She was thirteen years old, and had not been blest with a single misfortune in her whole life.
It was not, she told her reflection one night, that she really wished to be unhappy. But there was simply no possibility of being a romantic heroine when one’s life, and one’s person, were as pleasant and carefree as hers.
Take, for example, her hair, through which she now dragged a brush impatiently. Not for her a mop of red curls suitable for engaging in wild escapades, nor even straight, black, mysterious, glossy tresses that lent an air of glamour to a silent, cynical rejection of the world. No, she had thick, healthy waves in a dark blonde, pretty enough to have elderly ladies compliment it, but by no means the A Life Less Ordinary|golden ringlets] that might inspire knightly gallantry or unrequited passion.
It wasn’t just her hair. She put her brush down on the dressing table and leaned in close to the mirror. Her skin remained entirely free of freckles. It wasn’t fair. All the best heroines had freckles. Some of them also had the red curls, but she would have settled for the sort of perky brunette pigtails that betokened a budding amateur detective, whose summer holidays were always enlivened by gangs of smugglers or jewel thieves.
Beyond the lack of freckles, her skin remained distressingly free of serious blemishes. She thought she was quite good looking, on the whole, but she had just enough pimples for her mother to suggest that she use a face scrub, without ever having so many that she could hope for an ugly duckling-style transformation into a ravishing beauty.
There was also an inconvenient lack of personal tragedy in her life. Her parents were not only still alive, but still married, and apparently quite happy to remain so despite the occasional row. She had one younger sister and one younger brother, and she only disliked them when they were particularly annoying. Both their parents worked, and in the past few years the three children had been allowed to stay home by themselves after school. She considered whether this had turned her into an unthanked drudge, forced from a young age to take on responsibilities beyond her years, but that avenue of thought held no particular promise. Mum arrived home less than two hours after school finished, and Dad always baked enough biscuits and muffins on the weekend to keep three children well fed with no effort on her part. Besides, all three children were paid pocket money for the very minimal chores they performed.
She looked around her bedroom. It was quite a nice bedroom, even if she no longer liked the peach paint she had chosen at age seven. She had started to hang posters on the walls this past year, cut from teen magazines or purchased from the seedy record shop at the mall. There were photos, too: one of her on a rollercoaster with some friends, another of the same friends on a sleepover. There was a school photo of her best friend from primary school, who now lived five hours away, and still sent pictures and letters regularly. And a polaroid of some classmates, taken during rehearsals for the school play. She sighed. She wasn’t even interesting enough to be a lone wolf, withdrawn from society, nursing a dark secret, keeping everyone at a distance with her crushing sarcastic wit. She had plenty of friends, and was well-liked at school. Even the boy she secretly had a crush on had shown signs of liking her too – he had danced with her three times at the disco and often waited for her at the end of maths class.
It was no use. She was just too, too ordinary.