She Screams in Silence

“Smile, hun.”

Mechanically, Felicity Bennet forced up the corners of her mouth as the flash went off. This was the way she did things. Someone directed her and she followed orders. She never once did anything for herself. She kept her mouth shut, doing as she was told without contesting.

“No, no, her hair isn’t quite right,” her mother, Rachel, stepped forward, fussing with the photographer as they argued over whether Felicity’s honey-highlighted hair should be tucked behind her ears to give one a full view of her face, or left to cascade gently over her shoulders.

Felicity just kept smiling brittlely, the muscles in her jaw beginning to ache, clenching her teeth so tight she felt as though they might crack.

It was her senior portrait, supposed to capture all the beauty and promise being fulfilled at the end of her high school days. She should look radiantly happy. She had everything laid out before her––intelligence, looks, prestigious universities and careers, ambitious rich young men, all the best money could buy.

Even her name, Felicity, meant happiness. Happiness was what she was supposed to have.

And Felicity did everything she was supposed to do.

Yet, she was miserable.

An hour later, Felicity followed her mother through Union Square, glancing wistfully at the girls around her laughing and talking together. She didn’t really have friends. Besides not having the time for them, her parents wouldn’t really allow her to associate with anyone unless they knew the family and approved.

The two of them walked by the trendy stores Felicity’s peers filtered in and out of. Everything from Hot Topic to Abercrombie & Fitch was off-limits. Rachel put her daughter in designer wear she hand-picked herself. Felicity was just along to make sure the clothes fit properly.

“Now, I’ve had a lovely dress made up for our dinner tonight!” Rachel turned and smiled at her daughter, pulling her into Saks 5th Avenue. They always had dinners. All their wealthy Bay Area friends would come to their expensive Berkeley home, wearing their smart designer suits, and laughing over merlot and exquisite hors d’oeuvres, chatting about business in the “city” (San Francisco), and watching Felicity regale them with an operatic aria at her parents’ behest. And for these events, Rachel kept her daughter dressed to the nines.

A saleswoman was quickly alerted to fetch the item and she came bearing down on them minutes later, the dress in her arms.

Felicity kept the smile frozen on her face. The dress looked like something she might have worn when she was seven or eight. It was red velvet, very expensive, knee-length with long sleeves, buttons up the front, and lace on the collar.

Lace.

She found herself standing in it inside the dressing room some time later to make sure it didn’t need further alteration. With the exception of her figure, she looked like a little girl.

She was quite an oddity in appearance. Her mother kept her clothed in terribly expensive items, but they had the tendency to make her look rather peculiar––as though she hadn’t quite reconciled the fact that she was no longer nine. Her dark brown hair her mother had taken her to have dyed to a rich golden blonde. She had done that for years, almost as if she were taking personal offense that Felicity had dared to be born a brunette. Only recently had she stopped giving her daughter Shirley Temple tight rag-curls, even Rachel able to see that if she didn’t let at least one aspect of her daughter’s appearance mature there was the possibility that she might start to resemble Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? So now it fell across her shoulders in soft golden waves, still sweet and girlish, but not nearly as bizarre as the spirals.

Her appearance kept her separated from all her peers. She dressed well, but she wasn’t with the preppy popular people––she was far too out of place for that. She wasn’t rebellious. She didn’t participate in school extracurricular activities, so she wasn’t a nerd, a prom queen, or a theatre kid. She was nothing. She wasn’t even with the outcasts everyone mocked and scorned. That would have required her garnering some sort of attention from anyone other than her teachers.

She was an outsider, belonging nowhere and with no one.

• • •

Once the dress had been carefully zipped up in a garment bag, Rachel and Felicity climbed into their black Mercedes, whisking across the Bay Bridge back to Berkeley. Certainly Rachel would have preferred living in the “city,” but she made do with their home in the nicer end of Berkeley, north of the university campus. The Bennet family had money, but not quite enough for one of the Victorian painted-lady homes on the Haight.

“Bonjour, ma fille. Comment ça va?” Felicity’s father, Richard, called out from his study as the two of them came through the door.

