The Smell

A young girl discovers what her classmates think of her.

Hygiene wasn’t necessarily something that Samantha ever had a major aversion to, it’s just that it wasn’t really something she thought was necessary. She didn’t really understand it at all. It’s not something that crossed her mind very much, so to her, it wasn’t an issue. Sure, she always heard growing up about how you should shower, and brush your teeth, and change your clothes, and wear deodorant. She heard that stuff a lot growing up, but she also heard that you’re not supposed to use profanity, or start eating at dinner before everybody gets served, and how you’re supposed to make your bed every morning. Yet, it seems people are violating those rules all the time. She wasn’t able to distinguish which rules were the more important ones. Once in a while, in the hallways at high school, she would hear someone say something like, “I was running late this morning, and I didn’t even get a chance to shower.” This would reaffirm in her mind that showering must not have been that important. She didn’t hear the tone in other student’s voice, or the context of his situation. All she heard was that he didn’t shower. That meant, that her lack of willingness to take showers was perfectly fine.

Samantha was a sweet girl, a straight A student, had a great sense of humor, and was full of life. She was in the school’s band, and played the flute. She was easily the best player in the flute section, as she had been named first chair. She saw herself playing in a major orchestra one day, and honestly, she had the talent for it. She wanted to make a lot of money doing it, so that she could donate a lot of it to help people in need. The other students complimented her on her flute skills all the time, and the band teacher wrote for her one of the strongest recommendation letters he had ever written. She was applying to a prestigious music school, which she eventually was accepted to. At around December, about six months before graduation, Samantha felt as if she had the world in the palm of her hand.

One day, in her English class, the teacher assigned a project to the students, instructing them to work with a partner to analyze the themes and symbolism of the short story they had just finished reading in class. In Samantha’s section of the room, there were three people around her. Two of the three agreed to work with each other. This meant that Samantha and the remaining person would be working together. Samantha’s new partner responded to this revelation by saying, “That’s okay. I’ll just hold my nose.”

After she said that, the other two students smiled slightly, as if they were trying not to. At that point, Samantha was completely caught off guard. It was some combination between that comment, and the reaction it got that immediately changed her whole perspective. She didn’t realize that her poor hygiene was that obvious of a problem, that it was just generally understood by her classmates that she smelled as badly as she did. She didn’t know that that was how everyone saw her. She was mortified. For the entire rest of the class period, she just sat there silently. She heard people talking around her, but didn’t understand a single word that was being said. It felt like bungee cords were pulling down on her heart. There she was, sitting right in the company of people who saw her as nothing but a joke; someone to be avoid, and derided. She wanted to run and hide from them, as now she felt so exposed.

The class period eventually ended, and math was next. She now went to this class, completely alert and aware of how she was probably going to be perceived. She sat in her assigned seat, in between two kids. During class, she was distracted from what the teacher was saying. She wanted to keep focusing on the two kids surrounding her, to see how they would react to her. She looked to the boy on her right and saw that he had his face down in his sweatshirt. Then she looked to the girl on her left, and saw that she had her hand over the side of her face, which was tilted away from Samantha, and had a visibly disgusted expression on it. There it was again. This confirmed everything. These two cues were the kind of thing that probably happened on a daily basis, but that she never even would’ve thought to pick up on. Now it’s all she could see. She now knew what a joke she had been this whole time. A tear started to come up out of one of her eyes. She wanted to disappear. None of these people in her school saw her as anything but a smelly freak. None of her other achievements or qualities mattered.

Sure, a lot of the students probably never get close enough to her to smell her, but the ones who do probably told everyone else. They obviously had a problem with it, but Samantha wondered why they never told her. It seemed like that would’ve been a lot more respectable than telling everyone else, and a lot more logical than putting up with it. If this was Samantha’s problem, why the hell does everyone else get to hear about it first? It also doesn’t seem fair that her classmates feel they want to complain about the problem, yet they don’t want to take any steps to fix it, such as telling her about it. All that does is hurt her reputation even more, and doesn’t help them at all. Nobody wins that way. These people clearly weren’t logical thinkers. If they were, they also would’ve realized that there is more to a person than the way they smelled. But those other students didn’t care about all of Samantha’s other achievements, and now she didn’t either. Objectively, she was superior to them in just about every other way, but now, she and every other student saw her as worthless because of this one problem.

