Chapter 1
Darlene looks down at her lap, smoothing out her suffocating pink dress. Letting her blonde curls fall around her face, she stares at her hands as they fidget in her lap.
Freshly manicured pink almonds sit on her fingers, intricately designed per her mothers request. Darlene has begun to dread nail day; a biweekly appointment that creates yet another space for her mother to scheme her appearance. Image was everything. “You have the eyes of a prom queen, Darlene,” her mother told her once, as she stared critically into the green swamps of her lonesome lashes.
Now, years later, Darlene’s eyes avoid a long table of her friends she’s never truly met, dolled up in similar suffocating dresses to celebrate her 17th birthday. “Your circle matters Darlene.” Her mom told her as she walked through the front doors of high school years before. “Find your people.” Looking up at the girls surrounding her, cut from the same cloth her mother tried sewing her into, she sighs. Darlene watches them with unfiltered boredom, her gaze flitting across their bleached highlights and perfectly contoured noses. Lies drip from lips glazed like donuts, their sugary rumors hidden beneath fake smiles. She works to hide a scowl as they drink sparkling water, embarrassingly pursing their lips to avoid smudging their lipstick.
Darlene picks up her Shirley temple; the high calorie drink devastating the others at her table, and drinks from the rim, unbothered by the lipstick stain she creates. Not that she wanted to wear lipstick anyway. Shocked by her sugary choices, she receives salty stares from the girls next to her, increasing her annoyance. Darlene wonders what it's like to live a life so bland, counting calories in cherries and drinking water from paper straws.
Slowly turning away from the girls at her table, she looks for something else to watch. Darlene finds the restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows, the crystal clear glass displaying the sprawling beach outside; light blue waves crashing against the rocky sand of the Malibu coast. The sunset lights up the beach and restaurant windows in deep shades of orange and yellow, illuminating her blonde curls and accentuating her delicate features. It would be a perfect night, Darlene thinks, if she was enjoying it. She wishes she could crash through life the way the waves do, free and unconstrained. She wonders what it would be like to surf, how it would feel to coast across sharp peaks of water. “You’re too beautiful to kill yourself, Darlene,” her mother had scolded her when she brought up surfing lessons years before. The abrupt ending to a possible experience was one Darlene was used to, one she had come to expect. There wasn’t much of anything anymore.
Forcing her eyes from the beach back to the monochromatic balloons surrounding the restaurant terrace, Darlene feels imprisoned. She wonders if her mom considered that her favorite color isn’t even pink as she paid decorators to dress the room in every shade possible. Maybe the party wasn’t for Darlene at all. “Darlene is the type of gorgeous you brag about,” her mother always boasts, using Darlene’s curls to twist herself into their classy society.
Smoothing out the rosy tablecloth beneath her nails, Darlene turns over a realization that’s bothered her for years. She is just a piece on display, her beauty carefully curated for her mother’s benefit. It’s all she’d ever be. Resisting the urge to grip the edge of the table in frustration, Darlene sits up straight instead, pasting on a smile as she faces the girls once again. She forces herself to play the part, at least for tonight.
Darlene was good at faking it.
She has the eyes of a prom queen, after all.
