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Want to try to make one or see what other people came up with?! Every story will participate in The Doll Palace ratings. Good stories will be awarded with Dollpoints.
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All created stories have to follow . We do not allow any sexually related material. The Doll Palace will be enforcing this rule and completely blocking access to the accounts that disregard our policy and create sexually oriented stories.
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Hi, my name is Aeroo
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 | Contest entry! For TTBSI contest. |
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 5 with 4 vote(s)
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| Created: 2009-02-22 15:41:47 |
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First of all, I'M SO SORRY THIS IS LATE THERE WERE COMPLICATIONS YESTERDAY PLEASE FORGIVE ME K?
Second of all, I'm terrible at romance so forgive me if this is awful.
And thirdly, the story turned out weird. First it was tragic, then funny, and then... well, it's kinda bittersweet. But anyway, I hope it's alright and you enjoy.
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My mother never held me as a child. Or, at least, not that I remember. Most likely shortly after my birth, she had cradled me for a short moment or two, maybe even kissed my wrinkled face to soothe the tears that flow from any baby. But after that, she would never hold me again.
For how could a dead and cold body rock me in her arms, hug me tight, and tell me that I was wonderful? How could a decomposing pile of matter congratulate me on the A I struggled for in math? How could a worm-eaten skeleton kiss me goodnight and chase away my nightmares with a story where, of course, they all live happily ever after?
She simply could not, whether she would have in life or abandoned me. And that was the knowledge that burdened my slim shoulders through childhood.
My mother died three weeks after I was born. She had terminal cancer, and though there was a chance for survival, had she simply aborted me, she refused and allowed the tumors to grow without stopping them with an operation. Because the operation was not possible without killing me, the unborn foetus. And so, as soon as I was old enough to ask where mommy was, I knew.
I had killed my mother.
I suppose I had a good life. People took care of me. People educated me. People fed me. But I would have traded it for anything, anything else. Anything besides my own life.
My father loved me, of course. He cared for me well, provided me with nutritional breakfasts and sent me to school. But he was an empty shell, performing his duties perfunctorily. And even as he cherished his bonny daughter, he silently cursed her, because if I had not been born his wife would still be there. He needed her just as much as I did, though I did not see this until I was much older. All I could see was a man who was broken inside.
My two older siblings openly resented me. I didn't blame them. If I had been in their position I would have raged and screamed at my sibling, making sure they knew everything was their fault and if it hadn't been for them, the world would be a better place. But I didn't know this. I didn't know why they hated me so, why my brother Brandon, ten years old at my birth, would always shove me over when daddy wasn't watching, why my sister Cara, aged eight at my birth, would never share her toys and would never let me in her Barbie-filled room.
I took solace in reading, and became quite the bookworm. Harry Potter enthralled me all through elementary and middle school. Tamora Pierce's novels decorated the unpainted shelves I kept all of my favorites in. Orson Scott Card's Ender series earned a place of honor on my windowsill.
But it was still not enough for my life to be complete.
I did not have many friends. This suited me just fine, it wasn't as though I needed a companion to enjoy a book or to help me sketch. In childhood I had always kept a great deal of imaginary friends, who would praise me and love me and play with me, but each one eventually faded into a grey backdrop of lost memory, until I had no one but myself to accompany me. As a quiet girl who always did her required share of work, no more, no less, teachers didn't pay much attention to me. In projects where we worked in groups, no one invited me to join, but no one complained when I did. It was an odd sort of balance, but balance all the same. This is how my life was until I entered high school.
And my carefully ordered balance was turned on its ear.
Because that was the year I, Julia Casey Andrews, met Ash.
Perhaps I should explain.
I was known through unspoken decree as "That-girl-who's-nice-but-a-bit-of-a-loner-if-you-leave-her-alone-she'll-leave-you-alone-and-she- gets-good-grades." Ash was known as "That-lunatic-boy-who-will-do-anything-he-wants-and-is-really-fuucking-random."
We met in the cafeteria. I had been eating a salad and sketching a picture of the tree outside the school gates. I could see it through the window and liked the way the verdant leaves were partly in shadow, so I though, why not, let's give it a try. The drawing was going fairly well, though one of my branches was too big and skewing the balance I was attempting to create, when someone sat down heavily beside me.
