Honey and Wildfire
I remember the next few years bitterly. I do not call upon it the way you see others reminiscing in the movies, wishing they could return to the ages when teens blend into young adulthood. In fact, I try not to think about it at all, ashamed of the anger it stirs in me. Although I don’t want to, for the sake of this story I must. Because big things happened in these few years– important things, life-altering things; and if I decided to skip over these years, it would not only deprive you of context, but I’m afraid it would be dishonest in proving who we are and who we grew to be.
So. Here is my first memory of being sixteen:
It was the morning of my birthday. We were already a good amount into the school year, and I was taking my usual route to school. It was a particularly foggy morning, so the street lights seemed to stretch and streak above me. I was close to the meetup point– where some of us girls would meet and finish the walk to school– when I saw it. A grey pocket knife, open with its blade pointed away from me, laying in the patch of grass just a foot or two away. It was an odd sight, especially for the neighborhood I was currently in. There were small wildflowers, ones not even a child would stop to look at, that were sprouting around the knife, and the fog covered everything except for this patch of grass. It stood out to me like a sore thumb, but a sore thumb I could not take my eyes off of.
Although I had bled before, I remember wondering what my blood might look like on this knife. I wondered if it would stain the flowers red, or if my blood would be red at all. I thought that maybe my blood would ooze out gold like the gods if this knife in particular were to cut me. I thought that maybe this was a message from the gods– those of whom I gave up praying to long ago, and now only said a quick and repeated prayer to every night. It seems silly, but there, defiant to the fog, surrounded by useless wildflowers hiding its ugliness, the grey pocket knife was an omen.
It was only a few seconds before I kept walking, leaving the knife and the flowers and the gold blood behind me. However, I did not know that, by not touching it, I was allowing this knife to be carried with me. I unknowingly passed this knife on to my friends, and through the years, it made us all bleed gold.
***
I had only seen Dorcas around school for a few months, never seeming to catch her freely otherwise. I thought it to be normal, for she has gotten busy like this before. Her parents did always have high expectations of her. Perhaps that was it– her time was taken by her smarts and skills.
It wasn’t until I caught Marlene crying in the bathroom that I realized that wasn’t the case.
A few of us were sleeping over at Lily’s house– Marlene, Mary, and I– and I believe it was early Autumn. Marlene had disappeared for a few minutes, and I suspected her to be stealing some of Lily’s clothes again, before I knocked on the bathroom door. The lights were on, but there was no answer, so I opened the door. I entered the bathroom to see a tear-stained Marlene smiling forcefully at me. It was clear that she was trying to hide the fact that she was crying, but she was never very good at hiding her emotions, and she eventually got tired of trying to. So, I closed the door and let Marlene cry to me.
She’d said she missed Dorcas. “She won’t even look at me”, she’d said through thick tears, and yet, still trying to smile.
“She won’t?” I asked, because Dorcas had never seemed like the person to ignore anything.
“Well,” Marlene wiped a tear from the tip of her nose, “she does. But she looks at me like– like she doesn’t see anything. She looks right through me.”
And then I understood. Because sometimes, that’s worse than not being looked at, at all.
I started noticing the lack of Dorcas more after that night. I’ve learned it to be a very common occurrence, friends growing apart from each other near this age, but at the time, neither of us would stand for it. Neither of us wanted to lose Dorcas, and no one knew why she’d want to lose us.
Marlene cried to me many more times after that. “I miss my friend. She was my friend,” is what she’d usually end on, but deep down, I knew she was more than that. We all knew.
Over the weeks, we had all tried to reach out to Dorcas, but she never returned any of our letters or calls. We watched her from across the courtyard most school days. We watched her become acquainted with new people, better people. People who were as talented and intelligent and skillful as she. She mixed well with them, truly. Afterall, we all knew she’d take over the world someday. How could she do that without making connections?
