Allison Fae

September 22nd, 2022

Mrs. Fowler

ELA

When I Grow Up

Questions are like islands—often they form much larger pictures when placed in context of one another. Islands, too, paint a much larger planetary picture when viewed from an outside perspective. Although in the case of questions you don’t need a fancy rocket-ship in order to get that outside view—you just need to be honest with yourself. Inhabitants of a single one of these metaphorical islands may come to believe that theirs is the only piece of land on the entirety of the globe without this outside view. Questions are also similar in this fashion to islands.

Often I find myself asking questions about myself—focusing on the ones right in front of me—those most pertinent to my current situation or issues that I’m facing—without taking a look at the grander scale of how those questions relate to who I am. ‘What do I want to be when I grow up?’ was one of the first questions that I began to ask myself in this new way. Although it is on the surface a pretty easy question to answer—I could simply give a cliché like princess or queen of the world, but I don’t want to. I couldn’t honestly give answers like that without sounding like I’m ten years younger than I really am. I wasn’t able to look at myself outside of the day I had thought of it, but now I think I’m at a place in my life where I have the answer to that question.

My name is Allison K. Fae and I am thirteen years old. I understand that thirteen isn’t the typical age where one has their life figured out—it isn’t terribly old to do anything, really—but it’s old enough to wake up in a cold sweat from a terrible nightmare. One so terrifying that you’re running from a monster which is just so close to getting you until it doesn’t. I believe that if I’m old to have those kinds of dreams I’m old enough to wonder about my life past where I am now.

Especially if those kinds of dreams wake me up with sweat beading down my face and I realize that horror ringing through my bones like I’m tuning some instrument ringing out in the distance. The feeling of dread that immediately passes as I wake up; the feeling I in that single moment can almost hold in my hands. It’s not just fear: joy, anger, sadness, betrayal, and many more I could spend pages attempting to describe them fully.

It was like some magical switch was flipped on inside my brain and everything I began to feel I felt more of. I felt the feeling of feeling. I wanted to tell people about it—to share what it had felt like. I knew that if I tried to tell it to just anybody and everybody I’d find some way to muddle the message. There had to be some way I could get my point across.

When I grow up I want to be a writer. I want to give people all those same kinds of feelings that I feel, and I want to do it with my best friend, Jace. Okay, well, he’s not real, just an idea of a person I get in my head, but the things I feel when I imagine all the adventures he could go on or the things he could teach people makes me feel like I really have a job to do in this world. Is that weird? It might be.

Sometimes I wonder about all the questions in life, the ones that I find myself asking more and more each day. Where are you going to live after you’re an adult? What kind of person are you going to be? Will you be married? All of these questions were so far away and so large…so dangerous. They don’t have to be that way, just like any island; they can be tackled if one has a boat and the will to sail, no matter the size. Jace is my boat. The person who isn’t really a person I travel to all the different questions with, explore, adventure.

The topic of this paper was a single question, but I feel answering with a single answer was too...limiting. I wouldn’t have been able to give the fullest answer that I could have. No single answer to a single question, yet with a stream of answers the answer to the original question becomes almost obvious. It’s paradoxical but yet simple. It is a simple answer; I want to be a writer, but not just a writer. I want to inspire, I want to make people feel things, and I want to see where Jace goes in his journeys. I want to see what he wants to do when he grows up. I’m sure in time he’ll find his own voice to tell me.

~…~

“You sound like you’re trying way too hard to sound smart.” Jace tossed it back on the desk and hopped off the desk and on his feet. He looked up toward Ally, “Are you sure that’s what you want to hand in today? I’m sure you could add some bits at the end about how I get to slay the dragon and get the girl in the end,” he gave off a sly grin. “I mean…it is less depressing than your last one.”

Ally was stuffing her backpack beside him. She took the paper in her hands and looked it over once more. Her eyes darted to Jace subconsciously then returned to the paper, “Yeah. I’m all set. Besides, you’re not that kind of hero. Slaying a dragon is thirty years past due.”

“Seems less dramatic if there’s no dragon fight in the paper if you ask me.”

“Well, I didn’t ask you. You just stumbled in and thought you’d give your opinion.”

“Technically,” he chuckled and dropped his head so that his golden hair bounced in front of his eyes, “...my opinions are your opinions. So they’re always asked for.”

“Not exactly, and you know that.” She slid the paper into her folder and then the folder into the bag as well. “Besides, you’re going to get your adventures, just you wait. I just have to...” she looked out the window to the falling leaves and the rising sun, the beauty of it took the words from her. Jace snapped twice in front of her and brought her back. “Oh—what? I’m sorry...I have to go through my own little adventure here called school.”

