Six students sat in a circle, talking late into the night, it was no wonder the conservation turned to the words. They had been the topic of girls gossip, childish teasing, and school yard whispers for as long as they had been on people’s skin. The adults generally didn’t talk about them, but adults tended to ignore the things that needed to be said. 
Nate had his arm around Samantha, his mouth next to her ear. You couldn’t see or hear that he was saying anything to her, but you knew he was, because the words were appearing one by one on his neck as he said them. She was watching them, knowing that when they were apart, people would see that he thought her red shirt made her look fantastic tonight and, was that a new shade of lipgloss?
Charlie sat next to Nate, making gagging facing to Caitlin and Emily. They giggled quietly, because they were jealous, and because they secretly found it cute, respectively. Tamie sat across from Charlie, next to Sam, reading a romantic novel, about a boy  thought to be a rebel, who covered himself from head to toe to hide his words, and a girl who cared enough to find out he worked three jobs to take care of his three siblings, and the proof he cared for them was on his skin. It was clique and cheesy, just how she liked it.
Charlie noticed and called out to her, “Tamie! Reading that garbage again?”
Tamie looked up with a glare, “It’s not garbage. Some of us like to believe the words are a gift.”
Charlie laughed and Emily joined him, but Caitlin was nodding.
“They are a gift.”
Charlie groaned, “Don’t tell me you believe that ‘the only way I can be happy is if I see my name 20 thousand million times on my lover’ crap.”
“Not like that,” Caitlin said, “But when I was younger, I was mad at my parents and… I told them I hated them. The words appeared on my stomach, I was scared and sad, I spent 2 hours in the shower trying to wash them off, and when my parents saw how upset I was, they told me they didn’t care. But from then on, I’ve never said ‘I hate you’ to my parents. Not once.”
Charlie shrugged, clearly not impressed.
“Did you know,” Sam murmured, leaning in to the circle, “When I say bad words, they show up on my feet?”
Everyone laughed, and Samantha pulled off her boots to show them the array of swear words on her feet and between her toes. Charlie whistled, “Wow. I had no idea you had such a naughty tongue.”
Nate snorted, “Please. I know you got special permission to always wear your shirt in gym because the words on your back are less than school appropriate.”
Everyone laughed as Charlie looked shamefully at the ground.
“I have a story,” Emily told them, leaning back slightly, “I think you like this one T.”
Tamie, who had started reading her book again, looked up.
“See, there was this guy who would always hang out where I worked. Big, muscled guy, kinda freaked me out. He’d always wear these wife beater shirts, and up and down his arm, there was one word, sweetheart. Most of my coworkers, myself included, thought it was because he had some bimbo wife or girlfriend. But one day, right as I was closing, I saw him and then there was this little girl, running up to him, and he picked her up and, I could see as another ‘sweetheart’ appeared on his arm.”
Tamie sighed, clearly lost in romance land.
Charlie was still unimpressed. “See this is why all those stories about why the words are on our skin are dumb. We haven’t learned anything about not judging people.”
“Well, that might be true, but I don’t think we couldn’t have been worse,” Nate countered, “I mean, what if this amount of judging is objectively good compared to the way we treated each other before? And God or whoever did this is proud, now.”
Everyone in the room was quiet, for a few minutes, then Nate and Sam went back to cuddling, and Charlie went back to teasing Caitlin and Emily, and Tamie went back to reading, because, words or not, life goes on.