And so, when she didn’t call back, we let her go. We watched her through those months like a proud family, and although there were tears shed and walls punched (thank you, Marlene), we never held on to any anger for long.
In the meantime, Mary had gotten a boyfriend. Yes, what a shocker. She was sixteen afterall, but she looked a few years older than us. Mary had grown beautifully into her curves, and her round cheeks were the only indication of youth on her body. It seemed as though almost every boy at our school would stop and stare when Mary Macdonald walked by with her yellow pencil skirt, cropped grey jumper, and bouncy curls. None of them seemed to catch her attention though. No, Mary’s eyes were on someone else, but no one knew who.
At first, we all were jealous. Mary has a secret boyfriend? We’d parade her with questions every day, like: What’s he look like? Does he go to our school? Is he cute? What’s his name?
No matter how many questions we asked or how many times we asked them, Mary would only answer with a small smile and a raised chin. We saw the way she blushed and hid her face as if she didn’t know how truly gorgeous she was. The sad truth is, she didn’t. Not really; But we didn’t see that until about a month later.
“Guys!” Alice ran into the classroom, almost tripping over a nearby chair. She looked at Lily, Pandora, Narcissa, and I as if we were the only ones in the room. (In reality, there were about twenty more students staring at us four). “I saw him! Mary’s boyf–”
“Sit down, Miss Prewett.” Our math teacher never really liked our habit of treating every day like a dramatic comedy. “You are much too loud. You are also late.”
Alice sat down in her seat next to Lily. I could see her whispering, but I couldn’t make out any of the words.
Finally, after we were released, Alice could spring her news on us.
“I saw him, guys. Mary’s boyfriend. He was super tall and he had, like, stubble? Is that what it’s called?” She rambled on. “He doesn’t go here because he walked her to the front and then turned around and left. He got into this really nice, black car and drove off. It was like something out of a movie scene. I couldn’t look away!”
We had all gossiped about the first sighting of Mary’s mystery boy that day. It wasn’t until Alice told the story for the fourth time at lunch, that the details seemed a bit odd.
“Wait. He has stubble, he’s good-looking, and he has his own car?” Lily looked perplexed. “What kind of boy our age has all of those three things?”
“Well, Billy J. has a bit of a mustache,” Alice pointed out, “and most boys our age have their license by now.”
“A really nice car is a little sketchy for a sixteen-year-old boy though,” Marlene cut in. She pondered for a moment, then gasped. “Oh! What if he’s, like, really rich?”
“I wouldn’t put it past Mary to date a rich boy.” Alice nodded, but Lily wasn’t convinced.
Lily stayed quiet the rest of lunch as she stared off into space, biting her nails. The rest of us were eating and chatting amongst ourselves near the end of the period when Lily stood up abruptly, leaving the table and taking her plate with her.
She stormed towards Mary, who was sitting a few tables away, tutoring a year ten. Lily slammed her tray on the table beside Mary, forcing her to look up. The whole lunch room went quiet.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m tutoring, Lils. You alright?”
Lily’s back was to us, but I could tell her eyes widened the way they always do when she’s met with sarcasm in a serious moment. She turned her eyes to the year ten who was staring wearily up at Lily. “Excuse us. Mary Mae and I have some chatting to do.” We all knew Lily meant business when she used our middle names.
Lily grabbed Mary’s hand and pulled her outside. From what I heard, Lily had berated Mary for dating an “older man”. I never found out how old he was– though I suspect him to have been in his mid-twenties– nor how Lily put the pieces together, but they must have both known him for her to be able to. After the usual Lily Evans lecture, Lily had brought Mary into a warm hug. She had told her that she didn’t blame Mary, she was just worried and she loved her. She did say, however, that Mary should never be so stupid again and that she was to break up with the man immediately after school. Mary had cried, and so had Lily.
