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“Shelley, look! Your mom's in the paper!” Her dad greeted her as soon as she stepped into the kitchen. Seven years old and barrelling into her dad's lap to look at the smallest picture of her mom in the entertainment section. She was wearing a pretty dress that had been so twinkly, but the image in front of her poorly captured.
There was a column next to the picture. The words small and tightly crammed together. Her mom said it was just an interview about the production, MJ would find it boring, but she leant forward, squinting at the page until her dad propped it back up again and helped her read it aloud.
The interviewer asked about the show, her mom’s choices with the production, what the show meant and future projects that she was workshopping with her writing partner. MJ ate it all up, tucking the answers away, ready for when she would finally get to see the show, prepared so that she could fit in with all the adults.
MJ continued to sit in her dad’s lap as he cut the article and the picture out from the paper, hopping down and following him over to the fridge where it was pinned between her report card and the invitation to Gayle’s recital. All the little reminders that their parents hung up to prove they could do anything they set their minds to.
The paper clipping stayed there for a few days, MJ stopping to look at it every time she opened the fridge door, lingering on it. It was the coolest thing her mom had ever done. She always said that she was more behind the curtain, not the face of the show, but this proved her wrong. Her mom was famous. She had to be. She was in the newspaper and plenty of people read the newspaper so her being a celebrity was the only valid conclusion.
Each time she opened the door and took a moment to stare at the little clipping and her mom in that sparkly dress, she imagined herself in a similar position, trying to think what questions she might be asked by someone. She liked sitting in rehearsals for her mom’s plays – maybe that’s what she’d do, but instead of writing them she’d be on the stage, all the audience’s eyes on her.
But also, her teacher had recently praised MJ for her efforts during their science lessons – she could invent something! She could be a genius and solve the world’s problems, and from how much she heard her parents groaning over the news, it seemed like the world had a lot of them so the interviews she had would probably take up the entire paper.
She liked storytime too, loved sitting with her dad and having hum read to her, offering her own suggestions and grinning as he weaved them into the book. MJ thought she could grow up to do that – be an author. She could even write a book that got turned into a dance, then she and Gayle could be a world famous duo.
Her mom had chuckled when MJ repeated all this and more, idea after idea about what she wanted to be and how the world would know her spilling out before bedtime.
“Maybe you’ll do it all.” She’d said, MJ’s eyes going wide and the idea taking root. That was the best suggestion yet. She loved being busy, hated being bored and she could do absolutely everything she enjoyed that way. She wouldn’t have to choose.
“I want you to do something that you love though. Not just because you want to be in the paper, yeah?” Her mom had said to her a few days later. The paper clipping was gone from the fridge door now, in it’s place wad the poster MJ had drawn at school that had gotten her ‘Star of the Week’ and made her decide that maybe art is the path she’d go down. “People do silly things when all they want is to be famous, and you’re too smart for that, right, Chelle?”
She had preened under her mom’s attention, not fully understanding what she meant but happy to be praised for her smarts nonetheless.
“That’s it, lift the trophy a little higher!” The photographer called over the top of her camera. MJ followed the order, struggling to hold the smile plastered on her face.
She’s eleven and her parents are grinning up at her from the floor, the nights they’d spent helping her glue down sheets of paper to poster board and reading through her captions to check for spelling errors and helping her to secure each piece of her project in place, so worth it and her heart is full seeing the pride in their eyes.
It was just a science fair. The trophy in her hands feels plastic and cheap, only weighted by the heavy base it’s attached to, but her dad had skipped afternoon meetings to see her project in person, her mom had cancelled her afternoon classes – Gayle was out of town but she’d called MJ before school started not to wish her luck but to demand pictures of the prize when MJ won.
The stage is raised, behind her parents are plenty of bored, tired eyes that are barely focused on her, but they bore into her. Amongst the crowd is Fred Taylor, who didn’t even get a medal, glaring at her. He’d been muttering to his friends and family since the winners had been announced. He didn’t think she deserved it – his model volcano was cool but not particularly inventive and his presentation alongside it was lacking. MJ knew he was just jealous, knew the work she had put in was what had gotten her on that stage, had put that trophy in her hands.
Still, her eyes flicker back across the crowd and briefly wonder how many others favour Fred’s view.
“One more, big smile for me! We want everyone to see that lovely smile!” The photographer called to her again, MJ’s attention snapping back into the moment, taking a breath to steel herself and lifting up the trophy higher, tightening her smile.
