short story (Rebecca H.)

Hastily thrown-together outline of a story... Let me know what you think it needs more (or less) of, I guess. Thanks.


Mary wanted her Dad all to herself. She didn't know what to do with herself at home when he wasn't there, feeling unwelcome in every room, even the empty ones. Her Mom was almost always home and almost always silent. She'd spend big stretches of time buried in crossword puzzles or staring out the window. At one such time Mary asked her Mom what she was thinking. "Wondering if I should sell you to the gypsies," she said. "They came by when you were at school, gave me a good offer." She wasn't smiling.

Mary ran to her room and cried all afternoon. She repeated her Mom's story to her Dad, who laughed and said "yes, you be a good little girl and listen to your mother" and told her stories of gypsy children traveling the country in rickety vans to dance in the streets for tourist money. He made her threatened fate sound both scary and fun and he punctuated the stories with tickles 'til she laughed so hard she could barely talk as she begged him to stop. That night when she tried to sleep, though, she couldn't stop thinking about how her parents' stories more or less matched, couldn't stop feeling that was somehow her fault.

Her older sister Jenny never got this treatment. Her Mom talked to her and even occasionally smiled while doing so. Teachers at school treated Mary with this same double standard, joking with the other kids while shooing her away like some pesky dog. She wondered what was wrong with her. She studied the other kids, how they moved, how they talked, what they wore. Laura Tenenbaum had lovely blonde ringlets that gleamed in the sun and shook when she laughed. Missy Edwards always had a rapt audience when she showed pictures of her prize-winning border collie. Tina Smith won a statewide competition for her flute playing and got to leave Algebra early to go to private lessons.

Mary kept careful notes on who stood out and why. Slowly she endeavored to obtain these qualities herself. She stole a chunk of Laura's hair, the collar from Missy's dog, snuck into Tina's flute case and plucked off a handful of keys. These items, along with similar talismans from other classmates, she placed on an old sewing mannequin in her room that her Mom no longer wanted, claiming there'd be no one to sew school dance dresses for any more. Mary gazed lovingly at her growing collection every night, felt like she was piecing together the perfect self. Before bed she'd place a blanket over it so to her Mom the whole thing just looked emblematic of her messy room, of a neglected interest in sewing.

Her secret ritual made her feel more powerful. She started talking back to her Mom and to teachers. The other kids treated her with a "hands off" respect that they hadn't before. She started hanging out with boys who threw cherry bombs in the school toilets. She felt fearless and tough and alive. That is, until the new girl, Andrea Brent, ripped a chunk from her hair one day.