playlist series continues! haven't talked too much about miranda on here, but she's the main character of my project over on @marigoldscreativeprocess (shown here with her little sister cassie because how can she not be)
listen to miranda's favorites here!
m'lover kishi bashi / vienna billy joel / just the way you are bruno mars / BIRDS OF A FEATHER billie eilish / turn to stone electric light orchestra / riptide vance joy / eyes on you sara bareilles / the name of the game abba / campus vampire weekend
Miranda was a comparison point for everything that Cassie did. Miranda would have done it like this, Miranda would have done it like that, say what you will about Miranda but at least she didn’t do it like you. It would have been really, really easy to hate Miranda, who looked spotlessly beautiful in every framed photo, and whose trophies and awards took up so much space in the house that there just wasn’t room for anything of Cassie’s on display, but by the time she was fourteen years old, Cassie had noticed what her parents didn’t ever draw attention to: Miranda didn’t call.
Her parents obfuscated this fact with a kind of helpless mania, turning the house into a Miranda Shrine—mostly just stuff from high school, because Miranda wasn’t really active on social media, and the boring accounting work she did wasn’t exactly the kind of thing they could frame in the same way they could all of those Best In Class certificates. Miranda came for holidays every so often, never regularly, always with the attitude of one going into a war zone, and met the adoring fussing of her parents with a furious coldness that made it impossible for Cassie not to love her.
She always had time for Cassie, though, whenever she was there. She didn’t give Cassie a lot about her life, always brushing off Cassie’s questions with something like you don’t want to hear about numbers. She would look at Cassie’s sketchbooks, running her fingers along the colors and the curving lines with a delicate reverence, and she would listen to all of Cassie’s petty little grade-school dramas, and there would be something like a smile in her eyes for Cassie.
Which was why—
Cassie hefted the suitcase off of the bus, stumbling a little on the wet pavement and only barely managing to keep her balance. Her heart was slamming in her chest, an awful, resonant drumbeat that dizzied her almost as much as the weight of the suitcase.
Everything around her felt a little surreal—the gray skies, the indecisive rain, the unfamiliar street. She wasn’t the kind of person who did things like this. She was the kind of person who, in moments of apocalyptic teenage sadness, curled up in her bed and obsessively watched sitcoms on her phone until her eyes blurred with tears. The fact that she had gotten this far without anyone stopping her felt as though she had to be dreaming. This wasn’t the sensible thing to do.
Miranda was sensible. Miranda, Cassie thought, would come up with something to do about this, even if it was just putting her on a bus and sending her right back to their parents. She wanted someone to see her, if only for just a moment, and maybe Miranda would.
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Miranda’s apartment building was small and dingy—nothing like the big-city glitz that Cassie had always imagined for her—but the door to her apartment looked like it had been hit with a power washer, which made Cassie pretty certain that she was in the right place. She rapped on the immaculate wood and waited.
Miranda opened the door. She took in Cassie, then the suitcase, all with that flat, blank expression that never seemed to change into anything that anyone could reasonably understand. Then, as easily as if she’d been anticipating Cassie’s arrival this whole time, she stepped aside, clearing a path for Cassie into the apartment.
Cassie hadn’t been expecting this. Her parents—their parents—were both very critical and very opinionated people. She hovered nervously in the doorway, waiting for Miranda to say something else.
“The forecast says that it’s going to rain in exactly eleven minutes,” said Miranda. “It’s not going to be cold, but it’s going to be damp, and you’re wearing short sleeves. That’s a nice shirt,” she added thoughtfully, almost smiling, and walked farther into the apartment.
That was a fair point. Cassie followed Miranda inside, only barely remembering to shut the door after her. She set down her suitcase in the front hall—
“Shoes off,” Miranda called from the kitchen.
Cassie took her shoes off. She felt disoriented, joyful, unsettled, like she’d tumbled unexpectedly down a soft, grassy hill into—well, into a frighteningly monochromatic apartment, all of it scrubbed down just as obsessively as the front door had been. The furniture was modern, sterile, devoid of personality. She sat down on a chair that was all angles and tried to find a comfortable position.
“Oh, it’s not designed to be fun to sit in,” said Miranda, still in that blank tone of voice. “Try the sofa. It’s moderately better. I don’t have visitors, usually, but we’ll do what we can.”
Cassie had no idea how to start this conversation. She decided to go with the simplest question she could think of. “Do you—I mean—do you know why I’m here?”
Miranda looked up at her with a startlingly intense expression. “Our parents are nightmares,” she said.
“...Yeah,” said Cassie.
