Chapter Text
Prologue pt. 1
‘Gold Rush’
October 4, 1940
‘What must it be like to grow up that beautiful? With your hair falling into place like dominoes.’
Perfection was a muse Marjorie chased with the fervor of a wolf searching for prey. The need for it was drilled into her brain since she was born. Two shades of green lined her front yard in stripes acting as a canvas for her white house with tall pillars starring on the front, and flowers below the windows adding a touch of humbleness.
A fitted suit never failed to sport her father’s frame, who people often described as a family man, mostly because of the money he brought to their household. While her mother looked like a woman painted on propaganda posters who always posed holding plates of food over a table with smiling children.
Her life was labeled as perfect at first glance, like when you pick peaches from the grocery store; you often look for the peach that is the juiciest and the most orange looking. Yet some wait till the peach is visibly bruised on the outside to even bother looking at it as more than a table decoration. Now that the peach is soft and darkened, you dispose of it, because you know what you will find on the inside will be even more rotten.
Nobody cared to look past that first glance, and luckily for her, with the amount of shine she had to cover up her flaws, she had a couple years before her outside was rotten too.
Unlike her outside, the world was not perfect.
A war had started; they were calling it “World War Two”. The name itself is terrifying, especially after learning about the first one, which many referred to still as just “The Great War”, not the First World War. She would go to her father and express her fears about what she heard on the radio, or read in the newspaper. He would tap her head softly, whispering white lies like “Now now dear, they’re simply false worries drilled into your head using big words.” Big words weren’t meant for women, so she didn’t read them.
The warplanes were just paper that children had thrown for fun. The headlines of the papers were propaganda, simply to attract more pennies. You can’t trust everything you hear on the radio. You can’t believe everything you read.
There had been so many things she was told to ignore; so eventually, she ignored all of it.
•••
‘Everybody wants you, everybody wonders what it would be like to love you. Walk past, quick brush.’
She slid on her simple school dress, flowers swirling up and down her torso, fit for the October air of Long Island. The bow in her hair held her ponytail proper and taut, her bangs laid against her forehead with a soft, flawless inward curve. She touched up the minor bags under her eyes with makeup and added a tint of lipstick to bring life to her face. She wouldn’t say she was vain, but she believed she was pretty. Her boyfriend, Drew Perry, said she was pretty, and she loved to believe everything he said. She found herself deep in thought about him, or more accurately, about them. She knew everyone wanted him, wanted to be them. She liked to believe that he liked her because she was a simple minded girl, who slid the jealousy of others away from her thoughts and instead replaced them with him.
‘And the costal town we wandered round’ had never seen a love as pure as it.’
The women who enjoyed gossiping in their town talked about their beloved tight end Drew and his perfect girlfriend Marjorie, how pure their teenage love was, and how their eyes gleamed with the light of knowing what they had was real.
She wore his letterman jacket like it was a relic, and he wore her on his side like a trophy.
Her walk to school was short and sweet. The salt air of Long Island never failed to make her life more bearable. The lines of houses were decorated in funky colors, adding to the unique aesthetic of the coastal island. She could’ve very easily skipped school to walk with her thoughts by the beach, but she sometimes enjoyed going to school. Mostly because of Drew.
The school was now in her view, and she was greeted with the sight of her Drew leaning on the side of his car in the parking lot, laughing with some of his friends, and their girlfriends. Good mornings and cheers graced her as she smiled and approached the group, immediately falling into Drew’s side as his arm looped around her shoulder. The conversation was mostly about the upcoming game. Ninety percent of the conversations she had with all of them went the same, so there wasn’t much paying attention to do.
‘Eyes like sinking ships on waters going down, I almost jump in.’
So instead, she moved her attention to Drew. She liked to study his features like a painting when she was bored. His face displayed a sharply drawn jawline, that led into a chiseled chin that made her eyes move to his large grin with white teeth and perfectly kissable lips. She loved running her finger over the bump of his bridged nose, and tracing his thick eyebrows. His eyes were like sinking ships of a dark blue tinted with a rim of hazel and gold, begging her like sirens to immerse herself in them.
She’d never seen eyes like his.
‘I don’t like anticipating my face in a red flush.’
She let her hand slide up on the nape of his neck, some of her fingers threading through his light brown hair, and placed a kiss on his lips. The two held hands as they began to head to class. When she had approached the door to her class, she waved goodbye, and he flashed her a smile. He never failed to make her face flush with red right in the middle of the hall, and in embarrassment, her face would flush more because she would realize she was blushing right in the middle of the hall. She hated to admit she anticipated their encounters like this.
•••
Class was boring, as usual. High school had to be such a hellish place. It felt like after junior high, happiness wasn’t real. The sudden drabness of her days may have been because of the pure state of the world, but she was taught to ignore large issues, so the blame fell on school. Yet, being seventeen, she still wanted to at least live out her last years in high school thoroughly before she would be married off and find the fate of being a housewife. Then there wouldn’t be any light or happiness.
She didn’t mind her determined future completely, but she wanted something more from life. She never had anything interesting happen to her, nothing detrimental, or nothing that made her more interesting as a person.
She doubted her cat dying when she was seven was a personality trait.
She shrugged her thoughts off as she walked to lunch, going to her and Drew’s usual spot outside on the benches. She liked looking at the orange and yellow leaves of the trees with him, and talking about having a big Halloween party, even though it was days away. Talking with Drew was fun; no matter who was around, he never failed to make it feel like she was the main person in the conversation. The world could be ending right behind you, but his eyes would drag you straight back to him, his words felt like honey, and he made her feel like the main character in a cliché novel.
Drew was just charismatic like that.
She managed to snag his letterman jacket once again and wore it to her next class, his last name on her back. Her bet was, he wouldn’t be seeing this jacket until tomorrow.
‘And the costal town we never found will never see a love as pure as it.’