hackthis_archive | Heroes - Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair (Candice, Gen)

Blah blah blah, some reminder or some shit I can't -- oh, wait, I remember now. Apparently there is some way that you can get Nathan to call your flat with some sort of campaign message instead of the other way round. HOW CAN ONE BE DOWN? Tell us, precious, PLEASE?!

Heroes
Candice, Mr. Linderman, Gen
Spoilers through 1.22 'Landslide'
For

dorrie6

Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair

Her name is not Candice.

Her hair is not brown either.

She hasn't been 19 in ten years. Well, it will be ten years in 18 days, but no one knows that besides herself and Mr. Linderman. She thinks no one else would even care. Certainly not her father or her brother or her mother.

Mrs. Not Candice's Last Name either hasn't called her daughter in five years –- not since she stood over Candice and counted the rolls of fat she saw on her daughter's frame. Not since the last time she came to visit Candice and told her to get off her ass and go to the gym. Candice's mother didn't say it in those exact words, but the message was simple:

You're too fat.

You're an embarrassment.

I have to come and visit you, because when you come and visit me I keep the curtains closed in hopes that the neighbours won't see.

Candice's mother is slim. She is beautiful –- or she used to be beautiful.

The last time Candice saw her mother, she was just trying to hold on to something long gone. She was just trying to perpetrate a myth –- Candice doesn't have to perpetrate anything; she can make herself into the real thing.

When Candice morphed into the perfect daughter before her mother's eyes, her mother screamed and ran out of the front door. Even when Candice was perfect, she still wasn't right. Of course, Candice has never been slim. She has never been beautiful either. She has no idea why she thought these things could make her mother happy now.

Wait -– that's not true anymore.

The Girl Who Used to Be Someone else was never slim. She was never beautiful -- but Candice is.

Candice is gorgeous. Men whistle at her when she walks down the street. When she goes to the comic store to get comics for Micah, the clerk nearly falls off of his ladder when she asks for assistance. People notice Candice -– Not-Candice used to have to practically beg for help.

She doesn't even remember her birth name now. She's burned all those diplomas, all those stuffed animals, all those mementos of an old life that didn't love her anyway.

Now she is Candice, and Candice is a size four -- or sometimes a size six depending on the jeans she's wearing that day. Candice eats Froot Loops and Twix bars and whole pizzas with grease. She loves calzones and soda and eating ice cream out of the tub while Micah watches Cartoon Network.

Candice can have anything. She can eat everything and never gain a pound. Candice can look like anyone, be like anyone, she will never be teased because her pants ripped in gym class or because she couldn't finish her mile in under ten minutes.

Candice could walk into Trump Towers tomorrow, spit in someone's face, and no one would do anything, because they would think she was Donald Trump. Candice could be Mrs. Will Smith for the rest of her life if she wanted –- she's thought about this on more than one occasion -– but she always changes her mind.

She has a destiny. Mr. Linderman says she's the most important part of his puzzle. Mr. Linderman believes in her. He found her, sitting in her apartment, surrounded by delivery containers, and he smiled.

He said she was special.

No one had ever given Candice a compliment in her life -– except for that one time in ninth-grade when Michael Daniels said she had nice handwriting -– but Mr. Linderman said she could be anything, look any way.

Mr. Linderman said she could get revenge on the people who had teased her and run from her and made her think she was a worthless freak. He brought her geraniums back to life before her eyes and explained that ordinary people never appreciated other people who were special.

Ignorant people were always afraid of the unknown, but Mr. Linderman didn’t think she was fat. Or obese. Or ugly. He said she had beautiful skin. He said it didn't matter how she looked on the outside, because he knew how perfect she was on the inside.

Mr. Linderman was the first person to tell her she was pretty, and in return she's given him her loyalty and her time, and he's given her everything she ever wanted.

She can be whomever she wants, whenever she wants.

It's not a bad life.

It's bound to be better than whatever has become of her high school classmates, who are all probably knocked up and living in Trenton trailer parks and smoking crack at this point.

This life is certainly better than the one she envisioned for herself, full of cats and floral dresses that she ordered on-line because it was better than going clothing shopping and dealing with all those shop assistants who looked at her with disgust and/or pity in their eyes.

Not-Candice never liked clothing shopping. She never liked the way her mother tried to mold her, to make her look more presentable in hopes that no one would notice the girth. To this day she can't wear vertical stripes without hearing her mother's voice in her head.

Do you just want to look even bigger than you already are?

Candice though, Candice can wear anything she wants –- she chooses her clothing from Hot Topic and Wet Seal and Mr. Linderman lets her go to Fashion Week and sometimes Lindsey Lohan is at two shows at the same time.

Sometimes Candice is a model backstage: smoking Marlboros and drinking champagne and laughing nasily with other size 0 vapid airheads.

Sometimes Candice sits in Central Park with other old men, chewing on toothpicks and feeding the pigeons.

On Sundays Candice goes to random churchs and listens to different sermons and masses in different languages and thanks whomever gifted her with this for her life.

At night, Not-Candice dreams of being teased by perfect blonde girls with perfect teeth and perfect hair, but then she wakes up in the dark, and turns on the light, and in the mirror Candice looks back at what she's created, and she knows her life before this was just a bad dream, and now everything will be all right.

-end-

Title appropriated from the song by Nina Simone.

Current Mood: productive
Current Music: Muse 'Exo-Politics'