She anxiously rolls up her sleeves, exposing a worn bracelet made from a strand of sailing line. That’s an odd choice of jewelry for the elegant lady she is. Pencil skirt, white shirt, perfect hair, red lips – modern life embodied in five foot eight in heels. She’s young. Getting coffee she doesn’t need, not with her nerves already buzzing, before the first day at her first corporate job.
“Agatha!”
We all hear the barista announcing that her order is ready to collect. Agatha. Soon enough she will learn to switch those heels for sneakers and change the footwear only when she’s already in the office. Soon enough she will be taking that coffee away, knowing that getting early to her desk means a peaceful fifteen minutes for planning her day without interruptions made of hey-how-are-yous that don’t carry much of an honest care. But for now, she will stay.
She toys with the bracelet absently, unaware she’s touching the thread of an old memory. The rope, once bright and salt-scrubbed, has dulled to a soft grey. But it still holds the shape of its purpose. Just like Rose.
Rose, who insisted on making lunch in the middle of a man-overboard drill. Who brought her coloring books to the deck while everyone else practiced sail turns. Rose, who couldn’t sense the sharp edges of sarcasm but could feel, like a tuning fork, the vibration of not belonging.
At nineteen, Agatha was barely older than the kids she was teaching. But someone in charge had seen something in her—patience, perhaps, or that quiet ability to read what isn’t being said—and assigned Rose to her boat. You'll manage, they said. Which wasn’t a compliment, just a passing of responsibility disguised as one.
Rose was difficult. Not in the way children sometimes are, but in the way that makes grown-ups quietly dread being alone with them. Hilariously annoying, unfiltered, impossible to predict. She cursed in her sleep. She kicked Agatha while dreaming. She was brilliant at sailing when she remembered to try, and a liability when she didn’t.
Agatha tried her best. Professional, calm, a soft edge only rarely sharpened. But she was nineteen. She was scared. And she was tired. No one wanted to share a bed with Rose on the boat, so they slept side by side in the narrow double, limbs colliding like clumsy punctuation.
The other kids mocked Rose. Not in cruel words, but in performative kindnesses soaked in irony. They thought she didn’t notice. She didn’t get the joke. But energy is energy. And energy always lands. She felt it—being outside, being other.
Agatha tried to defend her, but her heart wasn’t always in it. Fear of responsibility clouded empathy. Resentment crept in like water under the deck. How do you protect someone who keeps putting everyone else at risk?
Then, one night, quiet, sea-lulled, breath-warm, Rose asked the question,
“Why do you like me?”
Agatha didn’t answer. She pretended to be asleep. Because the truth was… she didn’t know. Not really. Not yet.
She thought: You kick me in your sleep. You say the worst things at the worst moments. You test my every nerve.
But later, she watched. And listening became her form of wondering.
She saw the way Rose spoke to herself when no one else was watching—soft little insults, muttered under her breath like prayer. The kind of hatred that’s been learned young and worn like second skin.
And that, Agatha knew. That aching familiarity of being too much. Too loud. Too tender. Too complicated to be easily liked.
So a few nights later, Agatha turned to her in the dark and said,
“Ask me again.”
Rose blinked. “What?”
“About why I like you. Ask me again. I wasn’t ready before.”
Rose stared at her like she was speaking in code. Then, flatly:
“Why do you like me?”
And this time, Agatha answered.
“Because you know what you want. Because you go after it, even when no one else understands why. Because even when you're being a complete menace, you're honest about it. Because you feel more than you show, and I see it, even when you think you’re hiding.”
Rose didn’t say anything. She just curled in, small and quiet, and let herself fall asleep against Agatha’s shoulder. She still kicked in her sleep. But she never mumbled to herself again.
Because what she had asked wasn’t why do you like me — what she really wanted to know was why should I like myself?
That night, something softened. Not just in Rose, in Agatha too. The kind of soft that doesn’t feel weak, but whole. Like she had touched something raw and real and walked away without turning it into a wound.
Rose began to open up, not all at once, but in clumsy, sincere little bursts. One day, after a rough practice and one too many jabs from the others, she broke.
“I just want to be like them,” she cried, her voice cracking under the weight of those words. “I just want to be like other kids.”
It hit Agatha harder than she expected. She had heard those words before in a different voice. Her own. Echoing inside her for years.
Always too sensitive, too anxious. The worrier. The one who overthought every silence, every side glance. She knew what it was to live in your own head and wish it was quieter in there.
Agatha placed a hand on Rose’s back, gentle and steady.
“At some point, we all realise we’re not like other kids,” she said. “Let me tell you a secret, Rose: other kids don’t exist.”
The next morning, when one of the boys made a joke at Rose’s expense and the group erupted into laughter, Rose stood up, eyes blazing, and shouted,
“You don’t exist!”
It wasn’t witty. It wasn’t strategic. But it was true in a way that startled everyone into silence.
Then someone muttered, “She’s crazy.”
And from behind them, Agatha, who’d been quietly watching, spoke up, calm and clear:
“Aren’t we all?”
The energy shifted again. It didn’t become perfect, but balanced enough. Because Agatha didn’t try to stop the drama, she just interrupted it. Made the group think. She hadn’t been passive out of helplessness. She had been waiting. Hoping they would work it out. And maybe, in their clumsy way, they had.
The sound of a coffee cup meeting the counter breaks the thread. Agatha blinks, refocusing, the memory slipping back beneath the surface like a buoy tugged under by the tide.
“Agatha?” the barista repeats, more gently this time. Her cup waits on the edge.
She walks over, takes it with a nod of thanks. The warmth of the cup grounds her. The smell is oddly comforting, like familiarity. Like belonging. She lingers for a moment longer, watching the steam curl upwards, the barista’s voice mixing with the hum of the morning crowd. Soon enough, when she gets soaked in the corporate life, this might become a transaction, a pitstop. Today, it’s a pause. A quiet, luxurious ritual she chooses to savor. And maybe, just maybe, this part of her life can stay gloriously unchanged.
Some answers arrive years after the question is asked. Others never do. Not because they’re not there, but because we weren’t quiet enough to listen. Or we looked too far out when the truth had settled deep inside our souls.
We spend our childhoods trying to be like other kids. And if we’re lucky, at some point, we learn the untold secret: there are no other kids. Just a hotchpotch of individuals, shaped by their own wrong turns, unfinished thoughts, strange fears, and brilliant flaws. We’re all a little too much in some ways, a little off-center in others. That’s not the part to fix. That’s the part to learn about yourself and hold close.
Agatha sips her coffee, smiling absently. The time took a break, everything around slows down. It will take a few more absent minutes until the coffee will kick in unexpectedly and wake up the freshly hired consultant back to reality. Just like Rose would.