, pushed you on the swing, and always held the stump of your arm like a hand.

A little boy who tried to make you hands and cried when they failed.

A little boy who ran after your leaving car, yelling that he loved you.

I'm seventeen now, harnessed with a curse I can never escape.

Once we moved to this forsaken town of a little more than five hundred people, my parents offered to buy me prosthetics, something that had not been on the table before.

I refused, remembering tears in a pair of chocolate eyes.

A memory that is nearly gone now, driven out by those people who have the audacity to call themselves human beings.

A hundred of them troll the halls of Brookview High School, banding together in cliques I will never be invited to join. Every one of them avoids me like not having hands is as contagious as the plague.

If it weren't for my missing body parts, they might call me beautiful. Every teenage male for miles might have been lining up at my door with candies and bouquets of flowers.

I've only ever wanted one. A ten-year-old boy who didn't see someone who was weird or limited by her missing hands. A ten-year-old boy with melting chocolate eyes and thick wavy ebony hair that just barely curled at the ends.

Though, I suppose, he isn't ten anymore.

My own mom was horrified when she saw me that very first time. She nearly dropped me when I waved those handless arms in the air.

"What did you do to her?" She screamed at the doctor, the nurses. "Where are my little girl's hands?"

It was called transverse upper limb deficiency, more specifically carpal total. Simply, it means that I was missing all of my hands, as cleanly cleaved by nature as if someone had taken an ax to my arms.

For months, we traveled everywhere there was a specialist dealing in missing limbs. Every single one told my parents that prosthetics were my only option. My mom refused to listen, insisting that there had to be something else they could do to correct such an imperfection.

By the time my dad finally got her to listen to what the doctors were saying, every cent of my parents' savings had gone towards my doctor bills.

There was no money for prosthetics then, and despite our much improved finances now, I refused to let them buy hands for me.

My parents called me Raven that day, not that I ever looked much like one. No beady dark eyes and black cloak of hair for me.

I have cyan eyes that somehow manage to shine and thick straw-colored hair that falls to mid-back.

On my good days, I refer to my looks as sunshine over an ocean.

Today is not one of my good days.

Perhaps it was the fact that I have a chemistry test. I hated those mortifying days, forced by my own stubbornness to tell my answers to an assistant or to speak into my computer.

Either way, I am isolated in a room by myself, supposedly both for the benefit of the other students and to make me feel more comfortable.

As if it worked.

The only benefit that I could see is that every one of those other 99 people knew exactly where to find me once the bell sounded its ominous tune.

Of course once that dismissal came, I took my time gathering my things. My laptop I slid into the shoulder bag that I had wedged atop the table before slipping my arm through the strap and ducking my head.

Strangely enough, once I pushed open the door, I found no one meandering their way down the hall casually. In fact, the whole wing where I stood was quiet enough that I wondered if everyone else had died while I was taking my test.

Tossing that gloomy thought, I raised my chin and settled for a better explanation: they were all hoping to ambush me when I least expected it.

I refused to give anyone the satisfaction of embarrassing me in front of a cafeteria of gossip-hungry teenagers. I did the logical thing.

I altered my course for the office, where the receptionist, Ms. Holly would take pity on me and fret over me more than my own mom would.

Instead of the serenity I craved, I found all of the school, freshmen through seniors, crowded around the front doors. The very air seemed to tingle with gossip, and I fought the urge to bolt for cover.

"Did you heard..."

"I heard a new..."

"You know Natalie has already..."

I blew out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding like it was my last strand of sanity. There must be a new student due to arrive today, and if Natalie had already staked a claim, they had to be a male specimen.

Natalie, the girl who had declared herself my greatest tormentor from the day that I had set foot in Brookview.

If any girl deserved the name Raven, it was her, not me. It wasn't just because of her classically dark looks with the shiny thick cloak of feathery night hair.

Oh, no, she had a screeching voice that would rival any proud bird's harsh call. Not to mention the way that she set upon anyone like they were the tastiest delicacy she had ever devoured.

That anyone was me, more often than not.

Natalie had been voted prom queen her freshman year, despite the fact that the nominations were only open to upperclassmen. This was in spite of her horrid nature, and I suspected that several votes were gained by threats of airing dirty laundry.

I know I didn't vote for her.

Curious to see what sort of poor guy had caught her attention this time (she did go through the males of the school like tissues), I began to weave my way through the tight-packed crowd.

For once, my missing hands worked to my advantage because once the other students saw who was in their midst, they stepped aside hastily.

I managed to get to the left window that flanked the row of front doors. Natalie was standing at the opposite side, her nose pressed to the window and breath fogging the pane as she fought her excitement to get her hands on the new blood.