Felicity walked in, nodding dutifully at him, “Bonjour, Papa. Je vais comme ci comme ça. Et vous?”

“Très bien. Alors, où est ce relevé de notes?”

Briefly, Felicity considered lying. The moment was fleeting, however, as seconds later she found herself going forward, holding out the requested paper that contained her half-term grades she had placed in her purse.

“Felicity, don’t slouch!” Rachel commanded, entering the study.

Instantly, she straightened up like she had just traded her spine for a ramrod.

“Hey,” Richard winked at his daughter, switching to English, “capital of Bolivia?”

“La Paz,” Felicity replied softly, automatically.

“And...?”

She faltered. And?! What did he mean by and?!

“Come now, you know it has two capitals. What’s the other one?” Richard prompted her.

“I...I...” Felicity searched her mind wildly, “I don’t know.”

“Sucre,” Richard told her, sounding a bit disappointed. “Don’t slack so much on geography, dear. You’re usually spot-on.” He shrugged, turning back to the progress report and unfolding it as Rachel leaned over his shoulder, the both of them perusing it.

Felicity had a full schedule, as opposed to most of the other seniors who were taking the minimum requirements, opting for late arrivals and early dismissals. And nothing she took was light. Honors French 4, AP English, AP Calculus, AP Economics, AP US Government, AP Biology, and AP Psychology. Those, of course, were her high school courses. She also took four classes at the local community college––Physics, Statistics, European History, and Art History. On top of that, several times a week she attended piano lessons and opera singing lessons. She always seemed to have a paper or project due, a test looming, or her parents’ friends to entertain, as they often threw dinner parties and they never tired of parading their darling treasure. Felicity was often up at all hours, trying to finish it all, and in the past few years she had learned to function on three or four hours of sleep.

Mostly.

“Felicity, you’ve got an A- in English and Calculus!” Richard exclaimed, staring at his daughter in bewilderment.

She looked down at the floor, her voice nearly a whisper, “We’ve had some...difficult exams. I tried! I...”

“Obviously you didn’t try hard enough,” Rachel interjected. “We expect you to raise these grades, Felicity. An A- isn’t good enough.”

“I did my best,” she argued feebly.

Richard gave her a small smile, “Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t you think your best is sub-par. What is the best?”

“Perfection.”

“So...?” Richard grinned.

“So my best is an A. Not an A-,” Felicity answered dully.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Richard leaned over and pulled something from one of the drawers of his desk, holding it out to her. “Another scholarship I’m sure you can get!” he handed her the application. “It just requires one little essay. I’m sure you can finish it in no time.”

“Dad, I...” Felicity trailed off, “I mean, I’ve got a couple essays for school already, on top of my lessons and the SAT this Saturday and I’ve got a test and...and...”

“I know you can do it,” Richard smiled, patting her on the back.

“Yes, Dad,” she answered softly, accepting defeat.

• • •

Sneaking into the kitchen later, Felicity grabbed a thick ceramic mug from one of the cupboards and poured some coffee into it. She had only slept two hours the night before and she was expected to be radiant and charming for the dinner guests that would be arriving in an hour or so. Any little bit of caffeine to help her get through it would help.

“No coffee, darling!” Rachel trilled brightly as she entered the room, pulling the mug from her hands. “It’ll stain your teeth!”

Felicity thought to plead her exhaustion, but decided against it. She turned to the fridge, pulling out a carton of yogurt. She hadn’t eaten since lunch and then it had only been a small salad to, as Rachel put it, “preserve her girlish figure.”

“Un-uh!” Rachel snatched it from her. “Snacks in mouth end up on thighs!” she sang gaily. “You really ought to cut down on how much you’re eating, dear. You’re starting to put on some weight and it’s not attractive at all.”

“Mom,” Felicity blushed hotly, crossing her arms over herself, wondering if she knew how much that hurt.

“I’m only trying to help, dear!” Rachel patted her cheek. “You’ve just been looking like you’ve gained a few lately and I don’t want to see you get fat!”