“You don’t want to go back there.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I…”
“I don’t know if I’m much of an improvement, honestly,” said Miranda. “Obviously, I’m going to have to call them and talk to them about this, if only to make sure the authorities don’t get involved when they realize you’re in another state. I suspect that telling them outright what I think of them won’t help remove you from their custody, but framing it as though I see you as an unwanted imposition—it would have worked in high school; they would have insisted that we bond, and they would have all but shoved you into my custody. Yet now it seems that all they wish to do is appease me.” Her brow furrowed. “This is an interesting problem.”
“You have to be better than them,” said Cassie, her voice breaking a little. “You wouldn’t be living stupid far away and never calling if you didn’t know—what it’s like.”
Miranda’s mouth trembled. “I’ve had time to think about it,” she said. “I don’t like leaving you there, but at the time, I didn’t know what else I could have done. And I couldn’t…I do mean it when I say I don’t know if I’m much of an improvement.”
“I mean it when I say you have to be better than them.”
“A rabid wolverine would be better than them, Cassandra,” said Miranda. “Raising yourself would be better than them. Saying that I am a better option than our parents means literally nothing. You—”
Her mouth twisted, and she didn’t finish the sentence.
“I will find you an improvement,” she said instead. “Something not just better but good.”
“You’re good,” said Cassie immediately.
Miranda made a strange little noise and stood up very quickly.
“I’m going to order takeout,” she said. “That’s what teenagers like, yes? All my available data suggests that teenagers like takeout. I don’t have any food appropriate for guests, so takeout is a good option for this reason as well.”
“You’re such a robot,” said Cassie, punchy from the long trip and an absurd, unfamiliar feeling of relieved safety. “Beep boop.”
Miranda’s lips twitched into another almost-smile. She stared intently at Cassie. “I’m not a kind person,” she said.
“Okay, well, whatever,” said Cassie. “Are you going to tell me that I suck and my art career’s never going to go anywhere?”
“You don’t, and it will, so, no,” said Miranda.
“Cool,” said Cassie. “Then I’m staying. If—” She hesitated. “Or do you not want me here?”
Miranda blinked a few times and appeared to seriously consider the question. Finally, slowly, she said, “You are the only family I find worthwhile. I would not…like that…to change, over the course of however long we live together. There is no guarantee—”
Experimentally, Cassie asked, “So you think you’ll get tired of me?”
“Never,” said Miranda, very sharply.
Cassie felt that wonderful safety again—like she was a weighted blanket, heavy and soft. “Then I’m staying.”
Miranda stared at her for another long moment, then turned on her heel and retreated into the kitchen, punching some numbers into her phone.
The apartment wasn’t all that big. Cassie could hear what she was saying.
“Mother? Yes. I—” A long, put-upon silence. “Yes. Fine.” Another silence. “Fine.” A slightly shorter pause. “I’m occupied with more pressing matters than that. I realize—” a strange, hitching breath that didn’t sound like Miranda at all, “—that is, I know it’s been difficult for you, both of you, raising such a distant and indifferent daughter. I wondered if—no, there’s no need to apologize. You were justified in expressing your frustration.”
Which was pretty much exactly what Cassie had always suspected. Their parents sucked.
“I only wondered if I could pay you back.” A terse exhalation—Miranda’s version of a laugh. “No, not financially. Cassie arrived here in a fit of teenage pique.”
The words might have stung if Cassie didn’t see the utility of them—the threads behind them—the story Miranda was putting together.
“I was struck, upon speaking to her, with the difficulties that the two of you must be facing in managing such a headstrong, tiresome teenage girl.”
Now the words didn’t sting at all. Cassie knew that that had been for her benefit.
“I thought it might be a useful way to show my appreciation—” A pause, tense and hopeful. “Yes. No. I—I understand. Of course that is also—Mother, may I be frank? In speaking to Cassie, it’s become clear that you and Father must need some sort of break from her. I simply don’t think it’s in your or her best interests if she is sent back to you and subsequently returns to her old patterns of behavior. As is well documented, I set rigorous yet reasonable expectations; I will not brook foolishness, and I have the advantage of unfamiliarity—she will want to impress me. At the very least, I can take her in for the summer.”
Another silence.
“Yes. Yes, and we’ll—we’ll see how the summer goes. Yes, of course.” A strained pause. “I—l-love you too, Mother,” Miranda forced out, which wasn’t something Cassie had ever heard her say. “Goodbye.”
She came back into the living room, a little flushed, and said without preamble, “I’m sure you heard all of that, and I’d like to clarify, Cassandra—”
“Oh, it’s fine,” said Cassie. “They’re evil. Fight evil with evil.”
Miranda did another round of stunned blinking, then sat down on the couch next to Cassie and smoothed down her hair for a good handful of seconds. Finally, briskly, she said, “I want to see your sketchbook.”
“I love you,” said Cassie. “You know that, right?”
“Please withhold all expressions of perceived sentiment until you have spent ample enough amounts of time with me to form a more three-dimensional image of me in your mind,” said Miranda.
