Living With Perfection
(A/N: Just a short story I wrote one day out of boredom.....and believe me, I know loads about "living with perfection". Most of the other characters in this story are based on people that I know in real life. Anyhoo, this is mine, I didn't steal it, so please give me some common courtesy and do the same for me. R/R if you'd like.)
"Really, Sarah," sneered one of the two that she called the Perfect Twins. You never could tell which one, but whoever it was, whether it be Angelica or Cassandra, she was perfect: tall and thing, blonde and blue-eyed, and incredibly beautiful. She belonged in a Renaissance painting of angels, except for a certain gleam of cruelty behind her sapphire eyes. "Don't you ever get sick of being different?"
The one called Sarah flinched and looked down. It was nothing new, these questions, these taunts. She was never good enough for any of the others, and never would be. She was too short, too plain, too brunette. She let her mahogany-dark hair fall across her face as she continued walking, appearing to not have even heard the Perfect Twin's question.
"Hello! I was talking to you!" called the annoyingly perfect tones. Sarah felt a jerk on her backpack and was facing the Perfect Twin suddenly, looking into those beautiful features. Sarah glared, a facial twist involving the lowering of thick, dark lashes over her gold-brown eyes before turning and walking again. The Perfect Twin didn't pursue, apparently tired of the daily game of insulting the outcast.
That's what I am, Sarah thought suddenly, cresting a small hill. The outcast.
She walked through seas of golden leaves, fallen from the ancient trees that bordered the streets of her town. If you could call it hers. The townsfolk had rejected her ages ago, like a too-small fish from a fishing vessel that left the ports on the other side of town daily. Small-town New England was not a very accepting place. You either fit in or you didn't, and it was hard to live if you didn't.
She glanced up at the church as she passed, like always. The sturdy white clapboard structure, its steeple rising as though to pierce the sky, to catch a cloud on its very vertex, was meant to be a sanctuary. Even there, she was taunted. "Witch" was her nickname at school and at the church, although she could always pretend not to hear.
Without realizing it, she had arrived home. She stood in her driveway and checked the mailbox, like always, and there was never anything there. Her older sisters always were home first; ever since their sixteenth birthday, they had driven to and from school.
Maybe that was why she found Angelica and Cassandra so perfect. Her own sisters were twins, bright-eyed, golden-haired twins, as beautiful, accomplished, and perfect as the Smallbrook twins were. Samantha, oldest of the two by a few minutes, was a cellist, and wonderful Angela had a beautiful soprano voice, making her the pinnacle of the school's chamber singers. Next to them, Sarah stood out like a sore thumb.
She kept her eyes down as she climbed the stairs and turned to the right, not noticing the beautiful décor of the house. Her parents were accomplished, her mother a lawyer, her father a doctor, and she knew that they often wondered what had happened to their third daughter, what little mistake in the gene pool had merited her to be born to them. She was altogether too dark for this glowing, golden family.
She opened the door to her room and stepped inside, closing the door quietly. She should begin her homework, that she knew, even if she was hopeless at schoolwork and would never be brilliant. Brilliant like her sisters, like her parents, like the Perfect Smallbrook Twins.
She fell backwards onto her bed, reaching for the notebook that sat on her desk as she did so. She had the smallest room in the house. If she wanted to, she could all but stand in the middle and touch all four walls merely by turning this way and that. The twins had the master bedroom, because there were two of them, and her parents took the smaller room. She had always suspected that her room had been meant as a linen closet.
She sighed, pushing her hair out of her face as she turned over onto her stomach. She looked up, studied herself in the mirror over her bed. She wasn't exceptionally pretty, her face being too round and her nose too short. She was too thin, some said that she resembled an anemic skeleton. Her skin was free of blemishes, her lips too short and full. The only thing she truly liked about her was her eyes, and that was because they were different. They had provoked the "witch" label to begin with.
Her hair was straight as a pin and thick, long and thick, convenient for hiding behind. She did so often. As for the rest of her...she was too short four fourteen, at least, too short for her town, where everyone her age was at least five foot five and up. She was a measly five one, and looked like she was only eleven or twelve, body-wise. She was skinny enough to be. Not slender, like the Perfect Twins...skinny, like a scarecrow.
"Maybe if I was good at something....maybe then it wouldn't be so horrible," she said to herself, glancing at her hands. Her nails were short and square, and she had painted them with devil-may-care red polish...another thing that pointed her out as different. Pastels and sparkles were in this year, not fast strokes of bright colors, brighter in the sunlight that never seemed to stop shining.
Sometimes she wanted to cry. What business did the world have with being happy and wonderfully, wonderfully perfect when she was here...so imperfect, so...different. She didn't sing, like Angela, or play an instrument in sad, low notes like Samantha. Not that Samantha was ever sad or low. Both of them were happy enough, beautiful enough, radiant enough to make up for Sarah.