She deserved this.
This was her win. Her parents were on the floor and proud, Gayle would be on the phone later calling her a dork and MJ would roll her eyes.
Her hands curled around the trophy. She wasn’t allowed to curse, her parents always quick to sharply say her name when one slipped out, but in her head they couldn’t hear a thing and so she proudly proclaimed:
Fuck Fred Taylor!
The photo of her in the local paper, tucked away in the community section, stays on the fridge for weeks and a photo goes up in the school’s trophy cabinet. She hears Fred Taylor claiming that the fair ‘wasn’t even that big of deal’ and that the ‘winner probably asked to be put in there’. It hurt to hear, because that hadn’t been the case. MJ had worked hard and deserved to win. He was just jealous and being petty, but it stung, it made her frustrated.
MJ still isn’t sure what she wants to do when she grows up, but she is starting to understand what her mom had meant. Attention came at a price and she had to decide if the cost was worth it.
The feeling of her name being called, her family clapping and Gayle calling her from her dorm, makeup half done and risking a lecture from their parents about ‘safe partying’, she decided that this time was worthy price to pay, but there’s a part of her that curls around to protect that bubbling, joyous feeling.
She starts building up a wall of indifference, if people wanted to lie then at least anything they tried to wouldn’t be able to touch her. Her excitement could remain only with those that shared in it.
MJ walked into the kitchen, more exhausted than she’d been sprinting through London. A hot shower and sleeping on the plane ride home, Peter’s hand in hers, a fluttering in her stomach when he awoke and looked up at her, that’d been enough to rid herself of that tiredness.
She had barely slept the night before, tossing and turning, spending hours on the phone to Peter who spent the call split between apologising profusely to her, asking if she was okay and trying to determine what he was going to do now his identity was out.
In the morning she’d pretended to be asleep while her parents moved around the apartment, heavy feet and loud words telling her how they felt about the situation. Gayle called her and they sat on FaceTime, talking through it all. They argued a bit, but that didn’t tire her, that was the only thing that felt somewhat normal – somehow even now that Gayle was a grown woman with a job and live-in partner and saving for a house and responsibilities, her age didn’t matter when it came to her sister, the pair of them regressing to their younger selves for a while.
It was the sort of exhaustion that came with knowing the day would be hard. She was too tired to face it already. In one afternoon, everything had changed and no one had given her time to prepare. The stress, the anxiety and mostly the anger chewed and gnawed on her.
Frustration asking her why she’d not considered any of this, wondering if anything could have been done differently. She hadn’t wanted her first proper relationship to go this way. She wanted to enjoy the stupid honeymoon phase with Peter without prying eyes picking them apart.
When she finally emerged from her room, there were no cheers or joy about the fact that her face was in the paper. Her mom was phoning an old friend of a friend, tugging on old strings from her days working on Broadway trying to find someone who could help them out. Her dad grumbling as he flicked through the stack of papers and magazines on the table, laptop open in front of him and fingers flying across the keys.
A postcard MJ had sent from Venice before everything fell apart is stuck to the fridge.
It’s strange to see Liz’s face in the city again, plastered on as many news stands as MJ’s own name is. She can’t decide what is worse; to have a normalcy and future that she never got to enjoy taken from her or to be dragged back into something that she was nearly eight years removed from.
They’re trying to pit the two of them against each other, but Liz’s frustration isn’t that Peter ditched her at a dance in her senior year. Once upon a time, it had been. They’ve reduced the complications Peter’s presence in her life brought her family, her dad’s crimes and imprisonment and the fallout from that down to bitesize chunks that won’t give her the closure she deserves – she’s a jilted ex and MJ is the girl that stole from her.
MJ realised that neither is worse – that’s exactly the type of thinking that these vultures feed upon. She’s leaning into what they want, without her giving them a single word to print, they’re already winning.
They’ve both been wronged by the invasion of privacy that’s been forced upon them. They both deserved a chance to enjoy what they had – MJ should have been allowed to enjoy her senior year and Liz should have been allowed to keep her distance from the situation if she wanted.
When customers dare to brave asking her a question about whatever tabloid they’d picked up, MJ bit her tongue. Not for her boss who’d ‘taken a chance’ by keeping her on, not for the sake of customer service, but for the sake of herself and for the sake of Liz.
It was a silent victory of hers alone.