“So that’s a no,” said Cassie brightly.
Miranda sighed through her teeth. Cassie got the sense that, if she wasn’t Miranda, she would have rolled her eyes.
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beemblebu: you’re kidding
beemblebu: just like that?
cassowary: JUST LIKE THAT
beemblebu: goddddd why isnt MYYYY family like that
beemblebu: my older sister’s in detroit and if i showed up at her place she’d kill me
beemblebu: and then she’d like.
beemblebu: bring me back to life and send me back to mom so mom could kill me again
cassowary: literallyyyyyyy
cassowary: craziest thing
cassowary: the whole time she’s going “i’m a terrible option, i’m going to suck at this”
cassowary: WHILE SHES LIKE. ORDERING TAKEOUT
cassowary: and then she fully just let me eat as much takeout as i wanted and left me alone for the rest of the night
cassowary: how is that sucking at this. That’s called being a perfect parent
The scar on Phil’s cheek wouldn’t have been a scar if she’d taken better care of it, but she’d foregone proper injury maintenance with adoring diligence. Her parents hated the scar almost as much as they hated Miranda. Her parents hated the name Phil, and girls who wore pants, and girls who cut their hair boy-short, which made it very clear how they’d have felt about Certain Other Things without them ever having to say the word.
Miranda’s parents were dangerously apathetic when it came to the subject. All of their attention and adoration was poured into Miranda’s dear darling baby sister, Cassandra May Cohen, two years old and perfectly cherubic, which made anything that Miranda did fundamentally disinteresting to them. They could have gotten away with it at Miranda’s parents’ house, but Miranda’s parents might have let something slip to Phil’s, as they didn’t really care enough to remember what Miranda told them not to talk about.
So they didn’t do it. They didn’t even say it. But they felt it. Phil was in the school play, junior year—a luminescent Viola with her red hair tucked under a pageboy cap—and Miranda, from the shadows, shone the lights on Phil. Made her glow.
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Phil, with time, found friends. Miranda didn’t. There was a difference between being a socially awkward white girl and a socially awkward half-Indian girl who was never, ever, ever going to pass for white. Phil took to the theater with gusto, and Miranda disappeared into the shadows with a degree of relief.
Phil’s friends, however, never took priority over Miranda, who was worshipped with the affection and devotion she’d earned by being Phil’s very first confidante. Phil would miss cast parties, real parties, turn down invitations, all to sit in cheerful silence with Miranda while Miranda obsessively sketched out plans for the world’s most financially successful career. All the money was in STEM, Miranda said, or at least that was what her parents had implied, or what she’d read on some listicle, or something, so she was going to go into STEM and be really good at it.
“Yeah,” said Phil, two weeks into senior year, elbows propped on the back of a chair as she sat across from Miranda in the library, “but STEM is an acronym. Science, Technology—”
“I know what STEM stands for,” said Miranda curtly.
“—Engineering, Mathematics,” Phil finished. “Going into STEM is a super broad goal. There are a whole bunch of things that would qualify as going into STEM. Biology, physics, statistics, computer programming—”
Miranda’s fingers tightened around her pencil.
“What are you going to do?”
“Make money,” said Miranda.
“Yeah, but like, besides making money?”
“It’s a broad goal.” Miranda’s eyes stayed on the paper. “Like you said.”
“You know what I’m really asking, though, right?” Phil persisted, her voice softening a little. “What do you want to do?”
Miranda stared at the paper with glassy eyes, almost wet, and didn’t answer.
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What did she want? She wanted a reliable safety net, something that wasn’t dependent on the goodwill of other people. She wouldn’t allow herself to ask Phil to provide it, not when Phil’s parents were still mad at her just for playing Viola in Twelfth Night a year ago. Phil had places to go that weren’t here. Miranda wanted to see Phil far, far out of the city, away from her parents, living a life that let her cut her hair and wear three-piece suits, and leaving with her felt like a surefire way to evoke suspicion. Better to go their separate ways.
First loves didn’t last. Reliably, statistically, that was how it went. Miranda was quite certain that this first love was going to be a problem someday. But Phil was so effortlessly luminous, so magnetic—she’d grown out of jumpy uncertainty, or perhaps learned how to reshape it into something charming, something that made anyone speaking to her feel like they were her closest confidante.
What did she want? She wanted—
She wanted—
Of course there was room to imply it in brushing hands and secret codes and sitting together in the bleachers during football games, but there wasn’t room to think it, not directly, because it just wasn’t practical. She wanted—no, needed to know that she could take care of herself. Care from others was a conditional thing, dependent upon her being the sort of person who was easy to care for. She had never been an angelic child, and she’d grown into a particularly difficult teenager. If she wanted to be taken care of, she had to be something that wasn’t Miranda.