We didn’t talk about it after that, though I wish we would have. For over the years, Mary would be told of her maturity and elegance, and though she did obtain these things, she was being told about them by the wrong people. I wish every day that I could’ve protected her from the sweaty hands of the men that longed to touch her. I wish I could have protected all of us from them, but mostly Mary.
***
The week before the Christmas holiday was… something.
Alice had broken her arm skating again, but no one was surprised. She always had cuts and brushes on her, and she’d pick at them constantly.. Bellatrix came to visit our hangout spot by the lake to show us that she had gotten a tattoo (without her mother’s permission of course). It was of a dark blue raven, and it sat on her collarbone. The returning of the clock's time for Daylight Savings had made Pandora fall asleep virtually everywhere. If she sat down for just two minutes, she’d be asleep. Mary was finding more interest in makeup and fashion. Lily was either keeping a close eye on Mary or admiring Pandora as she slept. Narcissa enjoyed feeding us obscure facts when there was nothing better to talk about. She told us that a chef’s hat had exactly 100 pleats, hot water freezes faster than cold water, and some cats are actually allergic to humans.
“Is that why my kitty ran away?” Pandora had asked, sleepily.
Admittedly, we all missed Dorcas.
“I miss her.” We all knew who Marlene was talking about. It was a moment before she spoke again. “I love her.”
“I know, Marls. We love her too–” Mary had said in attempts to comfort with relation.
“No, like. I love her. Like, love love her.” Marlene accentuated each word with flailing hands as if she couldn’t bear to keep it in any longer. “Like. I’m-a-lesbian-I-love-her.”
This had gotten a few small laughs, mostly from Marlene herself, but we embraced her at once.
“Aw, babe.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“It’ll be okay.”
“I knew you fancied girls.”
“Does she know?”
“Thank you for telling us.”
“Marls, my dear.”
It was a uniting moment, one full of pride and love. Marlene bled gold then, and truthfully, she helped all of us by announcing who she was. None of us ever came out to each other after that, at least not the way Marlene had. In fact, after Marlene had, no one felt like they needed to. It was refreshing. It was normal.
Soon after, Marlene declared the need to change her hair again. This had become sort of a ritual more Marlene– changing her appearance anytime something big happened, as if to properly mark the occasion– so we ran to the shop, then to her house, and helped her dye her hair red. Her bangs were growing out, but the bleach was still prominent, so the red hair came through brightly. It was just the thing she needed. She glowed as bright as the gold on our skin.
We spent the holiday with our families.
Christmas and New Year's passed, and it was time to return to school. Narcissa’s birthday was first, then Lily’s. Turning sixteen was a huge deal for us, so we decided to make it memorable. Although Narcissa and Lily’s birthdays are twenty-four days apart, in order to make it amazing, we knew we were going to need to combine the parties.
And so, we planned for days. We finally held the party on the eighteenth of January– exactly in the middle of the two girls’ birthdays. It was a hit. We played in the flurries of snow, popped balloons, ate cake, and at night, set off lanterns into the starry sky. It was a beautiful night. Lily cried tears of appreciation and Narcissa's eyes glittered with joy. One might think that sharing your sixteenth birthday would be annoying, but Lily and Narcissa had claimed that they wanted to have a conjoined party like this every year from then on. The two girls linked arms all day, spending their day together as one. Their bond was beautiful and dear.
Narcissa had always harbored guilt and shame, and she had opened up to Pandora before about how all she ever wanted was to be kind. Lily, who was kind with ease and by default, was what Narcissa had always wanted to be but never felt she could live up to. However, that winter night, Narcissa had gotten a taste of what it really meant to be kind.
If only it had lasted.
The magic ended the day after Lily’s real birthday when she woke up late at night to a living horror movie. In a few days, we finally saw her as she came to us crying. I had never seen Lily’s eyes so swollen and dim. Her eyes lightened when she cried, and to me, it seemed as though she’d been crying for days.
Her father had died, she said. Car accident. The day after her birthday. On his way home.