Don’t get fat––it was Rachel’s greatest fear for her daughter. It was a bit odd, considering Felicity actually was thin and had a very nice figure. Rachel just rather would have had her even smaller––almost as though she was upset at Felicity for having traded in the frame of a young girl for curves.

• • •

“Where are you going to college, Felicity?” one of the pastel-suited women asked her pleasantly a few hours later, the guests gathered in the sitting room for after-dinner coffee and pastries. Felicity ate nothing, but rather sat there primly with her ankles crossed, speaking only when spoken to––a small step above a mannequin.

“I’m applying to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Stanford, as well as half a dozen other private universities,” she replied like a parrot reciting, “Polly want a cracker.”

“And what are you going to major in, dear?”

Richard laughed jovially, “She’s going to double-major, aren’t you, sweetheart? Molecular Cell Biology and English.”

Felicity merely nodded.

“Are you excited to be going out on your own? Your parents will miss you terribly!”

“Oh, no, no! We wouldn’t think of it!” Rachel cut in before Felicity could reply. “We’ll be getting a place wherever she goes to school so she can stay with us. We just couldn’t bear to be separated from our baby!”

Felicity stared at her hands folded in her lap. She would never get away from them.

“Felicity, dear, why don’t you sing for us?” Richard suddenly suggested.

Holding back a sigh, Felicity rose and walked next to the piano as Richard took a seat on the bench, pulling open the book for La Traviata and directed her as to which song he wanted her to sing. She hated being forced to perform like this, but she would never dare say so.

But she had hardly gotten three notes in before she was abruptly stopped.

“No, no, no, that’s all wrong!” Richard banged down on the keys, cutting the note off. “Felicity, it sounds as though you haven’t been practicing at all! Now, come on, let’s run through our scales.”

“Dad, please!” she blushed crimson.

“It’s the only way to get it perfect. Come on. Our guests don’t mind.”

Felicity gave up protesting, but consented as Richard began striking the keys once more, forcing her to run up and down the C scale and various arpeggios. When he was finally done humiliating her in front of their guests, he turned to them and said, “My sincere apologies about this. Perhaps next time our little girl will practice some more and we can have some real entertainment!”

Felicity felt like crying. Of course she didn’t.

A few hours later, Felicity was up in her room. It was large and grand, with a massive pink canopy bed and en suite bathroom. The horrid red velvet dress had been placed on a hanger in the far back of her closet, and she was now in thick flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt, the most casual items she owned––she was not allowed to wear tank tops or camisoles, as Rachel wouldn’t have her in anything so provocative. She still wore her shoes from dinner––black patent leather mary-janes––listening to the odd staccato tap they made on the bathroom tile.

Felicity stared blankly at the bathroom mirror, her reflection wretchedly echoing back at her. Her face was the creation of others. Everything about her was molded by someone else. She was the perfect little china doll, always silent and smiling, letting others dress her up and do with her what they wished, make her into something else they dreamed up.

A perfect little porcelain doll.

But instead of perfection, Felicity saw her own haggard face looking back at her, wide-eyed and terribly sad. It was the most depressing sight of her life. And gazing at it, she felt a lump rise up in her throat, choking her to death. And suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to smash that stupid picture of the perfect porcelain china doll––smash it until it was beyond mere cracks and flaws. Smash it all away until it was lying in ruins at her feet.

Felicity whirled on her heel and began walking out of the bathroom, but as she went through the doorway, she paused, staring at her étagère. She walked over to it, picking up the object that had caught her attention. It was a small silver music box she had had since she was a little girl. Rachel wouldn’t let her get rid of it, even though it represented everything Felicity hated. If opened up, nestled in the pink silk padding was a tiny delicate little ballerina that turned perpetual slow circles while Nat King Cole’s “Dance, Ballerina, Dance” softly clinked along. And she despised it. It only made her remember the horrible ballerina lessons her mother had dragged her through for so many years. She had hated ballet, but she had never said a word. But then, three years ago, her mother had pulled her out, telling her she was too overweight to be a ballerina. Felicity had been more than happy to hang up her toe shoes, but Rachel refused to let go of the fact where her daughter had failed––she wasn’t thin enough. So she took to reminding her of this fact by dragging her to the ballet in San Francisco every season, and keeping her room decorated in pale pinks and whites, a border of pink toe shoes painted along her wall, the room of a little girl who wanted nothing more than to dance. She wouldn’t let her get rid of that music box. It was to remain––taunting her of what she couldn’t accomplish.

