Mabel Darling
It started the way so many love stories start.
Boy meets girl. Boy wants girl.
No one has ever looked at girl before.
Girl gives in.
Girl goes mad.
It’s an embarrassment to admit I fell for such a cliché.
I still remember the very first time he spoke to me, his first words, so unremarkably trite, as if he hadn’t already set in motion my unraveling before he ever laid eyes on me. As if he were just another high school boy, two years younger than me but a foot taller, his dark hair expensively cut, his shoulders already broader than most of the seniors. The way he ambled right up to me and leaned against the locker next to mine. He made it seem casual, an afterthought for the hot new guy to say hello to the daughter of one of the town’s founding families, as if he weren’t already two steps ahead, or twenty.
I’ve replayed it so many times, as if I could have changed any of it. As if he didn’t hold all the aces, not only the winner but the game maker. I’d already lost before he even spoke those first words, luring me to the family that would destroy me.
I close my eyes, and my white ceiling disappears, my soft bed, my orange cat.
I’m back there again, in the halls of Willow Heights, the old familiar nightmare recurring the way it does so often.
Back straight, eyes down, arms stiff. I hold my books against my chest, watching the Prada pumps in front of me.
One-two, one-two, one-two. Click click click. She steps right on a crack.
Crack!
I picture her ankle snapping, her body lurching to one side with a cry, crashing against the heavy wooden lockers. Her head hits a lock, splitting her temple. Blood and hair matted against her cheek, oozing into her eye. She’s rushed to the hospital, where she catches staph and loses her eye. It spreads to her spinal cord. They give her an epidural and crack her spine while they do it.
Step on a crack, break your back.
My brain knows that’s not medically accurate, but my imagination doesn’t care.
I watch the tiles move by under my white tennis shoes, carried away like water under the bridge to Grandpa’s house. I’m careful to place my foot in the center of each tile, though it makes my gait lurch. They should replace the tiles, make them more suited to my stride. As it is, I can only take three normal steps before I have to pull up, shortening every fourth step. It’s inconvenient, but I’ve gotten used to it. One two three, rein in. Four six, rein in. If I step on a crack, it’ll be me in that hospital.
Too bad, so sad.
I arrive at my locker and turn the dial. Left fourteen, right twenty-four, left nine.
I retrieve my laptop and the one book I need for the day. I don’t even know why they bother with lockers anymore. Everything is online.
“I couldn’t help but notice you over here, quiet as a mouse,” says one of the new boys, the one with glasses, as he leans against the locker beside mine.
That’s the first thing he ever says to me. A lazy, flirty smirk plays on his lips, a cat toying with its prey, knowing it has all the time in the world before it eats. The mouse can’t get away, after all. Why not have some fun? Otherwise it’s too easy. Boring.
Bored already, his gaze wanders to a group of girls in short skirts. He’s ready to move on to more interesting prey before he even devours this morsel. Though our small school in a small town rarely gets new arrivals, when they do, they sometimes perform this formality. He was chosen by his family of brutes to introduce himself to the last of the town’s founding daughters.
The last one he knows about.
The Dolce boys are already well acquainted with all my cousins and brothers, who are far more noticeable. I’m an afterthought, an empty box to check off, a paper doll in khakis and a cashmere cardigan. It’s comforting to know that nothing ever really changes around here.
“Mice aren’t quiet,” I point out. “They squeak and scrabble around making all kinds of noise. Spiders are quiet.”
“Alright,” he says, agreeable enough. “I couldn’t help but notice you over here, quiet as a spider.”
“That’s impossible,” I say, closing my locker and staring back at him, unflinching.
I take in the slight turn in his gaze, the drawing back. He waits, expecting an explanation, but I don’t give him one. I turn and walk away, counting my footsteps.
One two three and four. One two three and four.
“What do you mean?” he asks, suddenly at my elbow, towering over me, his eyes narrowed just a fraction behind his glasses.
“You can’t help but notice something noticeable,” I point out, edging away from him a step. “Like your girlfriend. You have to try to notice someone like me. You have to be looking for her.”
“Then I guess I’m noticeable,” he says, the smile returning. “Since you know who my girlfriend is. That means you know who I am.”
“You already know the answer to that.”
“Humor me,” he says, his dark eyes with their long lashes sparking with amusement.
I can tell he’s enjoying this.
I can’t tell if I am.
“You’re not even as quiet as a mouse,” I point out. “And I wasn’t looking for you. So it follows that if I know who you are, you must be noticeable.”
“You’re funny,” he says, smiling wider, as if this delights him.
“You’re lying.”
“Well, now I have to hear this,” he says, sticking by my elbow as some others push past. I make note of my stepbrother among them, and my shoulders tense. Baron watches, his gaze flitting after mine, then back to me. He raises a brow, and I’m not sure if he wants an explanation for my comment or my tension.
