She is awake when her father leaves. She sits on her bed, looking out the window. She watches him step into the grey morning, his shoulders hunched, expression grim.
She used to sit here and watch him when she was younger. She used to sit and watch and dream.
She used to dream of vast purple skies spotted with silken clouds. Of heartachingly beautiful women with clothes of deep emerald and burgundy and necklaces of gold. She used to dream of men who held their heads high and faced death with unflinching heroism.
She used to dream of intense love, passionate lust, apocalyptic hatred, and magical endings.
She had imagined herself, taller, more graceful, with fuller breasts and a higher brow. Imagined men falling over themselves, begging for her attention. She pictured herself, powerful, cold, cruel, beautiful.
She had sat in her reveries of a brilliant, passionate world. Watched her father on the street outside pull his coat around him a little tighter. Listened to her mother sing softly in her high, thin voice, straining to reach the high notes as she washed the coffee cup her father had left behind.
She had vowed to leave. She knew, with a conviction that she could not explain, that she was destined for more than a lifetime of mediocrity. That she was not meant to be content with the small pleasures that life had offered her mother. That she was destined for a single love, an intense struggle, and a story of unparalleled greatness.
But she is older now. And she knows with the same conviction that she is ordinary. She knows that her features are plain and severe, her intellect average, and her voice too sharp. She knows that her life will be small, contained. And that will have to be enough.
...
One night she sits on the stairs, looking through the banisters at Lily and the boy. They are dancing, right there in the center of the living room, music playing softly from the radio in the corner.
She sees the way he looks at her, as though she is magic, as though she is exquisite, as though the world will crumble if he blinks.
She sees the pure, unadulterated happiness on Lily's face.
And she realizes that it is Lily who gets to live the life she had known with such conviction to be hers. It was Lily who got the letter. Lily who got to live in a castle. Lily who is magic.
Lily who will get to experience all of the passion and beauty and wonder the world has to offer, while she will stay home and look after her ageing parents.
Lily who will fall asleep to the whispers of this boy, this boy who adores her, while she will fall asleep to the whispers of her mother, Petunia dear, be practical.
She watches Lily, beautiful Lily, with her long red hair, her sprinkling of freckles, her graceful movements, and then she watches the boy press a soft kiss to her forehead.
Delicate. Soft. Magic.
And she sobs. The injustice of it all.
...
Sometimes at night she imagines herself on the edge of a cliff, overlooking darkness, surrounded by purple swirls. Dark, dramatic, with streaks of black, blue, silver.
Here, she is magic. She is turmoil. She stands at the precipice of greatness and adequacy.
She wants to exist. To create. To leave her mark. To indelibly change the face of the earth.
She wants to scream. She wants to be noticed, remembered. She wants to be documented. For this moment, her youth, her moment to be recorded.
She feels urgency, a swarm of insects in her stomach moving up towards her chest, waiting to erupt out of her. She imagines them crawling through her veins, escaping through the cavities of her body. Her nose, mouth.
She imagines her body being ripped to pieces, pieces of flesh falling away like discarded rags. She imagines herself being vaporized, turning into a silver cloud and floating into the night. Poetic. Dramatic. Fitting.
The night affords protection. At night, she can feel her desire, the forbidden fire that burns within her. But eventually the grey morning returns, and with it her dry, brittle existence. Where her dreams are merely flights of fancy and the fire is an ache that has permanently embedded itself in her chest.
She does her bed and leaves the room.
...
She leaves for London. She feels stifled at home, she feels her soul atrophying. She is nearly twenty and she wants something to happen, something to begin. So she packs her trunk. Blouses bought at discounted prices at the department store, three pairs of brand new pantyhose, simple A-line skirts that make her feel more elegant than she is.
Her parents see her off, tell her she is welcome back home anytime. She smiles, thanks them. She never wants to return. She will prove herself, that she can make it alone, create a life for herself. She knows it.
She registers for a typing course. The monotony is unbearable. She wonders if this is what it means to die slowly. She assures herself, sitting alone in her small flat, drinking reheated soup for the third night in a row, that this is temporary. A few boring, thankless years and then her life will begin. She can go to college. Maybe she'll study literature.
Her course ends and she takes up clerical work in an investment firm. On her first day, she rides up the elevator and a skinny man behind her whispers that he loves the view from where he is. His breath is hot on her ear and she freezes.
Her boss, Mr. LeMay, comes in late and hungover every morning. She brings him coffee and a stack of phone messages every morning. He says nothing.
One day he tells her to close his office door. He approaches her, boxes her into the door with his arms, his face so close she can smell the alcohol on his breath. He tells her she is beautiful. He slides his hand down her waist, grabbing at the material. Truly, beautiful he repeats. Her breath hitches and she stands as still as she can. His hands reach around behind her, he rests his sweaty forehead on her shoulder. Her mind is blank. She looks out the office window.
She returns to her flat, cold, shaky, furious. She imagines holding a gun to LeMay's head, watching him beg for mercy. She imagines standing in a sleek black dress and heels, towering over LeMay, him shrinking in fear. She imagines herself gorgeous, terrifying, powerful.
She contemplates her reflection in the spotted bathroom mirror, her skin green-tinged under the harsh fluorescent light, her hair greasy. And all at once, she feels empty, broken, disgusting.
She sinks to the floor of the dirty bathroom and stares straight ahead at the yellowing shower curtain. She stays there for hours.
...
She wakes up on the floor one morning with a pounding headache and a sour taste in her mouth. There is a bottle of whiskey next to her, and a bag of pretzels spilling out onto the rug. She is twenty-three and exhausted. She cannot bring herself to go to work. She cannot get herself off the floor. She feels fat, stupid, ugly. She lies there counting the circles on the ceiling tiles.
Lily sends her a letter that day and she tosses it in the dustbin without opening it, like the rest of them. She cannot stand to think of Lily right now. Lily, in her castle in the sky. Lily, with the friends who love her and the boy who worships the ground she walks on. Lily, who can do magic.
She feels alone. She wishes her parents would come. She wishes the girls from the typing pool would check on her. Of course, no one comes to the door. The telephone line her parents pay for remains silent. She imagines what would happen if she disappeared. If she floated into a wisp of silver air and vanished.
Two days later she is out of food. She is almost out of money. And she is too tired to try and pretend this is working. She returns home and retreats into her childhood bedroom. She does not miss the worried glances her parents cast each other.
...
She tells him a joke. Something about a football player and a tree. He laughs, throwing his head back, gasping for air. After dinner, he takes her hand in his. Holds her close to him as he drops her off on her parents porch.
She lies on her bed with her dress still on, trying to prolong the moment. The smell of his cologne. The way he looked at her during dinner, as though she were interesting, special.
He brings her sweets in the mornings. She packs lunches for them to share. He drops notes folded into little squares on her desk. For the first time in a long time, she feels light, youthful, alive.
He introduces her to his parents and his sister, Marge. She introduces him to her parents. They spend hours in his car, talking about his aspirations, where he wants to work, the home he dreams of buying. Then he looks into her eyes and says that he wants her. And in that moment she feels the tightness in her chest give, and she is in love with Vernon Dursley.
...
Her life is ordinary. She wakes up to the morning light dripping in through the lace curtains of their bedroom. She ties back her hair and makes Vernon coffee. He kisses her on the cheek and steps out into the grey street. She sings softly under her breath as she washes his coffee mug, straining to reach the high notes.
She pushes away thoughts of adventures and literature and magic. She lets go of what could have been, and what was stolen from her. She is twenty-five, and she is ok. And maybe that is enough.
Fin.