Page 38 of Holly Jolly July

and a big comfy chair with an open annotated Bible on an end table next to it. There is an open Rubbermaid container in the

centre of the room and everything I left behind is inside.

Ellie doesn’t wait for permission to begin perusing, kneeling before it and taking out one item at a time. She holds up an

old framed photo. “This was you?”

I lean against the dresser and nod. “Yup.”

“You look so... different.”

It’s Bethany and me in grade ten. We’re wearing tight layered shirts and skinny jeans, holding each other in a side-hug with

our faces pressed together.

“You were so cute,” Ellie states, tapping the girl on the right, the chubbier one with the more rounded features and a smile

that doesn’t reach her eyes.

I huff some air through my nose, not agreeing.

Ellie smiles up at me. “After the story you told me I thought you’d have been one of the goth kids or something, but you look

more like one of the popular girls.”

I grimace. “I had to blend in to survive. I was bullied a lot in middle school, especially after that Halloween fiasco, so

I adapted. I may have sat with the popular kids at the lunch table, but I never felt like I was one of them. If you’d have

looked at me, you’d have thought I had friends, that I was happy, but in truth I...”

Ellie waits patiently, holding the photo on her lap.

I swallow, looking at my hands. “I was all alone. Nobody knew who I really was. The people who pretended to be my friends were actually my harshest critics and biggest bullies.” I take the photo from Ellie.

“Bethany was especially cruel. She started dating Jax when she found out I had a crush on him. She knew he was out of my league. She wanted to rub it in my face that she could date a guy like him and I couldn’t. ”

“Jax? As in our Matthew Jackson?”

I nod.

“I knew you went to high school together but didn’t realize you two had that much history.”

Setting the picture back in the box, I shrug. “It was more like a lack of history than anything else. Taking him to bed was

sort of like proving something to myself. I thought he really liked me. He made me feel... I don’t know. Seen? Not just

as I am today, but for who I was back then. Sounds dumb now.”

“It doesn’t sound dumb at all.” Ellie reaches up and takes my hand. “I’m sorry you had such an awful time at school.”

“I found ways to get through it. Created a mask, of sorts. I didn’t feel safe being myself. I spent years pretending to be

someone I wasn’t just to fit in, which only made things worse. Acting like someone else all the time isn’t good for your mental

health. So as soon as I graduated, I dyed my hair orange, started wearing all black and taking my makeup seriously again.

My mom, she—” I cut myself off. Ellie watches my face, waiting for me to continue. I give her a little shrug. “She didn’t

understand.”

Ellie regards me for a moment, opens her mouth to ask another question, but thinks better of it. She looks back into the box

and picks up another picture. “Who’s this?”

I blink, having forgotten I had this photo.

It was Christmastime with my family, years ago.

Everyone in the picture resembles each other: me, my parents, and my grandparents, all shades of washed-out beige with polite, forced smiles, standing up straight with hands folded in front of us—except for one woman who stands out.

She looks like me, but more the me I am today than the one I was back then.

Her hair is black, cut short, and spiked along the sides.

She has a thick choker necklace, black clothes, holes in her jeans, and she’s grinning like a complete goof rather than reining it in like everyone else in the picture.

I join Ellie on the floor. “That’s my aunt.”

She smiles. “The one who showed you Alien ?”

I nod.

“I can see where you get your fashion sense from.”

“This was our last Christmas all together.” I take the frame and look closer. “We had finished eating dinner and were about

to open presents.”

“Still so weird, opening gifts after dinner,” Ellie muses.

“She was the best part of Christmas. Everyone was so quiet and reserved, and she was... not. She was so much fun.”

“Was?” Ellie tilts her head. “Where is she now?”

“She died,” Mom says from the doorway, startling us both. She’s drying her hands on a faded yellow tea towel, a sad smile

on her face. “She passed away several years ago. On Christmas morning, actually. It was... very sad.” Mom looks from Ellie

to me, her expression growing wistful, and I know right then I can’t spend another second in this house.