He usually didn’t work so late, but he had taken off the day before to celebrate with Lily, so he spent a few more hours at the office the day after. Lily had awoken to screams from her mother. She ran downstairs to see the police at her door. Dead. He is dead. Car accident. The day after her birthday. On his way home. Dead. Gone. He died in an instant. An instant death. What even is an instant death? He’s still dead. It doesn’t make a difference.
Lily cried in Mary’s arms for hours, and we cried with her. Neither of us had openly suffered a loss of someone so close before, so only Mary– whose father got in an accident the year before last– could really understand how she felt, and even then, she barely did. Only Mary knew the fear of losing a father.
Even after a few days, Lily couldn’t believe it. She’d tell us about all the memories with her father afterward, face still wet with tears. She told us about his favorite food and how they used to make it together every Sunday when she was little and the way he used to aggressively sing her to sleep. But mostly, she told us about the things she wished she could say to him. The things she wished she already had.
“Oh, my god, I can't believe he’s gone.” She never referred to him as ‘dead’. Only ‘gone’. Only for now.
Lily’s father was the glue of her family. When things got hard or arguments broke out, he was always there to love them back into shape. Now that he was dead, that all fell apart. Lily and her sister grew even farther from each other, and their mother resented them. Lily thought her mother imagined it was Lily’s fault that her father died that night. Lily sometimes agreed. The bright star that was her father had died out, as all stars eventually do. Except now, unlike space which had trillions of more burning lights, the Evans house was an empty void of nothingness.
After the autopsy, it was revealed that Lily’s father had Cancer in his blood. He would’ve died in a few months anyway. At least this way, he didn’t have to suffer.
Still, Lily grew bitter, and in her bitterness, she grew diluted. Her eyes were no longer the sight of dark green woods that lit up in the sunlight, but pale green like sea glass at the bottom of the dark ocean. She faced grief for a long time, and although her kindness never ceased, she could no longer feel it.
It was then, I suspect, Narcissa understood kindness even better than on the day of their sixteenth birthday party. Because, yes, kindness in Lily Evans was fierce as fire and soft as honey, but it was also sharp and cutting. She loved her father because she was kind, and that same kindness had led her into grief.
She loved her father because: how could she not?
She bled gold because: how could she not?
***
The summer after year eleven was a summer of distraction.
Mary was soon to be seventeen and had already acquired a new boyfriend. Thankfully, he was only a year older, but he still reveled in Mary’s maturity, which always made me a bit queasy even if I didn’t have a right to. Although Mary did have a boyfriend, he was not the one she kissed at parties (and Mary attended a lot of parties that summer holiday).
Instead, Mary would kiss us, her friends. She kissed us all at least once and only while drunk, but I saw the way her body reacted when she would kiss Marlene. Her hands would subconsciously pull Marlene closer by the hips. She breathed the air the other girl exhaled with such desire and always lingered on Marlene’s lips longer than anyone else’s. Now, I don’t believe she knew she fancied Marlene then. I think she was kissing us to distract herself from the lack of attraction to her boyfriend, or even just to have fun as many young girls do. I don’t think she knew how much she longed for Marlene the way Marlene longed for Dorcas. Mary was usually very obvious, but this time, I think her body gave her secrets away.
Pandora, on the other hand, isolated. I rarely saw her that summer unless I was with Lily or Narcissa. Pandora clung to Narcissa in the way a sister would. She would spend her days napping in Narcissa’s bed and spending as much time away from home as possible.
Pandora and Narcissa’s families were similar, but only in the way that they lacked love. Narcissa’s mother was openly cruel and stern, whereas Pandora’s father and brothers were dismissive and quietly evil. So, although Narcissa’s household was no more loving than Pandora’s, Pandora preferred loud cruelty to a quiet one. She would lay with Narcissa for hours, and neither of them would have to say a word. They just understood. This was Pandora’s way of distraction: distance.