“You used that excuse last week,” Jace crossed his arms and blew his hair up. He shook his head, “Just make sure it is heroic, okay?”

Ally smiled softly, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” This made him grin. She saw how the smile made his blue eyes glimmer. She’d have to remember that detail for later.

“You should try to relax or something. If anything gets you down just fight your way out of it.” He grinned once more flashing his teeth and then he was gone in an instant. Ally knew he wasn’t really ever there. He was just a character that she made up in her own head, but she couldn’t help but let him come out when loneliness struck. She’d spent almost eight years with him even before fully knowing his name. He told her in a dream once, Jace Starr. Originally Ally hated the last name having two ‘r’s in it, but he was pretty persuasive in his own right.

“C’mon, it’d be a hero’s name!” He strutted in an almost peacock fashion. “You know it’s just right for me.”

Ally was left standing in her room holding her backpack. She couldn’t get her mind off of it. Yeah...fight my way out of it. Only problem is I can’t really fight my way out of my problems. Ally had been abandoned on the doorstep of a troubled married couple thirteen years ago. She bounced from foster home to foster home until just a few months before this current morning she was adopted by the Fae family. The couple had their own difficulties conceiving children on their own so it had been fate that Ally came into their lives.

Jaclyn and George Fae were kind enough people and they were certainly understanding with her situation—patient and willing to help her adjust. Ally still felt off about the whole situation. It wasn’t ever a feeling she could describe if asked. What she wasn’t able to say Jace was more than willing to do for her.

“You’re scared of getting attached,” he echoed. “You don’t want to get comfortable only for them to ship you off like every other foster home.”

She supposed that sounded right. It hurt her heart thinking it. Plus, there were people who lived much less fortunate lives, so I have no reason to complain. Now she stood thirteen years old, blonde hair almost mirroring Jace’s shade, but hers crawled down her back whereas Jace’s grew out thicker than it did long. Grew...funny word for someone who didn’t grow at all.

Jace would always say that he wore the blond better. Of course, she made him think this so of course she agreed. She felt that everything looked better on him—he was in some ways modeled after her own image. Of course he was more warrior-like and the opposite gender, but he shared her blonde hair and blue eyes.

She pulled herself out of her thoughts. Tricky things those thoughts could be...they were like arms veiled in black pits, grabbing at her legs that tried with all their might to drag her down into pain and misery. And then all at once she tripped and fell down into the depths of memories. This particular veiled arm was the smell of her coat—it pulled back memories of her first day at her new school with the intensity of a branding iron. The coat was a gift from her current foster parents. George Fae had mentioned that autumn in Maine could be absolutely brutal.

“The wind is just killer on yer ‘ands there,” he bellowed out. George was a better safe than sorry kind of guy that had been cranked up to eleven. He told Ally that safety and security were two of his big ‘S’s. Jaclyn joked that the third was his stomach.

Ally wasn’t laughing by the time she made it to Nasseu Middle School. Ally had learned early that kids that blended in the crowd were typically the safest from humiliation. Obviously humiliation could come and knock on anybody’s door, but the most of it could be avoided by lying under the radar.

Ally was not popular at any of the previous schools she had gone to, nor was she well liked. Most people believe that they are kind to all they meet, but the truth was that most people were unkind to at least someone. Ally tended to be that someone more often than not. She spent plenty of time seeing the same formulas repeat in each of the student bodies: The jocks looked similar, the nerds looked similar—everything looked similar. There was some cross-over every now and then like how Bangor Middle School had her grade filled with athletes were already competing to be their class’s valedictorian. Even if the dots weren’t dotted in the exact same places the lines were all the same.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“It’s your fault you know. Lack of interest in your student life isn’t much an excuse.” Jace remanded her. “If you want to be liked you have to get a bit uncomfortable.”

She ignored him...knowing right well that he was perfectly right. Well, he would be right if the game she had to play were fair in any sense of the word. No, the game was not fair. All the other kids had known that before they left their diapers. There were people that had to try harder—do more just to get back to even. There are people who had to try their very hardest just to get the bare minimum. Ally had almost perfected the art of not attracting attention. She blended in wonderfully.

Now, all of this was wonderful until she factored in George Fae’s wonderful sense of safety and security. She walked into Nasseu Middle School September 4th with a coat that was suited for helping soldiers through a Russian winter.

