A Month Earlier

Everything hurt.

That was what MJ quickly learned about being twelve years old.

Even if the big hurts were fewer and far between, every day seemed to be filled with little hurts. When the rest of the team had a sleepover and didn’t invite you, it hurt. When they friended you on social media just to send you messages that kept you awake at night, it hurt. When a group of older girls shoved you into the lockers as they sprinted down the school hallway, it hurt. When you woke up in the morning and remembered what yesterday was like and you knew today would be more of the same, it hurt.

All those little hurts added up quickly, until they felt like carrying a big concrete block you couldn’t put down.

MJ always kept the blinds in her room shut tight, as tightly as she could pull their rough drawstring. It wasn’t that she didn’t like light; she didn’t like sunlight. More than that, she hated the way the world looked in the sunlight, and the way she looked. Sunlight was too bright. It was too honest. Everything showed in it, especially imperfections; dirt and dust and stains on furniture, and scratches and bruises and bumps on skin. The fake light from lamps was more forgiving. You could hide things in the soft, muted glow of fake light. Sunlight was like the harsh stare of the kids at her school, always looking for weaknesses in everything and everyone they saw.

So it was dark when she woke up that morning, and she liked it that way.

Her mother felt differently. She marched into MJ’s bedroom at 7:01 a.m. just as she did every morning, ignoring MJ stirring in her bed and walking right over to the window, snapping the blinds open and letting the sun invade every corner of the room.

MJ’s eyes only shut tighter. She turned away from the light, moaning and pulling her pillow around her head.

“Mom, come on!”

“You keep it too dark in here. It’s not healthy.”

“The sun gives you cancer, you know.”

“That’s not funny, Maya.”

“It’s true,” she grumbled.

“If you’re late again you’re going to find out I’m scarier than cancer.”

MJ sat up in bed indignantly. “How is that okay, but what I said isn’t?”

“Because I’m the mom,” her mother insisted.

Still grumbling, MJ crawled out of bed and stumbled across the floor to her dresser. Pulling open the drawer, she fished out a pair of jeans and a baseball-style shirt that had “MJ” printed on the front. Her parents named her Maya Jocelyn. Papi always called her MJ because it reminded him of the character from the Spider-Man comics he read as a kid.

MJ didn’t like the old comics much, but she loved her father.