Babs Seed didn’t want to wake up, so when she did she threw the covers over her head and tried to go back to sleep, because what was in her dreams was probably going to be much better than what was in her life. Her dreams were always of mundane things, little images of walking to the store or buying a bunch of grapes or eating oatloaf or sitting in a field, always mundane things but never anything really exciting or emotional. She never frolicked in fields and laughed or got chased by monsters or fought in arenas, or if she did there was always this muted feeling and tone about them, like she couldn’t bring herself to care about what wasn’t real.
To be fair, there wasn’t much to care about what was real, either. All she cared about now was going back to sleep so that what was in her dreams, which was mundane and boring, could keep her away from what was in real life, which was unpleasant. She knew it was unpleasant and that was why she wanted to go to sleep again, because maybe it would go away the longer that she stayed asleep, maybe she would wake up and the things that bothered her would go away.
Babs Seed didn’t want to wake up, so when her father came along and knocked on her door, she shut her eyes tighter and tried desperately to fall asleep again. Babs, he said, please wake up, please come downstairs and eat yourself some breakfast, it’s not going to kill you to go to school. Don’t give me that look, Miss Seed, hop your behind out of bed and go downstairs now.
Now, Babs. Don’t act like you’re still asleep, Babs. We’ve been through this a million times. Don’t make me drag you out of there.
Are you making me drag you out of there.
He chuckled. Babs, we do this every morning, I swear. A little mewl of protest escaped her lungs as Mister Seed picked her up and put her on his back. Her little hooves flailed as she tried to dismount, but her had wrapped one of his around her forehoof to keep her from moving. Babs, don’t struggle. I thought you were tired. And she was tired, tired of waking up every time just to get out of bed in the morning, when the bed was comfortable and soft and kind, and her father’s back was hard and rough and smelled like he had taken a shower in cologne. I swear you get heavier every day, he says, and that hurts for him to say but Babs doesn’t want to say anything about it yet.
Is she up, her mother asked from the doorway. She could tell when her parents had had a good night or a bad one by the tone of her mother’s voice whenever she asked this question. If she asked is she up and she sounded all low and whispery and giggly, they had had a good night, but if there was nothing in that voice and it was all clipped and almost-nasty-not-quite, they had had a bad one, and if she didn’t show up at all, they had had a really, really bad night and Babs knew at that point not to talk about it again.
Yes, she’s up.
Good.
Even when she had had a good night she always just said good and went on her way downstairs. When she had a bad one, though, she didn’t linger like she did when she had a good one, gesturing to her father from the doorway in that weird and unexplained way adults gesture to each other. Her father put her down, and Babs almost went back to her bed, but the last time she did that she got a scolding, and the last thing she needed was a scolding. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and left the room feeling heavy.
She paused a moment as she passed by the upstairs bathroom, looking into it, trying to blink it away because she knew there was a monster in there that told her truths she didn’t want to hear. But she went on her way anyways. She went down the stairs, took a left, grabbed her bookbag, and left, because she wasn’t sleepy anymore and she didn’t need breakfast. She’d forgotten a lunch, but that was fine because her lunch table friends would usually have a little thing or two they could share, and that was all she needed anyways because it wasn’t like she usually was all that hungry right.
Her stomach grumbled. Babs ignored it.
Instead she went straight to school, because it wasn’t very far and she lived in upper Manehattan now so there wasn’t a lot of excitement around these days. Back a few years ago, she lived in a part of town where things happened, where shadowy ponies did shadowy things at night. She once saw a pony get stabbed and watched him bleed in the street and nopony came for him until long after he had stopped moving and the ambulance had picked him up. They had looked at each other, shook their heads, and put him on the cart, and Babs never saw him again. Her parents moved up here not long after that had happened. She sort of wished it would, because there wasn’t a lot of excitement around these days.