She wrote sometimes, but was afraid to show anyone her sacred writings. What she wrote was her soul, her passion, her one true love. Any other person wouldn't understand the mournful pieces, the meaningless fan-fiction, the laughing parodies. She viewed her classmates as illiterate fools; none of them shared her passion for literature. They didn't understand the emotions of writing, the many meanings of words. English, Sarah though grimly, is the only class I do well in.
Not excel, like Samantha and Angela, or like Cassandra and Angelica. She wasn't athletic, like beautiful, popular Jessica. She wasn't an actress, like bubbly and amusing Rosa. She wasn't friendly and perky, like Tanya, or the class clown, like Beth. She wasn't even the jaded, twisted Goth, like Jasmine ("Jazz").
Every self-help book on the shelves says to be yourself, to be an individual. But individualism doesn't hold in a small town that is set in its ways and always will be. It's unacceptable for a young girl to dream, a young girl who isn't exactly pretty and isn't very talented. It isn't right for that girl to dream of the day she could leave, somehow, go to college thousands of miles away, live in a large, impersonal city where nobody would know her.
If she thought about it, she could conclude that she liked being different. But she was far too different to fit in. She should have accepted that by now, she thought to herself. She was a freshman....time for fresh beginnings, but it's difficult to get them where everyone knows one another, where everyone has always known one another. Where there isn't a soul who will forget.
She stood and walked to her one window, kneeling and leaning against the sill on her elbows. Her fifteenth birthday was next week. The family would remember, would gather and give her gifts that every fifteen-year-old girl should want. Should want. She laughed bitterly. Not this girl.
This girl didn't exactly know what she wanted, but she knew that it wasn't what others wanted, would never be what others wanted. "I want acceptance," she decided, speaking in a low, firm voice. But you can't box acceptance, tie it up with shiny ribbon and a pastel bow, the card taped to the top. 'Just what you've always wanted,' the card would read. 'Just what you've always needed.'
She hated that want, that need, that desire to be one of them. She hated it with every bone in her body, just as she loathed algorithms and cute, perky, sweater-and-skirt sets. But she knew by now that she would never be one of them. She knew it as she stood and walked across to lock her door. She would remain as she was, spinning stories, weaving yarns, dreaming poetry, until one day the Blind opened their eyes and Saw her as she was.
And until then, she decided, she'd take one thing at a time.
(A/N: Just a short story I wrote one day out of boredom.....and believe me, I know loads about "living with perfection". Most of the other characters in this story are based on people that I know in real life. Anyhoo, this is mine, I didn't steal it, so please give me some common courtesy and do the same for me. R/R if you'd like.)
"Really, Sarah," sneered one of the two that she called the Perfect Twins. You never could tell which one, but whoever it was, whether it be Angelica or Cassandra, she was perfect: tall and thing, blonde and blue-eyed, and incredibly beautiful. She belonged in a Renaissance painting of angels, except for a certain gleam of cruelty behind her sapphire eyes. "Don't you ever get sick of being different?"
The one called Sarah flinched and looked down. It was nothing new, these questions, these taunts. She was never good enough for any of the others, and never would be. She was too short, too plain, too brunette. She let her mahogany-dark hair fall across her face as she continued walking, appearing to not have even heard the Perfect Twin's question.
"Hello! I was talking to you!" called the annoyingly perfect tones. Sarah felt a jerk on her backpack and was facing the Perfect Twin suddenly, looking into those beautiful features. Sarah glared, a facial twist involving the lowering of thick, dark lashes over her gold-brown eyes before turning and walking again. The Perfect Twin didn't pursue, apparently tired of the daily game of insulting the outcast.
That's what I am, Sarah thought suddenly, cresting a small hill. The outcast.
She walked through seas of golden leaves, fallen from the ancient trees that bordered the streets of her town. If you could call it hers. The townsfolk had rejected her ages ago, like a too-small fish from a fishing vessel that left the ports on the other side of town daily. Small-town New England was not a very accepting place. You either fit in or you didn't, and it was hard to live if you didn't.
She glanced up at the church as she passed, like always. The sturdy white clapboard structure, its steeple rising as though to pierce the sky, to catch a cloud on its very vertex, was meant to be a sanctuary. Even there, she was taunted. "Witch" was her nickname at school and at the church, although she could always pretend not to hear.
Without realizing it, she had arrived home. She stood in her driveway and checked the mailbox, like always, and there was never anything there. Her older sisters always were home first; ever since their sixteenth birthday, they had driven to and from school.
Maybe that was why she found Angelica and Cassandra so perfect. Her own sisters were twins, bright-eyed, golden-haired twins, as beautiful, accomplished, and perfect as the Smallbrook twins were. Samantha, oldest of the two by a few minutes, was a cellist, and wonderful Angela had a beautiful soprano voice, making her the pinnacle of the school's chamber singers. Next to them, Sarah stood out like a sore thumb.
