My Wonderful Disaster

Chapter One — I’m Fine [Part 2]

No warning. No buildup. Just — cold, then sticky, then the smell of artificial cherry, and the sound of the cafeteria absolutely losing it. Not even gasps anymore. Just laughter. Pure, clean, delighted laughter, the kind that meant everyone was being thoroughly entertained and nobody — not one single person in that entire room — was going to do anything about it.

I stood there.

Fruit punch running down my face, dripping off my chin, soaking through my hoodie, the only hoodie that was big enough to hide everything. My tray was still in my hands. I became aware of this slowly. I was still holding my tray.

I put it down on the nearest table.

I walked out.

Same as always. Head down. One foot in front of the other. The cafeteria doors swung shut behind me and I stood in the empty hallway and pressed my back against the wall and I breathed.

In. Out. In. Out.

My phone was still buzzing in my pocket. Notifications pouring in. The video, the diary, the fruit punch — someone had filmed that too, of course they had, someone always filmed everything —

I'm fine, I told myself.

My hands were shaking so hard I had to press them flat against my thighs.

I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm —

I was not fine.

...

Mom was in the kitchen when I got home, still in her work blazer, holding an envelope.

Cream coloured. Hartwell University crest in the corner. Already open.

I stopped in the doorway.

She looked up at me — taking in the fruit punch stains, the wrecked hair, the rash, all of it — and something moved across her face. I waited for it to be concern. I always waited for it to be concern.

It wasn't concern.

"What on earth happened to you," she said. Not even a question. A verdict.

"Nothing. What's in the —"

"Mavis." She set the envelope on the counter "Hartwell sent their decision."

I already knew. I crossed the kitchen and picked it up anyway.

Dear Ms. Delacroix, thank you for your interest in Hartwell University. After careful consideration of your application, we regret to inform you —

I put it back down.

"After everything," Mom said quietly. "After every single thing I have done for you."

"Mom —"

"Do you know what I gave up?" Her voice was climbing already, that familiar ascent I'd learned to brace for the way you brace for turbulence. "Do you have any idea what it has cost me to keep this family going? To keep you in medication, in doctors, in a school that is frankly too good for the effort you put in —"

"Mom, I had a really bad day —"

"You always have a bad day, Mavis. That's the problem. Every day is a bad day. Every week there's something — the lupus, the fatigue, the appointments —" she said the word like it tasted wrong, "— and I have restructured my entire life around your illness and this is what I get. A rejection letter."

Something was happening in my chest. A pressure building, cracking along old fault lines.

"I didn't ask you to do that," I said carefully.

"Excuse me?"

"I didn't ask you to restructure your life. I didn't ask to be sick. I didn't ask for any of this —"

"And I didn't ask to raise you alone." Her voice went sharp and quiet in the way that was worse than loud. "I didn't ask for your father to be a useless drunk who disappeared the moment things got hard. But here we are. Here I am. Doing everything. And you can't even —" she gestured at me, at all of me, at the fruit punch and the rash and the rejection letter, "— you can't even do the bare minimum without falling apart."

"That's not fair —"

"You are an embarrassment, Mavis."

The room went very still.

She said it evenly. Not cruelly, which was almost worse. Like it was simply a fact she was tired of working around.

"Every time I talk to someone about you I have to make excuses. Every time your school calls I have to explain. I am so tired of explaining you." She picked up the letter again. "You use that illness as a crutch. You always have. Other people have lupus and they manage — they go to school, they get grades, they have futures —"

"Other people have mothers who actually support them —"

"Don't." Her eyes flashed. "Don't you dare. I have given you everything —"

"YOU HAVE GIVEN ME NOTHING."

It came from somewhere I didn't know existed. Three years of cafeteria exits and swallowed mornings and I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine and it just — tore through.

