𝔞ᖱ𝒆l𝔞𝔦ᖱ𝒆 💞

“Naturally. Any girl worth her salt can,” she agrees, looking down to Marzanna.

“I told her the teachers wanted her to take first class—when we arrived.” The Irish first grade, a year behind. “I think she thought I was flying her home.”

Caroline laughs, her eyebrows rocketing for the clouds. “Did she enter first class?”

“No. The third,” he tells her. “And she will be applying for Harvard.”

Caroline smiles at their conviction. “And what will you be when you’re a woman, Marzanna?”

A tiny tea kettle yelp. This ladybug’s wings fan out, and she releases a pitch heard only by anthills. Marzanna wants to see Gandhi, and she takes off.

The chase is afoot. One step for him is eighteen of her millipede scuttles, and they spear through the planetary atmosphere of homegrown cucumbers and organic stop light cherry tomatoes, Nicholas attached to her like a poltergeist. A subway rattles the street. A man steers his poodle. They breach gravitational pull, and in T-minus fifteen seconds, they’re here.

Caroline huffs a breath. She pushes back her effortlessly tousled hair, which rustles her real mother of pearl earrings.

“You would think it was Christmas.” She glows, looking up.

“I wouldn’t,” he tells her. “It’s quiet.”

Gandhi stands at a bronze eight foot, as tall to Marzanna as the Statue of Liberty, and the moon, and the Empire State Building. He’ll burst the sky like a sewing needle, unleashing Biblical floods.

Nicholas stands in the intervening silence, feeling the question already radiating off of Caroline: why Gandhi? She’s only ten.

But for now, Caroline's eyes are free to twinkle fondly.

Standing before them is the identical twin of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and Marzanna, for once, is behaving quite mannerly -- perhaps on account of her deep, subject-matter knowledge on his ability to orchestrate Biblical floods, and also his history for freedom fighting. She just stands there staring at first, for what seems like an eternity, evaluating his willingness to be interviewed by a ten-year-old, and/or gifted with her most unscrungled pipe cleaner.

This is how it usually goes, really; Marzanna the Line Leader's famous flaw is her silent and infinite-blue staring. It's been brought up numerous times at Parent Teacher Conferences, yet Nicholas does not one thing about it.

He's blue-eyed himself, and loves her too blindly.

Her meditation is interrupted when she's rocked off her axis by familiar sound waves, ones that had first made themselves known to her from a VHS tape purchased at the gigantic Macy's. Marzanna gasps, but doesn't whip around. Her first instinct is to check her Little Mermaid lunchbox-turned-crossbody -- she does so carefully, wondering whether or not her Ariel printed in PVC-film had sprung to life.

Hm ... her mouth isn't moving.

So she happens upon a second guess. Turns around to find that Miss Caroline Honey is the culprit, humming the tune of Disney's newest, red-headiest princess ... though she looks a touch more Walt's Silver Age. More 1950s, imagined by Mary Blair.

More Cinderella.

❝ ... I know all the words. ❞ How Marzanna manages to sound proud and shy both at once is anyone's guess. Even Gandhi's. She wiggles her pink-buckled shoes nervously, clutching her lunchbox for dear life, and barely looks up. ❝ I learned it all right away the first time I watched it. ❞

She has a song in her -- many, in fact, but for much too long, she's been supposing that songs are meant to only be sung by real princesses in the TV. Children learn the value of their voice most easily if their parents respond to it warmly, and Nicholas, for all his efforts, has only been in her life for barely two years. The first eight were spent entirely differently.

dialogue prompts from the first season of prime's off-campus.

you are intolerable.

do not give me the silent treatment.

nobody is expecting you to be _____.

take a shower. you smell like shit.

it'll come back to you. like riding a bike.

did anyone ever tell you that eavesdropping is rude?

has anyone ever told you your references are dated?

i'll pick out your outfit, you just do your makeup.

i plead the fifth.

i am always telling you to wear your jacket. you never do.

how do you suddenly know my name?

you can't just kiss me out of the blue.

you blush whenever i come near you.

get over yourself. i don't blush.

my single ass needs another drink.

this is the part where i tell you all the things i want to do to you when we're alone.

you're just giving me the bed because you feel bad for me.

i wouldn't know who i am without it.

you centered me.

you're overthinking. get out of your head.

