"I've been meaning to ask you." Her best friend, Aya says in an undertone. "Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" She asks puzzled. Distracted.

The teabag wrapped around the plastic spoon plopped back into the Styrofoam cup, sending raindrops of weak, caféteria tea sloshing over the fake laminate.

She tutted with annoyance.

"It's just... You sometimes look so lost. Like you're...I don't know....upset over something." Aya tears off a piece from the café menu card, using the slick, glossy paper to unsuccessfully suck up the tea drops.

"I'm not upset Aya." She replied calmly.

"Is it your parents again? I thought they were doing okay."

She cocks her head to the side, a bemused smile on her face. "How do I convince you that nothing is wrong with me?"

"I didn't say anything was wrong with you. I just thought you looked a bit under the weather. I hate seeing you that way, and I want to know if I can make it go away!" Aya's dark eyes narrow with determination, pausing the conversation to continue trying to wipe up the liquid.

"You know what I'm not?" She muses thoughtfully, staring at the glossy mangled piece of paper. "I am not un-absorbent."

"What!?"

"I am like spongebob. I suck. I soak. I absorb." She laughs.

"Spongebob was cool."

"Yep."

"What do you absorb?"

"Emotions. Stories. Loss. Pain." She rattled off. "Occasionally there'd be laughter, or hope. Seldom though."

"So when you're sad...."

"It's just excess liquid. Not mine." She shrugged. "Absorbent and yellow and porous is me."

"Where does your own, err...liquid, go?"

"It turns into sponge. It becomes me. It never leaks out." The smile in her eyes is real, reaching the pupils. Even inside the pupils; into sub-pupils.

"I always knew you were a cartoon character...."

Author's Note:

Word count: 296

Inspired by the ability to absorb. It is both a blessing and a curse.