susie golightly, district two | finished

Susie liked quiet things.

She always had. Flowers and ladybugs and mystery books — she was a girl made for spring. Soft like a lamb, shy as a breeze. She did not belong in the mountains, but that was where she made her home. Not by choice, but by desire. A poor girl in a poor existence, trying to reach for better things with hands that couldn't stop shaking.

Her life did not start in a garden — and it would not end there. She wasn’t sure where it would stop, but thus far it had stretched between a desert shack and a cottage in the suburbs. They had called it a scholarship, but the rumors called it charity. A wretch from the outside allowed beyond the gates of Ormond. It made her mother proud.

But she was lonely, and afraid, and so unsure of herself. She hated the cold, and the harshness of the strangers. All the houses were so big, and all the personalities were so large, that it was easy to look down at the borrowed clothes she wore and the cheap textbooks in her bag and think, ‘I’m just passing through. I'll never belong here.’

She was smart, but she was gullible, too — so quick to hide that she ran behind the first person to offer her shelter. Julie was loud, and brash, and beautiful; a girl that fit well into her lifestyle, a girl that could enchant a room and never flinch from the attention. It did not make sense for Julie to have a friend like that, but it still happened.

They shared classes, and clothes, and secrets — Julie talked, and Susie listened. She followed. Through the snow, and the house parties, through all the things that she couldn't quite understand. 'Just a little longer,' she told herself. 'Get an education, and then you’re free. You can build that garden for yourself.'

Life had a way of finding its own path, through the dark night and the twisting woods — and when Frank and Joey came into her life, she took a step behind Julie and smiled shyly. She did not trust them, but the truth was that she didn’t trust Julie, either. She liked that they let her stay quiet, that they whispered and shouted and touched each other.

They let her stay — in their shadow, in the silence. She was grateful for it, but something in her still felt torn and small. Julie made them skip classes, Frank spoke in a way that frightened her, Joey was so headstrong that it made her stomach roll with anxiety. Because she worried about him. Because she worried about all of them.

They didn’t know her last name, they didn’t know her favorite book or color. She was just the weird girl in Julie’s shadow that followed closely behind, who spoke only when spoken to, who wore her hair in pigtails and dyed it pink because she liked the colour — not because she wanted to be seen. She wanted to be invisible.

But that was the thing about gardens, and dreams.

They withered, and they never came true.

Susie did not belong in the mountains. In the snow, and the dark, and the terrible secrets building around her.

Maybe this is where her story would begin.