To ask Phil to take care of her—to—
There were words she couldn’t say. Things she couldn’t want. Things that weren’t reasonable to ask of Phil. Miranda would make a life for herself, and she would live it.
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Phil went to prom with a boy from their drama program who was dealing with similar parental expectations. Miranda didn’t go to prom at all; she didn’t see the point. She stayed home instead, keeping an eye on Cassie, while her parents made upset fussing noises about her missing prom. Really, they chose the strangest things to have opinions about.
Phil came over after prom, pale face red around the nose and cheeks, swaying a little. She was wearing a horrid organza prom dress in a shade of green that they both knew she didn’t like. High heels, and glittery makeup. She looked like someone who wasn’t Phil.
“I wanted to come over,” she said. “I wanted—Mimi.”
Miranda, who had never in her life been a Mimi, stared, and waited.
“You know,” said Phil. “Right? You—we—”
“We aren’t going to talk about this,” said Miranda, and shut the door, heart pounding like she’d just run a marathon.
Life wasn’t a romance novel. You still had to wake up the next day.
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Phil applied to about a dozen out-of-state colleges with the intent to major in communications and go into journalism and change the world. It was only in the spring semester of their senior year that Miranda finally, belatedly began to understand that this was why Phil had asked her ever so desperately what it was that she wanted. Phil wanted things—friends, a fulfilling job, the freedom to live her life the way that she wanted to live it.
Phil wanted Miranda to want things. Phil saw Miranda not wanting things as some sort of indicator that Miranda was keeping things from her, or that Miranda was secretly unhappy, when really—well—happiness, unhappiness, Miranda did not know how to define either. She existed. That was what could be said about it.
Miranda was going into STEM. She had good enough grades that this could still remain a vague plan, as she’d be able to choose a major officially in college. Granted, her college advisor had asked her with polite bemusement to clarify what “going into STEM” meant, exactly, and, like Phil, hadn’t seemed entirely satisfied with her answer, but. Was it really too much to believe that all Miranda wanted was self-sufficiency and a neatly logical life? Perhaps she really was just that much more sensible than the rest of her classmates.
Very accidentally, Miranda appeared to have been absorbed into the larger, chattering cluster of Phil’s friends, which meant a lot of lunch periods spent listening to people she didn’t care about butcher show-tunes and trade musical theater fanfiction. They treated her with the same sort of gracious friendliness as Phil, but it had taken a very long time for Miranda to find Phil charming and tolerable, and senior year was coming to a close. She didn’t see the point in any efforts now.
So of course Miranda was there when Phil came up to the group with her first ever college acceptance letter—somewhere that wasn’t here, obviously—and of course Phil was too busy to notice when Miranda left, and locked herself in the nearest bathroom stall, and buried her head between her knees, and felt, again, something that wasn’t nothing. Something that someone like her didn’t have any room or right to feel.
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What was she supposed to do? Why couldn’t she figure out how to do it right?
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Phil left early that summer to stay with her aunt. It was a proper train ride out, horrifically early in the morning, which meant that the goodbye-Phil party the night before was a horrible idea that Miranda refused to attend (as an act of protest against teenage stupidity). But Miranda was a careful planner, and at four in the morning, she stretched out, catlike, fully rested, before assembling herself for the last time that anyone would ever see Lily Williams in a skirt and stockings.
Miranda didn’t tie her hair back in a perfect ponytail. She left it long and loose, tumbling down her shoulders, its subtle wave giving her the appearance of a bizarrely severe mermaid. She applied her makeup sparingly, and she tied one of Phil’s sparkly ribbons around her wrist. If it was the last time—the very last time—
There was no danger now. Phil’s aunt knew enough of the situation to provide something of a buffer between Phil and her parents, and she lived far enough away that any news Phil’s parents received would be strategically filtered through her aunt. Miranda could say—do—something. She didn’t know what. It wasn’t even a practical impulse. Maybe it would just be the hair, and the ribbon, and hoping against hope that Phil would understand what it all meant. Phil usually did.
Phil was staggering out onto the train platform when Miranda arrived. A few of her friends were clustered around her, giggling and crying and sleepily hugging. One of them was carrying a to-go bag that made it clear they’d gotten breakfast after the party together. Miranda felt a strange wrenching not-nothing in her chest.
Phil saw Miranda. Her friends started making faces at each other and at Phil that Miranda could not decipher, but Phil waved them off a little too airily and hurried up to Miranda.
“Kind of thought you weren’t going to show,” she said.
Miranda felt that wrenching not-nothing again. Stiffly, she said, “I’ve invested enough time in you that seeing you off feels…moderately worthwhile.”
“God,” said Phil. She was still smiling, but there was an air of tearful exhaustion to it. “Look, I just, I have to tell you before I go, I…”
Miranda waited.