you can put me down now. we all know how much you can bench.

i don't need your pity. i don't need you to be my therapist.

what if i'm broken?

if you're going to chase an impossible dream, chase one that actually matters.

this party's kind of dead, right?

are you driving, or shall i?

i think people can change, if they want to.

if i go, will you come with me?

you can't let the bad memories erase the good ones.

do you never have a shirt on?

people who care about you will understand. if they don't, they're not your people.

you said this wasn't a date. it feels like a date.

god, it's so hot when someone knows what they want.

this is a party. parties are supposed to be fun.

stop fucking with my head.

i'm a girl. i have to think about what everybody else is feeling before i can figure out what i'm feeling.

don't think. tell me what you want.

you scare the shit out of them, you know.

look how hard they're trying to please you.

you really can't be alone, can you?

can we hit dairy queen on the way home?

i can't take on anyone else's stress today. i'm emotionally raw. i'm a shell of a woman.

i don't know what your problem is, but i suggest you do whatever it takes to work it out.

we have to cling to the people who see us and smile.

just let me know you're okay.

we're on the same team. don't you get that?

don't you want to know what being single and slutty has to offer you?

let's start with the small stuff and work our way up, okay?

you didn't do anything wrong.

it has recently come to my attention that i'm a serial monogamist.

i'm actually so proud, i could cry.

what kind of _____ do you want to be?

have fun. do stuff just 'cause you want to.

i told you to stop opening my mail.

who says print media is dead?

i don't want you to look at me differently, or treat me differently.

i always knew. i just thought you'd tell me when you were ready.

you're not just one thing. you're everything.

the words will come when they come.

you reminded me of who i used to be.

you could be anywhere, doing anything, but you're not. you're here.

hey, look at me. i got you. i got you, okay?

i don't want to be that guy.

you're not as dumb as you look.

stop being chicken shit and tell _____ how you feel.

i know i said i was dropping out, but can i maybe drop back in?

i couldn't miss your big moment, could i?

[ fish major ] : i whimper

[ fish major ] : there's a difference.

[ fish major ] : if you stopped listening to inna and the blogsphere you'd know it

. . .

[ fish major ] : you keep saying you don't like me but

[ fish major ] : allah'a şükür box dye exists [ fish major ] : so does the block button

[ fish major ] : i fail to see your real problem here [ fish major ] : we should talk about it after your psych eval [ fish major ] : i can pick you up tues 8pm

[ ➵ rothbart ] : as much shaytaan as can be contained in a yellow peanut m&m.

. . .

[ ➵ rothbart ] : you KNOW why i cant block you???

[ ➵ rothbart ] : [ Me_And_Zhanka.heic ]

[ ➵ rothbart ] : [ Me_And_Zhanka2.heic ]

[ ➵ rothbart ] : [ Me_And_Zhanka3.heic ]

[ ➵ rothbart ] : [ Me_And_Zhanka4.heic ]

[ ➵ rothbart ] : as for tuesday 20:00

[ ➵ rothbart ] : im already scheduled for gutting myself with my housekeys.

[ ➵ rothbart ] : go ask tatia

[ ➵ rothbart ] : she always looks at you and says the most disgusting things

[ fish major ] : you are deeply unwell.

[ fish major ] : i am reporting this to the dean so you never have to grade a paper ever again

[ fish major ] : still need you to explain this aversion to my blondness though

[ ➵ rothbart ] : which is infinitely worse than my thing

. . .

[ ➵ rothbart ] : STOP

[ ➵ rothbart ] : TEXTING

[ ➵ rothbart ] : ME.

[ ➵ rothbart ] : I DO NOT LIKE YOUUU.

[ ➵ rothbart ] : i hate yellow hair

[ ➵ rothbart ] : yes

[ ➵ rothbart ] : it achieves for you nothing beyond the look of a blini

[ ➵ rothbart ] : vanilla, milk, werther's originals, malibu barbie, and other signs of weakness.