This was odd, but I was sure that they were merely taking a break from something, and had only plopped down next to me as a coincidence. But then, when a pleasant male voice(though a bit too loud to be quite comfortable) said, "Hey, girl, whatcha drawing?"
I glanced up at my new companion and blinked in surprise. I wasn't used to talking to people, so it took me a moment to reply. "The fig tree. That's all." His presence made me uncomfortable. He was the opposite of me, with a deep tan, rumpled black curls, disturbingly tall, and a huge smile.
"That's awesome! I wish I could draw like that. You're lucky, girl."
"I practiced. Luck has nothing to do with it." Keeping my replies short and clipped was best. I didn't want this boy's friendship. I wanted to keep up the cold shell of my normal life.
Inside, though, I was intrigued. What did this laughing sunshine want with a lonely overcast winter morning? I wasn't pretty. My hair was shoulder length and a dull mousy brown. I was short and slight, without much of a figure to speak of. The pale skin of my serious face was freckled, though thankfully clear of acne. My only interesting feature was my jade-green eyes. Like my mother's, but hers had been laughing and crinkled in all her pictures, while mine were round and blank. And besides, you couldn't see them from far away, so that couldn't have been what attracted him.
"Girl? You listening? Yoo-hoo...?"
"What?! Oh, sorry, my apologies, I was distracted, by, um, never mind, just tell me, what were you saying?"
He laughed. And not just a little chuckle, but a huge shaking laugh that made people turn their heads and stare. He threw back his head with abandon before coming to his senses and replying, "I said, you sound like my grandma. She's always at me to practice my music."
"What? Um, what do you play?"
"Trumpet. What else?"
I never got to tell him what else, because at that moment, the bell rang for the end of lunch. He scowled at the clock, and picked up his dirty orange backpack. Just as he was about to leave, he startled me by snatching up my slim hand and kissing the back of it lightly.
"Adieu, my fair art-eest, may we meet again someday!" He shouted in a heavy faux accent. He turned and jogged off, jumping over a table in the process.
I sat there for almost a full minute without breathing, not able to think about anything but how warm his lips felt against my cold skin. It occurred to me that this was because he was alive, unlike me. I was not truly living, simply carrying out the duties I was given and trying my best to please what family I had left.
And I didn't even know his name.
That night I couldn't sleep. I stared up at the cracked ceiling and listened to the skittering of what I hoped wasn't mice in our walls. The ragged doll that was the sole remnant of my mother's plans to sew a little family for me sat on a three legged stool at the other side of the room. Shoving back the light covers, I slipped out of bed and picked her up. I hadn't slept with her in years, but her musty scent comforted me and soon I was drifting off to a dream in which the sun flew down and kissed me on the lips.
The next morning, for the first time in my life I was sad to wake up and abandon my dreams. Usually I would shudder and shake off cold nightmares in which I froze to death alone, but not today.
Today I was alive.
Again, in the cafeteria, I sat alone. I had only shaded part of the tree and was glad to continue. Only three leaves had been finished before the boy from yesterday came back.
"GIRL! Hi! Looks like we did meet again!"
"You know, in a school with five hundred students, the odds we wouldn't meet are pretty slim."
And the same laugh as yesterday came bursting out of him, making it seem like the very sun was brighter.
"You're funny! You know, I think I like you, girl."
"My name isn't girl." I said this a bit more harshly than was really necessary.
"And my name isn't girl either!"
"Oh? What is it, then?" He probably thought that last line was funny, I remember thinking with contempt.
"Ashoka Harold Star." The boy- Ashoka, I suppose- said this with pride. The kind of pride that develops from years of insults and incredulous looks, the pride that comes from people constantly asking you to repeat your name. I had to respect that, at least a little. "But you can call me Ash, kay?"
"I don't think I'll call you anything. I'd prefer not to talk to you."
"Hey! Hey! Girl, talk, um, please?"
"I told you. That isn't my name. And if you're trying to ask me to talk to you, it'll take more than please." Even as I rejected and diminished all Ash said, I felt different. Something within me was stirring, something that wanted to come out and meet the world with open arms. I didn't know if I liked the feeling. It made me a bit nervous, so to cover any sign of that up I pinned Ash with a sharp glare.
"... Please tell me your name. And please talk to me. Please." He bowed his head slightly, with an expression filled with so much anguish that just I had to laugh. It felt strange, to giggle, to have a moment of pure happiness that escaped from my body and flew out of my lips in an explosive burst of joy. Ash looked at me oddly before grinning and laughing with me.