“I love you. Like, I’m in love with you.”
Miranda almost said I know. Something about the way Phil was saying this felt off-kilter, and she couldn’t define exactly what was wrong. Perhaps that Phil was saying it at all. She’d come here, though, Phil’s ribbon on her wrist, hair down—had that made Phil brave?
The look on Phil’s face did not seem brave, exactly. Resigned, perhaps. “I know it’s not—I know you don’t do that, or whatever—”
“Your parents are insanely homophobic,” said Miranda very flatly. It was all she could think to say.
“I mean, yeah, but that doesn’t make me not a lesbian?”
“Of course not. Why would you assume that—” Impractical question with limited time. Try again. “This isn’t something we speak about. It isn’t safe for you.”
Phil’s smile took on a harder cast. “How is that your choice to make?”
This was not the expected or the planned response. Miranda blinked a few times, very fast, hoping that maybe the blinking would buy her some time to think of something to say, something that would make—sense—
“We both know what they’re like,” said Phil. “But even when they’re not around, you haven’t let me—say anything. Do anything. They’re not bad enough that they’d—you don’t know what they’re like. And I get it, sure, maybe we wouldn’t have been able to talk about it at school, or at your house with your parents and the fact that they don’t love you—”
“Don’t say it like that,” said Miranda, which was not at all the sanctioned or the planned response.
“Four years,” said Phil, “and that is the most emotion I’ve ever gotten out of you.”
“Don’t say it like that.” Her eyes stung.
“We could have talked about it before now,” said Phil. “Figured out some kind of plan. Something.”
“Do you know how rare it is to end up with the first person you fall in love with?” said Miranda. She was about to say, I was trying to improve our odds, but she didn’t have time to do it.
“Is that your way of trying to make me feel better?” said Phil, and let out a wrecked little laugh. “You don’t love me, but that’s the most statistically likely outcome?”
“What?” said Miranda.
“I can’t,” said Phil. “I can’t with you. I’m wasting my life, my time, just waiting, and I—I can’t—”
“Waiting,” said Miranda. She felt a little dizzy. “That’s what you think you’ve been doing. Waiting. For me to—”
“Love you,” said Phil, helplessly. “If you can.”
Phil knew. That was what Miranda had always liked about her. She knew how Miranda worked. Hadn’t she always known? Hadn’t she always—smiled, without asking for clarification?
“Do you love me?” pressed Phil.
“Not now I don’t,” snapped Miranda.
She hadn’t meant it like that. She’d said it too fast. She’d always had a horrible, sharp tongue—Phil had always known that about her—known it, understood it, at least, she’d thought—she’d been sure—
“Cool,” said Phil, with all the wobbly bravado of a heartbroken teenage girl. “That’s so cool. That’s so fine. You know what, thank you for finally telling me. I’m gonna get over it. It’s gonna be—I’m gonna use this to fuel my journalistic fire, that’s what I’m gonna do, it’ll be a whole big article I’ll never print, and when I’m done, I’ll date a bunch of girls in college and I’ll never think about you again. Don’t worry about it. Go off and do STEM.”
She turned and left—not to Miranda, but to her friends, with the shaken, out-of-pace gait of a lost little deer in the woods. Her friends enfolded her with warm sympathy, fussing over her, a few casting cold looks at Miranda before turning back towards Phil. Some of the tableau felt a bit deliberate. They wanted her to see that Phil was hurt, and it was her fault.
Miranda ran through the data. She saw her errors. She knew what Phil would have wanted to hear three seconds ago, three days ago, three years ago, but what good did that do now? What choice would she have made differently? She saw Phil’s parents for what they were, even if Phil didn’t. Homophobia wouldn’t have been the only problem with even a whisper that Phil was dating anyone who wasn’t all the way white.
How is that your choice to make?
It wasn’t. How had she missed that? But wasn’t it her job to plan for every possible problem? How could she ever manage anything if there were variables like this—so big, so important, and yet so impossible for her to see until they were in retrospect?
Miranda buried her face in her hands. When she looked up, the platform was empty, and Phil was gone.
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If Phil had been writing this story, Miranda probably would have gone back home, cried cathartically in the arms of her parents, mended fences between them, and settled comfortably into the domestic sphere that she’d never been able to fully appreciate. What happened, instead, was much more in line with Miranda’s emotional regulation practices: she went home, lay with her arms crossed over her chest for four hours, and, when her father arrived back from work, was told that “behaving like a corpse isn’t going to get you the attention you so clearly want, especially when you’re supposed to be keeping an eye on Cassie.”
Cassie, by this point, was four years old, and persisted in adoring Miranda in a way that Miranda found particularly unbearable today. She didn’t want to be looked at with limpid eyes by someone who, in a few years, would probably also tire of waiting for some sort of affectionate overture and give her a dressing-down in a public place.