Felicity was supposed to be perfect. And that cruel spinning ballerina in that dreadful silver box was going to remind her that she wasn’t.

She pivoted back around, going back to the bathroom and regarding her reflection once more, the music box in hand.

Everything she hated right in front of her.

She just wanted to smash it all.

Hardly even aware of herself, tears welling in her eyes, she brought her arm back and hurled that loathed music box straight into the glass with all the force she had.

Instantly on impact the glass shattered with a wicked crash, sending shards flying in every direction. Instinctively, Felicity brought her arms up to protect her face as the glass went towards her. She opened her eyes, looking at the shards lying all over the floor, the music box forlornly turned on its side, the lid broken off and the ballerina nowhere to be seen. She gasped, suddenly seeing crimson droplets land on the glass around her shoes. She turned her arms over and tried to keep herself from screaming. Instead of hitting her face, the glass had given her innumerable cuts all up and down her forearms, the blood snaking down them in bright scarlet rivulets. She stared in horror at the various stinging cuts, the blood in some sick twisted way looking like cherry red Christmas ribbons. How would she ever explain herself? She looked like she had just attempted suicide. Luckily, her arms had been angled in such a way that the glass hadn’t actually cut the inside of her wrists, for though she was bleeding freely, nothing seemed to have hit a main artery.

“Felicity, we heard a crash. Are you all right?” Rachel’s voice came from the other side of her bedroom door.

Felicity shot her head up, staring at the door in alarm. “Um, I’m fine, Mom.” Odd how her voice sounded relatively normal. “The, uh, the mirror fell down.”

“It did? You’re not hurt, are you? Let me see.”

“No, no, I’m perfectly okay. I wasn’t even in the bathroom when it happened,” she lied through her teeth. “I’ll...I’ll clean it up. Don’t worry.”

“Are you sure? All that glass, you might cut yourself!”

Felicity nearly laughed in spite of herself. “I’ll be careful. It’s all right, Mom.”

“Well, all right,” Rachel answered unsurely. “You let me know if you need any help. Please watch out.”

“Uh-huh,” she gulped, nodding. She began walking forward to fetch an empty shopping bag to deposit the mess in, the glass crunching under her feet. Thank God she hadn’t taken her shoes off.

She paused as she began to step through the doorway. She could clean the blood off the tile, but if any got on the carpet of her bedroom floor, there would be no hiding it. Best to tend to that first. She turned back and sat down on the edge of the bathtub, taking a hand towel and holding it alternately against her arms, and also holding them under the running faucet, cringing as it stung horribly. Above the sink she had a medicine cabinet with a box of band-aids, and she took it out along with a tube of Neosporin, delicately applying small amounts all over her forearms.

As she put each small band-aid on each small cut––she used nearly twenty of them––she sang softly the song from her music box, “Dance, ballerina, dance/And do your pirouette in rhythm with your achin’ heart/Dance, ballerina, dance/You mustn’t once forget a dancer has to dance the part/Whirl, ballerina, whirl/And just ignore the chair that’s empty in the second row/This is your moment, girl/Although he’s not out there applauding as you steal the show/Once you said his love must wait its turn/You wanted fame instead/I guess that’s your concern/We live and learn/And love is gone, ballerina, gone/So on with your career, you can’t afford a backward glance/Dance on and on and on/A thousand people here have come to see the show/As ‘round and ‘round you go/So ballerina, dance/Dance, dance/Whirl, ballerina.”

Within half an hour all the mess had been cleared away, glass, blood, music box and all swept off to the garbage. Felicity had also donned a long sleeved shirt, sighing as it would have to be her clothing of choice for the next couple of weeks. Well, she could always feign being chilly.

No one would ever know the truth. No one would ever know that that night had been the first time Felicity had felt herself begin to crack.