The school looked like a prison from the outside. It was a tall place made out of bricks and was perfectly, completely square in every way. Some days a filly from the third grade class would say Babs you idiot, it’s a cube, and you should know that because they’re gonna teach you some geometry second semester, and it’s going to be hard if you call a cube a square. Babs ignored them because a cube was pretty much a bunch of squares anyways and they were dumb to call her dumb. She walked across the hoof-worn, cracked pavement and past the swings with the paint cracking off, and she did it fast because there was always a colt there with his hat backwards that would yell at her in a voice that he was trying to make sound like somepony else.
Fatty.
She could tell what kind of day he was having based on what he yelled at her. When he called her dummy, he was having a good day, and just wanted attention even if he knew Babs would ignore him. When he was having a bad day, he would call her fatty because he knew it hurt her, even if she didn’t think about it on the way inside. Babs figured he’d be a lot happier if he played with friends instead of sitting on the swingset by himself, wearing his ballcap backwards to hide the bruises under the brim.
She didn’t know his name, but she didn’t have time to ask, so she went inside, biting her lip to stop herself from thinking about him calling her Fatty. She went to the second floor for second graders and into Room B, which was Miss Fizzy’s class.
Miss Fizzy was a nice teacher. She had her light-blue mane in a bun and wore glasses that made her eyes look twenty times bigger than they actually were, not because she needed them, but because it made the class always feel watched, so they wouldn’t cheat. Babs avoided looking her in the eyes and instead stared at her neck as she said good morning and went to her seat. She was the last filly in the door before the bell rang, so she didn’t know who had left something on her desk.
She grabbed the apparent note and hid it, not because she didn’t want Miss Fizzy to see it, but because she didn’t want to see it, because she knew who had sent it and what was on it. But hiding it only revealed the carving somepony had made on her desk the previous day, that she had found than and ignored, but now found herself encapsulated by it.
It said BIG BONED BABS.
She put her hooves over it, but it was too long to cover with them, so now it only said B NED B. So she leaned against her desk on her forelegs and sat up a bit, so that she wouldn’t have to look at it.
Miss Seed, please sit in your seat, said Miss Fizzy. Babs pouted a bit, but obeyed, because she wanted Miss Fizzy to stay a nice teacher and not get mad. Miss Fizzy was very scary when she was mad, as teachers tend to be. So Babs sat in her seat, and had to close her eyes to keep herself from looking at the carving and remembering what it meant. BIG BONED BABS. Maybe it was the colt from outside, but then again he looked like a first grader not a second grader. Maybe he moved up a class. Maybe he was a second grader but was moved down a class because the bruises on the back of his head made it hard for him to think.
Babs thought that maybe she could do something nice for him all of a sudden.
She took out the note, but didn’t read it. She grabbed a pencil and started drawing. Two circles for heads, two ovals for bodies, two rectangles for hooves. She drew his hat on his head and scribbled her mane on her own, then gave them big, smiling faces. She wrote “truce?” underneath it, then decided to write more question marks because she really, really wanted to get the message across. She didn’t turn it over because seeing what was on the other side was exactly what the pony who had written it first would have wanted her to do.
Pssst. Babs felt a note poke into her back. I think you should read this, the filly behind her said. Babs almost turned around and punched her.
Instead, she smiled sweetly, took the note the filly handed to her, and hid it in her desk. They really wanted her to see that first one, didn’t they.
Today, class, Miss Fizzy said, we’re going to learn about squares.
Babs bounced in her chair, because she liked squares, even if for the most part she despised school. Squares were a perfect shape, something she wasn’t. Every corner a ninety-degree angle, four sides of the same length, and you could slice them apart and they could still all come back together as that shape, and stay that way. Babs had been sliced and diced for years now and she was still finding pieces on the floor in between classes. She wasn’t listening to Miss Fizzy, now, because she didn’t have to. She knew all about squares, and how hip it was to be one, and how lame she was because she was most certainly not a square.
