“I’m glad that worked out.” Emily smiles, picking up her pace as she leads me through the school. I make a conscious effort to keep up with her, running across the width of the control room and programming Andrew Jr. to match all the pace changes. Emily’s tiny legs move incredibly fast as she weaves through the vast complex of the campus.

“Um… thanks.” I tell her through my exterior, biting my lip as I speak. I fiddle with the cord of my tracksuit pants as I’m guided around the school.

“Oh it was no problem.” Emily gushes with the flick of a wrist. She skips further ahead of me and cuts across down a cobblestone path beside the math’s block. I already know I’ll have trouble getting my head around the map of St Josephs. “I needed a roommate, anyway.”

It makes me wonder why.

“Aren’t co-ed rooms banned?” I try. Emily rolls her eyes instantly and continues traipsing up ahead.

“They are, but I’m allowed to bend the rules just a little bit.” She says matter-of-factly. Andrew Jr. jogs down the path, falling back in step with her fast paced walk/skip.

“Why’s that?” I ask.

Emily doesn’t reply, instead shaking her head. We pass a few small groups of students as they mill around the tuckshop eating. A light drizzle falls above us, coating our backs as we jog across a small clearing of grass which separates the school from the boarding homes. Emily leads me in the direction of a large block of brick units. Out the front I spy a metal plated sign. St Joseph’s Boarding House.

Barely anyone is in sight as we enter the main building. I wonder how long ago school began. Has Emily skipped class to go sit in the park or something?

Hey. I think. Didn’t she ask me for directions before??? Why has she suddenly changed her schedule so she can fit me into her room…?

 “It’s just up the hall.” Emily says after she’s accepted a room key from a woman behind the administration desk. As we step down the cream walled corridor, I do my best to memorize my route to my apparent room but my head is filled with doubt.

She knows.

No one’s even come close to guessing my secret before. As far as anyone’s ever known, I’m just innocent old Andrew. The guy who comes and goes across the towns, picking up chicks and the proceeding to dump the news that he’s cursed and living inside the skeleton of a robot. The guy who walks around carrying a backpack filled with pieces of metal. The guy who doesn’t go swimming because he’d sink.

The guy who relies on their exterior to live.

Emily wouldn’t have gotten that far into the puzzle of my life, would she? I mean, all she knows is that I coincidentally share the same name as my own disorder. Maybe if this continues, I should change my last name. maybe even change Andrew Jr.’s appearance, if it reached the point.

“We’re here.” She announces, derailing my train of thought. I shake my head abruptly, blotting out the worried thoughts and focussing on the scene outside the control room. Emily yanks open the faded white door, marked with the number 23. The room inside is hardly what I expected and I gasp from my seat, almost letting it slip through my exterior’s mouth. It’s happened before.

The room is simply furnished, like the rest of the school with a metal framed bed on either side. The floor is a beige rug. As I peer through the windows of Andrew Jr.’s eyes I notice there’s a mini kitchen set up through another door on the right. The same goes for a bathroom on the left. The room is lit partly by the light streaming through the open window beside one of the beds, and as soon as Emily flicks on a light, it only brightens further. But it isn’t any of those factors that surprise me about the room.

It’s the IV pole and clear mini fridge filled with bags of thick brown fluid at the end of Emily’s neatly made bed. They rest beside a tattered blue suitcase, still barely unpacked. Is she…Anorexic or something?

I step inside and sit awkwardly on the edge of the second bed, the mattress springs creaking under my exterior’s body. I place my backpack beside me, zipped shut to hide its contents. Emily pauses at the front door for a minute, breathing heavily before rolling up her stockings and crossing the room to sit on her own bed.

“It’s not what you think.” She says at once, her green eyes stone hard. I glance again at the IV pole and the bags of fluid. The mini fridge hums quietly in the background.

“You don’t have to tell me.” I say through Andrew Jr.’s mouth.

She shakes her head. “No, it’s okay.” Slowly, she tugs up her dress so I can see her stomach area. Protruding from her belly is what looks like a plastic tube with a thick clear cap over the top. From what I gather, it goes into her stomach. The skin around the hole is stretched, a sickly yellow colour. “It’s Gastroparesis.” She says, pulling the dress back down. “A stomach disorder.” My eyes trail to the IV pump once more. “It’s called an NJ tube, the thing I’ve got. It gets food into my stomach because it’s never really functioned right.”

“Oh.” I say, not sure what other means of comfort she’d need. Suddenly I wish I could tell her that my life isn’t so perfect either.

“Um… yeah.” Emily says. “So I’ll be hooked up to the IV at night for feeds and it might get a bit noisy, if that would bother you at all. I could do it in the bathroom if you don’t lik-“

“It’s fine.” I interrupt, curling my exterior’s lips into a gentle smile. “I’m a pretty heavy sleeper, to be honest.” Okay… that was a lie. I know that the noise won’t trouble me, but it isn’t because of my sleeping patterns. Actually, the cabin I sleep in is completely soundproof. Whether or not I can have some time outside my exterior at night is my main dilemma. I always give myself a few hours at least, in the middle of the night to get outside into the open. Even if it’s just sitting on the windowsill breathing in fresh, outside air that isn’t stale or metallic like what I get from Andrew Jr.

I hope Emily is a heavy sleeper.

“Well, that’s enough about me.” She declares, shifting around on her bed until she’s lying down with her back propped up against the pillow. “What about you, Andrew?”

The way she says my name unnerves me. It’s as if she knows I have my secrets. My eyes are usually a dead giveaway. I’ve never seen anyone else with yellow eyes before. It’s my own fault really, for installing them into my exterior. I only did it to match my cursed self. See, yellow stands for small, in the realm of magic. Mist probably based her incantation around that so many years ago. I’ll have honey coloured eyes as long as I’m bound to this state. 

“What do you wanna know?” I ask her uneasily, wringing out Andrew Jr.’s hands.

“Why did you come all the way over to Tassie?” She asks.

“Why did you come all the way over to Tassie?” I counter.

“I asked you first.”

I let out a sigh. “I’m travelling Australia.”

“Really?” Emily sounds genuinely interested. “Have you been to Sydney?”

“Yep.”

“Canberra?”

“Yep.”

“Brisbane?”

“I was born there.” My answer is a little shaky on that one. Being my birthplace as well as my curse’s origin mean I know quite a bit about it. For instance, it brings back memories of a life before Mist and Andrew Jr. I’ve never enjoyed discussing my past.

Particularly with people like Emily.

“I was born in Ipswich.” Emily says, rolling over onto her belly to face me.

“I’ve been there, too. It’s nice.” I tell her evenly.

“Yeah. It’s where my sister got the Andrew Lawson’s disorder.” She tells me.

I freeze from behind Andrew Jr.’s glass eyes. I remember Megan Sharpe all too well. She had luscious black hair, much like her sister’s and hazel eyes. I remember the days we spend chatting in the playground at school, and the times I spent yearning to tell her about myself.

It isn’t a good time yet. I’d tell myself firmly. I did eventually, though.

Megan was my first victim. After I’d introduced myself, she screamed, just like the rest.

The last thing I saw of her was her billowing black hair as it streaked behind her as she ran down the street, away from me.

“I’m sorry.” I say, more to Megan than her sister.