Zeal "Pet" Zelazny // [D8]

They say everyone needs a hero. Until I was eight - half my lifetime ago - my hero was one Alice Norman. Sure, she was a few years ahead of me in school, but I've always been optimistic, even as a toddler. Not just optimistic, in this case - aspirational. I wanted to be older, cooler, better. I figured step one was to have some really cool older kid friends. So while the other little kids played chase, I learned to climb the wire fence that separated the preschool from the Kindergarten kids and I watched. They played the strangest games and their recess was way too short and none of them carried around blankets any more.

That day I went home, folded up my blanket, and put it in the bottom drawer of my dresser.

"Sweetie?" My father asked as he crouched at my side.

I pushed the blanket in farther and burst into tears. "Only little kids have blankies."

He read me a book to hush my tears and lull me to sleep. The next morning, I found the blanket, tucked securely around my shoulders. Now, I totally get why my parents didn't want me to grow up too fast, but honestly, that was a battle long lost. You'd think they would have realized it that morning, when I went screaming into their room and launched myself into their bed. I've always been a little hellion, and I really, really hate it when people touch my stuff.

The first day of Kindergarten is maybe still the best day of my life. As soon as the recess bell rang, I was out on the playground, looking for the big kids. I stalked them all mercilessly. When they toppled me to the ground, I didn't cry. When they ignored me, I screamed until a teacher came over and made them include me. I was relentless, and even then, I knew none of them actually cared about me.

Except Alice. Maybe. She's always been hard to read, which is probably what attracted me to her in the first place. I couldn't tell if she hated me, which was an improvement over all the other kids. So, I became her perfect shadow. I started to dress like her, talk - or rather, not talk - just like her. I kept this up for three years, feeling cooler and bolder each year. By then, I didn't have a single friend in my grade. I just hung out with Alice and her mercurial group.

The realization crept up on me slowly, over the course of months. Sometime in the middle of third grade, I began to realize that Alice - strange, beautiful, mysterious Alice - didn't care about me the way I cared about her. She didn't call me her best friend, she didn't wish me a happy birthday, she didn't leave me little gifts. All the things I did for her were for nothing. She was never going to elevate me to trusted confidante, all because I was too young. There wasn't a damn thing I could do about that, and I was suddenly and irrevocably angry about it.

I tried to fight her on the playground.

I say tried, because the second I lifted my fist above my head (it was my first fight, okay), a teacher grabbed my writs and hauled me off. I was suspended for the remainder of the day. When my parents picked me up, I was a cloud of impotent rage. I hated Alice Norman.

How quickly heroes fall.

The next fear years are sort of a blur, admittedly. School got harder, I actually made a few friends in my year. Nothing too remarkable happened until I got to high school. It wasn't that my ambition had quieted, or I'd gotten into meditation, or whatever crap. I was biding my time, analyzing what had gone wrong, and in sixth grade and again at eighth, I was legitimately at the top of the school hierarchy. I had no reason to strive further. That changed in high school. The moment I stepped onto campus as a fourteen year old freshman, I knew I was in trouble. I had no protection from the much bigger kids. Even my fists - which had been honed on the playground - were puny in comparison.

I needed a new ally, a new hero.

Ridley.

The first time I saw her that year, I didn't even recognize her. She'd grown up so much, into a beautiful and terrible teenager. I listened to the kids gossip about horrible things she'd said, about her lineage, about her life. I soaked up every bit of information I could find and only then did I approach her.

It was in the girls bathroom, between periods. My parents had given me a small amount of birthday money. I'd really wanted a new headband, but instead, I bought blood red lipstick. I waited until she was finished and then leaned close to the mirror to apply a coat before offering it to her. "An offering for Queen Ridley," I said, not a hint of sarcasm in my voice and a bloody smile opening my face.

She called me pet after that. I don't suppose now, at sixteen, that it would be so terribly difficult for me to make friends. I've lost all of my baby fat - finally - and grown perhaps an inch too tall to be of interest to boys but as I don't have any interest in them, that works out perfectly. My hair is still a frizzy mess underneath but I've learned to tame it. It only takes an hour every other day, and because of that, I've also learned to braid, which Ridley loves. Sometimes she'll let me share her makeup, which is really the only way to make my thin slit eyes pop. I even do well enough thrift shopping that sometimes Ridley "borrows" (permanently) my outfits. Clothes are just another offering. Because unlike enigmatic Alice, Ridley acknowledges me in the hallways. She pets my head and sends me on errands. When her day has gone to shit, I'm the one that massages her shoulders and braids her hair.

Ridley has let me be everything I want to be, and in exchange, I am her loyal servant.

Ridley, the Queen of my Heart.