“Why would you want to put yourself through something like that?”
I stare fixedly at my dinner. I’m used to hearing that line and others like them. Like a robot, I raise a forkful of mashed potatoes to my mouth, insert, chew, swallow, lower the utensil for more; over and over, until only a small mound of white blobby food remains on my plate.
“I mean, life is difficult enough already. Why add to it?”
“Attention, probably. It usually is with ponies like that.”
The last mound is full of lumps. One slides off and plops into the gravy I have pushed to one side. I hate gravy. Yet every time we have this meal, my mother ladles it over my food. I push my plate away and set the fork on the side, the way polite little ponies indicate they have finished eating.
“May I please be excused?”
My parents blink at me. My request has interrupted their conversation. I think they might have forgotten I’m even here. My mother’s eyes flick to my plate and her lips purse at the food I’ve left, but she nods anyway. Gratefully, I get down from my chair, tuck it under the table and carry my plate, glass and cutlery to the kitchen. They go back to their conversation before I’ve even left the room.
“I mean really. What did he expect would happen? I really do reckon he’s just doing it for attention. Career slump and all that. He’s not getting as much work as he used to and now, he’s all anyone can talk about.”
“His poor wife. She’s the one I feel sorriest for in all this –”
The rest is cut off by the slosh of water in the sink as I rinse my plate and set it on the draining board. I make my way upstairs, trying not to hear anything more from their conversation, but a few snippets slip through.
“… the betrayal …”
“… think you know a pony …”
“… why would you choose to be-”
I smother the last one with my bedroom door but it’s no use; I know what the rest of that question is. For a moment I stare at the door, all four hooves jittering against the floor. I was raised to be polite. I have never once bucked anything in my life but right now I want nothing more than to buck that door off its hinges. I want to run back downstairs and yell: Because it’s not a choice! Nopony chooses to be different! Nopony chooses to make themselves a target! Nopony wants to NOT fit in! Nopony chooses to be a freak! Why would anyone choose that? It’s not a choice! It’s just the way they are!
The strength goes out of my limbs. I’m lying to myself. That’s not what I want to say to them. I allow my head to dip and the truth to breathe.
It’s just the way I am.
I’m never going to tell them.
I flop onto my bed, spend a few moments staring at the perfect white cornices of the ceiling and then roll onto my front. I bury my head in my pillow, biting down on words I’ll never say out loud, even muffled and by myself. When I was a little filly, I once cheeked my mother when I thought she couldn’t hear and the results were … explosive. I never want to see that side of her again. Her angry face from back then swims into my thoughts, alongside other scraps of memory.
“Stupid girl! You stupid, stupid girl! Don’t you dare talk to me that way or I’ll –”
My face gets hot but I don’t ease up from the pillow. Vaguely, a part of my brain wonders whether it’s possible to suffocate like this.
That particular thought path is a dangerous one. I’ve travelled down that one before. I don’t want to go back there.
I raise my face with a gasp, roll off the bed and reflexively un-enchant the shoebox under it. When enchanted, it is invisible to everypony who does not already know it is there and impenetrable even to those who do. Only my magic can bring it out, open the lid and look at its contents. It’s a spell I learned at school and one which my parents never learned.
School. They were so proud when I got into Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. It was something worth bragging about after the shame of my sister flunking out of Trottingham University. I was happy too. I got so much attention when I passed the entrance exam; my parents lavished me with days out to museums, art galleries, orchestra symphonies, plus lots of social occasions at which they would introduce me to ponies from work they hoped to impress. Their little magical prodigy was their proudest possession and they showed me off like I was carved from pure gold.
At least until I actually started at the school and realised I’d gone from being the smartest kid in my class to just one in a sea of smart kids, some of whom were much, much smarter than I was. I threw myself into my studies, determined to keep making them proud of me. Yet my gold began to feel like a veneer and I had to study harder and harder, longer and longer, just to feel like I was worthy of their pride compared with the other fillies and colts in my class. My life telescoped to nothing but work, work, work; yet no matter what I did, their smiles dimmed when they saw my report cards and asked what rank I had taken this time. I was never first in my class, always second, and that fact crushed down on my time until there was no more room for museums, art galleries or symphonies, just studying and fighting to take back my place at the top and make them proud of me again. I had value, damn it! I would make them see I had value!
Except I never did take the top spot every again. We graduate soon and I’m not any closer than I was years ago with that first report card. And now I have fresh shames to add to that old one.
That shame spears through me like icicles dropping off a frozen roof as I look into the enchanted shoebox. Clippings from magazines should not inspire such feelings but these do. I brush a hoof across one wonderful, beautiful curve of a model to whom this photoshoot probably meant less than nothing. To me, however, this little shoe box is a treasure trove of discoveries about myself and hidden embarrassments at the truths the rest of the world can never know.
Never?
No, never.
My parents would …
I drop the clippings; throw them down, more accurately. My magic instead lifts the invitations, receipts and other detritus that represent months and months of meticulous planning. Order forms for space rental, music, catering, helium balloons, streamers, confetti and a million other things you don’t think about when you decide to throw a party. Ponies throw parties all the time. Throwing parties is easy, right?
Wrong.
This is my first and I am determined that it be perfect. Everything has to be perfect. Nothing less is acceptable.
Finally, I levitate out the most precious item in the box: a photo, posed years ago at the very start of my journey of discovery about myself. My very private journey. We all look so happy in it; snapped at random when none of us were posing or knew the camera was there. Spike’s thumb-claw is just visible in the corner, indicating he was the one behind it. I should thank him. I love this photo.
