When Molly was four, one of her friends made a serious and heartfelt promise to marry her when they were grown-ups.
At the time she had no reason to think of getting six of those conversations in one week as anything but normal. In retrospect? That had been the early warning signs.
*
Elementary school brought new challenges, along with the first inklings that something seemed out of place. Half the class took it in turns to endlessly pester her while loudly announcing that they thought she was GROSS. Every Valentine ’s Day her locker overflowed with adorably sincere yet hopelessly embarrassing hand-crafted gifts.
Molly was allergic to chocolate. Her little sister loved her for it.
But oh, that was just the first little trickles. High school began, and the dam didn’t burst – it EXPLODED.
*
“Listen, Molly, there’s something I gotta- oof!”
“Molly! I need to tell you- OW”
“Molly! Where are you?!”
She was inside her locker, hyperventilating. She came out twenty minutes after the principal had hosed down the mob with a fire extinguisher, and snuck home that evening under cover of darkness, moving from shrub to shrub like a criminal chipmunk.
By her second year, Molly had felt out some basic rules for herself.
She couldn’t be too popular, or she’d be beset by swarms of suspiciously good-looking nerds, geeks, outcasts, and rejects.
She couldn’t be too unpopular, or she’d spend her days running and hiding from the most popular kids in school.
She couldn’t be too normal, average, or ordinary, or the school’s jocks, star students, and elites would make every excuse in the world to spend their time following her around, offering advice, and furiously trying not to stare at her.
In the end she found a nearly-perfect balance of being almost-but-not-quite ordinary but in a very boring way that wasn’t particularly quirky. Not liking ketchup on her hot dogs, for example, was safe. Enjoying peanut butter and bacon sandwiches? Too peculiar. Playing the trombone? Fine. Playing the tuba? Unsafe. Pet gecko? Doable. Pet spider? Too far.
By the end of her senior year the weekly lineup of boomboxes outside Molly’s window had shrunk down to three-to-four holdouts, all of them long-lost childhood friends she’d been secretly expecting to show up for years now, and she felt pretty proud about managing to attend prom without a date. Even prouder when she left without being detected by her thirty-six sighing, wistful, dateless best-friends-but-more that surrounded each exit.
If she’d known what was ahead of her… well.
Well, everyone said that.
But boy did she mean it.
*
“Your credentials are impressive.”
Molly smiled in what was the world’s most carefully neutral way.
“Yes, I think we can work with this. We can talk to Dr. Gordon and get back to you by the end of the week.”
Molly’s eyebrow twitched. “I’m sorry?”
“What is it?”
“I was under the impression that Dr. LaFontaine was in charge of this lab.”
“Oh, his heart got to him. Retired just last month. But Dr. Gordon was practically running the place before – such a bright young man. You’ve heard of him before?”
“Elementary school,” she said, blankly.
“I’m sorry?”
“Nothing. Don’t call me I’ll call you.”
“What are you-”
Molly tucked and rolled through the window in an expert dive, then brachiated home through the hedges like an arboreal shark.
*
“Secretarial work seems a little below the quality of this resume.”
Molly nodded.
“But then again, Mr. Stevens has high standards.”
Molly nodded.
“You start Monday.”
Molly nodded.
“Be early.”
Molly nodded.
“And try to ignore his…eccentricities.”
Molly nodded, then squinted suspiciously. “I’m sorry?”
“Mr. Stevens has particular qualities, and –”
The office door opened a crack and a ridiculously handsome and mildly dishevelled man stuck his head around the corner. “Tim? Where’s my vodka cart, my meds, and my quantum electronics handbook?”
“Coming right up, Mr. Stevens. I’m sorry miss, but I’ll be right…huh.”
“Who are you talking to, Tim, and why aren’t they ME? I’ve got some outlandish personality defects that need to be ceaselessly catered to in order for me to be minimally socially acceptable!”
“She was right here a second ago.”
*
“This is the fry cooker put the fries in the basket and pull them out when this goes ding.”
“Wonderful.”
“This is the ice cream maker it’s always broken so don’t ask how it works.”
“Great.”
“This is the patty grill just leave them here all day and put them on a bun. Use this flowchart.”
“Amazing.”
“First customer, go for it.”
A stretched limousine screeched to a halt in front of the restaurant, sixteen security guards, professional selfiers, and a wine-taster poured inside, and from amidst the chaos emerged an internationally known pop star.
“I’ll have the…” he began, and then his perfect face froze in a very familiar expression.
Molly sighed, swallowed, then threw the fries in his face and escaped out the drive-in window in a hail of bullets.
*
The monitor went ‘beep.’
Sometimes it hesitated.
Molly was tired of waiting for that little halt. She was ready to listen to anything else, or nothing else. Whichever came faster.
“…and I admire you so much for it,” finished up George.
She sighed. “How long we known each other?” she asked.
“Since you came to the home. So, ten years.”
“How long you felt like this?”
“Ten years.”
Molly coughed and gave up halfway through.
“Molly?”
Arms quivering with the weight of years and tubes and fluids, Molly reached up, took George’s hand, and yanked him into a Glasgow Handshake that exploded his nose like a bushel of overripe strawberries.
“I WIN, MOTHERFUCKER,” she cackled, and then she died.
The burial was logistically complex. In the end her nieces gave up, put two shovelfuls of dirt atop the writhing mound of sobbing funeral-crashers, and went home.