I learned how mean boys could be on the school bus during my first week of third grade. It was the first year my sister, in kindergarten, was riding with me and I beamed as we walked to the bus stop at the end of our street.

The leaves were starting to turn red in our small town, and the morning chill was fresh on my cheeks. I took her hand as she climbed up the steep steps of the bus, her pony tail bouncing along with her lunchbox. “Good morning, Mr. Jim,” I smiled.

“Rose, my dear! It’s good to see you,” he gave me a toothless grin. “Who’s the little one you’ve got with you today, is that your sister?” I smiled ear to ear and nodded shyly.

We walked down the aisle to find a seat in the middle of the bus. “Never the front or back,” I warned her. “The middle is good, but make sure it’s the real middle, you don’t want to get stuck in a row where the tires are or else your legs will fall asleep.” She nodded, taking it all in.

Somewhere around the second to last stop, just as the Lannister girls were piling in, my eye turned. Back then, I couldn’t tell when it happened—a little slip, a little slide, a slight feeling of pressure in my orbit and then everything seemed back to normal. Except it wasn’t.

One of the fifth grade boys noticed first, glared at me all suspicious for a few seconds, then started cackling. “Look at her eye,” he shouted. “It’s all messed up.” No one seemed to pay attention. The crowd of rowdy boys were too busy making spitballs to stash at the back of the bus for the afternoon ride. Maybe there would be enough time, I thought. I glanced at my sister seated next to me. She was looking out the window. I turned to stare at the ripped green vinyl seat behind me as I tried to right the prosthesis. Like the doctor had told me, finger to the corner of your eye, then press in and up under the eyeball. But now I could feel more eyes on me and it was unnerving.

Then, out of the corner of my good eye, I saw him fling his head back to get the shiny black bangs out of his eyes. He raised his voice above the din, “Hey guys, look! Look at this. She’s got a glass eye.” A few of the boys’ ears perked up at this exclamation, and some of them stood on their tiptoes and peered over their seats in my direction. My sister turned to see what the commotion was all about, then saw my face. “Margaret,” she whispered. “Margaret.” She tugged at my sleeve. “Your eye.” She looked afraid for me, but also afraid of me.

My cheeks burned red. This isn’t what I signed up for. She looked up at me—her eyes, wide and marvelous, were about to cry. I hated that I couldn’t do this faster. The eye doctor always told me I needed to practice to get better. “Wash it every day, practice, practice makes perfect. Soon it will be as natural as washing your hands,” he’d say. I’d always stare at him in disbelief. What did he know anyway? He had two good eyes. It wasn’t natural. Not natural at all. More like the opposite. If I practiced, then I’d have to think about it more and I didn’t want to think about it. Like those Russian nesting dolls, I wanted to tuck it away inside of me. Keep it at the core, buried deep under all the other layers of wood.

I learned how mean men could be in one of the study rooms in the basement of the library during my first week of graduate school. September always arrived with some anxiety—who would notice this year? Who would ask me about it? Who would whisper about it behind my back?

One Friday afternoon, Marc, a timid Jewish boy with big curls who’d liked me since undergrad, brought me there to hang with his friends. We’d gone to college together, taken a math course here or there, but mostly I knew him because my roommate had had a crush on him for four years straight. Now he was in business school and I was in medical school in the same place, and it was nice to spend time with someone who knew where you came from.

One guy, Rich, about five feet tall but louder than all the others, jumped in after everyone had arrived. “Guys, I’ve got the old tests from last year from one of my old frat buddies. I say to hell with studying, let’s look at the questions, memorize the answers, then go out for some beers together.” The room grew quiet. Everyone looked around at each other, scanned the room, waited for the first person to respond. This was going to be their first test in business school, and they’d worked hard to get here. My friend, the youngest of the group by at least five years and anxious to fit in, blurted out, “Let’s do it, Rich.” Smiles and nervous laughter spread around the room.