My image, my balance, my life, they were all slipping downhill and out of control.
And I was loving it.
We started talking every day. Not about anything in particular, but not about nothing. Simply about whatever topics came to mind.
Soon we started meeting outside of school, where we would take a short hike up the hill to a grassy meadow. It was there that we would sit, and talk about things that mattered. It was there we laid bare our deepest secrets, where we dared the other to look at the horror of our souls, and still accept us. It was there that we truly became friends.
He was such an optimist, always reminding me that "Any girl who's talented like you is someday gonna live happily ever after. So you don't got nothing you worry about." I always laughed and told him it was bull. But... I did like hoping. It felt good to imagine a future where I'd be okay, normal, and accepted.
I told Ash right from the beginning my mother was dead. It wasn't a big secret or anything. But what he told me... he told me everything. He told me about how his parents were nearly always drunk and how they divorced. He told me about how his mother used to hit him all the time whenever he stayed over and how his first dog was hit by a car. He told me about breaking his arm in first grade, and breaking his leg in second. I was a source of comfort who listened, who did not judge, and who told her own painful stories.
One lazy day as we lay side by side on our backs in the tall grass, I said, conversationally, "You know, it's my fault she's dead."
There was silence for exactly thirty seconds before Ash sat up and stared at me, shouting,
"You killed your mom?!"
I winced. I had mentally told myself that for years and listened to it whispered by my siblings. Hearing it out loud like that was painful nonetheless. I know he didn't mean to hurt me, would never intentionally hurt me. Yet hurt me he had.
"Yes. I did."
I could see the horror in his eyes, I knew he didn't understand. I stared at him though, refusing to explain, prepared to face him down. It was a crazy sort of test, to see if Ash still cared for me, even if I was the worst sort of murderer.
"I don't believe you." He said finally.
"You should."
"Well, I don't. I know your mom died when you were pretty little, or you wouldn't have given me that sob-sob-I-wish-I-could-remember-more-about-her discussion. No offense to you of course. But seriously, if you were a kid and did something by accident, it's not your fault. You'd be too young to know what you were doing. So in my book, you are automatically not guilty."
I stared. That was one of the longest speeches he had ever given me. And suddenly I felt ashamed for testing him, for doubting him. The tears I had spent most of my life suppressing rose unbidden to press at the backs of my eyes. I squeezed them shut and ducked my head to chase them away, but more came, and more, until my shoulders were shaking with the effort not to cry.
"Um... Jules? You alright?"
All it took was that little remark, that little proof that someone cared, to push me over the edge. I started bawling like a three year old, snot and all. I cried hard and sobbed, "She died... b-because of me. Because I was b-born. She couldn't get the o-o-operation..." I dropped of the narrative here and wailed, "And she never even got to hold me!" My face was probably a mottled red color by then, and the mucus that smeared across both tearstained cheeks was not helping. I wouldn't have blamed Ash if he had turned away in disgust or even abandoned me until I was feeling better. But instead, he dropped down on his hands and knees beside me and put both muscled arms around my shaking body.
He was the first person ever to hold me like that.
"P-promise me you won't let go," I whimpered hoarsely.
"Nah. I gotta let go sometime. But I promise I'll hold on 'till you've got your happy ending. I'll keep you safe until happily ever after, kay?"
And as I sobbed my tears and frustration into his steady chest, a tiny spark of an idea popped into my head. At the moment I was too busy dealing with my emotions, the ever-present sorrow and guilt entwined with the security and joy that flowed through my veins.
Only later, when I lay safely curled beneath the sheets of my bed did it blossom.
I was in love with Ash.
And though I would always miss my mother, I knew I could rely on him to love me back. My old balance was gone. I wasn't the icy girl who was afraid of friendship anymore. I was myself, and I was glad.
That was all more than twenty years ago. I can still remember it like it was yesterday, though. No, I didn't simply "become myself" after a tearful embrace. I battled depression and security issues for much of my teenage life, and still do. Ash and I didn't live "happily ever after" either. We did get married when I was twenty two and he was twenty five. And we were very happy. But it didn't last forever, nor should it. We have the same ups and downs as anyone.
But we love each other, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
]]FIN. |
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