A few more notes came to her. Passed along down the aisles, from any number of sources that she didn’t know or care about the names of. Whispered voices in the back, whispering with conviction, with condemnation, all about her, about the way she was. About her size, especially. Babs tried to make herself smaller, or at least think she was smaller, but it wasn’t going to change the way she was. Only work could do that, her father would say on good nights, and he wouldn’t say anything on bad nights, because he and her mother were too busy yelling at each other.
She saw that the subject wasn’t squares anymore, and immediately lost interest. It was long division, something she hated, absolutely despised in every way shape and form, and for once her parents agreed. Her father hated it, her mother hated it, her grandparents when she went to see them in Queens hated it. They understood it as well as she did and they were adults with jobs and businesses. She let Miss Fizzy’s words glaze over her like she let the notes pass under her and to her and never let herself see them. It was stuff she didn’t need to know.
Miss Seed, Miss Fizzy called. Come up here, would you.
Babs swallowed. She got out of her seat, very slowly, very shakily. Spit spot, please, Miss Fizzy cried. She sped up, significantly, ignoring the snickers, grabbing the chalk, looking up at the problem. It was numbers and lines with numbers on either side and over and under. It was meaningless, stupid stuff. It was dumb, so very, very dumb, and so very, very silly, why did she have to learn this, what was the point, and was she saying this out loud.
She was.
Babs threw the chalk. Then she went to the principal’s office.
The colt with his hat on backwards was there too, also waiting to see the principal and get told why he was a bad pony, hopefully get told that he was bad because he called Babs bad names like Fatty. His hat was turned the right way now because he was trying to cover up his eyes, but Babs could see that one of them was swelling, further and further, like a big balloon under his skin, and it was turning purple and nasty. He looked down and fiddled with his hooves, and Babs felt a little bit bad, because she had forgotten to take her note to him with her, just in case she saw him there.
He looked like he had been crying. Babs sat beside him and saw that he was still shivering. He didn’t even try to talk to her or acknowledge that she was even there. He just looked down at his hooves and was very, very quiet. She didn’t touch him. She didn’t want to know what he’d do if she did. She just sat beside him and looked him up and down and tried to find out why he looked like he’d been crying.
Since his hat wasn’t backwards anymore, he couldn’t hide the huge, purple bruises that he had hid under the brim. But he didn’t seem to care anymore about those, because he had a new one under his eye, and now here he was, waiting to see the principal, and shaking like leaves shake in the wind. And even as Babs leaned in to look closer, he didn’t move or talk or anything. He just breathed shaky, unsure breaths.
Don’t touch me, Fatty.
Babs backed away. The secretary called in the colt with the bruises, but Babs didn’t hear the name as well as he did. He hopped down, and now she was alone, sitting outside the principal’s office, and she missed the colt with the bruises already. She wished she could have asked him about why he had bruises and why he hurt like he did, but something told her that it wouldn’t be nice to do so, because it was like asking her why she was afraid of the monster in her bathroom that told her truthful lies.
The colt left the prinicipal’s office a moment later, sobbing, crying again, trying to regain his composure with snorts and sniffles. He wasn’t having a very good day at all. She raised a hoof to put it on his shoulder and to try and say comforting things, but then she thought better of it and put it down. Besides, he was trotting away too fast for her to do or say anything. Ponies tended to do that when they didn’t want help anyways. So Babs Seed sat and waited for her name to be called, which it was a moment later.
The talk with the principal was crisp and short and to the point. She explained how this wasn’t normal behavior, why she couldn’t do that, and the majority of it went over her head. The principal never had a good day. She always had bad ones. Babs could tell by the tone of her voice, how professional it was, how harsh and biting it was underneath the profession. Babs left the office with a detention slip and went on her way back to class.
