Hello and Welcome, dear friends to "Revelations - Sharks" which is the Maggie-centric work in the Revelations universe!
This is the companion piece to already-published "Revelations," which tells this story from Alex's point of view. I very strongly recommend reading that one first. "Revelations" is what sets up this entire universe - this fic doesn't rehash most of the constants of the world, so you'll likely be confused if you don't read that first.
Thank you so much for being here! Please let me know what you think of this story. And remember our bargain - y'all wanted this story, so y'all promised me comments up the wazoo!
Maggie's parents aren't soulmates.
She doesn't know that when she's younger, but it explains everything when she learns it.
It explains why they never talk about Revelations in her house – not before she had her first, and not after. It explains why everything she knows about soulmates and what is going to happen on her fifth birthday comes from kindergarten playground gossip and from tv shows.
Two days before her fifth birthday – before her first Revelation – Maggie's friend Cassie reminds her to take pictures of her arm and put them in her Revelations journal to keep them safe. Maggie tells her that she doesn't have a Revelations journal.
The next day – the day before her birthday – Cassie's mom gives her a Revelations journal at pickup.
Maggie realizes later that Cassie's mom thought they just couldn't afford a journal, not that her parents actively didn't want her to have one.
So when Maggie wakes up on her fifth birthday, she kind of knows what she's going to find. Animals on her arms. She knows one arm will be about her and the other arm will be about her soulmate, but she doesn't remember which will be which.
It's still very early, the digital clock next to her head starts with a 3, and it's still dark, and she can still hear the crickets outside her window. But she pulls her flashlight from under her bed and silently drags the covers over her head and turns on the light, huddled in her little cave, careful not to wake her brother.
On her right arm, from wrist to armpit, are drawings of sharks. Intricate and detailed and designed. Maggie has never seen anything so pretty in her entire life.
And Maggie loves sharks – she has four books about sharks on her bookshelf right this minute, and Ms. Dana her kindergarten teacher said she would give Maggie another one for her birthday – so she figures out this arm must be the one that's about her.
So she looks to her left arm, which she remembers is her left because it's the arm she doesn't throw with so good, and she sees a snake. A big, thick, strong snake coiling around her arm.
There are snakes sometimes in the cornfields, and they really scare Maggie. Some of them are poison, and their neighbor's dog got bit by one and he died, and they didn't have a funeral but they buried him in their backyard and sometimes when she's playing outside by herself Maggie brings a flower and lays it on his grave.
But Maggie's learned at school that her soulmate is a wonderful person that she's supposed to love, and Maggie guesses that maybe she should trust her soulmate and not be so scared of snakes anymore.
She promises herself, solemn and silent and serious, huddled under her covers in the dead of night, just hours after turning five, that she'll try.
Later that day, at drop-off, it's Cassie's mom who takes pictures of her arms, covered in her marks, after Maggie's own mom has driven away. She gives the prints to Maggie a week later, after they're developed. Maggie tucks them in her journal and hides the whole thing under her bed.
(When she's older and her parents kick her out, Cassie's mom is the first person Maggie calls. She tells Maggie that she's sorry for what's happened to her, but she can't support that kind of lifestyle in her house. She wishes Maggie the best of luck and hangs up on her.
Maggie's aunt is her second call.)
When Maggie is seven, she learns that her soulmate has a name that starts with A. There are five kids in Maggie's class with names that start with A. Maggie's own brother starts with A. That must mean there are like a billion people with A names in the world.
Sarah P came to school a couple weeks ago on her birthday with a drawing on her arm, not a letter. Ms. Morris looked it up and said it was a Korean letter, but it looked like a beautiful box with squiggles to Maggie. Ms. Morris told Sarah P that her soulmate probably lived in Korea, and they all looked at a map of the world, and Korea is really, really far from Nebraska.
Maggie had been hoping her soulmate might live in Korea too. She tries not to be disappointed when she sees the regular old A, but it's hard.
Maggie's soulmate lives in the US, she learns when she's nine, on the west coast or in Alaska or Hawaii. Maggie hopes for Hawaii, because she's only nine but she's kind of sick of the winter. Alaska would be cool too though – Maggie's always wanted to ride on a dog sled.
Lots of the other kids in her class have soulmates who also live in the Midwest. Suddenly people start caring about who around them has their same letter. Even though hers isn't in Nebraska, Maggie avoids every boy she meets who has a name that starts with A.
