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Logainne sat rigidly on the weathered wooden bench, the kind that always felt splintery even through thick pants. She was meticulously highlighting sections of "The Feminine Mystique" with a series of color-coded pens. Her hair was pulled into her signature short, high braided ponytails, and a “Bans Off Our Bodies” button was pinned to her backpack. As usual, her full focus was on advocacy.
“Logainne?”
She looked up, slightly annoyed by the interruption, and then froze. Standing a few feet away, kicking distractedly at a loose pebble, was Marcy.
Logainne remembered Marcy instantly: the girl who probably could've beaten everyone last year with ease, yet she excitedly flunked "camouflage" at the last second. She remembered the perfect posture, the crisp pleats of her uniform, and the cool, almost robotic politeness.
The girl in front of her now was different. Marcy’s shirt was slightly wrinkled, her shoes were scuffed, and she was nursing a melting ice cream cone with what looked like genuine, unhurried ease. Her usual aura of intense, multi-lingual precision was replaced by a pleasant, almost lazy haze.
“Marcy! Wow. What are you… doing?” Logainne asked, perplexed.
Marcy offered a soft, slightly crooked smile. “I’m failing to finish a triple-scoop pistachio. It’s a work in progress.”
Logainne felt almost amazed at that. The Marcy she met last year would be doing a three-hour piano practice, or maybe winning a high school level math competition despite only being twelve. But now she looked so.. carefree.
“Oh. Right, obviously,” Logainne replied with a short chuckle, “I was just prepping for the debate team’s next motion. It’s about judicial precedent in gender equality cases.”
Marcy slid onto the bench beside her. “Sounds… challenging.”
“It’s necessary,” Logainne corrected, automatically. She thought of her two dads, of their love, which was always conditional on excellence. No one likes a loser. her father, Carl, had rolled his eyes last week when she’d earned a B on her science quiz. That harsh, unshakeable belief that any failure was a moral flaw, not a momentary slip.
Marcy nodded slowly, licking the melting ice cream before it dripped onto her hand. “I dropped karate,” she said, her voice quiet.
Logainne blinked. “What? But I thought you were a state champion!”
“I know, I was. My mom signed me up for the advanced black belt camp this summer. I just… didn’t go. I told her the dates conflicted with my mandatory advanced French immersion course, but they didn’t. The French course started a day late, and I didn’t tell her. It’s going to be a complete mess when she finds out.” She paused, examining the ice cream. “I also got a C on my European History midterm.”
Logainne stared. A C. Look, a spelling bee was one thing, dropping one of your many extracurriculars was another. But Marcy, the girl who spoke six languages and was on her way to be the youngest high school freshman at a parochial school, intentionally failing something as important as a midterm exam? It was a reckless, beautiful, terrifying act of defiance.
“I don’t understand,” Logainne whispered.
Marcy sighed, a sound heavy with the weight of years of expectation. “It’s exhausting. I’m tired of being this.. poster child of achievement. I want to be known for something easy, something uncomplicated. I want to be a disappointment.” She lowered her voice further. “I want to find out what happens when I stop being perfect. I want to see if the world keeps spinning. So far, it has."
Logainne felt a sudden, profound rush of recognition. Marcy's rebellion was.. sad, yes, but incredible. And brave. Logainne’s own fight, her relentless advocacy, her uncompromising political correctness, was just as much a passion as it was a shield for her. At such a young age, she poured all her energy into fighting for others' rights because it was less painful than examining her own lack of control at home. She defended the marginalized because it was a tangible good her fathers couldn't fault.
“My dads,” Logainne admitted, the words tasting like ash, “I love them, and I know they love me. They're fantastic people. But no matter how hard I try sometimes, I feel like I'm not doing enough to make them proud. And sometimes, when I talk about my birth mother, Peggy Jenkins, just asking a simple question, Carl Dad gets this look, like I’ve ruined their perfect, adopted family narrative. He says I’m ungrateful, that I don't have a mom. I mean.. that's kind of baloney, right?"
Marcy gently placed her hand on Logainne's, ignoring the way she flinched at first. “Mine just sigh. A loud, disappointed sigh. It’s worse than yelling. It says: ‘You are failing your entire ancestry.’”
They sat in silence for a long moment, two impossibly bright girls who were, at their core, both utterly burned out. Logainne realized she had changed only outwardly, channeling her perfectionism into righteousness. Marcy had changed inwardly, daring to introduce flaws into her carefully constructed existence. Carefully, she laced the other girl's fingers with her own.
“So, a C,” Logainne said finally, turning her attention from her book to Marcy. “Did you enjoy the extra time you got instead of studying?”
Marcy smiled, “I read a terrible graphic novel and sat in the sun for an hour. It was perfect.”
“...Huh. Woah. You know, I think you've inspired me, just a bit.” Logainne announced, the words feeling monumental. “But if I’m going to get a C, it's going to be in something really stupid, like home ec, not history.”
Marcy laughed, the sound warm and genuine. “That’s the spirit. Next time, let’s aim even lower, just to see what happens.”