The rest of the day was a blur. She didn’t want to think about school anymore so she stopped thinking in school to keep herself from thinking about it. She started thinking again as soon as the last bell rang, and the rest of the class rushed out of the classroom, pushing and shoving like there was a fire or an explosion or some nasty pony blasting up the school with magic or with a knife or something, except this was a happy charge and not a scary one. Babs took her time, though, because she had to gather up all of the notes she had gotten all day, and try not to look at them as she marched out of the classroom. They all had nasty lies on them. Fatflank, here’s a steak for big-boned Babs, Babs has a big butt, I haet babs sed. All sorts of stuff like that. Babs learned very quickly not to read them because they weren’t true and she couldn’t let lies make her cry.
Babs went to the trash can across the hall and threw away all of the notes, all except for one. The one with her drawing, the little white dove among the crows. As she walked through the mostly-empty halls, she tried to look on the good side of it and not the side with the nasty lie. It was a good drawing, one of her best so far. The colt with the backwards hat had to like this drawing. It was her way out of at least a little bit of pain and her way into having at least one pony that was nice to her.
It was a warm day, because it was May and summer was almost there, so very, very close. The sunlight blinded Babs for just a second as she walked out of the school, and she almost sneezed as her eyes adjusted to the brightness of it. The pavement was red-hot beneath her hooves like the surface of an oven, and she trotted swiftly over it to the cooler, but still warm, woodchips that made the floor of the playground. The colt with the backwards hat was still there, chewing on some bubblegum, looking sullen, blowing up bubbles the size of his head and then popping them. With every pop, a tiny little smile would stretch over his face, and Babs’ heart ached because she felt like this might have been the only time he could bring himself to smile. She trotted towards him with a little smile of her own.
He saw her, scowled, but didn’t say anything. That was encouraging. What do you want, Fatty, he growled. Haven’t you done enough already.
Babs’ smile wavered, but she kept it up anyways. He wasn’t really angry at her. He was just angry at most everything going on and what went on with him, about going to the pricipal’s office and probably getting told off, and that Babs had almost touched him. She shouldn’t have tried, but the whole idea here was to forgive and forget the past and the yelling and the names. She almost felt like saying something, but when she opened her mouth to speak, he gave her such a harsh glare that she closed her mouth instantly.
His eyes said it all. The principal had figured out he was lying, and started making him tell truthful lies. Started making him talk about things that didn’t need to be talked about in order to keep himself happy. It was the same sort of doomed expression Babs saw on the pony that got stabbed. Everything about the colt was bleeding out onto the street and draining down into the gutter. Everything about his shivering and his glaring and his cursing was coming undone and showing who he was underneath, who he really was. Babs knew that if she went into the bathroom at home, she’d have to bleed out to, and that there was no worse way to die, with the bloodstains on the pavement your only remembrance and how quickly that was washed away by rain and time and cleaning carts.
She put out her hoof, and the colt stiffened, until he saw the note in it.
What are you doing, Fatty. What’s this.
The note changed hooves, and the colt’s wide, bloodshot eyes scoured the page, going over the drawing, the words, the smiles of the drawn ponies. “Truce?” he mumbled.
Babs closed her eyes, hoping desperately it would work, hoping maybe they could start healing, start learning, start from the beginning again and not have to hurt each other anymore.
“Truce?...”
She heard the paper crumple, and her hopes with it.
“Truce?” huh. The colt scoffed. You want a truce. Truce for what. You’ve never fought back, Fatty. You never fight back, because you’re a big fat baby. There’s nothing to have a truce for. It’s not you against me, it’s me hating you.
Babs turned away, but the colt kept going, stepping down from his swing, growling like an angry dog. Yeah, go ahead, cry. I hate you, Fatty. I hate you. You’re a mistake. Your parents should have never had you. You’re such a fat little piggy, I bet you eat up all their food. I bet they even let you, Fatty. You’re unstoppable.
Stop.
Fat, fatty fat fat. Big, fat, fatass Babs Seed the fat filly. The fat little piggy. Everypony hates you, but nopony hates you more than I do, because you gross me out more than anypony else.
