100 Things 16/100: Fair, of Face
Title: Fair, of Face
Fandom: Original Fiction
Series: Monday’s Child
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 683
Prompt: For Dark Bingo Fill: “Bullying”
Mondays child is fair of face,
Tuesdays child is full of grace,
Wednesdays child is full of woe,
Thursdays child has far to go,
Fridays child is loving and giving,
Saturdays child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.
May Bell had never been one of the popular kids.
Her parents had thought it cute to name her May, given that their last name was Bell, her mother claimed it was quaint and old fashioned. For May, it was torture. Throughout her school years, she was known as Maybelline the Fashion Queen, because if there was anything she was not, it was fashionable. She wore hand-me-downs and cast-offs from her cousins Karen and Sheila. Karen and Sheila’s mom might have had more sense when it came to choosing names, but she didn’t have any more fashion sense than her sister, May’s mom. The bags of outgrown clothes were full of corduroys and boy’s jeans, flannel and button down plaid shirts. By the time she got to high school and was able to get an after school job, the damage was already done, her reputation and nickname cemented.
Even May admitted that she was no beauty queen, her features were plain, her coloring drab and ordinary. She didn’t even have freckles to break up her pale, round face.
College was a little better; she was shy and studious, and kept to herself. When she graduated, she took a job at a large company in the city, doing bookwork in the accounts receivable department. She liked numbers, numbers always made sense, not like people, who were a complete mystery to May. She never understood why people picked on her, why the popular girls pushed her around and ridiculed her. Why should her clothes matter? She was a nice person; she was never mean to them, why were they mean to her?
Inevitably, there were cliques at the firm, just as there had been in high school and college as well as the department store where she had worked. Small groups of women clustered together to gossip and laugh and take their breaks together. May was never included, never invited to sit at their tables in the break room, or to join in their water cooler conversations about the latest episode of some TV show. She ate alone, or with Quan Tang from payroll, who was still learning English and was just as shy as May, so their breaks were quiet, though companionable.
The women from accounts payable were loud, May heard every word of their conversations, it could not be helped. The leader of the little group was Angela Graystone. Angela had been a beauty queen before she married and started having babies. The guys in the office loved Angela, with her buxom figure, long honey-blonde hair and almond-shaped exotic green eyes. Angela, of course, had been a cheerleader in high school.
The stories Angela and the others told about the old days, when they reminisced about school made May wince. They had loved school. They had enjoyed pep rallies and football games and proms. The events that had been sheer torture for May had been joyful for the beautiful people. One afternoon, she overheard Angela laughing about a girl that had tried out for the cheerleading squad; she was mocking her, even now, as an adult. When she heard someone at their table say, “Well, they deserved it,” May left the break room and went back to her desk, fuming.
All these years later, and the popular kids were still mean and small. Time had not granted them any more compassion for those they had hurt. Her fury faded in the face of the realization and she began to pity them. She was glad she wasn’t one of them. When it came time for a coffee break, she sought out Quan Tang and invited her to come. She also stopped at the new girl’s desk because she had noticed that she had been taking her breaks alone.
The End
Originally posted at http://rinkafic.dreamwidth.org/