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“Growing up in a small town can be really amazing. Everybody knows everybody, so there’s a real sense of community. But it can also be stifling for the same reason, especially if you’re different.”
“Whoa — is this your villain origin story?” Jin interrupted, suddenly looking interested.
“What? No! I’m not the villain in this story. I’m not the villain in any story.”
“Of course not,” Maxine soothed. “Unless somebody drinks all the coffee and doesn’t start a new pot.”
“Or someone is having an entire conversation on speakerphone,” Jin added.
“Or — ”
“Am I telling this story or not?” I asked before Maxine could contribute another item to the list. “As I was saying, I had a hard time finding a place to fit in. I basically had two friends, and we were not popular. There was a questionable third friend who seemed to magically appear only when she needed help with her calculus homework. I was fine with that, though. I liked who I was, even if it was a little lonely sometimes. Sissy, though — Sissyhad no problems fitting in. She was popular: homecoming queen, the Peach Princess two years in a row — ”
“I’m sorry? Peach Princess?” Maxine interjected, naturally focusing on the least important part of the story.
“There was an annual Peach Festival with a beauty pageant. The Peach Princess got to ride in the convertible with the mayor to start the Peach Parade.”
Maxine nodded. “Sure, sure. Makes sense in an Andy Griffith kind of way.”
“As I was saying, Sissy used to do these beauty pageants with my mom, which was my mom’s dream. I was a beauty pageant dropout, because I had such bad stage fright that I projectile-vomited on one of the judges during the talent portion. It was one and done for me.” Maxine and Jin worked very hard not to react to that last bit of information. “Meanwhile, Sissy loved them. Beauty pageants combine two of Sissy’s favorite things: winning and people telling her how pretty she is. Proving that she can do something better than me was a close third. My mom’s best friend had a daughter, Cam, who was just a few months younger than Sissy, and they all did the beauty pageant thing together. It was literally my mom’s dream come true. Her best friend’s daughter being best friends with her daughter, doing pageants together — Sissy just couldn’t do any wrong in her book.”
The server reappeared with our appetizer, giving me a few seconds to organize my thoughts while I stuffed my mouth with the cheesy crab dip Jin had ordered.
“Put the pita chip down and finish your story,” Maxine ordered, ending my reprieve.
I finished chewing and tried to pick up where I’d left off.
“So my sister’s best friend Cam had been dating Macon for two years. I forgot to mention that fact, and it’s important to the rest of this horror story. The summer before my junior year, I overheard Macon’s older brother, his daddy, and his grandaddy talking at the Baptist church’s summer festival.”
“How many festivals can one small town have?” Jin interrupted, sounding bewildered.
“Right? It’s like a Hallmark movie,” Maxine agreed.
“We don’t even have a movie theater. There’s literally nothing else to do but have festivals. Back to the story, I overheard them talking from where I was sitting behind an oak tree.” I held up my hand to stave off the questions I could feel coming. “They were talking about Macon ‘dabbling with trash,’ and it was pretty clear that the trash was a person. At first, I was outraged on Cam’s behalf. Despite being friends with my sister, Cam is a genuinely nice person. She always tried to include me — not that Sissy would ever have let me tag along. ButthenMr. St. James said he couldn’t ‘allow this ill-advised dalliance with that Buchanan girl.’”
“Oh shit,” Jin muttered, pita chip suspended halfway to his mouth. Maxine was wearing a grimace that suggested she, too, had figured out where this story was headed.
“Sissy had cheated with Macon,” I confirmed. “I tracked her down and confronted her. She acted like it was no big deal. Cam was supposed to be her best friend, but she couldn’t have cared less that her actions would break Cam’s heart. She tried to make it seem like I was just mad because I had a crush on Macon.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you won’t be offended when I say this,” Maxine commented. “Your sister sounds like a gigantic bitch.”
“The biggest bitch.” I sighed, knowing I had to tell them what happened next. I could feel my cheeks heating with the decade-old humiliation, and I took a fortifying drink of wine. It would have been a gulp if Maxine hadn’t forced the glass away from my lips.
“Slow down there, champ. You’re not a big drinker, and we need you to make it through the rest of this shit-show before you get sloppy.”
She wasn’t wrong. I never had been much of a drinker, so one glass of wine was enough to give me a good buzz. I nodded and dove back into this nightmare of a story.
“I understand that I didn’t have any reason to be mad at Sissy, but Iwasmad and hurt, regardless of not having a claim on Macon. This is the part of the story where things get a little bit tragic and a lot embarrassing. After I barfed on the judge, I didn’t have to compete in the pageants, but my mom still made me go watch Sissy compete. They were all-day affairs, so I had to find ways to entertain myself. This was before the age of decent portable electronic devices, so I read a lot. Mostly fantasy series or graphic novels — all very cool, I know.”
“Aw, Sutton, there’s nothing for you to be embarrassed about.” Maxine reached across the table to squeeze my hand. “Jin likes anime, and he’s a full-grown adult.”
“Hey! Don’t drag me into this.”
“That’s not the embarrassing part, thank you very much. When we finally got the internet, I got super,superinto fanfic. So into it that I started writing my own fanfic. Except I wrote it about people I knew and things that happened around our town. I wrote it on our computer in a password-protected file that I hid on the hard drive, because I absolutely never intended for anyone to read it. I didn’t even bother to make up names for people. And, naturally, I was the heroine of every story, and I always ended up with Macon.”
“Oh, God,” Jin groaned. “I have a bad feeling that I think I know where this is going.”
“A week or so after the summer festival, we were eating dinner when my mom asked Sissy why she and Cam seemed to be avoiding each other. Sissy said they weren’t avoiding each other and that everything was fine. I kind of snapped and announced that Sissy had cheated with Macon.” Two sharp intakes of breath sounded from across the table. “Sissy convinced my mom that I had misunderstood what I’d overheard, and my mom believed her, like always. Well, two days later, copies of my fanfic were all over town. She added a ‘by Sutton Buchanan’ line to each story, so everyone knew who had written them, just in case it wasn’t obvious by the fact that I was the main character of every story. Of course, Sissy neglected to include any story where she was painted in a negative light. Life after that went from difficult to impossible. I was basically ostracized by everyone except a few people whose stories were flattering.”