Stop, please…
No, I won’t stop, Fatty, cause you’re stupid, too, cause you don’t fucking get it, the colt said, pushing Babs. You won’t get it until I drill it into your skull through all the fat between your ears.
Stop.
Fatass.
Stop it, please…
Fatty little pig.
“You’ll what?”
What happened next happened fast, too fast for Babs to tell, but she was limping and running back home, and her face felt like it was swelling up several times it’s size. She hadn’t stopped hitting the colt with the bruises for a really long time, and all she knew was that he was back at the playground, laying on the ground, rolling around. She didn’t remember if he was bleeding or not. She couldn’t open one of her eyes, and she tasted something thick and warm dripping from her mane.
She hurt all over, and she was tired, and she was going home. That was all. And when she came home, her mother screamed and called for her father, and her father’s eyes widened, and they both asked her what happened a million times, and Babs mumbled that she got in a fight, and it was all fast, and she felt sort of dizzy. Her parents worked together for once and started putting ice on her wounds and asking her exactly what happened, and she just kept telling them that she got in a fight, and didn’t tell them about the colt with the backwards ballcap. She figured if she told them about him, they’d get in a fight with his parents, but it would be the adult kind of fight they had sometimes with all the yelling and the screaming and the threats, and she didn’t want to give the colt with the ballcap that.
Her mother gave her a damp, warm washcloth. Go upstairs, Babs, she said. We’re calling the doctor, you’re gonna be fine. Go to the bathroom and clean yourself up, okay.
Babs nodded, even though she wanted to shake her head. She shivered as she made her way upstairs, because she knew the monster was waiting for her. She could hear his metal jaws clapping open and shut, his rickety, wild laughter echoing in her head. She put a hoof on the slightly open door and took a deep breath. She had to do it. Her mother told her to. But she couldn’t. She didn’t want to hear any truthful lies today. She was dizzy and aching and wet from all the sweat and the wet rag and she just wanted it to just be over.
She figured she should go to bed. She didn’t feel like drawing before bed tonight. Too much had happened today. She didn’t have the energy.
She had to. Her mother told her to. She didn’t want her mother to be angry with her. She swallowed and pushed the door open.
The bathroom was clean. Porcelain. White as heaven was supposed to be. There was a little step in front of the sink for Babs to step up to, and besides that little step was the monster. It looked so unassuming, so innocent. Just a little plate with a dish with numbers on top of it, long enough for a pony to put all four her hooves onto it. Babs knew what it really did, though. It made everything ever said about her ever true, and as long as she kept away from it, she felt happy. She had been trying for almost the whole year to make it not true. Almost the whole year to make the taunts and the notes and everything a lie.
Maybe they were lies now. Just maybe. Babs tried not to think about it. Babs tried to stand at the sink and clean the blood off her face, so that she could open both her eyes, and now her vision was blurry in one eye for a few seconds. She blinked it away, and looked at her swelling face, and felt hate for it. She hated how babyish it was. She hated how cherubic and how–
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe those were all lies. Maybe, maybe, it was always maybe.
Babs, the doctor is here, her mother called.
One minute, Mom.
Maybe. That was all she had to go on. Babs hopped off of the step to the sink and stared at the monster. Maybe, just maybe, that was all she had. No friends, no cutie mark, no true talents, just the monster and a million maybes. Maybe things would change after today. Maybe things would be better. Maybe she wouldn’t have to deal with the taunts and the catcalling anymore. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe the scale would say something different today.
Babs swallowed and stepped on it, putting all four hooves out, standing straight, standing on equal footing, feeling the monster creak and groan under her. She pleaded to it. Maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe I won’t be fat anymore. Please, I’ve had a long day, please, be nice, please tell me something good, I need something good, please. I don’t want to be heavy anymore. I don’t want to be big boned or fat or a giant or a pig or anything anymore. I just want some good news and the day to be over. Please be nice to me.
The scale stopped moving. She had gained five pounds. Her scream rang out across the block.
