Mae shut the door behind her. Much to her surprise, her mother and father were both already in the living room. Her parents had divorced when she was about ten, and she didn’t see her mother very often.

“Sweetie,” her mother greeted her, rising and going to embrace Mae. Mae shrugged out of the hug. Years of brief and relatively meaningless contact would not be forgotten, no matter what the situation.

“You’re looking well,” her mother remarked, smiling kindly. “That haircut really suits you.”

“It’s the same hairstyle I’ve had for the past… uh… not sure how many years. If you were around more, maybe you’d have known that,” Mae said sharply. Her mother flinched, a pained look on her face.

“Mae,” her father said, quite displeased. “That is no way to treat your mother.”

“Well, she hasn’t been particularly good to me or LB or Louie either, so I guess we’re even,” Mae snapped.


“Mae, go to your room. I don’t want to see you until dinner,” her father said. “We’ll discuss your behavior after dinner.”

“Can’t wait,” Mae dryly replied, storming off to her room.

“Sorry about that, Whitney,” she heard her father say. “She’s taking everything rather hard.”

“I can understand that, but still, it hurts to hear my own daughter speak to me like that.”


Mae sighed and flopped onto her bed. Parents! They can be so unreasonable sometimes! she thought, rather childishly.

“Fine,” she muttered to herself. “I might as well take a shower while I wait for Mommy Dearest and Wise Poppa Smurf to finish discussing Delinquent Oldest Child, while neglecting Freakazoid Middle Child and Nerdboy Youngest Child. It‘s a miracle that Louie is so normal. Then again, he did have two older siblings to observe so he knew what not to do in life.”


Mae rose from her bed and walked to the bathroom connected to her bedroom. She shut the door, locking it behind her. She disrobed, letting her clothes fall haphazardly onto the tile floor. She wiped the makeup off of her face-- a normal pre-shower ritual for her-- and examined her reflection in the mirror briefly, frowning in displeasure at her appearance. “I look like a boy without makeup,” she muttered. “A boy with a semi-decent rack.”


With a sigh, she turned from her reflection, stepped into the shower, turned the water on full-blast, and tipped her face up to the spray, her eyes closed tightly. Out of nowhere, the memory came. The memory. Mae bowed her head, sobbing, letting the tears flow freely.


“Guess what!” Ophelia declared, bounding into the clubhouse. Mae lowered her gaze from the ceiling-- in increasingly poor condition, with cracks in it that she meant to have repaired but never actually got around to-- to Ophelia. Ophelia was positively glowing.

“You look happy,” Mae remarked, smiling. “What’s up?”

Ophelia grinned broadly. “I’m going to the winter formal,” she said.

“I thought you called it an antiquated mating ritual. What changed your mind?” Mae asked. She grinned. “Is that my Ophelia in there, or did some alien do a poor cloning job?”

Ophelia laughed. “Nah, it’s me. Cyrus asked me.”

The smile rapidly left Mae’s face. “…He what?”

“He asked me to go to Winter Formal with him, and I said would.”


Mae leapt to her feet. “Why, Ophelia?” she asked. “Damn it, why did you have to go and do that?”

“Because I like him. You’ve had years to act on your feelings, and you’ve done nothing. I figured… I thought that since you weren’t going to do anything, it would be okay…” Ophelia said hesitantly.

Mae drew a sharp breath. “You are so cruel,” she finally said.

Ophelia stared Mae straight in the eye. “I don’t regret ‘stealing’ him from you. You must hate me for being like this. But…”

Mae bit her lip, trying to control herself. “Get out of here, Ophelia,” she said hoarsely.

“Why? Why can’t we just talk this out?”

“Get the hell out of here!” Mae screamed. Ophelia flinched.

“Fine,” Ophelia said softly.

“And don’t ever f**king come back in here, ever!”

“Whatever.”

“And by the way, Ophelia… there’s no such thing as miracles!”


But by then, Ophelia was out of the yard. Mae sank back down onto the lounge chair, the tears running down her face. She knew that by that evening, she would end up calling Ophelia and apologizing. Mae bowed her head, trying to regain control of herself, and as she did so, with a brief crack and a sprinkling of dust, a small piece of the ceiling came loose and landed in her lap.



Mae huddled up in her shower, trembling, the tears still running down her face. “Yes,” she whispered. “I do hate you, in a way. And yet…”