With a fierce roar, a motorcycle came skidding around the corner and barely missed hopping the curb as the driver braked to a stop.

The figure, who was clearly male and who had to be the student, swung one leg over to disembark from the machine. Seeming to trip over nothing, his face was stopped from smacking the pavement only by the helmet he still wore.

I suspected that the skidding and almost curb-hopping from before was due more to the fact that the driver was unused to the machine and not because he was showing off.

Natalie had yet to reach that conclusion and was gushing to her ever-changing gaggle of sycophants about how he had to such a man to handle a motorcycle.

Meanwhile, the student was picking his way carefully up the sidewalk in front of the school, and something in his gait sparked a chord of familiarity in me.

The anonymous reflective visor of his helmet turned in my direction, sending the feeling that he was studying me as he paused in his progress.

I watched his gloved hands reach up and pull off the helmet from his head, revealing tousled ebony hair and chocolate eyes that gave you the sensation that you were melting.

I flinched back from the window as I saw his lips say, Ava, a name that only one person in existence had ever called me.

Frozen as a bunny who saw a semi barreling in its direction, I could only stare wide-eyed at the young man that I last remembered as a ten-year-boy.

My lips formed his name under my breath, Chris, and then, like the coward I was, I bolted away from the window, putting as much distance between the two of us as possible.

Why did I run from the person that I had such fond memories of? The boy who had picked my flowers, the boy who had held the stump of my arm like it was a hand, the boy who had tried to make me hands out of Legos, the boy who had yelled that he loved me?

I was frightened of how this seventeen-year-old teenager would measure up to the genius that I had known. I was scared of all the emotions I had seen flicker through his eyes and what he had seen in my own eyes. I was worried about what his coming would mean for my life.

I heard him crash through the doors just as I reached the fringes of the entire student body.

"Ava!" Chris yelled over the top of the gossiping crowd. "Ava, where are you!"

Biting back a sob, I stumbled down the endless stretch of empty hallway. Passing the entrance to the girls' restroom, I made a sharp turn and slammed myself into a stall.

How I wished I had hands in that moment! I'm sure that I looked like a fool, the stumps of my arms scrambling against the simple bolt lock before I remembered to push rather than grasp.

In the safety of the stall, I sank to the dirty cold tiles of the floor and whispered his name just once.

"Chris."

That one syllable, filled with so much meaning, broke the barricade I had hid my tears behind, and I bawled. It was just as ugly as what the world saw when they noticed that my hands were missing.

Hot, slimy snot ran out of my nose and down the curve of my lips to pool against my neck. Tears traced their paths like rivers carving a mountain. I felt my eyes swell, and I was sure that my nose was tomato red.

However, when I heard the sound of footsteps outside the bathroom, I clamped my quivering lips shut to contain the sounds forcing their way out while I scooted against the porcelain of the toilet.

"I can't believe that idiot ignored me and stood there yelling for that handless freak!" Natalie's furious voice fumed, and I heard the sound of a lipstick tube being popped open. "And with such a nickname for her too. Nobody says her given name, much less gives her a nickname!"

There were murmurs of agreements from the ever loyal girls, who bent towards her like they were sunflowers and she was the sun.

"To think that I ever thought he was cute! He's such a weirdo, knowing a freak like that! Well, he made the wrong enemy today, and it's social outcast land for him!"

Natalie smacked her lips together, and I could imagine her pursing them in the mirror. Then, there was the sound of zippers and the fast retreating of footsteps with the ever present tittering that came from such a crowd.

I used my wrist to flip the flap of my satchel back and found the phone that my parents had insisted on once we had moved to Brookview.

Carefully, I used my arms to grip it and maneuver it into my lap. Biting my lip, I leaned closer and whispered, "Call Mom."

My mom picked me up early from school, formulating some excuse for the office while I slid into the car to stare blankly out the window.

Despite her not-so subtle attempts at prying what was bothering me from me, I refused to tell her, tucking the look of the new Chris away to study later.

Ignoring my parents' insistence that I stay downstairs and eat with the family, I fell onto my back in bed to stare up at the sloping ceiling of my bedroom.

I gently allowed the image of Chris standing on the pavement in front of our school fill my mind, his features replacing the bland ceiling.

There was some emotion I hadn't ever seen in his eyes as I thought back. It wasn't pity. Despite the fact that I had never seen pity radiating in those chocolate orbs, I knew for sure that wasn't what I had seen.

Relief.

Chris had been relieved to see me, and once more, I remembered the boy running after our car that was laden with suitcases and boxes, yelling that he'd always love me.

I hadn't doubted his words, yet now that he had found me, he should cut his losses before my missing hands caused problems for both of us.

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