“Just don’t wear the coat.” Jace said, “I don’t see why you had to in the first place,” Jace said.

I couldn’t say no...saying no meant you were disagreeing with someone and if you disagreed with them you could have a fight with them. If you fought with them they threw you out on the street. If that happens I live nowhere and die. I die, Jace.

“You’re not going to die.”

“Sure I will. Everyone does.”

“Even me?”

“Eventually. If I go, you go.”

“That’s unsettling. What if I go but you don’t?”

“I don’t think that’s even possible.”

No, I couldn’t say no to the coat. It was too kind of them. I knew it was too hot outside; I’m not dumb, just…sad. Nobody else was wearing anything remotely winter apparel by the time I walked in through those doors the first time. So by the first seconds of my new school I had stuck out like a sore thumb. Worse—I was like a toothache during thanksgiving dinner.

Ally had seen the looks that the other kids were giving her. Each person that passed turned to stare bent every fiber in my being choked up all at once and kept screaming. It wasn’t Jace’s voice. It was my own voice but louder. TAKE THE COAT OFF. JUST YANK IT OFF RIGHT NOW. I knew of every single person’s eyes that turned around to me. I could tell you exactly what color each of them was in those few seconds as I passed them. Details like that stick out to me. I also remember exactly how sweaty I got inside the coat. I was nervous from each person that looked at me and then I got nervous from my voice shouting inside. Then I got nervous because I wasn’t doing anything about either of them.

Ally was deadlocked. Somehow, she managed to make it safe and sound to her assigned homeroom. Mr. Minch’s room smelt so heavily of garlic it made her eyes water the first few seconds of going in, but they quickly got used to the scent. It surprised her how quickly one could get used to that smell.

“What’s this here but a face I’ve never seen?” Mr. Minch sang from behind his desk. His voice was so poppy it lit up the eyes behind his round specs. His goatee was cut thin and he wore a Hawaiian shirt, which unfortunately he couldn’t have thought to wear an undershirt. He was balding near the top; the rest of what remained on the sides of his head was a dark brown.

“I...I’m Ally,” she said.

There wasn’t anyone else in the room just yet, and Ally let loose the breath she’d been holding from the hall. “Yes,” he picked up a clipboard from his desk. She could see his eyes scanned the board feverishly, “…Miss Fae, am I pronouncing that right?”

She nodded.

“Excellent.” He dropped the clipboard and it rattled on the desk. His hands clasped together and his lips pursed to a smile at the corners. “You’ll find that if you arrive on time to homeroom here you’re really just arriving early.” He shook his shoulders, “What can I say? Kids will be kids.”

“O…Oh…do you want me to leave and come back in?”

Mr. Minch laughed a hearty sound. He’d taken it as a joke, but she was serious.

“Looks like you and I will get along just fine, Miss Fae. I like a joke I think more than most around here. You can find a seat wherever you like. There’s no assigned seating for homeroom.”

Ally nodded. Quickly she moved her bag into a chair right beside her to try and play it off. She freed herself of the coat and felt like a vice had lifted off of her neck. Behind her the door opened again and people filled in; they looked at her as they entered, but nobody approached her. They sat closer to the front. Ally thanked them silently.

Homeroom began and Mr. Minch gathered everyone’s attention before the morning announcements and introduced Ally. She nodded and smiled awkwardly before turning red. The morning announcements cut them off and Ally sat down with her cheeks still red. Great…that was spectacular. It could have been so much worse…I have to keep telling herself that I’m just imagining everything. Nobody really cares that a new kid is here. Nobody‘s worrying as much as I am.

She just had to hope that people didn’t find out that she was an orphan. At least…until it became such a moot point that it didn’t matter. She has been through it all before...but hoped that it would be some time before it cropped up. Back in Bangor she lasted a month before the news got out. It was a good month.

The day started to be okay after homeroom. It was only a fifteen minute period before her first class—which for Ally was English with Mrs. Fowler. The room wasn’t too far from where she was already; just down the hall and a right at the fork. Second door on the left. She walked into an almost full room. It definitely took her by surprise considering how late everyone else was to homeroom. Mr. Minch was right about everybody not taking homeroom seriously.

Mrs. Fowler seemed to be Mr. Minch’s exact opposite. She was leaning on seventy against Mr. Minch’s middle age. Her hair was doll-like, white and cut short. Her eyes were beady and needed glasses as thick as the books stacked on her desk in order to see anything.

