Hysterical and Useless

Marlene McKinnon is not a good person. At least, she doesn’t think she is. She’s once again sitting, staring at herself in her vanity mirror, eyes tired and bloodshot, helplessly listening to her parents screeching at each other for the fiftieth time this week. She slumps down onto her bed, blasting music into her ears, trying to disassociate and forget her mother’s pained screams. She’s hoped and prayed that her father would finally decide to abandon them one day, but her prayers were never enough for whatever God decided she was worth punishing, so she just stopped trying, rendering herself useless.

She watches the seconds tick by on the clock across from her, waiting for 8:00 to finally come so she can leave for school; no matter how boring school can be, anywhere is better than the shithole that should be her home. Plus, she only has three months left until graduation, and after that she can leave with her mother and never come back.

Mary MacDonald meets her as she arrives at school. Mary has been one of the only constants in her life since the first day of kindergarten when Mary came up to her, shook her hand, and said they were best friends now. Today, Mary is wearing one of her especially elaborate outfits with her hair in braids. Mary's very distinct and fashionable style always starkly contrasts Marlene's every day outfits of graphic tees and cargo shorts. The most Marlene commits to her appearance is hair, which she dyes platinum blonde regularly. Mary always says she has the fashion sense of a five-year-old boy, which Marlene can't say she disagrees with.

“Hey McKinnon! You’re coming to practice after school today, right? If you skip again, McGonagall will probably beat your ass. She’s dead set on making it to nationals this year.”

She’s right; Marlene has been skipping soccer practice a lot recently. It’s not because she doesn’t like soccer, she loves it. She’s not actually sure exactly why she’s been skipping, but she thinks it has something to do with the fact that she’s been getting an average of three hours of sleep a day.

“I definitely will, I’ve just been… busy, recently,” She lies. She doesn't love talking about her home life, and luckily Mary understands as she always does and leaves it at that.

In first period, chemistry, Marlene is lab partners with Dorcas Meadowes, otherwise known as the most beautiful girl in the history of the entire universe. Marlene knows she doesn’t have a chance with a literal goddess, not to mention the fact that she is definitely 100% not gay. Even more, Meadowes hardly even acknowledges Marlene’s existence. So yeah. Definitely no chance.

At lunch, Marlene sits at her usual table with Mary and Lily. James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter sit at the table next to them. All four of them are on the soccer team as well, and James and Sirius take it way too seriously in Marlene’s opinion.

“Hey MacDonald!” Sirius yells probably louder than necessary from his table, “You ready for nationals?”
“I swear to God, Sirius if you don’t stop fucking screaming right now…” Remus says, putting down his textbook. Marlene is pretty sure Remus and Sirius are both very gay and very in love with each other, but Mary told her otherwise.

Ignoring Remus, Mary responds “Hell yeah I am! Just one more game and we’re there!”

“What about you, McKinnon?” Sirius asks, and Marlene responds with an enthusiastic nod.

After school, McGonagall lectures her about not missing practices and how she might have to kick her off the team because of her absences. Marlene knows these are empty threats, because she’s one of the best players on the team and their coach knows this.

After the lecture, Marlene runs out on the field to her friend group. Although Lily isn’t on the team, she still comes to all the practices as an assistant ref. Even though her position isn’t required, Marlene appreciates her enthusiasm. During the practice, the team plays perfectly. Sirius and Marlene score the same amount of goals, with James close behind them. At the very end of the practice, however, Peter falls down hard, and after a quick examination, Lily declares Peter’s ankle sprained. It’s a shame that they’re down a player in their last game, but Marlene is still confident that the Yellowjackets are going to make it to nationals.

Two weeks later, they’re preparing for the game that dictates how interesting their lives will be over the next few weeks. McGonagall is giving them a pep talk, but all Marlene can focus on is the fact that she might be able to escape from her house for an entire week. She won’t lie, the past two weeks have been… rough. Her dad decided to cheat on her mom once again, which opened up a whole new wound for her parents to fight over. Worse, she’s been caught in the crossfire more and more because her parents have been fighting over custody in case of a divorce. At one point, her father came upstairs, asked her who she would stay with, and punched her after she chose her mom. The large bruise on her face had been hard to explain to her friends.

But, no matter how difficult life is right now, she needs to focus on the game. It’s around fifteen minutes until they start, and she’s too distracted. She takes a drink of water and walks over to Mary.
“Hey Marls! You ready? Sirius is literally manic right now and I’m not going to deal with it anymore.” In the background, Sirius is pacing back and forth and lecturing a very inattentive Remus about something.
“I’m so ready. You?” Marlene replies.
“You know I am!” Mary says.

About ten minutes later, McGonagall calls them out to the field to get started. Marlene takes some deep breaths and watches as the other team enters. “Everyone get into positions!” McGonagall calls out, and Marlene heads up into her offensive position, Pandora and Dorcas just behind her. She watches the seconds tick down and the game starts.

Every minute of the game feels like a second; when they make it to the final five minutes, the teams are tied three-to-three. In the final minute of the game, Marlene scores one last goal, and the Yellowjackets win.

“We’re going to nationals!” Mary declares excitedly after the team returns to the locker room.

“Nice playing, Marlene,” Dorcas says to Marlene in the excited aftermath of the game, “You ready to go to nationals?”
Marlene pauses for a second, about to explode at the fact that Dorcas Meadowes knows her name.
Too anxious to come up with actual conversation, Marlene responds with a simple (and awkward) “Uh, yeah.” She’s pretty sure she’s blushing hard enough for Dorcas to notice, but she just gives polite salutations and walks away. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thinks as she watches Dorcas walk away toward Regulus and Pandora, two juniors on the team.

Two weeks later, Marlene wakes up at 5:00 a.m. to go to the airport and set off for Seattle. She knows she’s going to be early, but she’s eager to leave her house, and she’s been packed since the day they won the game.

Marlene ends up sitting in the airport lobby at 5:30 in the morning eating a stale bagel and daydreaming about what her life will be like after nationals. Maybe a college will scout her out and get her a scholarship so she can move to some fancy college town with her mom, leaving her hellish home in New Jersey without looking back. Maybe she won’t be able to find a college at all and be forced to go to her town’s shitty community college. God, she thinks, that sounds like the worst possible outcome. Staying with her father for another four years seems like actual hell.

When Mary arrives at the airport around six, she learns that she has a severe fear of airplanes, apparently. She’d never been on an airplane, so there was really no way to know. Marlene, though well-intentioned, is horrible at helping Mary with her anxiety attack; her attempts at comfort include awkward pats on the back and a collection of unhelpful “comforting” phrases.

Eventually, Mary calms herself down and goes down to meet the others with Marlene. The plane is set to leave in thirty minutes, but the group decides to head down there early. McGonagall directs them to a terminal.

After a lot of waiting, they finally go onto the plane. Although Marlene has been on plenty of flights before, she feels strangely anxious about this one. She chalks it up to nerves about the game and takes a seat next to Mary and Lily, with Dorcas, Pandora, and Regulus sitting directly in front of them. Sirius and James are being especially loud this morning, apparently mourning Peter’s spot at nationals (though they are calling him “wormtail,” which Marlene has no idea about the origins of, but she regards it as a horrible nickname.)

The flight is set to last eight hours, and Marlene decides she will fall asleep to pass the time. She wakes up to a strange amount of turbulence, but is too tired to distinguish any voices and goes straight back to sleep.