MJ had expected she’d grow tired of answering where she had applied to, what her major was going to be, would she be living on campus or off, if she knew how hard it was to get into MIT, had she applied to scholarships or if she knew the cost of college, would she be getting a job.
She’d braced for that. Honestly, as tiring as it would become, she was excited for her senior year to be filled with questions like that. It all meant she was just one step closer to her future – the hard work was so close to paying off and soon those questions would have definitive answers; she was going to MIT, she was doing majoring in Physics with a minor in Theatre, a strange combination perhaps but she didn’t want to limit all her options. She would be supported by one scholarship and would already have a job lined up. Hypothetical would become a reality.
Obviously, she had answers for all her back-ups. She knew better than to hinge all her hopes on one school.
Perhaps, she should have realised sooner that the first question about her senior year wouldn’t have anything to do with her academic future. It was instead:
“Are you going to have his spider babies?”
Peter’s hand sliding in hers helped her drown out the rest of it, but that one lingering. She was seventeen. As much as she’d argued otherwise with her sister and her parents, she was a kid.
What kind of question was that? What were they trying to make her into?
The absurdity of it piled on top of everything else she’d read about herself over the summer. At this point she’s too tired to be angry. There was enough of them to keep the bullshit rolling endlessly it seemed, but she was only one person and she couldn’t keep putting her energy into her anger not when her words wouldn’t do anything for her, putting her focus into her actions.
No one may be asking her about her future or college, but she’ll make sure that she’s got an answer regardless. In the meantime, she decided that she’d laugh at the questions and things printed, treat them for the joke they were. Her wall of indifference taking on a slightly different shape, but protecting her nonetheless, refusing to let anyone see her as distracted or emotional or give them any nugget of truth that they could talk about.
None of it ended up mattering.
Every school rejected her. Rejected them all.
She refused to regret her decisions that led her there because at least they were real and at least they were hers and at least they were true.
Peter remained something she believed in and someone she supported because MJ was smart and she knew good people. She was raised by them and they’d shaped her to chase after something because she loved it and she thought she was on the right path for that.
It helped mildly to think of things that way, until she could take her break, heading to the toilet and calling her sister. She sat in the staff bathroom with the rickety hinges on the door and the smell of damp, and she told Gayle the news. In the fragile safety of that room, MJ let herself be angry and disappointed and upset.
Gayle listened, shared in her frustration and set MJ right with a promise to visit, with a promise to help her plan. She doesn't cry, because that would have meant she'd gotten her hopes up and-... she doesn't do that. She anticipated this. She knew this would happen.
She-...
She doesn't cry and Gayle accepts that she doesn't, cursing out the school and calling MJ a dork and reminding her that she's more than just her connection to Peter.
"It's like they don't even know you're a back-to-back two-time winner of the Young Einstein's Science Fair. I mean, they know that, right? You put that on your application?" She asked towards the end of the call, managing to get a laugh from MJ.
Her graduation photo and news of her future at MIT makes it into the staff newsletter at her mom’s school. The programme from her ceremony is stuck underneath it, a little further down is a letter confirming the times for her move-in and details about orientation.
There is a feeling in her chest as MJ stands with the fridge door half ajar, paused from where she’d been going to get the milk for her coffee. It’s smug and pleased and proud with an underlying justified anger. When she thinks about it properly, she realises she feels vindicated, triumphant as she stares at her achievements.
It makes no sense, no one had doubted her – never her parents, her friends had always believed that they’d end up there together and she’d certainly never underestimated herself even if she’d planned for a different outcome. The issue with MIT’s system that had led to her initial rejection had been frustrating, but it was quickly rectified with profuse apologies. She’d even been a little understanding, this was still only the second batch of applicants they’d taken on since the blip and they were probably dealing with more of an influx of applications following people deferring for year.
Yet, she still feels like she’d won a battle.
She decides that the hollowness that follows after thinking of this as a triumphant victory for too long is only because it comes at the price of moving on and starting a whole new fight of doing it all over again at college.
That’s what she tells herself and tells other people when they ask why she doesn’t look excited or when she wakes up, tears in her eyes, thinking about what saying goodbye to the city really means.
The lies fall too easily from her lips, and soon, it’s second nature to stop herself from zoning out when someone asks about her plans, a perfected front that, most days, she believes herself.
There’s more to it than just moving away, she’s just taking her time unravelling it all.