Note: This is the second chapter of my novel Blue Eyes. You can find the first chapter here:https://youngwritersproject.org/node/46146
PHIE
Pretend like you don’t exist, Sophie.
That was what my mother had told me, long ago, whenever we ventured out in public,the smoke in the air rasping our lungs, drowning out most of our words. Pretend like you don’t exist, so you don’t bother anyone. Nobody at all.
It never helped, though. It never helped and it still didn’t now, even though I was living in a new place with people who pretended to be my parents but weren’t, never could be. A lot of people pretended, I was realizing. Emma was the first person I met who didn’t coat her life with lies, smooth over the bad patches with a fake smile. Who was real. Who loved me for who I was, not the perfect girl crystallized in glass that everyone wanted me to be.
And then when the announcement came, I knew, somehow knew, deep in my gut, that I was about to have to pretend again. Pretend that I was the blond-haired, blue-eyed girl I seemed to be; not the ragey mess inside.
Still, I got up when the teacher asked. I clenched my hands to hide the tremors running through them like the ocean waves of the Western Provinces, hung my head so my hair covered the sweat beading on my forehead and running down my cheeks.
This would all be better if Emma were going to be here with me. But she wasn’t; her eyes were a dark, misty brown, reminding me of the forests my mother, sister, and I would camp out in when we had nowhere else to stay. I sent a silent curse to the Alterers for not giving her blue eyes like me.
The only person who could possibly have helped was Melly. With her blaring red hair and dark-as-twilight blue eyes, she would have held my shaking hand as we walked to the office. It’s okay, Phie, she’d tell me, and I’d think, God those eyes could hold an ocean and I love her so so so so much. She understood me in a way even Emma couldn’t. We were twins; the closest kind of sisters possible. Similar as sisters could be, because we were related, truly related, unlike most of the embryos forming in the Alterers’ labs.
But now Melly was gone, and even if she wasn’t, we wouldn’t be identical anymore. I’d been forced to Alter my red hair to blond when I moved to the Middle Provinces, and my twilight eyes to a “more conventional shade of blue.” I doubted Melly would even recognize me if she saw me now.
“Sophie McPhillerson, would you please report to the office?” my English teacher, Mrs. Larson, boomed, peering at me from behind shiny green reading glasses that were sliding down her long, bony nose. Still, her dark, terrifying, black-hole eyes were not at all blocked from my view.
I looked around to see that all the other blue-eyed students had left, and now it was just me and the brown-eyed people, who were all staring at me judgmentally. I knew they’d break out in whispers and raucous laughter the second I stepped out the door.
“My last name’s not McPhillerson,” I whispered, my soft breath falling onto my hands, which were grasping my backpack, not wanting to pick it up. I don’t know why I said it, don’t know why I even said anything at all, but the words slipped out before I could stop them.
“Oh, well, I’m fairly sure it is, miss,” Mrs. Larson snapped. She made a big show of going to her desk at the front of the room and checking the list of students. “Yep. McPhillerson, Sophie. Says it right here.” She walked over and jammed the piece of paper in my face, as if I didn’t know my name was there. Her voice was pure venom as she said, “Why were you lying to me? You just wanted to mess with me, didn’t you?”
The remainder of the class gasped in shock, staring at me with wide dark eyes, disbelieving that anyone would dare challenge Mrs. Larson. “Guess she has two reasons to go to the principal’s office now,” Alyson Calsbeek not-so-subtly whispered to her best friend, Jana Mitchell. Both of them were total teachers’ pets and always got to have their desks put next to each other.
But I didn’t care what those girls thought of me, or what anyone on the planet did. I raised my chin, looked Larson in the eye, and said, “Not my real last name.”
Mrs. Larson shook her head. “Look, I don’t know what in the godforsaken world you are talking about, but please just leave. Now. You are at least five minutes late.”
“Okay.” My stomach twisted into knots I didn’t think I could ever untie, but I shouldered my backpack and pretended everything was totally fine as I stepped out of the room.
Pretending. Even I was doing it now. Really, though–is there any way to escape it? To escape others’ expectations of what you should be, not what you are?
I took out my phone and tapped out a text to Emma.
SOS.
I repeated it a few times, my pulse quickening with each letter I typed, then hit send.