The only person she didn’t practice this distance with was Lily. Lily was still struggling with grieving the loss of her father just six months before, and Pandora seemed to believe that was enough distance for Lily. When Pandora wasn’t with Narcissa, she was with Lily in the woods or by the creek. I learned later that she spent those hours telling Lily about her mother and allowing Lily to tell her about her father. Pandora lost her mother at a very young age, and although she doesn’t remember this loss, she still feels it.
Pandora told me years later that she doesn’t even remember what her mother looked like. For her father covered all the portraits of her that used to hang in the halls, and Pandora never had the courage to unveil them. Because what if she didn’t look like how Pandora imagined? What if she never really knew her mom the way she pretends she did? All she knows for sure is that she had white-blonde hair like Pandora; everything else is a mystery. Pandora never intended to stay curious for long, but when it came to her mother, she couldn’t bear to let go of that curiosity. It was the one thing she had left.
And so, Pandora talked to Lily about her mother, and Lily talked to Pandora about her father. They sat with their anger and sorrow and regret until they revealed themselves to be grief.
I believe something flourished between the two during those months, that they sought comfort in each other that was beyond the likes of friendship. Their connection had always been tender and pure, but after the summer months, they never were the same. I would catch the two sneaking off together, though I think it was unknowingly, for they would slowly trail away from the group, lost in the colors of each other’s eyes. Their energies balanced the other out like water and the Earth. Their touches were small and simple, yet thoughtful. Each look that passed between the two was a look of hope and of faith.
Although I’ll never know the secret moments they shared and whether or not they confessed their intimacy, I believe they fell in love that summer; and again, and again, and again every season after that.
***
A bit into our last year of school before university, Marlene was already planning the year twelve prank. Our school usually pulled off one great prank a year, and it was always by the year twelves. Marlene had only consulted with Alice and Lily for most of the plan, assuring the rest of us that we’d be included once it got closer to the end of the year.
I suppose I should’ve expected to see Marlene and Alice covered in pink powder when I walked into the girl’s lavatory. Their faces gave off the impression that they had just been caught, even though I couldn’t have cared less. This was a normal sight for me.
Alice spoke first as if I deserved an explanation for their fun. “We’re just trying some things out, you know. Just estimating the amount of–”
Marlene quickly covered Alice’s mouth with her pink-stained hand. “What happened to the statute of secrecy?”
I smiled at them in adoration before turning around and leaving. Such weirdos, I had thought. Though, I had thought about it lovingly. Not everyone felt the same dorky affection for Marlene and Alice.
Marlene was considerably liked throughout the school, though she had her enemies. She would flip off random people across the halls, ones I didn’t even know she’d known. She also had a few boring people constantly complaining that she was too loud or talked too much in class. To be fair, she did talk a lot, and yet, she still aced every single one of her courses.
Alice, on the other hand, was not as lucky as Marlene. The older Alice got, and the more she refused to conform to everyone else’s ways, the more she got made fun of. She frequently wore long shorts or trousers along with oversized shirts. When others grew into their shapes, Alice's neck stayed long and her face stayed plump. Someone once told her she looked like she had a constant allergic reaction. Others decided to stick to subtle ways of bullying by patronizing her and making small remarks, such as: “Got a boyfriend yet?”
It was true that Alice was tall and full and awkward, but she was even more admirable for it. Seeing Alice be treated that way, even in the slightest way, such as not holding a door open, made me angry. The idea of what beauty was supposed to look like made me want to punch something, so I can’t even begin to imagine how it felt for Alice. In fact, Lily had almost punched someone who made a comment about Alice once, but I had held her back. Sometimes I wish I didn’t. Sometimes, I wish they’d got what they deserved and had to live with a crooked nose for the rest of their life so they could experience what it felt like to not be conventionally attractive.
But that’s foolish, and it doesn’t make society's ideals disappear.
***
On the first day of October, just a week and a half after Dorcas’ seventeenth birthday, there was a knock on my door.