I curled like a mouse in an old arm chair in the corner of my room. My head obscured by a huge anatomy textbook, I focused on reading. Rich glanced a couple times in my direction, but I thought nothing of it. Maybe he was checking me out—I’d worn a tight miniskirt and a low-cut shirt, not for any particular reason other than I was twenty-two and wanted to look good.

The next day, my friend told me that after I had left, Rich started to mime taking his own eye out and swirling it around in his mouth. They had all had a good laugh at my expense, even Jamie who seemed like he had the kindest eyes. My friend told the story slowly and evenly, very matter of fact. I tried to brush it off. “Boys will be boys, even if they think they’re men. So much for meeting my future husband in business school.”

He looked at me, perplexed. He knew I knew how he felt, the crush and all. But it didn’t feel right, he’d slept with my roommate the day before we graduated last June and I just couldn’t share someone like that. But if I’m honest, it wasn’t that. His large, dark puppy eyes and hunched back and nerdiness repulsed me. I wanted the Martys of the world, blue-eyed, muscular, brilliant ex-football players headed to investment banking. Don’t we all. How brash of me to think my one-eyed self could snag someone like that.

I learned how nice some people could be when I was twenty-five, just two years after the graduate school incident. I’d given up hope, resigned myself to becoming an old single doctor cat lady. The label had no ring to it, and I did not like cats. But I had to be something. Ironically, it was someone from the business school who asked me out. I still don’t know what came over me. Maybe I was worried I might fall for him. Or maybe I had stopped caring all together. Whatever it was, I did it almost as a game, a dare to myself. I’d never told anyone about my eye unprompted. I figured I’d play my cards early and get it over with. Better to race to the finish line and move on. What did I have to lose?

“So, I have this eye, see here,” I pointed to my left eye. “It’s not real,” I blurted out. It was our second date and he had just taken a bite of his swordfish. He paused for a moment, kept chewing, then without missing a beat, swallowed, looked me in the eye and said, “Have you ever been a pirate for Halloween?”

I paused for a moment, not quite sure what to make of it. I looked at his eyes. Two lovely eyes, blue as the sky. Were they sparkling? Dancing? I didn’t know, but I wanted them to be. And it had been a long, brutal day in the anatomy lab, eight hours staring straight into a dead woman’s face and smelling formaldehyde as we peeled her skin away from her cheekbones. And I was tired, tired of it all. The meanness, the meaninglessness, the memories that I had buried before they had a chance to sink in.

Then I surprised myself. I laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed. “No,” I said. “But it’s a good idea. I like it.” How on earth had he come up with that on the spot? He watched me laugh, then took another bite of his swordfish. His eyes were twinkling now, I was certain. Then we kept talking as if nothing had happened.

At the end of the night, he dropped me off and kissed me on the stoop. I cried myself to sleep. I convinced myself he’d never call me again. Some one-eyed freak. What a dumb idea. He was flying to India next week for a summer internship anyway. When he called me long distance two weeks later, I nearly fell on the floor. He kept calling. I kept answering.

Five years later, we got married. Five years after that, three kids, no cats. I quit medicine during the pandemic and went into business myself. I did not become the old single doctor cat lady.

In twenty years, I haven’t found the words to thank him for those eight small words, offered over a plate of swordfish on the outside patio of what is now my favorite Mexican restaurant with mediocre food. The restaurant has closed, but when I walk by the old wainscotted building, broken Christmas lights still strung over the black gates that surround it, the words are there, floating above the flagstone. The words that did not make me fall in love, but rather, made me fall into seeing the goodness of some people and changing how I looked at myself in the mirror—from a small nesting doll shrinking behind the glass to a pirate, strong, smiling, most of all complete.

Anne Merritt is a poet and, more recently, writer of short fiction. Her debut book of poetry, Light through Marble Veins, was published in 2018. She teaches narrative medicine at Yale and lives in Connecticut with her husband and three children.