I wasn’t in trouble right then, but my instincts told me that I would be very, very soon.
PHIE
Pretend like you don’t exist, Sophie.
That was what my mother had told me, long ago, whenever we ventured out in public,the smoke in the air rasping our lungs, drowning out most of our words. Pretend like you don’t exist, so you don’t bother anyone. Nobody at all.
It never helped, though. It never helped and it still didn’t now, even though I was living in a new place with people who pretended to be my parents but weren’t, never could be. A lot of people pretended, I was realizing. Emma was the first person I met who didn’t coat her life with lies, smooth over the bad patches with a fake smile. Who was real. Who loved me for who I was, not the perfect girl crystallized in glass that everyone wanted me to be.
And then when the announcement came, I knew, somehow knew, deep in my gut, that I was about to have to pretend again. Pretend that I was the blond-haired, blue-eyed girl I seemed to be; not the ragey mess inside.
Still, I got up when the teacher asked. I clenched my hands to hide the tremors running through them like the ocean waves of the Western Provinces, hung my head so my hair covered the sweat beading on my forehead and running down my cheeks.
This would all be better if Emma were going to be here with me. But she wasn’t; her eyes were a dark, misty brown, reminding me of the forests my mother, sister, and I would camp out in when we had nowhere else to stay. I sent a silent curse to the Alterers for not giving her blue eyes like me.
The only person who could possibly have helped was Melly. With her blaring red hair and dark-as-twilight blue eyes, she would have held my shaking hand as we walked to the office. It’s okay, Phie, she’d tell me, and I’d think, God those eyes could hold an ocean and I love her so so so so much. She understood me in a way even Emma couldn’t. We were twins; the closest kind of sisters possible. Similar as sisters could be, because we were related, truly related, unlike most of the embryos forming in the Alterers’ labs.
But now Melly was gone, and even if she wasn’t, we wouldn’t be identical anymore. I’d been forced to Alter my red hair to blond when I moved to the Middle Provinces, and my twilight eyes to a “more conventional shade of blue.” I doubted Melly would even recognize me if she saw me now.
“Sophie McPhillerson, would you please report to the office?” my English teacher, Mrs. Larson, boomed, peering at me from behind shiny green reading glasses that were sliding down her long, bony nose. Still, her dark, terrifying, black-hole eyes were not at all blocked from my view.
I looked around to see that all the other blue-eyed students had left, and now it was just me and the brown-eyed people, who were all staring at me judgmentally. I knew they’d break out in whispers and raucous laughter the second I stepped out the door.
“My last name’s not McPhillerson,” I whispered, my soft breath falling onto my hands, which were grasping my backpack, not wanting to pick it up. I don’t know why I said it, don’t know why I even said anything at all, but the words slipped out before I could stop them.
“Oh, well, I’m fairly sure it is, miss,” Mrs. Larson snapped. She made a big show of going to her desk at the front of the room and checking the list of students. “Yep. McPhillerson, Sophie. Says it right here.” She walked over and jammed the piece of paper in my face, as if I didn’t know my name was there. Her voice was pure venom as she said, “Why were you lying to me? You just wanted to mess with me, didn’t you?”
The remainder of the class gasped in shock, staring at me with wide dark eyes, disbelieving that anyone would dare challenge Mrs. Larson. “Guess she has two reasons to go to the principal’s office now,” Alyson Calsbeek not-so-subtly whispered to her best friend, Jana Mitchell. Both of them were total teachers’ pets and always got to have their desks put next to each other.
But I didn’t care what those girls thought of me, or what anyone on the planet did. I raised my chin, looked Larson in the eye, and said, “Not my real last name.”
Mrs. Larson shook her head. “Look, I don’t know what in the godforsaken world you are talking about, but please just leave. Now. You are at least five minutes late.”
“Okay.” My stomach twisted into knots I didn’t think I could ever untie, but I shouldered my backpack and pretended everything was totally fine as I stepped out of the room.
Pretending. Even I was doing it now. Really, though–is there any way to escape it? To escape others’ expectations of what you should be, not what you are?
I took out my phone and tapped out a text to Emma.
SOS.
I repeated it a few times, my pulse quickening with each letter I typed, then hit send.
I wasn’t in trouble right then, but my instincts told me that I would be very, very soon.
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