She doesn't know why, but she really isn't excited to meet the boy who is her soulmate. The idea makes her feel kind of sick inside.
When she's ten, Maggie learns that her parents aren't soulmates. Her oldest brother, Tomás, mentions it casually at breakfast one morning, like it isn't a big deal.
He's newly 16, and his soulbond is open, but he's telling Maggie and their middle brother Antonio that he doesn't care.
"Why waste time wondering about something that doesn't matter," he's saying as he shovels cereal in his mouth. "Pop didn't spend his time worrying about it, that's for sure, and look at him. We had the biggest yield last year of anyone in Blue Springs."
Maggie is only ten, but she knows that can't be all that impressive. There are only 321 other people who live in Blue Springs, and that includes babies.
Antonio's spoon is hovering over his own cereal. "What do you mean, Pop didn't worry about it?"
Tomás looks at him like he's an idiot. Tomás loves to look at both of them like that, like even though they're only ten and twelve, they're the biggest idiots in the universe. "I mean what I said, Tony, you dimwit."
"Don't call him that," Maggie says softly. Tonio has a lot of trouble in school because he can't read well, but it's not his fault that the letters keep wiggling around when he looks at them, and he isn't stupid, and it isn't fair for Tomás to call him dimwit all the time.
But Tomás ignores her, as always. "Did you dipshits really think Pop and Ma were soulmates?" He scoffs at them. "No one in this fucking town are soulmates. You'll never meet yours, so you might as well stop thinking about it now. It doesn't matter."
He takes another huge bite of cereal and Maggie watches the milk drip down his chin, hitting his shirt and making a wet circle that expands and expands and expands.
Maggie learns when she's eleven that her soulmate likes to read and surf and do something with science.
Maggie hopes the surfing means she's right about Hawaii.
Maggie's not surprised by what's on her own arm. She loves softball, and she's really good at it. And she's good in school – even though he's two grades ahead of her she helps Tonio a lot because he has trouble, so she's gotten really good at reading. And soccer isn't as fun as softball but all the other girls play it, and Maggie wants to do what they do, so she keeps playing.
She's always kind of liked science, but she's never thought about it much.
She decides to enroll in honors science when she gets to the upper school for seventh grade. If her soulmate likes it, it must be kind of cool.
Maggie has always known that she's a little different from the other kids. She looks different – her skin is a little darker and her hair is black and her eyes are dark, and most of the other kids are pale and blonde or have light brown hair and lots of them have blue or green eyes.
She knows that her parents talk differently, and that they speak Spanish sometimes at home, and she's never heard any of her friends' parents speaking Spanish.
And she knows at home they're Tomás and Antonio and Magdalena, but at school they're Tommy and Tony and Maggie.
She doesn't really realize she's not white, though, doesn't realize there are words for the kind of different she is, until she's in seventh grade, her first year in the upper school, and someone beats up Tonio for the first time. Maggie finds him, huddled against a wall, hiding behind the school. His skinny frame shaking with fear and pain. The white wall he's against is splattered with blood.
He tells her, his voice shaking, what they called him, what they said to him.
Maggie is furious. She walks him home and cleans him up before their parents can come home and see him.
She tells Tomás what happened, even though Tonio tells her not to. Tomás sets his jaw and says he'll handle it. He's 17 now, a senior, and he's on the football team. He's huge and strong and popular and all the girls like him, and Maggie is sure he can take care of it.
He does. He beats the crap out of the kid who did it, tells him never to mess with Tony or Maggie ever again.
But after Tomás graduates – even though he still lives in town, at home, and works in the fields with their dad – the kid retaliates.
He and his friends come for Tonio again and again, and then, when they're sick of Maggie intervening and screaming at them, they come for her too. They don't hit her as hard but she bleeds.
She goes to the principal, defiant.
He's the authority figure. He's supposed to help.
He suspends her one day for fighting. He suspends the boys one day for fighting. He tells Maggie to stop causing trouble.
Maggie goes home in a rage, and her father won't look at her and Tonio won't look at her.
It's Tomás who comes to her room, the little cubby she has to herself now that she and Tonio are old enough that they can't share a room anymore because she's a girl. Maggie rages at him that she and the boys got the same punishment, and Tomás just shrugs.
"They're white," he says, like it's that simple.
And, it turns out, it is.
They're white. The principal is white. The whole fucking town is white.
And Maggie isn't.