Media Miles // [Capitol]

The first clear memory she has, there are cameras peeping through the windows. She doesn't understand why her parents are arguing, their voices tight like the string she had wound around her chubby fist. She tugs, the other end wrapped around March's matching appendage. Media flexes her fist, bats it against March's. That's mine, she wants to say.

It's been ten years, Daddy says. We have to give them something or they'll keep circling.

His voice is charged and March won't release the end of the string, and just when she's about to cry out, something shatters. The window glass crashed into the living room, telephoto lens slipping in with the breeze. Media wails; March wails. They are a chorus of startled anxiety.

See?! Daddy demands, although Media doesn't. She tilts her head back, opens her throat wide, and screams, for the first time in her life. It isn't Mommy or Daddy that scoops her up, but one of the nannies, carrying her off to the nursery. On the ceiling, there is a castle on a cloud. It has always filled her dreams, the place where she, the little princess, will one day live.

That night, she tosses and turns. She cannot find her way through the familiar Castle passageways. That night, the Castle imprisons her.

###

Daddy comes home at bed time each night. She's tried crying; she's tried pleading. She needs her Daddy to read to her. It doesn't work; she never sees him in the daylight. So, she tries a new tactic. She arranges all of her teddy bears in a perfect row in front of her big girl bed. She tells March to stay away. This is her show, and these teddies are her audience.

When Daddy's keys ring in the hallway, she begins.

"Today I will read from book." She pats the picture book. "You all have to listen, okay?" She waits for the teddies to acknowledge her, and then cracks the first, wordless page.

"Once upon a time there was a little princess. She had a sister who liked to work in the kitchen. The little girl was a princess and her sister was her slave. They had a very pretty Mama and a very handsome Papa. But he was gone, disappeared by the evil witch."

She pitched her voice as high as possible, knowing that she could command her nurses from the kitchen if she yelled loud enough. The teddies respectfully didn't shush her, but her Daddy was more stubborn than her nurses. She had just learned that word, 'stubborn'. Nursie Carly said she was stubborn, so her Daddy must be too.

Media cleared her throat. "The evil witch took him away from the princess and slave and hid him. They looked everywhere. The princess was really nice to her slave sister so she took her along. They looked under rocks and in big houses and even went to the President's house!"

The teddies gasped.

Media giggled. "But he wasn't there! He disappeared forever. The end."

She clapped her book shut and gasped. Her Daddy in the doorway, his face all screwed up. "Media, who told you that story?"

She puffed out her chest. "I made it up allll by my own."

"I think that's enough reading for tonight," he said, scattering the teddies as he snatched the picture book from her.

Media's eyes welled up. "I want you to read it to me!" She screamed.

He opened the book. "There's nothing to be read, Media. It's just pictures."

That night, she cried herself to sleep.

###

In kindergarten, there are so. many. kids. She isn't stuck with March any more! She can have all the friends she wants. Mommy lets her put on her best pink dress, with sparkles and lace. Nursie Carly spins her brown curls atop her head. She has Daddy hair but Mommy's eyes, Nursie Carly tells her. Maybe she'll be tall like Daddy too. She wants to be tall, and have long legs, and butterfly eyelashes, just like the models in the Cap-ee-tol.

At kindergarten, she ruffles her skirt every chance she gets. She wants the other girls to see her pretty skirt. It's better outside, where the sparkles really shimmer. But mostly they are inside. She doesn't like it when they have circle time; her legs itch and the teacher yells at her when she tries to stretch them out. There are so many fun things! Games and toys and desks just her size. But she can only play for a little bit of time before the teacher makes her sit and listen.

She doesn't like listening.

"My Mommy doesn't have to sit at a desk," she says. The teacher is a bad teacher. She makes Media sit in the corner for ever. She punishes her, but Media told her the TRUTH!

After school, Daddy is there, in daylight, talking to her teacher. His face is bad at first, but by the time he lifted her into his arms, he is smiling.

"You want to be like Mommy, don't you?"

Media shook her head.

"You don't?" He asked, carrying her away from the tiny desks and the mean teacher.

She tapped him on his nose. "I want to be like you, Daddy."

His laugh is everything. She giggles and then presses both of her hands to his cheeks. She kisses him, smacking her lips together, like he taught her. "I love you, Daddy."

"I love you, Media."