Excerpt: The In Oh Double You

Maybe I should step back for a moment. My name is Floret. Yes, like a piece of broccoli. I don't know what my parents were thinking, but I don't mind so much. I never really got teased about it growing up because most kids only knew the word as being my name. In fact, some of my friends have told me they were kind of surprised when they found out what it meant. But that's not to say I wasn't teased growing up, or that I have a lot of friends. But I'm getting a bit off-track.

So, that's me, Floret, your narrator. The story I'm going to tell you is completely true, except that none of it ever happened. I mean, if you subscribe to the theory that every possibility that could happen does happen in some alternate universe, then the story I'm going to tell you certainly did happen, but I don't want to get that confusing...yet. Suffice it to say that this story is a story of what could have been. When I say "I was," read it as "I might have been" and when I say "I have always been this way," read it "I could have always been this way," and when I say "I'm telling you a story," read it as "I might be telling you a story." Okay, I am telling you a story, but try not to think that the I that I use in telling the story is the same I that is actually telling the story. Try to mentally separate the narrator from the character, even though we are technically the same person, if that makes sense. It probably doesn't. I'm confusing you. I'm sorry. I promise it'll all make sense later, okay?

So, in this narrative might-have-been world, I am nineteen years old. I am a second year college student. This is my first time drinking in a bar (and I've only ever drank at all on a handful of occasions before). I am a virgin. I am kind of a nerd. I am not antisocial, but I am shy. Also, I can see the future.

I wouldn't say I'm exactly "normal."