"Sometimes a young lady's physical beauty can by no means outshine the inner beauty that radiates from her heart and spirit." ~ Michael Jackson, 1976

Chapter 1 — Marilyn

"Now, look at that!" Brian crowed.
"Yes, you know, once there was this very unpopular girl..." Peter said.
"... and so she thought she could buy pretty," Thomas continued.
"So she bought herself a dress just like Sarah." That was Peter again.
"And a purse like Jenny!" Was it Brian? Marilyn wasn't sure. The voice came thick and fast in his excitement.
"And a jacket like Melissa!" Phil joined in.
"Marilyn had that jacket before I bought mine," said Melissa, not looking up from the homework she was trying to finish before the teacher returned, and went unnoticed. This was not about truth.
"And did you see her shoes?"
"Just like Daisy's!"
"How stupid!"
"Yeah! How stupid! Stupid Edmond. Thinks she can buy popularity. You can stop that now, stupid Edmond. Ugly-Edmond! No one likes you! Stop dressing up. Stop copying pretty girls. They don't deserve being copied by you!"

Marilyn Edmond put her head down on the table as they continued with her bookbag, the pants she had worn yesterday and the way her hair was permed. In the darkness of her folded arms she pretended she wasn't there. They couldn't get to her. Her body was a shell, a robot. She was the little pilot sitting in the back of her head, looking out at the world through two long, dark tunnels that were her eyes. They could bump into the robot-shell, but they couldn't get to the pilot. They couldn't get to her.

There was no doing right for Marilyn. If her clothes weren't in fashion, she was laughed at. If she dressed by the fashion, she was accused of copying other girls. She just couldn't do right.

She was tired, too. Lately, she didn't sleep well. This treatment had been going on for a long time — years now —, and it was starting to get to her. When she came home from school in the afternoon, it used to take her a while to shake it all off. Over the years, that while had become hours in which her classmates' voices haunted her. Now, being in 11th grade, it had finally started to follow her into her dreams. Also, sleeping seemed to bring morning on faster, and as a result her body clung to her awake state, leaving her weary and even less resistant to mental assaults.

Someone bumped into her desk so hard that Marilyn thought it would fall over and take her with it. Shocked, she looked around her.

"Oh, ugly-Edmond, was that your desk? You're so ugly, I just didn't see you. Can you imagine that? I guess, that's some way for my poor eyes to protect me. Having to look at you every day is a real torture. You know what?" here Brian came threateningly close to Marilyn's face, leaning on her desk and the back of her chair and making it impossible for her to get up, "That dress doesn't suit you. I can't believe you left the house in it. Don't you have a mirror? Oh, wait, if you'd look in the mirror you could never leave the house!" He sniffed. "And by the way, you stink."

"Well, you shouldn't come so close, then," Marilyn said, shoving him off.

"Argh!" he whined, displaying disgust, "Ugly-Edmond touched me! Yuk! Ugh! I'm sure to get warts now!"

"Don't you feel stupid?" Marilyn asked, but it didn't have the desired effect.

"Ugh! Now she's talking to me, too! I need to report sick! Get me an ambulance, I'm dying!"

At that moment, the door clicked. The class fell silent immediately, everyone slipped into their seats, and when the teacher entered his room, he found nothing out of the ordinary, just orderly and politely waiting students.

As Mr. Smith started his lesson on Shakespeare's use of puns and other rhetorical figures, Marilyn quietly moved her feet back, so she could look at her shoes under the desk. They were brown with yellow clasps. She hadn't noticed that Daisy had shoes like these. But then, she probably did. They were in fashion...

"Marilyn!" Mr. Smith called loudly and, it seemed, not for the first time. A class full of spiteful eyes were turned on her, when she looked up. "Marilyn, would you give us the honour of joining us?"

Whenever possible, Marilyn avoided the cafeteria during lunch break. It was forbidden to leave the building, but she was good at sneaking out unseen. Not once had she really been caught.

