April was a strange woman. She’d grown up in a small town, where people whispered and called her a freak. When she came of age, she moved to Berkeley, thinking she would blend in. Even by Berkeley’s standards, she was still odd, but she at least found friends who appreciated her.

April hated color. It upset her, triggering anxiety attacks or fits of anger. Her clothes were all white or light grey, her apartment was decorated with the blandest beige furniture she could find, and she always took public transportation. She had a driver’s license, but stoplights upset her.

Obsession was not uncommon in Berkeley, and if that was all, April might not have stood out. But there was one other thing about her that caught the eye. Her hair naturally grew in snow-white.

She wasn’t albino. Her skin had a healthy complexion, and the doctors she’d seen were at a loss to explain it. Her friends joked that she hated color so much, she’d driven it out of her blood entirely.

Until one spring day, when one of those friends knocked on April’s door. It was a quick and hard tap tap tap. “April? It’s Sarah. Are you in there? I texted you.”

“Come in,” April called. “It’s not locked.”

Sarah pulled open the door, stepped inside, and looked around for her friend. She caught a trace of April through the doorway to the kitchen, and took a quick step that directly: “Did you-”

“Robe,” April called out.

“Oh. Right.” Sarah took a quick step back to the door. She kicked off her shoes, and then grabbed one of the three grey robes that hung on a peg by the door. Throwing it over her shoulders nicely covered her electric-blue tank top. “Did you see the news?”

“I avoid the news,” April replied. She was in the kitchen. For her, cooking was an activity that took some time, and that had to be conducted with thick gloves. As a teenager, she’d tried eating only pale foods, but nutritional deficiencies forced her back to a more normal diet.

She rationalized that she was like a nuclear reactor technician: handling dangerous substances for the greater good.

“Right, whatever. There was a story about you in the New York Times. It’s a huge deal. Like, a bunch of generals resigned and there are going to be charges and stuff.” Sarah rushed into the kitchen and started reading from her phone. “Leaking military transport exposes hundreds of children to experimental chemical weapon ‘Agent Lollipop.’”

“I’m not a child,” April replied. She didn’t look up from her work.

“No no. This was twenty years ago. Look.” Sarah shoved her phone until April’s nose. On the screen were pictures of several other young people, all about April’s age. They all dressed blandly, and a few had snow-white hair.

“Huh,” April said. “Neat.” She pronounced the word crisply.

Then she went back to chopping vegetables.

Sarah frowned. She furrowed her brow. “Are you… not getting this?”

“You are the twentieth person to text that article to me. Though you are the first to come over in person when I ignored you, so thank you for being a good friend.” April briefly smiled. “I understand completely. First there are going to be friends who pity me. Second there are going to be doctors who want to flush the toxins out of my blood so I can be ‘normal.’ Then there are going to be lawyers who want me to cry about how awful my life is so we can sue the government for all its worth.”

Sarah frozen. He jaw opened and shut. Finally she blurted out: “But your life is awful.”

April snorted, and a smile touched her face again -- strained through it was. “Your life was awful when your brother was dealing with drinking. If a doctor said he could flush the bad spirits out of your blood so you wouldn’t care a loved one was drinking themselves to death, how would you have reacted?”

A hot snap overtook Sarah’s tone: “That’s not even close to the same thing.”

“They are to me. Because they’re both wrong.” After a moment, April added, “And I’m glad your brother recovered. I’m sorry if that was too personal.”

A long silence hung between them. April continued to chop vegetables. Sarah stared.

“Anyway. Now that that’s over, you want to hang out?” April spoke like nothing had happened. “You already walked all the way over.”