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By the time Allison Argent celebrated her tenth birthday, she’d been holding a bow in her hands for over three years. Her first bow had been a gift from her parents, red and plastic and tied up in purple ribbons, lying next to a Styrofoam target propped up against the Christmas tree. That day, her father had held her arms steady and helped her to fire her first arrow. She hadn’t looked back since.
At ten, she was already entering local competitions and winning more often than not. Her arms had grown taut and strong, her eyes sharp and focused. She always won the President’s Challenge in pull-ups in her gym classes, and she’d taken to writing “London 2012” in her diary over and over again, a secret, unspoken mantra.
That single-minded dedication was what led Allison, on the day she turned ten, to walk up to her mother and announce that she wanted a haircut. “Like yours, mom,” she said, gesturing to her mother’s close-cropped hairstyle.
Mrs. Argent looked down at her daughter, eyes wide with surprise. “Allison, honey. Where did this come from? You have such beautiful curls!”
Allison tugged at her long, heavy braid. She’d been practicing in the backyard all morning and the wind had pulled dozens of tiny tendrils loose, causing them to float in and out of her vision. “It gets in the way,” she explained, “when I shoot. I don’t want anything to distract me.”
Mrs. Argent studied her daughter critically. “Well, you have reached double digits. If this is what you want, you’re old enough to make that decision,” she relented.
At the salon, Allison didn’t even blink when the stylist pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail and cut it off at the nape of her neck. Twenty minutes later, as the stylist was brushing the last stray hairs from her neck, Allison looked in the mirror and grinned. She looked tough, grown up, like a hero on the cover of a fantasy book. She shook her head and watched the short curls wiggle in place, none long enough to fall into her eyes. Perfect.
But the next day at school wasn’t perfect. Her friends gasped when they saw her, horror in their eyes. “What did you do?” Stephanie wailed.
“I… I like it?” Allison said, confused, running a hand over her head. This wasn’t the reaction she’d expected. But the other girls just looked at her with a mix of shock and bewilderment.
If her friends were confused, her other classmates were worse. All of them gawked at her; a few laughed outright. In gym, when the teacher split the class into boys’ and girls’ teams for kickball, Eddie Simon shouted, “Hey, shouldn’t Allison be on our side?” Mr. Taylor made him sit out the game for the comment, but he couldn’t prevent the tittering laughter from the rest of the class.
By lunch, Allison was ready to fake sick just to get away from the torture. As she headed to the cafeteria with her friends, she couldn’t help noticing how they walked together in a cluster a few feet away from her, as if her newfound unpopularity was contagious. Sharon Sanders took advantage of the gap between them to push through, shoving Allison roughly to the side. “Oh, sorry, Allen,” she said sweetly, her teeth sharp.
That was enough. “My mom made me do it, ok?” Allison exclaimed, eyes welling up with tears as she stopped in her tracks. That was enough to make her friends turn around, understanding dawning in their faces, and they started making cooing noises.
“Oh, Allie, it’s ok!” Stephanie said. “We’ll let you borrow our headbands and barrettes and once it grows out you’ll be pretty again, I promise!”
“Lots of kids have really mean moms,” Jessica added. “Everyone will understand.” Allison nodded, sniffling, and didn’t contradict her.
That afternoon, Allison dropped her backpack in her bedroom and headed straight out to the backyard with her bow. She shot arrow after arrow, barely pausing to rest, pounding the target until her arms ached. She was focused, determined, and blessedly free of distractions. But when she went back inside, she started searching through her closet for the laciest headbands she owned.
The Argents packed up and moved at the end of that school year, and by September Allison’s hair had grown out to a short mop of feminine ringlets. She had to use a dozen bobby pins and hairspray to keep it even halfway tamed while she practiced her archery, but no one at her new school had a reason to laugh at her.
A few years later, when Allison was in seventh grade and already attending her second middle school, her new archery coach started talking about entering her in international competition. Allison brought home the paperwork and brochures and lists of relevant websites, excited to take the next step toward the dreams she’d been building for half her life. But when her parents saw the forms, they shared an uneasy look.
“Allison, sweetheart,” her father began, “I think we need to look at this practically. This would cost a lot of money…”
“Don’t we have money?” Allison asked, surprised. Her family had never lacked for that.
“Yes, of course, but…” Her dad looked as if he was searching for a viable excuse, which didn’t make any sense. Didn’t her parents want her to succeed? “You’ve already missed so much school because of our moves. The traveling this would require wouldn’t be good for your future. You have to think about high school, about college. And this kind of public exposure…” He trailed off, as if public exposure was the worst possible thing that could happen. “I just want you to have a chance to be a normal kid,” he finished.
“What your father is saying,” Allison’s mom cut in, steely where her dad had been regretful, “is that we’re not going to sign these forms. And we think you should cut back your lessons so you can focus on your schoolwork.”
Allison could feel the tears rising to her disbelieving eyes. “Fine!” she exclaimed, and she stormed off to her room, where her archery equipment was stacked neatly next to a box full of books she still hadn’t unpacked from her last move. Drying her eyes and trying to ignore the cavern opening up in her stomach, Allison methodically unpacked the box, piling the books on the floor next to her dresser. Then she gathered up her bow, arrows, arm guards, and all her other equipment, tossed it into the empty box, and sealed it up with duct tape.
A few months later, Julianna, one of the few friends Allison had made in Sacramento, turned to Allison at lunch and cocked her head to the side. “Hey, how come you don’t have archery practice after school anymore?”
Allison shrugged and tossed her long hair over her shoulder. “Oh, it just got too intense. My parents wanted me to, like, go to the Olympics or something. It was fun and all, but that kind of pressure isn’t for me.”
“Oh, ok,” Julianna said. “That makes sense!” Allison smiled, taking another sip from her milk carton, and the conversation moved on.
Allison is seventeen now. With so much uncertainty in her life, so many friends and homes fallen away in succession like grains of sand in a loose fist, Allison relies on the stories she tells herself to build a narrative of her own past, of the person she is and the person she’s going to become. When she looks at pictures of herself from fourth grade, she cringes, getting annoyed at her mom all over again for making her cut her hair so short. And when she looks at pictures of her preteen self wielding a bow, she rolls her eyes at the memory of her parents’ overzealous desire to make her a champion, ignoring the way her fingers twitch with muscle memory and longing.
Truth and desire, for Allison Argent, have always been less important than self-preservation.