Bleachers / Cherrytown / Too Late

A lot happened that fall.

She got her first scar, when that fucker Whiplash snarled and kicked her and sent her crashing down the metal stairs leading up to their apartment. She wrote in her notebook a hundred thousand ways in which a pony named Slip Dash died, and she got suspended again when Fast Clip stole her book from her backpack, ripped the pages up and tossed them over the baseball field like confetti, so she knocked out some of his teeth.

Fine. Whatever. That gave her more time alone and time with her novels. Time to draw and write and dream the day away, until her mother would return with too many bags to count in her hooves yet even more under her eyes, and she would look at her in a way that she couldn’t quite figure out.

One night it rained, and she wandered the town in her one and only jacket with the hood drawn up tight. She wandered to the field and broke into the varsity team’s equipment room and stole Fast Clip’s baseball bat. On her way over to his apartment (so she could break his windows since he lived on the first floor), she crossed the baseball field and paused when she noticed someone sitting on the bleachers.

A mare was sitting about halfway up behind home plate, crying her eyes out.

“Hey!” she shouted.

The crying mare snapped her head up.

“You!’

“Me?”

“Yeah!”

They stared at each other in the damp and rundown field, illuminated by the field lights glowering over them.

“Why are you crying?”

“What?”

“Why are you crying?!”

“What?”

She unfurled her wings and began crossing the field. “I said, why are you crying?”

The other mare sniffed. “I’m not!”

“You are! I can tell from here!”

“Well… Why do you have a bat?” Her eyes widened. “Are you going to kill me?”

She balked at that. “No! Why would I kill you?”

“I don’t know! Why are you out here at midnight with a baseball bat?”

“Why are you crying on the bleachers?”

She drew to a stop just in front of home plate and looked up at the stands. The other mare stared at her through a pair of watery green eyes. Next to her was a spilled box of chocolates: each piece laying upturned and disheveled across the stands. “What’s that all over your face? Why does it look so bad?”

“Because makeup runs when you cry, you idiot,” she sniffed. “Have you never worn makeup before?”

“No? Why should I? Why were you crying?”

“I wasn’t crying!”

“You–” She worked her jaw and growled. “You just said you were!”

“It’s none of your business!” cried the other mare.

She flared her wings and marched around home plate to climb the bleachers. “Well it is now! Because I have the bat!” She raised the bat to the sky like she was summoning a deity.

The other mare was unimpressed and continued to sulk. “We know each other,” she muttered. “Regrettably.”

She stared blankly at her.

“We have History together with Mr. Dustworth.”

“Oh!” She twirled the bat in her hooves. “He’s cool. He doesn’t ask me for a note when I’m late and he doesn’t report me either when I ditch. You’re, uh–”

“You don’t know me, I made sure not to ever speak to you,” she replied.

“Right. But you know me, huh?”

“Of course, everyone in this city knows Disaster Daring Do.”

Daring grinned. “I prefer Danger Daring myself!”

“I think disaster is more apt.”

Daring bent over and swept some of the excess pieces of chocolate off the bench. “I don’t know what apt means.”

The crying mare grunted and turned away from her. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you, they might suspend me too.”

Daring picked up the chocolate box’s cover. The brand was some Prench name she couldn’t pronounce. They sold bigger boxes, but they also made smaller bars that were easy to stuff into her pockets when the convenience store cashier was distracted. “This stuff’s expensive…”

“And he didn’t want it…”

The gears began churning in Daring’s head. “Ohhhh. You got denied from prom, huh?”

“You wouldn’t get it.”

“Huh?” Daring blinked. “What makes you say that?”

The mare dried her eyes with the back of her hoof. “You– You just… You seem like you wouldn’t care.” Her glare softened a bit. “Sorry.”

“I mean. I don’t. I just… Don’t get it.” She used the edge of her bat to prod at the upturned box lid. “I don’t get what makes you want to… ask someone to do that.”

The other mare wrinkled her nose. “You never liked someone?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve never… Had feelings about someone? Like, felt a connection? Wanted to kiss them? Ask them out? Thought someone was pretty?”

Daring looked the other mare over. Her purple coat was damp from the rain. Tears had ruined her makeup, her mane looked unkempt and a little damp from the rain, and her cheeks looked red and puffy. She looked… like a pony.

Was she supposed to look like something else?

Daring thought hard. She tried to picture herself asking someone to prom. Who would she want to ask? Someone she liked, right? Well… who did she like? Was she meant to look for something in their eyes? Their height? Their voice?

“Uh.”

“You… You’ve never felt any of that? Like, at all?”

Daring set her bat down. “Hm.” She thought about some of her favorite books, and how some of them would feature love stories. She never paid them much mind, since she was always more invested in the action and adventure parts than the sappy kissy-kissy parts, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she was never really sure what the two characters saw in each other.

If the author said they liked each other, then sure. But beyond that, how was she meant to know what it meant to like someone?

“Look. I… When I had my first boyfriend, I thought he was hot. He had this beard-thing going on, and his mane was kind of messy, but his abs… Woof.”

Daring blinked.

“You’ve never felt that way about a stallion?”

“No?”

“...What about a mare? I mean, mares can be sexy in their own way.”

Daring gagged at that word. “No! It’s not that! I just… I don’t think I’ve ever thought about ponies like that before.”

The other mare widened her eyes. “Woah. Really?”

“Yeah! Really!”

They stared at each other, both shocked by this revelation.

“...Whiplash was right, there is something wrong with me,” Daring muttered.

“What?! No there isn’t! I mean– I don’t think it’s wrong to not feel something towards other ponies! Look, I… I heard from some friends that there’s a couple of ponies out there who don’t get any of those types of feelings unless they’re for someone they already know. So, like, they don’t feel love towards strangers at all, but they can feel that way towards closer friends.”

“I… I don’t know. I never thought about this before.” She looked up at the clouds dotting the sky and began to chew her cheek. “Sorry. Uh… I should go. Sorry for… Bothering you.”

Daring stood up and began to descend the bleachers, still thinking.

“H-Hey!” The other mare stood up and called after her. “Uh. I’m… I’m Cheerilee.”

Daring nodded. “Thanks?”

“Sorry for…” Cheerilee gestured vaguely.

Daring shrugged.

“You forgot your bat?”

“It’s not mine.”

They stared at each other for a while longer, neither understanding the other, before Daring turned and left the field. She went home and snuck back into her room before digging out her journal, turning to a fresh page.

There was once a King and a Queen who loved each other. Because… Because….

“Because…” Daring set her pen down and frowned. “I… What the fuck is love?!”