There was a girl at my high school who was always encircled with thick swirling wisps of a fine, fragrant miasma.

She seemed to ever be emerging almost into view, as if living within her own localised fog.

That wasn’t all that was weird about her, either. I never saw her eat or drink; instead she could be seen floating ethereally around the school canteen at lunchtime, inhaling the odors of other people’s food and juice.

She seemed sickly, with translucent skin and cheeks which looked sharp enough to draw blood. Yet her eyes sparkled like a thousand firecrackers, and her every breath seemed hungry and somehow feline, like a lion.

I was an odd duck myself, and perhaps I sensed a kindred spirit in her. She spoke to me of her home being the oceans, the highest mountains, the desert which stretched forever until intertwined with the crimson sun. She claimed to never age. You could say she was somewhat eccentric.

The other students called her “Stinkbomb”, and swatted her away when she came too close, yelling “Go away! You”ll give me the plague!” 

The teachers seemed to not notice her at all, or maybe they treated her with disdain. Either way, She sat dead-still at the back of class, her legs crossed as if meditating, her scent visibly poking at people’s noses.

She was gone after one semester. I remember sitting forlorn in the cafeteria, lamenting the loss of her unearthly scent. I don’t remember ever hearing her real name. 

Nobody else remembered her at all, and I began to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing, like some wondrous fever dream.

She kissed me, once, in the schoolyard, not long before she left. I breathed her in, deep, and my nostrils filled with noxious fumes. I felt sick in the stomach and my heart and head pounded so loud that a passerby could hear. I fainted, and when I awoke, a teacher said that he thought I might’ve been dead, as it took so long for me to breathe again.

But the funny thing is, since that day I’ve never had so much as a head-cold, and every other kid from my graduating class of 1938 is dead.