While all students headed in one direction, she left through a fire door and quickly made her way to the back of the gym. There, among old desks and other rusting belongings of the school, she sat on the fire stairs and looked out on the former public bath behind a high fence on the premises next to school grounds, that had been out of use ever since she had been a little girl. The pools were empty, patches of grass and small trees were growing between the tiles, and the diving platforms stood desolately dreaming about better days long gone, about children playing and people enjoying themselves in the sunlight.

Marilyn had often thought about suicide, but not in the way that most people do. For her, it was a door that stood open at all times, it was a friend that would never reject her. If you can't bear it anymore, you can always come to me, no matter the time of the day or the time of the year. There is no hurry, I will always be here. In some odd way, it was this thought that kept her alive. Because it meant that she wasn't caught. She had a choice. She was here on her own free will. If it would become too bad she would climb the fence and throw herself off of the highest diving platform. And that would be it.

On really bad days — and she had seen far worse than this particular day in spring 1976 — she had sat on the fire stairs behind the gym and asked herself if it was bad enough yet. Did she want to climb over the fence, climb the diving platform and fall among the small trees in the empty pool below? By the time the bell indicated the end of the lunch break, she had decided every time, that it wasn't so bad yet that she couldn't wait another day. There was always tomorrow.

The truth was, she had to admit, that she didn't want to die. She wanted to live. She looked at the world, at the flowers and the trees and the sun in the sky, and it was all so beautiful. She didn't want to leave it. She wanted to be a part of it. There was a place for everyone and everything on this world — but for her. She wanted to feel the joy she saw in the lives of others. She wanted to be like them. She wanted the little things. It was common in school that the girlfriend put her lunch on the tray of the boyfriend, and he carried it to their table. Just for one day Marilyn wanted to go to the cafeteria and have someone who would allow her to put her lunch on his tray. She wanted to walk through the cafeteria after a guy carrying nothing but her purse. Just once. But she would never have that. She would never know what that felt like. Every now and then, that thought would bring tears to her eyes. If something so small was so eternally out of her reach, how would she ever find someone willing to hold her hand? To kiss her? To sleep with her? To marry her? To be the father of her children?

But Marilyn was tough, and she was stubborn. No, she was not going to let them drive her out of her life. Not those people, and not is this way. She was not going to give up, and she was not going to give in. They could make her life hell, they could take everything from her, but they would not make her leave. To live, one needed air to breathe and food to eat. Happiness was a luxury.

But all those years had not gone by without leaving marks. When Marilyn had been younger, she had loved to look at the sky. She had always looked up at it when she had been walking home from school. Its blue, endless expanse had made her heart feel light and her soul free. But that had changed. Now Marilyn walked through her life with her head bent down facing the ground and her teeth clenched like someone walking through a storm. Her skin had worn thin. She was 17 years old, and she had the feeling that she'd already burned most of her life's energy in this useless battle.

The dress, that had sparked the assault that day, was a flowing summer dress with a geometrical pattern in brown and warm yellow on a white background.

When Marilyn returned home that particular afternoon, she stood in front of the mirror and looked at herself. There was no-one she could have talked to. She had no siblings, her father was a business man, and her mother a doctor in a private hospital. Neither of them would be home until late.