Was the solution, then, to learn how to adore people? Miranda didn’t want to do that. Loving people hurt. It was humiliating, and she couldn’t control it.
“Maybe I won’t go into STEM,” she said to Cassie. “Maybe I’ll—”
What would she do, if not that?
Cassie, quiet as ever and blissfully oblivious to whatever it was that Miranda was feeling, rested her soft baby cheek on Miranda’s shoulder, blearily watching the animated cat on the screen as it expounded upon the values of friendship and community. Miranda found the whole thing a little too unsubtle for her tastes.
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Miranda was sent off to college with no fanfare and no friends. Her parents hugged her somewhat perfunctorily and with a degree of very obvious relief. Cassie cried, which Miranda resented, as it was clear that this would be added to the list of reasons that Cassie was ever so precious—to love Miranda, of all people! To be sad that Miranda was leaving!
She stooped down and dried Cassie’s tears. She’d never exactly considered herself an older sister, but this felt important.
“When it’s just you,” she said, very quietly, “when they don’t have me anymore to compare you to, they are going to get worse, and they are going to be unkind. Your days of being their perfect little baby are coming to an unceremonious end. You are going to have to learn how to be something else.”
She meant it as an indictment. Almost a cruelty. Cassie was four. There was no telling how much of the little speech she understood. But Cassie wrapped her baby arms around Miranda’s neck and hugged her, and Miranda—
Oh, not nothing, not nothing, not nothing. Never nothing. Too much. But it all went away, with time. Let this be the last time she saw Cassie—a sweet little girl who loved her. Miranda could not withstand another disappointment.
She would not put herself in the position to experience one again.
looking at my follower count like ah yes. my dear treasured friend mutuals who i have known for years. thanks for following me over in this direction :’) i am really excited
posted this on my main, but as it's becoming something more serialized and i write it in chunks, i have decided to repost it here with a different title! what's better to kick off the inaugural celia original fiction experiment than girls being weird about each other?
Phil and Miranda fell in love—not quite at first sight, at least not for Miranda, and even Phil would say much later that she hadn’t figured out exactly what she felt until that unforgettable Physical Education class. The first time they met, Miranda had been all in white, not as a statement on virginal purity but as a daring demonstration of her perfection and precision. Stains on white clothing showed. Miranda moved through the world so quickly, so neatly, that she remained positively spotless, from her cream-colored turtleneck to her bright white tennis shoes.
She’d been moving just as quickly down the crowded halls of their high school, weaving between backpacks, targeting every other sophomore she saw with rapid-fire precision to ask them what they’d gotten on their PSATS. Of course half of the sophomores she asked that said, blankly, that it was August, and the other half, who by this point had become quite accustomed to That Freak Miranda Cohen, had ignored her with the exhausted irritation only possible from a sleep-deprived sophomore in the middle of the school day.
Phil, though. Phil had started two weeks after everyone else, and she had been trying in vain to get people to not call her by her terrible full name—no one was calling her Phil, it was always Lily or Philly or something else way, way, way too feminine—and there was a kind of manic hopefulness every time anyone turned her way, like the next person to talk to her really could be her best friend. Miranda’s long black ponytail caught her attention, and all the white that she was wearing in a sea of dark, apathetic high school colors made her stand out like the moon at night.
So Miranda turned to Phil, dark eyes accusing, assessing, and when she asked, Phil had an answer. Her parents had made her take the PSAT right before transitioning her out of homeschooling and into actual high school.
“1430,” she said. “Why?”
“What?” said Miranda tightly. Then, “What’s your name?”
Phil winced, smiled, and said, “Lily,” because that was the one that did seem to be sticking for some reason. “Lily Williams. Why—”
Miranda scribbled something down in her notebook with homicidal precision and disappeared without further explanation. Baffled, Phil watched her leave.
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Miranda strove for perfection because no one had asked her to do it. In point of fact, her parents wanted her to be more loving, more giving, more patient, and Miranda refused to bend to that wish for no reason. Excellence was its own safety net. Love was not a reliable backup plan.
Her score on the PSAT had been 1420. Her inquiries among her peers had suggested apathetic disinterest in the question this early in the year, which in turn cemented Miranda’s position as the cream of the crop. The best of the best. She would submit her college applications with the proud certainty of outshining every hopeful in her high school—
—so long as no one was scoring higher than her.
Of course 1420 wasn’t the best that a PSAT score could possibly be. That wasn’t the point. The point was that Miranda’s high school was full of people who didn’t care about their future, who weren’t thinking about this question, whose goals and aspirations remained aimlessly imprecise. To have her question answered immediately suggested that this was a person who threatened to beat Miranda at her own game.
Untenable.