It was Dorcas.
It was pouring outside, and she was soaking wet. I couldn’t tell if her face was wet with tears or rain. Through hysterics, Dorcas cried, “May I– May I come in and talk to you guys?”
Of course, I let her in. I didn’t know how she knew that all of the girls were inside, but when I had asked her, she’d said: “It’s the first of the month. You always invite us over on the first of the month,” and, yes, she was right. But what struck me was the word ‘us’. I felt hope and betrayal both at once.
Dorcas apologized to us for leaving without a word. Actually, she spent about an hour apologizing profusely through tears and snot. It was the first time we’d ever seen Dorcas cry. She was unbreakable, so it came as a shock to all of us that she was this close to breaking.
She apologized for breaking the promise to stay together as a group. She apologized for not returning any of our letters or calls. She apologized for not immediately rushing over when Lily’s dad died. She apologized until her lungs practically gave out from breathing so heavily.
After about an hour, we were all crying and hugging Dorcas. All of us except for Marlene.
Marlene sat in the chair, more still than I’d ever seen her, with her arms crossed and her eyes fixed on Dorcas. When the rest of us forgave her, Marlene blurted out, “Bullshit.”
We all turned toward her. I could see the hurt just in the way she sat.
“What?” Dorcas asked, her eyebrows furrowed and her eyes teary.
“Bull. Shit.” No one said a word, so Marlene repeated herself again. “I said. Bullshit.”
“What’s bullshit, Marls?” Lily asked.
“This. Her.” Marlene nodded her head toward Dorcas as if to say she did not care enough to use her hands. “This whole thing is such bullshit.” Dorcas went to open her mouth, but Marlene cut her off before she could even exhale. “Nope. No. Nuh-uh.”
“Marlene,” Mary pleaded.
“I don’t want to hear another word out of her mouth unless it’s an explanation.” Then, Marlene finally looked at Dorcas, really looked at her. Her eyes began to glisten over and her voice quivered with anger and hurt. “Explain it to me.”
Dorcas looked just as heartbroken as Marlene at that moment. “Marlene, I’m sorry–”
“I know you’re sorry, everyone knows you’re sorry, but sorry doesn’t–” Marlene’s voice broke. I watched as she took a second to compose herself, breathing and swallowing down her cries. “Explain it to me.”
Dorcas moved toward Marlene slowly, but Marlene still flinched. Dorcas held out her hand as she stopped just a foot in front of Marlene. For what felt like a full minute, the two girls stayed there– Dorcas’ hand reaching out and Marlene debating whether or not to take it. Eventually, she decided. Marlene stood up, but she did not take Dorcas’ hand. Still, Dorcas was happy to lead Marlene outside. They did not come back for an hour, and when they did, they were both drenched in rain. However, Marlene was holding Dorcas’ hand, looking less hurt than before.
Dorcas had given us the general explanation once they returned. She said that she was under a lot of pressure with the expectations she and her parents had put on her. She said she wasn’t excelling when she was with us, and now she realized it was because she was happy, because she wasn’t over-working herself. She said none of this was an excuse and that she knew it, but that she eventually did burn herself out. She’d been getting into constant arguments with her parents over her future and her academics. In the most recent argument, Dorcas’ father had yelled at her, asking her what the hell she wanted. It was then that Dorcas realized all she wanted was to be happy with her friends again. It was the last year before adulthood, and Dorcas was done trying to grow up too fast, so she ran to my house.
Dorcas was bleeding in silence for a year, and we didn’t know. She was causing Marlene to bleed, and she didn’t know. But she was home now, and that was what mattered.
***
If you recall, I mentioned gods at the beginning of this chapter. I said briefly how I had stopped really praying to them, and now only did it out of habit. I didn’t know if I believed in God or other gods anymore, and I think that was an extremely normal thing– to question religion and God at our age.
