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People came from miles around came to see Extraordinary Blue Acrobat.
What flexibility! They would marvel, What skill! They would sit in the old wooden bleachers, in front of a hand-made stage, and gasp and cheer at the backflips, frontflips, flips with a spin, flips with a double spin, and the ever amazing contortions she could perform. Ever person that visited insisted on coming away with some evidence of her extraordinary feats, happily purchasing postcards and pins and other small trinkets to bring back as evidence they had been there. They had seen her in person.
Bluestar she called herself, though some people still called her by her real name, Violet. Since the name wasn’t fitting for a person who was blue (not purple) she refused to acknowledge the old name and would insist on only responding to Bluestar, so most gave up on calling her by her real name. Her mother was a rare exception, since her daughter was refusing the name chosen specifically for her (by her mother) and making poor life decisions and not following the path that was proper (as decided by her mother).
At least she kept the flower motif, was Bluestar’s lackluster argument.
She had not been like this before, the people in her old town whispered and gossiped. She was petty, cruel, too competitive for her own good, they said. This new iteration of the girl was just a mask, a phony. Sooner or later, her real face would be revealed.
She ignored them.
There was a lot she ignored, these days. Her mother, for one. Her old friends, acquaintances, family, who all seemed to know best. The blue look wasn’t good for her and had to be unhealthy. There was a treatment they’d heard of, to correct what had been done to her. Everything she was choosing to do was the wrong way to go about things, according to the peanut gallery. Since her decisions were bringing her both happiness and money (to support herself, since her mother refused to be part of her choices), she found no need to change how things were done.
Whenever she did feel the desire to talk to someone else, someone who didn’t judge her on her looks, her choices, all she had to do was go back to where it started.
Charlie would always let her in.
The boy was still far too innocent, far to naive. Not yet jaded to the world. But he had been kind to her, even after her petty cruelty to him, and that was enough for her to trust him. These days, she even enjoyed her company, even if Willy Wonka was still rather weird. She was never hesitant to give her opinions on the new candies and chocolates they were developing, though through unspoken agreement they never asked her to try anything unless it was fully developed. She had learned her lesson, a lesson she could never forget after the alternations, and stuck with opinions only.
It worked well for everyone involved, however. So none of them had a desire to change what worked.
Her life was not what she expected. Her chewing gum addiction was long past. Her mother’s overwhelming influence aws gone.
And still, the Extraordinary Blue Acrobat was well pleased. This was not the life she had planned, but she was more than happy with what life had given her. A career that supported her life, however unnatural it was. A career she loved, however unexpected. Friends who never judged her, however strange they might be.
A moment of stubbornness to the the first, the best, to try the experimental gum had changed her life completely. And what a life it had become.