[ ➵ rothbart ] : can you pls go. text the eight THOUSAND other girls that are dying to suck you off

[ ➵ rothbart ] : i said please

       ⊹ ,   a nasty shred of gossip,   the kind that didn't need to travel far. little got past a dragon's preternatural hearing.   this bit of scandal had every intention of getting back to her.   word travels fast on a lower-east side rooftop not even the wind could carry off secrets.   she does not cross the length of the party so much as she appears behind the idol off-duty.   the scintillating sea foam of her skirt keeps them apart by only an inch or so.   zoya's chin drops to an exposed shoulder,   cool as sea water beneath her jawline.   to a casual observer it may seem an affectionate gesture between two girls several glasses deep but in truth it was nothing short of an coercion.   ❛   what an odd way of asking me if i kiss women.  ❜   wry smile,   there is a barest hint of silver flickering in her gaze then.   

Zoya materializes behind her like a mist, then cools to solid form only when the point of her chin paints a stroke along Marzanna's neck. A classic, utterly wholesome display of feminine friendship.

Girls will be girls.

❝ Hi Zoya, ❞ she says, sweetly, fondly, but without a shred of virtue required to make it sound like anything other than a proposition. Her free hand snakes upward, drifting along the swell of Zoya's pillowed mouth before she peels away, gloss catching on tip of her nail. Meanwhile, her dumbstruck companion, a skinny, four-eyed, fellow gossip-hoarding blond, looks on.

❝ My friend says that he knows everything there is to know about you in online diaries. Your star chart, your shopping list ... your preferences between men and women. Go on, Valeri, tell her what you read. ❞

He stutters. Marzanna grins, a bit sadistically.

She whispers to Zoya over her shoulder, twirling the black-plastic stick in her cocktail.

"Dare? You sure?"

The year is 2006. Grace, 21, hair a shock of pitch blond — like butter! Like a scampering labrador's scruff! Not yet gentled with the chocolatey browns age will later crimp into his roots — sits out with a poorly miscalculated air of safety. He's in the kitchen reading something, a magazine probably, as his entire gaggle of undergraduate friends play truth or dare. A classic. There is a delicious bake of fun time brownies sat half-demolished on the table (he hadn't partaken), bottles of Bud Light (he is partaking), and Marzanna's self respect on the line. Music thrums, a growl of something painfully of the time, and Mark laughs in his stupid Niners cap.

"Ooooh! Alright! You asked for it," Mark crows.

Yeah. Grace agrees. Marzanna is too pugnacious. Out of the corner of his eye, he spies her wearing something casual, her hair dark and bouncing like the cresting waves of the Pacific, and she still looks painfully Victoria's Secret here. He's in his double denim and his glasses, social isolation, and distant interest. Mark's in audacity.

"Dare you to get all sweet on Ryland."

Grace jumps in his seat. "What?!"

The rest of the group gasps. Yeah. What?!

It's 2006. American Idol's in its heyday, Steve Irwin just died, and Pluto is no longer a planet. It's 2006, Marzanna's 21, but feels a whole lot like 13 Going on 30 -- why else would she be blushing like a schoolgirl, all her red pugnaciousness gone -- collected, pulverized, then distilled to a paint that stains every inch of the face? While Mark plays the role of playground bully! It's Kelly Clarkson's turn on the stereo, and his snickering's timed perfectly to the beat.

❝ Holy shit, Grace, ever heard of a draft? ❞ He asks, beaming, in a shitty but still placeable impersonation of their current, no-one's-favorite president, Mr. George W. Bush. ❝ Your country needs you. Or, uh ... more like a country needs you -- specifically, the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhst -- ❞

❝ Shut up, Mark. You belong in Texas, where rattlesnakes should be eating your brain. ❞ Barks Marzanna, hurling at him a ping pong ball, some Chex mix, and the house cat, too, if Maya hadn't held her twiggy arm back.

❝ No one's safe from Mark the Shark. ❞

❝ I can't believe you just fucking said that. ❞ Isaiah shakes his head, but curiously, unhelpfully, looks to Grace anyway.

❝ I hate this game. Will you leave him alone? You know he is shy. ❞

❝ Relax, Kazakhstan, no one's telling you to suck -- ❞

❝ Everybody FOCUS. ❞ A hush falls over the unbraincelled crowd as Mark calls everyone back to attention. Half the crew looks to him, the other half to Grace. Marzanna, meanwhile, is melting into pearlwater right in her chair, deeply regretting that one awful, drunken night-out where she had revealed to two people in this room a secret she'd been hoarding. Maya was one of those people.

The other, unfortunately, was Mark.