Because we, as a group, were only seventeen and we had already experienced grief, heartbreak, manipulation, death, love, joy, fear, abandonment, guilt, and sexuality. It was hard to feel all of those things and not be angry at the way they were presented.
“Are you guys religious?” Narcissa asked one afternoon by the creek. The air was getting cold and the water would freeze over soon, but our initials stayed carved in the tree beside us.
We all gave different answers.
“Kinda.”
“Not really?”
“Yes.”
“I think so, maybe.”
“Uh.”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you?”
Narcissa lay her head back against the tree stump slowly, as if she knew these were going to be the answers and, yet, still dreaded them. She was playing with Alice’s hair previously, but let go of the last strand.
“Do you ever think… that religion is desperation?” We rarely got to hear Narcissa’s raw thoughts, so neither of us spoke a word, but we watched her, hoping it would encourage her to keep talking. Thankfully, she did. “I just think, well, I’ve never been very religious, even though my mother has tried to push it on me countless times.” She never talked about her mother. “But recently, I heard a quote that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.” She watched the trees above her, the leaves swaying in the wind like waves on the sea.
“What was it?” Pandora asked because she knew Narcissa does not speak of something unless she’s asked to.
“It was: ‘I don’t think God punishes people for specific things. I think He punishes them in general for no reason.’” The wind whistled in the silence. “I cried last night because of it. I cried because, what if that’s true?” Finally, she raised her head, looking at us. “What if He does just punish us for no reason?”
Pandora sighed. “I think I’d rather there be no God at all.”
Lily sat up from where her head lay in Pandora’s lap. “If there is a God, even if He does punish us for a reason, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.”
We all agreed silently, because, yeah, he would have to earn our forgiveness. There was nothing that made sense in our minds why God would have chosen to cause us suffering, to cause anyone suffering. Why did Lily’s father have to die? Why was Pandora’s family negligent? Why was Narcissa’s mother cruel? Why did Alice have to endure feeling less than everyone else? Why did Marlene have to hide who she was from people who didn’t think she had the right to love? Why was it so hard for Mary to see that she deserved better than shitty men? Why was Dorcas under constant stress to the point where she believed she didn’t have the right to be happy? Why were people all around the world suffering and dying in pain? Why did evil exist? To teach us a lesson? Or for no reason? Either way, we had to deal with it. It’s a jarring thing to realize that you are in a maze of pain where the only way out is more of it. So we all sat there, thinking about the big question: Why? What is this life for? What is this pain for?
“I’ve always been so scared of pain and suffering,” Narcissa spoke quietly, “that I don’t feel like I’ve ever properly lived. I’m almost seventeen and I don’t feel alive. Instead, I’m paralyzed by this fear that God has given me for the things He created. And I have guilt because of it. I’m ashamed. Why should I be ashamed of something He made me? Why am I the one that’s guilty? He’s the guilty one.” Narcissa was standing up now, pacing back and forth between two trees. Eventually, she sat back down, and when she did, Lily spoke.
“Why does everyone assume God is even a He? Is it because they think only a man deserves such worship or is it because only a man could evoke such pain?” It was clear that Lily was doing well in her History of Feminism class. She spoke clearly and with passion. “Personally, if God is real, I don’t want to believe that He’s the one who causes us pain. If God is real, I want to believe all He is, is love. And I believe He’s a woman. I believe God is a woman.”
***
Before we knew it, it was the end of the year again, and time for Marlene’s long-awaited prank. We were all still struggling with the events of the past year and a half– especially Lily, who had to relive the anniversary of her father’s death– but Marlene somehow always knew how to make mischief while putting a smile on our faces.
She had done a good job of keeping it a secret for most of the year, but about a month before graduation, she filled the rest of us in.
When I heard the plan, my heart skipped a beat. I had been waiting for something like this all year, something to bring hope back into my blood. I couldn’t contain my excitement.