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Phil signed up for all the clubs that Miranda was in. Miranda, of course, assumed this to be some sort of threat to her Long-Term Plans, especially given Phil’s clear interest in her in particular. Phil would hang round the door after debate club, or carry Miranda’s books to the monthly student newspaper meeting, all while wearing the hopeful smile of a lonely new girl—which, to the recipient of the smile, read as an unsubtle attempt to ingratiate herself to Miranda. Had she noticed, then, the distinct lack of close bosom friendships in Miranda’s life? Was she intending to weaponize Miranda’s hollow heart—wake some sleeping capacity for feeling, for care—only to stab Miranda in the back?
No matter. Miranda resolutely ignored her.
For her part, Phil could hardly explain why she was doing what she was doing. Something about Miranda’s rigid refusal to dismiss her was intensely fascinating to her. Being homeschooled had always meant living a very different life from her peers—in point of fact, she’d tried out public school when she was eleven, and had tearfully begged that her parents let her return to a safer, more secluded world with them. Most of her experience with other teenagers involved derisive cruelty, whether passive or aggressive. Miranda’s stony silence wasn’t personal in quite the same way.
She would try, sometimes, for a halfway sentence—some observation about the weather, or the trees. Miranda’s eyes would flick to her with something very close to terrified curiosity before flicking quickly back away, and then, stiffly, Miranda would say, “I have to go. My mom’s in the parking lot,” and leave, usually in the wrong direction, almost always to lock herself in the bathroom until Phil left.
Seriously. Fascinating.
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The fall semester continued in this way for some time. Miranda didn’t thaw, and Phil didn’t ask her to, just kept carrying her books and mostly not talking to her. It served as a strangely effective barrier against their classmates, who had significantly less interest in tormenting a pair of odd friends than they would in tormenting an odd girl on her own. Phil found a kind of comfort in knowing that there was someone at school who wasn’t going to say anything about her shapeless, boring, beige-y clothing, and Miranda—well, Miranda refused to care. She just wouldn’t.
The spring semester brought an unexpected change.
It wasn’t intentional—after all, they weren’t actually speaking to each other—but the first day back from winter break, Miranda and Phil found themselves in the same Physical Education class. Phil’s school-issue shorts and shirt were a size too big, and Miranda had unsuccessfully attempted to bleach her uniform white. Both of them saw each other immediately.
Phil beamed.
Miranda’s cold mask gave way to an expression of open horror.
Their teacher clapped her hands together, and said, “Pick a partner!”
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Miranda was on the fencing team. It was pretty much the only sport she actually liked. Elegant, graceful, precise, distinguished—she liked how she looked holding a sword, and she liked how it felt to know how to use it. She still wasn’t well-liked at their school, but after working with terrifying diligence on her swordsmanship through the fall, there was a degree of respect placed on her name whenever anyone brought up her fencing aptitude.
What they were doing in Physical Education that day was a kiddie version of fencing. Ridiculous. Undignified. She managed about five minutes of whacking Phil’s pool noodle away with her own pool noodle before she gave up, dropped her so-called sword, and stalked over to their failure of a gym teacher, who referred to herself as “Miss Natalie” as though adding a Miss to the front of one’s first name made being on a first-name basis with teenagers in any way dignified.
Miss Natalie’s chipper expression gave way to one of resigned exhaustion. “Yes, Miranda?”
“This is absurd,” said Miranda. “Why can’t we practice with real swords?”
Outside of being Miranda’s definition of a truly disappointing Physical Education teacher, Miss Natalie was also assistant coach for almost every sports team that their school had to offer. It was for this specific reason that she took in Miranda’s expression, took in the pool noodles, took in absolutely everything she knew about Miranda (impossible to please, but adhered to any stated rules with obsessive rigidity), and said carefully, “Listen, I know this is frustrating and well below your pay grade, so I’m gonna make you a deal. If you make it through fifteen more minutes with the play swords—”
“Pool noodles,” said Miranda.
Miss Natalie sighed. “Pool noodles. With the pool noodles. You give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll let you and your partner demonstrate sword form in front of the class. How’s that?”
“Lily doesn’t know a thing about sword form—”
Miss Natalie, however, knew a thing or two about Miranda. “But you do, right? And you’re good enough to show off what you can do against someone who isn’t right on track to be team captain in her senior year.”
“Junior year,” said Miranda, eyes narrowed, but she was mollified enough to leave Miss Natalie alone and pick up the pool noodle again.
Phil was watching Miranda with puppyish curiosity. Her skin was impossibly pale, almost translucent, which meant that the pink flush of exertion was already showing up around her cheeks and neck and ears. Her eyes were impossibly large, the color of hazelnuts. Her nose was dusted with freckles. Miranda catalogued these aspects of Phil, along with numerous other aspects of Phil, every time her eyes landed on Phil: she turned over the details, feeling as though they were important for a reason she could not yet define. She needed to always know how to describe the reddish-gold shine of Phil’s messy hair.