Was it true that the dress didn't suit her? When she had bought it a few days ago, she had thought that the colours looked nice against her dark mocha skin. Now she wasn't sure. She had liked the way it flowed down her body and played around her knees. She had felt good in that dress, now she felt like a fool. Like a slimy toad that had dressed up in an attempt to appear human. How stupid. Stupid Edmond. You can stop that now, stupid Edmond. Ugly-Edmond!Was she ugly? Marilyn studied her face. Her eyes were caved in from lack of sleep, and even through her make-up and her black skin the dark circles that rounded them were clearly visible. What was it, that made them call her ugly, that made them despise her so much? It had be something very obvious. Maybe it was her nose. It just wasn't right. When she looked at her face from the right side, it was okay, but when she looked at it from the left side she looked — stupid. Ugly! She pulled the corners of her mouth down to enhance the effect. No doubt, looked at from the left her face was a disaster! And her lips! Like tires. Someone had once said that if she had a car accident she wouldn't get hurt, because her lips would cushion her against the impact. You should become a crash test dummy, ugly-Edmond! That's the perfect job for you!Marilyn sucked in her lips to make them look smaller. And again the image of the toad with make-up wearing a summer dress came to her mind. How stupid of her to think it would make a difference. She was what she was. An ugly, slimy toad. It was in her skin. Something disgusting, something slimy that she couldn't wash off no matter how hard she tried. Ugly-Edmond touched me! Yuk! Ugh! I'm sure to get warts now!Marilyn didn't think that she would ever wear that dress again.

Afternoon turned into evening, and evening soon became night. Marilyn lay in bed, tossing and turning, weary yet restless. In the dark silence of the sleeping house, the voices of her classmates were deafeningly loud in her head. If she fell asleep, the morning would be here in an instance, and all the torture would start over again. She kept telling herself that she needed the sleep, that, if she couldn't sleep, as least she needed to lie and rest, but she couldn't even lie still. It was almost 1 a.m., and Marilyn was so desperate and worn out that she was close to tears. She had already searched the medicine chest for sleeping pills or flu medicine or anything that would help her sleep, but had found nothing. A doctor's household and no pills! Outside her window under the lamplights, the crickets chirred in the warm Californian night.

Desperate and helpless, Marilyn got out of bed and put her dress back on, that she had already stored away in the very back of her closet. It would do for a walk in the night, where no-one was around to see her.

She left the house quietly. Although she was almost an adult and Encino was a good place to live, she had the feeling that her parents wouldn't appreciate her walking around the empty streets of the neighbourhood alone in the middle of the night. Outside, the warm night air wrapped itself around her like a blanket. She inhaled deeply and, listening to the concert of the crickets, set off in a random direction.

The streets were deserted. There wasn't a soul around. The street lamps cast their yellowish light on the pavement and the greenery of expensive estates as Marilyn wandered past them. It was a wonderful walk with all the world around her fast asleep. And it seemed to help her. She walked in the middle of the street, turning every now and then like a little girl, and watched her skirt billow. The street started to climb, first only slightly, then steeper as it took a sharp turn to the right going farther uphill.

What happened next happened so fast that Marilyn hardly had enough time to take it in. Without warning a cyclist came dashing around the corner, bent forward on his racing bike for maximum speed. Leaning in and cutting the curve as gravity was pulling him downhill, he was driving on the wrong side, not expecting anything or anybody to come the other way.

Marilyn screamed when she saw him coming straight at her.

Seeing her at the last moment, he grabbed the brakes, sharply pulling to his right to get back onto his side of the street to avoid her.

The wheels locked as he put all his strength into breaking. Bent over the handle bars he was unable to apply any weight to his back wheel. The vehicle got out of control. There was the sound of screeching metal as the front wheel turned inward and went down. The rear came up, buckling like a horse under an unwanted rider.

The cyclist gave a cry of despair as he was hurtled over the bars. He hit the pavement of the street, turned over once, and then lay still, while the bicycle, grinding and rattling, came to lie next to Marilyn.

Then, there was silence.

~~~~~

If you have read some other stories I've written, you might have noticed, that I don't normally say anything about the race or skin colour of my characters, unless they are real existing people. I don't think it matters, and everyone can imagine whatever they want to.

Marilyn, however, is a real existing person, and she is black, so that's different here. :)

Alright.

Please think about voting and commenting. :)Especially as this story isn't finished yet, it would mean a lot to me to know what you think of it.

Thank you  for reading! :)

Much Love

RedBird¹³ <33