“Do we all know our jobs?” Marlene asked on the last day of the school year as the eight of us were huddled inside a single stall in the girl’s bathroom.
“Yes, sergeant,” we all echoed. (Marlene had made us call her sergeant for the entirety of the prank).
“Great, comrades. Then let’s get going.” Marlene saluted us and opened the stall door. We broke into groups and headed off into our designated areas, each group with one Walkie-Talkie.
Marlene, Alice, and Mary headed up to the Headmaster’s office as a distraction. They would pull off a mini prank so that no one would expect anything else. It was a smart tactic, honestly.
Narcissa and Dorcas were the brains of the operation. They strategized every move possible down to the millisecond it needed to be completed. They walked to the courtyard where a mandatory assembly would be held in approximately four and a half minutes.
I was with Pandora and Lily. Since we were the best-liked and best-behaved, no one would suspect a thing. We were ultimately the ones who needed to succeed in order to pull this entire prank off. We walked to the courtyard, hoping we’d be seen by the professors and marked present in attendance before quietly slipping away. Marlene, Alice, and Mary were the only ones who were supposed to be knowingly absent from the assembly, and we counted on that fact.
Luckily, just four and a half minutes later, one of our professors came up to me, marking Lily, Pandora, and I present, before asking us the much-needed question: “Where are the terrible three?” The terrible three, obviously, were Marlene, Alice, and Mary. They had been known to cause trouble together over the years and had acquired this lovely nickname.
“Oh, I’m not sure. Perhaps the loo?” Pandora answered with her brilliance and a daring look, saying, you should go find them.
A smirk crept up on my face when I watched him reluctantly decide to do just that. He stopped one of the other professors to tell them where he was off to, and just after he slipped away, so did we.
On our way out, we saluted Dorcas and Narcissa as they stood near the back of the group, Walkie-Talkie in hand.
Then, came the fun part. The three of us ran to the bathroom where we stashed the backpacks full of pink powder– which was just powdered sugar dyed pink that we had stayed up the night before preparing. We put the backpacks on and spirited to our next destination while Marlene, Alice, and Mary were probably getting scolded by now for attempting to cover the Headmaster’s office in pink post-it notes.
Pandora, Lily, and I made it to the water system just behind the building in perfect time. We signaled to Dorcas and Narcissa on the Walkie-Talkie to let them know we’d arrived. Now, all we had to do was wait for their return signal, and the real prank would start.
You see, while the three of us were getting our backpacks full of pink powder and running across the school, Mary, Marlene, and Alice were in charge of getting every possible staff member as far away from the assembly as possible. They were going to do whatever it took, whether it was run through the halls screaming or start a fake fight. I learned later on that they had done both of those things. Successfully, Narcissa signaled us on the Walkie-Talkie that almost all of the staff had been called to leave the courtyard and stop the fight. Although it wasn’t all of the staff members that left, we had to work with what we got.
And so, Pandora, Lily, and I opened the cover to the outdoor water sprinkler system and poured all of the pink powder into it. We sent the timer for the sprinklers to go off in exactly a minute, and then sprinted our way back to the assembly.
We arrived just in time to see Narcissa and Dorcas finishing their spray painting of the courtyard wall (washable paint, obviously). Staff members were rushing toward Dorcas and Narcissa when the sprinklers went off. Pink water (with a bit of undissolved powdered sugar) was raining across the grass of the courtyard. The sprinklers danced in circles, and pink covered every person in sight. I saw Marlene, Mary, and Alice rush into the courtyard, jumping into the pink rain. On the brick wall of the courtyard, in bold, pink letters, read: GOD IS A WOMAN.
To bleed red is to live, yes. Perhaps it is even to die. But, right then, I knew to bleed gold was to change. Whether it is pain or love, whether it is the color of honey or of wildfire, it is still gold. All of us were gold at one point or another, for better or for worse.
But that day, instead of bleeding red or gold, we bled pink.