Inside the small poorly-lit room sat a boy in the far back of the room named Harrison Sellers; a turned hat kept his eyes out of view and his crossed arms suggested he was actually sleeping. Ally dared not call this bluff, she was sure he would bite her hand off if she tried anything. The hat turned down seemed definitely to be a stern no thank you.

In front of his seat was Carlos Kinney—a bit of a wild card, he was constantly getting into trouble. He was fluent in backtalk and sass. Next to Carlos were three people all in conversation with one another: Ashley Evans, Sidney Jameson, and Adam Everetts. Adam and Ashley were insufferably public about their love, but it was obvious even to Ally that Ashley seemed to wear the pants between the both of them. Adam was pretty dopey.

“Remind me never to make you act like that around a girl,” she thought to Jace.

“No problem. Hero’s got to hero first and foremost, know what I’m saying?”

Sidney Jameson was Ashley’s right hand. Anywhere Ashley went was where she was just like a lost dog. Sitting next to Sidney was Lillian Jones. She had reddish-brown hair tied up in a ponytail and more muscles than the two girls behind her combined. It was more than evidence that she was involved in some of the school’s sporting clubs. It turned out that this was true—volleyball was her passion through and through.

On the other side were twins, girls conjoined at the neck; each with dark brown hair pig-tailed-up with faces buried into a book on the table. They were Josephine and Rosemary Higgins. Even after attendance was taken Ally couldn’t be sure who was who.

Last at the front of the classroom were Aoi Landon and Derek Young. Aoi sat with black hair trimmed short and a warm smile on his face as Ally passed. He was the first kid to greet her without any strange looks on his face. Derek next to him had shaggy brown hair and a flawless face. The both of them together were dressed nicer than anyone else in the room; it was startling.

Ally picked the only open seat in the class which was just behind Lilly and next to Ashley. The class wasn’t much of anything. Ally knew that these first days were just transition days to get kids back used to being at school instead of enjoying the summer.

“Now I know that you’re all expecting,” Mrs. Fowler began. “You’re thinking that you’re going to float by this first month with no work. It may have been how you did things with your older teachers, but that is going to be different in my class.” She sat and waited for the class to groan or complain…no one did. Only blank stares responded. “We…” she cleared her throat, “are going to be starting up on a reading assignment. It’s not going to be anything too long, just something to get your brains to start cranking again.”

The groans filled the room now, but Ally still remained quiet. This was fine. The more people were focused on reading the less they could be on her. I just need to get through today so I can fix myself for tomorrow. Mrs. Fowler began passing around sheets of paper that were coated front-to-back with words. At the top she could see that it was one of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories—one that she hadn’t read, The Imp of the Perverse.

“Read this for the rest of the period. We’ll discuss its finer points in class tomorrow.” She finished handing out the sheets, stopping for an extra second and bent down as she gave the twins their sheets.

She whispered something and then stood back up. “I need to leave to go speak with Principal Herondale quick. I trust you’ll do your work.” She nodded, as if expecting them to answer back. “I’ll be back momentarily.” She made to head out of the room.

“Uh, Mrs. Fowler,” Sidney raised her hand. Mrs. Fowler stopped in her tracks as one hand held the door open. Her eyes darted back as if to respond. Sidney continued on, “…I don’t know what this word here means.” She pointed at the paper.

Mrs. Fowler stood still for a moment longer then turned her head quick, “Bring your questions tomorrow,” and walked out of the room, closing the door tight behind her.

Sidney was holding the paper still and now felt like a fool. She let it fall to the desk. “Well, fine then.” She grabbed her bag and threw it over her shoulder, standing up.

“Where are you going?” Aoi asked.

She shrugged her shoulders, “No teacher. No point. Might as well do something I like with the free period here.”

“What’s that?” Ally found herself asking. It slipped out before she realized what she had said.

Sidney’s eyes lowered and her face snarled up, “What does it have to do with you?” She turned back toward Ashley and Adam. “Well, come on you two, are you coming?”

Ashley shook her head, which was aimed down at the sheet on her desk. “Can’t. Promised my mom I’d get better grades this year. Maybe when I’ve secured them.”

Adam shrugged after her.

Sidney looked at them a second, relaxed, and then embarrassed sat back down. Her bag slid off her shoulder onto the ground and she too began to glance over the short story.

The tension in the room disappeared, but Ally still felt on edge. She could see Ashley had some social pull over Sidney; maybe it was some inferiority complex that she had going on. She looked as if she could be real mean, though. I’ll have to watch out around her. Ally turned to the sheet in front of her and started to read.