I’m never going to tell them.
But I might … I could … I think I want to tell … her.
This is stupid. We’re not going to be in school together anymore after graduation. We barely speak as it is. She’s always so busy with her private lessons. I probably mean nothing to her. She’s off with all those high-flying ponies at the castle now. No more room in her life for her old friends. We’ve all been drifting apart since Celestia chose her – over me, a traitorous voice in my brain whispers. I’m just as good, just as smart, just as dedicated, why wasn’t it me? Why was I left behind? Why don’t I have the same value? What’s wrong with me? Is it because I don’t fit in? Because I’m different? Because I’m wrong? Because I’m a freak? Because I’m a sick twisted deviant –
I bite down on my bottom lip. The pain jolts me from the self-destructive thoughts before they can properly take root.
But wasn’t that my thinking when I first started planning this party? To bring us all back together again, once more time, to spark up the old friendship we let wane with time and distance? The others said it was a good idea. They promised they’d make room in their schedules to come and that they’d remind her to attend as well. Friendships are hard to maintain when you don’t see each other every day. That’s what the books say. You have to make more of an effort when convenience isn’t just given to you by your circumstances.
My circumstances have reduced down to living at home with my parents, searching for a job for after graduation and trying not to let depression swallow me up like a giant mouth full of sharp, bright, knife-like teeth. I didn’t make enough connections at school. I don’t have the avenues other ponies do. My studies haven’t served me half as well as them. So I need to try harder, study harder, give myself new skills that I can use to get work and get out of this place.
Because if I have to sit through one more dinner listening to my parents and not being able to speak out in case they realise …
I wince and carefully replace the photo of all of us around a table, put the lid back on the shoebox and cast the enchantment again before sliding it under my bed. I might not be so painstaking, if not for my mother’s habit of coming into my room when I’m not around and poking through my things under the pretence of cleaning. We have an earth pony who comes to clean twice a week. My mother has never picked up a duster in her life. Yet when I was in my second year at Celestia’s School I came home to find her sitting at the dining room table, waiting for me, a book in front of her turned so I would see the title when I walked in.
“We don’t read filth like this in my house. What? Well I don’t care if it was for a school assignment! I will speak with your teacher about the appropriateness of the texts he chooses for his class, if that’s the case. It’s utter nonsense that children should be exposed to such deviant values as if they’re at all acceptable. What could Princess Celestia be thinking, employing someone like that? I shall contact the school immediately.”
I used to like Mr Purview. He took time off from work after my mother’s strongly worded letter. He’s back now but he doesn’t smile as much anymore and he doesn’t run any extra-curricular clubs anymore. I recognise what it’s like to see the joy drain from a pony after tangling with my mother. It’s how my sister looked the last time I saw her, dragging her pre-packed suitcase down to the cab waiting under a street light the night she left for the last time.
She lives in a cottage on the far side of Canterlot now. I need to go see her sometime. In secret, of course. My parents would be horrified to know I’m still speaking to her.
They would be horrified at a lot of the secrets I keep from them.
Sometimes, in my darkest moments, I think my mother suspects. When she looks at me with her perfectly plucked eyebrow raised in the way that makes me feel like I must have toilet paper stuck to my hoof or lettuce in my teeth, a fleeting panic grips me that she knows and is about to confront me with it. Images of my bags, already packed and out on the sidewalk, suffuse my brain, until I remember that she would never make such a public scene. Ponies remember the way they used to parade around their golden child. No, they’d sneak me and my tarnish out of their house before kicking me out of their lives.
I wish I was at school. At school, everything makes sense. If you follow the rules and get good grades, everything else falls into place. It’s outside school that the real problems lurk; when you realise that watching other ponies as they walk past, tails swaying, might mean more than you want it to. The social strata of most high schools doesn’t exist at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. But outside school …
Outside school you have to know ponies. You have to have connections. Your face has to fit. You have to fit. You have to be normal for ponies to accept you. Outside school, it doesn’t matter that you used to be the second-most intelligent pony of your entire cohort. It doesn’t matter that you’re going to give the graduation speech (because she doesn’t have time, too busy with Celestia’s special classes too busy being special and valued and loved for being exactly who she is). It doesn’t matter that you know more about magical theory than anypony else in Equestria – barring only two other ponies, one of whom is the princess. Ponies have to think you’re like them for you to get anywhere outside of school.
Maybe it’s different in cities other than Canterlot …
I’m never going to tell them the truth. Not my truth. Not the preciously guarded secret it took me so long to even put into words about myself. I’m never going to tell them.
But this party … maybe there, I can tell someone. I’ve only ever truly trusted one pony, after all. She would understand – or at the very least she wouldn’t out me to my parents and get me thrown onto the street. She has connections and she cares about me. She’s not great at showing it but the others assure me she still cares. Maybe she can help me find a safe way out from under them. Maybe she can help me find a way to live my truth. Maybe in secret but maybe … just maybe … I could live my truth openly, for everypony to see. Wouldn’t that be something? To not be afraid all the time? To know that ponies know and to not care? To not have them sneer at you like some kind of sick freak, like you don’t belong, like you’re not normal.
Maybe.
Or maybe she’ll just listen and that’ll be enough. Maybe I could go on keeping it a secret from everyone if just one other pony knows and … accepts me anyway.
The hope is a small flame but it burns in my chest as I look at the calendar and count down the days. Only three more. Three more days to the party. Three more days until all of us are back together again. I know she’s busy, but she wouldn’t let me down. She’ll come. I need her to be there. I need … her.
Three more days.
I can survive until then.