“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t like this either, but refusing to play with someone isn’t bullying. It’s just being a less generous person than I would have hoped. I can’t order Regan to be friends with your daughter.”
“I told you, Mom,” said Heather, voice despairing, and wrenched her shoulder out of her mother’s grasp. “I don’t want to be friends with them anyway. They’re mean. I said I didn’t want to come here. I want to go home.” She turned and stomped out of the house, leaving her mother gaping after her.
“I really am sorry about all this,” said Regan’s mother apologetically.
“You should teach your child some better manners, before she gets herself into real trouble,” said Heather’s mother, in a clear attempt to have the last word. Then she followed her daughter out of the house, as Regan collapsed, sobbing, into her mother’s arms.
2
THE COST OF BEING ORDINARY
TIME KEPT PASSING AFTER that, as time always does. Heather stayed away from Laurel and Regan on the playground and in the cafeteria, crossing paths with them only when school and its associated adults forced the issue. Years went by, first one and then two more. Laurel continued showing the sharp side of her tongue whenever given the opportunity, while Regan followed her through the world like a silent shadow, always careful to keep herself tucked inside the box Laurel had drawn, the one labeled “girl” in glittering, immutable letters.
Thankfully, Regan’s horses, large and smelly and occasionally dangerous as they were, somehow managed to fit inside that box. She sometimes thought they would have been expelled from the box in an instant had Laurel ever bothered to learn anything about them, had she ever bothered to accompany Regan to her riding lessons or the stables. Horses had big, stompy hooves and large, terrifying teeth, and even with as much as she loved them, Regan had a healthy respect for the amount of damage horses could do if they decided they wanted to.
Plus, they stunk. Not so much when she was actually around them, and the reality of horse could drown out the less compelling realities of sweat and urine and horse poop, which came in piles as large as her torso, but as soon as the horses were out of the picture, and it was just her and the shower, or her and the shovel, the mammalian reality of them could be a little difficult to bear.
At least she didn’t need deodorant yet. Her own mammalian realities were taking a while to make their presence known. It was frustrating at school, when Laurel and the other girls currently allowed within the inner circle started talking about training bras and periods with the worldly air of ten-, almost eleven-year-olds, and Regan had to hang around the edges acting like she was too cool to have opinions on shaving her armpits and whether Vivacious Vanilla or Luscious Lavender worked better for school-day antiperspirant.
She didn’t like either one. She’d tried swiping them from her mother’s side of the sink in the upstairs bathroom, and they both smelled like laundry detergent—yuck. Maybe if she smelled bad without them, she’d learn to have an opinion, but she didn’t think so. Opinions were better reserved for things that mattered, like whether she should go to Karen Winslow’s slumber party when it meant missing her Saturday evening riding lesson, or whether it was better to keep up her training and avoid being shut into Karen’s bedroom with a dozen other girls, most of whom tolerated her only because she was still inexplicably Laurel’s favorite.
Regan grabbed a shirt from the laundry hamper, folding it with sharp, efficient motions and dropping it onto the pile already on the bed. She knew why she was still Laurel’s favorite. She was Laurel’s favorite because she’d been there for the snake incident, and she’d learned, better than anyone could have possibly expected, why going against Laurel was a bad idea. Heather had never socially recovered from being cast out of the inner circle. She had a few friends who kept her company between classes—she wasn’t alone—but she had never regained the vaunted heights of Laurel’s approval. Regan had been there to see it happen. She had been there to understand just how quickly and viciously Laurel could take someone from beloved to beneath notice, and she had internalized that lesson remarkably well. She was still Laurel’s best friend because she was willing to do the work to never lose her position, never be cast out of favor, never have to face the world alone.
As long as her horses didn’t become the thing that made her strange, she’d be fine. She wasn’t sure she could give them up, even for Laurel. No matter how many times her mother told her that girlhood wasn’t destiny, she didn’t think she could survive without Laurel.
But the other girls were starting to change in ways she couldn’t copy, no matter how important it seemed. Their bones were migrating into new shapes, hips getting wider and waists nipping inward, some more obviously than others. Laurel was one of the “lucky ones,” according to the girls who flocked around her in their ribbons and flounces, praising her developing breasts like they were something she’d accomplished through hard work and personal virtue, not hormones and time.
Regan grabbed another shirt, snapping it out with force before folding it neatly. She was being shut out more and more, referred to by the other girls as a child who should play with kids her own age, even though she was older than most of them. Breasts weren’t a sign of maturity; they were just a sign of—of breasts! She wasn’t even sure she wanted them. Some of the older girls at the riding stable talked about their breasts like they were wild animals that refused to stop attacking them, making jumps and dressage more difficult. They would have told her not to pray for puberty, if she’d asked them, which was why she never asked. They didn’t have to thread the needle of normalcy the way she did. They hadn’t been there for the incident of Heather and the snake. They didn’t know.
Girlhood wasn’t destiny unless you wanted it to be, and she had accepted her destiny wholeheartedly. Anything to be normal. Anything for Laurel.
Regan placed the neatly folded shirt on the pile, taking a calming breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. She’d have to go to Karen Winslow’s stupid party. Staying home to go riding would solidify the idea that she was just a little baby kid and didn’t deserve to be included.
It was a waste of time, and she’d hate every minute, but there wasn’t any other choice. She’d been working so hard for so long to stay in Laurel’s good graces. She wasn’t going to lose her place now.
“Regan? Honey?”
She looked up at the sound of her mother’s voice, unconsciously swiping a hand across her cheek. “Yes, Mom?”
“I just wanted to see if you were all right. It doesn’t usually take this long for you to put away your laundry.”
“I’m fine…” Regan looked at the welter of brightly colored shirts, socks, and underwear. The same sizes she’d been wearing the year before. Even some of the same actual clothes. She wasn’t outgrowing anything. She wasn’t growing, not the way the other girls were. She was getting taller—maybe a little faster than she should have been—but that was all. “Mom?”
Something about her tone made her mother freeze in the doorway, a thread of panic wending its way down her throat and filling the hollow behind her lungs, until it felt like there was no room left for anything beyond being afraid.