That day, after school, Samantha ran home in the rain, and then took a shower. Then, she put on deodorant, brushed her teeth, did her laundry, and put on clean clothes. She knew she wouldn’t see the other kids until the next day, and she would have to do this same sort of routine all over again before that, but at this point, she just now wanted to feel clean. She wanted to separate herself from this hideous monster she just found out she was. As she was taking her shower, she just stood in there crying. The tears just kept pouring out. Once she was finished with this routine, she felt clean; not better, just clean.

The next morning, she woke up earlier than usual, and she was eager to perform standard hygiene rituals like everyone else, so that she could feel normal again. She did just that, and felt ready to start the school day. She walked into her first class of the day, which was history. She felt relaxed. She was focused, ready to learn whatever the teacher was going to talk about. About halfway through the class period, she looked to the girl next to her, who was looking down. Samantha was concerned that maybe she smelled again, but convinced herself that her mind was just playing tricks on her. A few minutes later, she looked at the girl again, who was now blatantly holding her nose, and looking down. Samantha completely heated up inside, and wanted to scream her thoughts.

No, no, no, no, no! I did everything right; every important detail! This is exhausting trying to please everybody and still failing! I did nothing wrong! You are wrong to be disgusted by me right now!

Of course, she kept these thoughts to herself. She started to cry again, and the tears were stronger than they were in math class the day before. She was so frustrated now. She wanted to give up trying completely, and just die. Once she calmed down, she tried to think about what the problem could have been. She analyzed everything on her person, and realized that it was her shoes. She ran home in the rain the day before, and now the shoes smelled. It seemed like a fixable problem, but the frustration was just too high for her to be relieved.

The next day, she fixed all of these problems, and she went into school feeling nervous about what reaction she was going to get. She really thought she did everything right this time, but it didn’t matter. After the incident in history, she had learned that if you suspect someone is thinking something about you, they probably are. She had no idea how she could’ve smelled, but she suspected it in every class. In history, the girl next to her coughed. In band, a student rested his chin on his hand, so that his hand was close to his nose, as if he were trying to cover it. In English, two students nea her laughed about something. In math, the teacher opened the door for reasons that he claimed were due to the room being hot. In every one of these situations, she knew the people were reacting the way they did because of the way she smelled. She thought maybe she put too much deodorant on, or maybe it was her backpack this time. As she smelled it to make sure, she imagined a slightly unusual smell which she completely made up in her own head, and was now feeling bad because she was convinced that that smell must have been the reasons she got the reactions she got that day. The entire rest of the day, even when she went home, she couldn’t enjoy her hobbies as much, because she kept thinking about her backpack smelling.

Samantha was a mess after this. It got to the point where her entire say would consist of imagining smells, imagining people reacting to those smells, being distracted by worrying about those reactions, and feeling exhausted and hopeless in her attempts to improve herself. She even realized that even if she did improve, it was too late for her classmates to see her in any other light. She even thought if she moved, and completely changed her ways, she would still know herself to be the girl who once smelled all the time, and she couldn’t live with that. She even worried that word about her poor hygiene would spread around so widely that she would never get a job, or a boyfriend, or even a friend, no matter where in the country she went. Her grades started to suffer, as did her flute playing. As she imagined more reactions, she imagined more smells, in a vicious cycle. Her life was completely taken over by these thoughts. She believed that this defined her as person, and so she let it define her. She descended further and further into this identity until all she was was this girl who cared about nothing else other than how she smelled, and how that affected people’s opinions of her.

Now, instead of going to that prestigious music college, and playing on stage, and doing charitable things for the world, she lives here. She’s extremely depressed, and will barely talk to you. You have to approach her very calmly, with a very welcoming voice. You can’t give her the slightest impression that you are being judgmental or critical. She will imagine criticisms when they aren’t there, and then proceed to cry about those criticisms for hours. Give her one blue pill and one white pill. Make sure you compliment her for taking them.