Miranda picked up the pool noodle. Phil bounced on the balls of her feet. Her tennis shoes had once been white, but were covered in old mud and grass stains.
Abhorrent.
Fifteen minutes passed quickly. Miranda wasn’t trying very hard now that she knew she’d be able to hold a sword. Any mistakes she made now would be attributed to her impatience with a craft that was utterly beneath her. Phil got one or two hits in before she stopped trying, swinging wide and wild in ways that were very easy for Miranda to miss. She didn’t smile with her mouth, but the sparkle stayed in her eyes. This was fun for her.
Finally, Miss Natalie clapped her hands together, said, “Okay, guys, we’re taking a break from goof-around time for a minute—” (the very existence of goof-around time during a Physical Education class was, Miranda thought, grounds for Miss Natalie to be banished from Planet Earth and sent right to the moon) “—we’re gonna get a special demonstration from Miranda. You guys remember Miranda’s on our fencing team, right?”
The annoyed boredom on the faces of the uneducated masses had absolutely no impact on Miranda. Their opinions didn’t matter. She took the sword when Miss Natalie offered it, and looked across to see what Phil was doing.
Phil was holding the sword shyly. Curiously. Her eyes flicked up towards Miranda, a strange blush lingering around her cheeks and ears. Exertion? No. What was it? No. It wasn’t—
No. No, no, no, no.
Miss Natalie was saying something that sounded vaguely instructive. Miranda drew herself up to her full height—she’d always been on the tall side, though Phil, frustratingly, was two inches taller than her—and readied herself to begin. Phil mimicked her with appalling clumsiness. Her hands were all wrong on the sword. She was going to lose her grip in a moment. What did she think she was doing?
And the way Phil looked at her then—
Miranda lashed out. It was quick, it was biting, and somehow, despite the blunted sword, it cut—a long, deep, bruising cut that stretched across Phil’s cheek and towards her ear. Phil gasped, almost a scream, and reeled back, tumbling to a sitting position on the ground; Miranda, drawn forward by a force she didn’t understand, brought her sword sharply across Phil’s chest, snagging the fabric of the too-large shirt and tearing it down the middle.
“—RANDA!” shouted Miss Natalie, and pulled her back. The sword in Miranda’s hand clattered down to the ground between them.
Phil was sitting on the floor. Her cheek was dripping blood down onto her ruined shirt. The look in her eyes was, if possible, more adoring and worshipful than ever before.
That was when they fell in love.
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Phil’s parents and Miranda’s parents and the principal were having a very loud shouting match in the principal’s office. Miranda and Phil had been sent outside, because when they’d been brought up, Phil had staunchly defended Miranda, Miranda had attempted to throw herself upon the mercies of the school detention system, and this had decisively upset both sets of extremely defensive parents. Thinking ahead, the vice principal had removed Phil and Miranda before they could continue to argue their cases, leaving them in the mostly-empty hallway with Phil still pressing gauze to her bleeding cheek.
“I’m sorry about your—” Miranda gestured to Phil’s face.
“Shut up,” said Phil. She smiled, then winced. “Seriously. Don’t apologize. That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. You’re like one of those cobras.”
“Cobras,” said Miranda.
“Yeah, you know, super fast and totally ouch if you’re not paying attention. And I was so not paying attention.” Phil grinned broadly, then winced even more.
“Stop smiling at me,” said Miranda. “Do you lack even the most basic self-preservation instincts?”
“Yeah,” said Phil, and smiled a third time. Miranda whacked her shoulder.
One of the secretaries stepped out of the main office. As the door opened, they could hear Phil’s dad yelling, “—serious injury to our poor Philophrosyne–” before the secretary hastily shut the door.
“Philophrosyne?” said Miranda.
Phil made a face. “I hate it,” she said. “I hate Lily, too, but no one ever just calls me—”
“Phil,” said Miranda.
Phil was clearly about to smile again, so Miranda put a hand firmly over her mouth.
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Phil carried Miranda’s books for the rest of sophomore year, and when junior year started, Miranda started carrying Phil’s. When Phil asked about the weather, or the trees, Miranda would say, irritably, “I don’t know. I don’t care. Does it matter?” and then, when Phil pressed, Miranda would say, “Yes, the sky is very blue. What did you get on your Algebra test?” and obsessively check their answers against each other while Phil continued to talk about the cloud in the sky that looked like a duck. Then, inevitably, they’d sit down in the grass by the track around the football field and trade lunches: half of Miranda’s for half of Phil’s.
Miranda braided Phil’s hair on occasion—as she described it to Phil, she had a very little sister, so she’d gotten good at braiding the hair of distractible, fidgety people—and sometimes, when they shared textbooks, their fingers brushed.