“We gotta get going,” I say past the lump in my throat.

“Now?” Ellie asks, eyeing the box of items she hasn’t had a chance to look at.

“First rule,” I whisper in her ear as I grab her hand and pull her standing.

“Ah, yes.” She follows me out of the room. “We have some evening filming to do, have to go back to set, really important scene.”

“Oh.” Mom doesn’t bother to hide her disappointment. She follows us to the living room and stands at the top of the stairs,

Dad next to her, close but not touching. They watch as we put on our shoes. “Well, I hope you come and see us again before

you leave town. It was nice catching up with you, Maria, and meeting you, Ellie.”

“So nice to meet you, too,” Ellie replies, but I’m tugging her out the door so fast she’s cut off by it slamming behind her.

She doesn’t say anything as we get into the car, or as I drive down the street to the highway, or as we wind along the tree-shaded

road back to the cabin. The air between us is thick with tension, with Ellie doing her best to give me peace and quiet despite

it being against her very essence. The farther we get from my old home—from my parents who look the same but acted completely

different, from the person they tried so hard—but failed—to make me become, from the limited memories I have of my aunt—the

better I feel.

By the time we’re back inside the cabin, with a bottle of wine wordlessly popped and poured, I’m ready to talk about it.

“My aunt...” I begin, then stop, not sure what to say.

“She died on Christmas morning?” Ellie asks, incredulous.

“Yeah. But we didn’t find out until three days later.”

I glance up at Ellie, whose mouth is frozen open in an expression of sheer horror.

I take a deep breath. “Shortly after that picture was taken we went and opened presents. She gifted me a makeup set. My first

one. I was twelve years old.”

Ellie gives me a small smile. “She introduced you to Alien and your first makeup set, too? She really inspired you.”

“Yeah, she did. In a lot of ways. Mom said I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup yet, but Aunt Cindy told them to lighten up.

She took me into the bathroom and we did my makeup together.

I remember looking in the mirror and feeling so pretty, and being so proud of it, and feeling like.

.. I don’t know. Like I didn’t have to be me.

I could be anyone. I could be one person one day, and a different person the next, like makeup could transform more than my looks, actually change who I was as a person.

I didn’t like who I was back then. I felt like I didn’t fit in my skin, like it belonged to someone else, and it was itchy and I just wanted to take it off and run away.

I guess, in the end, I did...” I trail off for a moment, gathering my thoughts while Ellie waits patiently, elbows rested on the counter between us.

“We went to the living room to show my family how I looked. I was so excited—I thought they’d all love it.

But my grandpa took one look at me and told me I looked like a cheap whore. ”

Ellie gasps.

“Right? Who says that to a twelve-year-old?” I give my head a shake. “Aunt Cindy started yelling. Then my mom started yelling.

I was crying. They told me to go wash that ‘trash’ off my face. Mom threw my makeup in the garbage. I heard them shouting

about how they didn’t want me to end up like my aunt, and my aunt was screaming back that she’d never want to be like them.

This went on for a while, but by the time I’d washed it all off and came out my aunt was gone. I never saw her again.”

Ellie is silent, taking this all in.

I push on. “She passed away two years later. Fentanyl overdose. She was all alone on Christmas morning, using drugs. She took

too much and it all ended right there. She didn’t have anyone to be with. She didn’t have anyone checking up on her. She had

nothing. And—” The tears that have evaded me up until this point finally find their way to my ducts, threatening to spill.

I blink a few times, then let them fall, having learned a long time ago that emotions are not meant to be bottled up, and

knowing with every cell in my body that Ellie would be the last person in the world to judge a person for crying. “In a way,”

I continue, my voice thick, “I always felt like we were so similar. We don’t fit in. We’re the black sheep. And every Christmas

I think about her. I think about me. I can’t help but wonder — will that be me someday? Will I end up like her? All alone on Christmas morning, trying to mask my pain for just a little

while, with no one to notice when I’m gone.”