Or maybe my narcissism is reading too much into it, and he didn’t even notice.
I give him the easier answer. “You didn’t laugh, so why would I believe you think I’m funny?”
“You don’t play around, do you?” he asks, that smile still toying with his full lips as we arrive at my classroom. He leans against the doorframe, his elbow above his head, blocking my way in. To move past him, I’d have to touch him, and I won’t do that.
“Why would I?” I ask, lingering in the hall. “Games are a waste of everyone’s time.”
“But games are so much fun.” His voice drops to a purr that does something funny to a place inside me that’s never been amused before. It’s like a tickle, something playful but horrifying, warm and chilling at once.
“Depends on who’s playing,” I say, wanting to be away from him now, to sit in my seat and work with rational, logical numbers, for the day to go back to being ordinary and orderly, like every other day.
His gaze assesses me, calculating. He won’t mistake me for easy prey again. I’ve made myself clear, and I’m hopeful that he’s smart enough to pick up on it. I keep my head down, stay out of drama, but I’m not a shrinking violet who can be pushed around like his sister. I’m not the weak link in my family, so his hoard of bully brothers should leave me alone, knowing I’m not worth the fuss.
“It certainly does,” he says at last, pushing off the doorframe, his gaze ducking down my boyish body before returning to mine. He wets his lips and steps past me, his fingertips ghosting over my waist, and then he’s gone.
I’m glad he’s not here to see me recoil.
In the classroom, I set myself in my seat and flip open my notebook, where I write down the number of steps it takes me to get to class each day. Today I didn’t count, distracted as I was by that new boy. I stare at the column of previous days’ numbers, trying to soothe myself.
All those steps, leading nowhere.
The teacher walks in. They don’t like to think their class is the nowhere where all those steps lead. I sit up straight, my back stiff, my hands folded on my desk in front of me. I measure each breath. Inhale… One two three four. Exhale… One two three four.
I don’t move a muscle all through class.
Everything is perfect. No one looks at me. They’re all bored.
Who wants to learn about old dead white guys?
That’s what someone asked on the first day of school.
I do. But I didn’t say anything. I only answer when a teacher calls on me. I’m always right. I pay attention. I like learning about all kinds of dead guys, not just old white ones. Mostly I like learning how they died. If the teacher doesn’t tell us, it plays in my head. For the next hour, screaming young men die in battle, writhing in agony as they’re impaled on bayonets and trampled under hooves.
I imagine they’re my family, my town. Those men in war, they’re my cousins, my uncles, my grandfather. What would I do if it was one of them?
Would I cry?
Did the men in this battle beg and sob as they died? Did they gurgle as their lungs filled with blood? Did their wives cry when they found out? Were they smiling behind their black veils, rejoicing at their freedom? Or did they despair, knowing their children would starve to death without a father to feed the family?
Did they eat them?
I smile when the teacher’s eyes meet mine. I tuck my beige hair behind my ear. It’s past my shoulders and straight, as uninteresting as the rest of me. Khaki skirt to my knees, matching loafers, white button shirt, no makeup. I am a blank slate, a cardboard box with no opening, a white sphere. How was it formed so smoothly, with no seams, no edges?
Why doesn’t my baby cry?
That’s what my mother asked the doctor when I was a few months old. My father likes to tell people that. To laugh and say I’m shy, that I was such a good baby that I didn’t even cry. I’m such a good girl, I never demand a moment of attention from anyone.
Good children are seen and not heard.
Perfect children are neither seen nor heard.
That’s me.
I am the perfect daughter, the perfect female. I wait for men to imprint upon me the image they want to see, project their ideal, then tell the world I’m exactly what they always wanted. Somehow, they don’t see that what they’re witnessing is a product of their imagination, their creation. That they’ve painted a face on a porcelain doll and told themselves it’s me. They never crack open the head, shatter the hard body. If they did, they would see.
But they never do. People like to believe their delusions.
People like me enough, not too much. Just enough to talk without walking away from me first. Mostly, they don’t notice I’m there at all. I’m bland and unremarkable, like plain oatmeal. I do as I’m told, disappear when I’m not needed. I don’t stir pots or rock boats. I sit still while their fingers probe into soft places, maintain poise when they give in to the animalistic urges for rage and lust. My existence is a muffle for tortured screams, a cushion for violent blows, a balm for depraved desires.
I never argue. I don’t protest.
I absorb darkest secrets like an amoeba, surface so serene people think I’m not listening at all, that I never hear a thing, that I didn’t see a thing. Soon, my image fades from the picture in their mind, their memory, until in their reality, I was never there at all.
Best of all, I never tell.