"You have given me nothing except the feeling that I am too much and not enough at the exact same time!" My voice was shaking, my whole body was shaking, fruit punch drying in my hair and I didn't care, I couldn't care. "You know they bully me. You've always known. And you told me to ignore it. For TWO YEARS you told me to ignore it and today they poured a drink on my head in front of everyone and they read my diary out loud and they showed a video of me and everyone laughed, Mom, everyone —"

"Mavis —"

"And I came home and you're standing here telling me I'm an embarrassment?" My voice broke. I hated it. I hated that it broke in front of her. "You know what? Fine. Maybe I am. Maybe I'm everything you say I am. Maybe I really am just like Dad —" the words tasted like poison, "— maybe I really am a waste of everything you've sacrificed. But at least he left. At least he didn't stay and make sure I knew every single day exactly how much of a burden I was —"

"Go to your room." Cold. Flat. Done.

"I WISH I HAD A DIFFERENT LIFE."

Silence.

Complete, ringing silence.

Mom stared at me. I stared back. Both of us breathing hard, the kitchen between us feeling like a country neither of us knew how to cross.

I grabbed my bag.

I went upstairs.

I locked the door.

She followed. Of course.

Knock knock knock. "Mavis. Open this door right now."

I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, back against my bed, knees pulled to my chest. The carpet was scratchy under my palms. I focused on that. Scratchy. Real. Here.

"This is my house." Knock. "You do not get to speak to me like that and then hide —"

I pressed my palms harder into the carpet.

"I have sacrificed my entire life for you." Her voice was muffled but I heard every word. I always heard every word. "My career. My relationships. My —" a pause, something shifting in her tone, something that might have been tears if Mom ever cried, "— I looked at you when you were born and I thought you were the most perfect thing I'd ever seen. And now I look at you and I don't even —"

She stopped herself.

But I'd heard it.

I don't even.

I don't even what, Mom. Finish the sentence. I dare you.

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. The fruit punch had dried in my hair and my joints were on fire and my rash was burning the way it always burned when I cried, when I was stressed, when my body decided that whatever was happening emotionally wasn't enough and it needed to contribute.

My phone was still buzzing distantly from inside my bag — notifications, video, diary, laughter, David Chen's quiet chuckle — What would it look like, I thought, staring at nothing. A different life. What would I even be.

Someone who woke up in the morning and didn't immediately take inventory of what hurt. Someone whose mother looked at them and finished her sentences. Someone who could walk into a cafeteria and just — eat lunch. Unremarkable. Unbothered. Normal. Someone David might actually see.

Mom's voice had gone quieter on the other side of the door. Still there. Still going. I'd stopped hearing the words and started hearing just the sound — relentless, filling all the available space the way it always did.

I looked up.

The mirror on the back of my wardrobe door caught my reflection.

Red-faced. Fruit-punch stained. Curls ruined. Rash angry and bright across my cheeks. Eyes swollen. I looked like a summary of everything that had ever gone wrong with me, all at once, all on the same day.

I wish I was someone else, I thought. Not for the first time. For the thousandth time. But louder than usual. With more of me behind it than usual, like something that had been pressing against a door for years and finally had enough weight to push through.

I wish I was anywhere but here. I wish I was everything I'm not. I wish —

The mirror glittered.

I blinked.

Just once — a flash, gold and warm and impossible, spreading out from the center of the glass like a heartbeat, like something alive behind the surface. There was no light in my room that could explain it. There was no explanation at all.

I stood up slowly. My joints screamed. I didn't care.

I walked toward it the way you walk toward something in a dream — legs moving before your brain signs off on it, body already knowing something your mind is still three steps behind on.

My reflection looked back at me. Same Mavis. Tired, wrecked, fruit-punch stained.

But the glass was warm.

I could feel it radiating from a foot away, this impossible gentle warmth, like sunlight through a window in winter. My hand reached out.

Don't, said the small sensible part of me. The last small sensible part.

I touched the glass.

And the world decided it was done with me.

At least so I thought...