She kept her eyes down as she climbed the stairs and turned to the right, not noticing the beautiful décor of the house. Her parents were accomplished, her mother a lawyer, her father a doctor, and she knew that they often wondered what had happened to their third daughter, what little mistake in the gene pool had merited her to be born to them. She was altogether too dark for this glowing, golden family.
She opened the door to her room and stepped inside, closing the door quietly. She should begin her homework, that she knew, even if she was hopeless at schoolwork and would never be brilliant. Brilliant like her sisters, like her parents, like the Perfect Smallbrook Twins.
She fell backwards onto her bed, reaching for the notebook that sat on her desk as she did so. She had the smallest room in the house. If she wanted to, she could all but stand in the middle and touch all four walls merely by turning this way and that. The twins had the master bedroom, because there were two of them, and her parents took the smaller room. She had always suspected that her room had been meant as a linen closet.
She sighed, pushing her hair out of her face as she turned over onto her stomach. She looked up, studied herself in the mirror over her bed. She wasn't exceptionally pretty, her face being too round and her nose too short. She was too thin, some said that she resembled an anemic skeleton. Her skin was free of blemishes, her lips too short and full. The only thing she truly liked about her was her eyes, and that was because they were different. They had provoked the "witch" label to begin with.
Her hair was straight as a pin and thick, long and thick, convenient for hiding behind. She did so often. As for the rest of her...she was too short four fourteen, at least, too short for her town, where everyone her age was at least five foot five and up. She was a measly five one, and looked like she was only eleven or twelve, body-wise. She was skinny enough to be. Not slender, like the Perfect Twins...skinny, like a scarecrow.
"Maybe if I was good at something....maybe then it wouldn't be so horrible," she said to herself, glancing at her hands. Her nails were short and square, and she had painted them with devil-may-care red polish...another thing that pointed her out as different. Pastels and sparkles were in this year, not fast strokes of bright colors, brighter in the sunlight that never seemed to stop shining.
Sometimes she wanted to cry. What business did the world have with being happy and wonderfully, wonderfully perfect when she was here...so imperfect, so...different. She didn't sing, like Angela, or play an instrument in sad, low notes like Samantha. Not that Samantha was ever sad or low. Both of them were happy enough, beautiful enough, radiant enough to make up for Sarah.
She wrote sometimes, but was afraid to show anyone her sacred writings. What she wrote was her soul, her passion, her one true love. Any other person wouldn't understand the mournful pieces, the meaningless fan-fiction, the laughing parodies. She viewed her classmates as illiterate fools; none of them shared her passion for literature. They didn't understand the emotions of writing, the many meanings of words. English, Sarah though grimly, is the only class I do well in.
Not excel, like Samantha and Angela, or like Cassandra and Angelica. She wasn't athletic, like beautiful, popular Jessica. She wasn't an actress, like bubbly and amusing Rosa. She wasn't friendly and perky, like Tanya, or the class clown, like Beth. She wasn't even the jaded, twisted Goth, like Jasmine ("Jazz").
Every self-help book on the shelves says to be yourself, to be an individual. But individualism doesn't hold in a small town that is set in its ways and always will be. It's unacceptable for a young girl to dream, a young girl who isn't exactly pretty and isn't very talented. It isn't right for that girl to dream of the day she could leave, somehow, go to college thousands of miles away, live in a large, impersonal city where nobody would know her.
If she thought about it, she could conclude that she liked being different. But she was far too different to fit in. She should have accepted that by now, she thought to herself. She was a freshman....time for fresh beginnings, but it's difficult to get them where everyone knows one another, where everyone has always known one another. Where there isn't a soul who will forget.
She stood and walked to her one window, kneeling and leaning against the sill on her elbows. Her fifteenth birthday was next week. The family would remember, would gather and give her gifts that every fifteen-year-old girl should want. Should want. She laughed bitterly. Not this girl.
This girl didn't exactly know what she wanted, but she knew that it wasn't what others wanted, would never be what others wanted. "I want acceptance," she decided, speaking in a low, firm voice. But you can't box acceptance, tie it up with shiny ribbon and a pastel bow, the card taped to the top. 'Just what you've always wanted,' the card would read. 'Just what you've always needed.'
She hated that want, that need, that desire to be one of them. She hated it with every bone in her body, just as she loathed algorithms and cute, perky, sweater-and-skirt sets. But she knew by now that she would never be one of them. She knew it as she stood and walked across to lock her door. She would remain as she was, spinning stories, weaving yarns, dreaming poetry, until one day the Blind opened their eyes and Saw her as she was.
And until then, she decided, she'd take one thing at a time.