Laced Steel - M.J. Fields

Chapter One

Idiom

The grass is always greener

on the other side of the fence.

Truth

The grass is greener

where there is rain and sun.

From where I sit now, there is nothing but sand, and sand sucks when it’s too cold to wash it off your body in the ocean. It’s March on the Jersey Shore, so that’s not gonna happen, unless I were to get drunk, something I’ve yet to do in all my seventeen years, like the rest of these fools.

Sure, I’ve drank, but never to the point that I would take a near polar bear plunge like they’re doing. And, okay, not all of them are fools, just the ones stripping down to their skivvies and jumping in the Atlantic in the dark … in March.

I’m surrounded by my fellow ensemble members of Seashore Academy’s spring musical, Newsies. Yep, us lowly members of the ensemble were not invited, via the school’s unofficial app, The Seashore Sound, to attend the also nonofficial cast party, so we created our own.

Right before my family, and my extended family, moved to Mantoloking and we all started school here at Seashore, I discovered the app.

The face of the app had major appeal. It showcased the student government. All four of the officers could also have been on covers of magazines.

Harrison Reeves, vice president of the student body, junior, and captain of the crew team, is absolutely delicious. His bio includes information, such as his SAT scores being 1550. Tall, dark-ish, and extremely handsome. One click on his picture brought me to his IG page, where I saw picture after picture that could land him on the cover of GQ. And if that didn’t solidify him as my future crush, the fact that his family owns the largest collection of Broadway houses certainly did.

Once upon a time, my dream was the ballet, but after last year, I realized I would never fit into the mold of a ballerina, so I turned my passion and focused on the possibility of Broadway.

Why did I change focus? Because my body changed, and I had no choice.

Unlike my twin brother’s, Justice, six-inch vertical spurt that had doctors concerned about his accelerated growth, my shit went horizontal. A year ago, my ass was on a road trip heading to Kardashian-ville. No ass injections here. Just a lovely growth spurt that started at my once B cups—now a large C—and moved to my ass.

My cousins, Brisa and Tris, are practically holding their breath, hoping they’ll be as “blessed” as I am in those two departments. Because their mom, my aunt Bekah, is “thick” in all the right places. But that wasn’t the case for me. So now, knowing I didn’t trait after my mom, except in height, they’re worried.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m a dancer, and not to toot my own horn, but I’m really good. Until my growth spurt, I was always a featured dancer or soloist, and I never had to wear a bra under my dance leotard.

Dad was livid after my end of the year recital that I didn’t tell them that things had drastically changed for me. He was even more angry at the fact that the girls who seemingly took my place were truthfully less talented, less trained, and less disciplined as I always had been than me failing to tell him about the changes.

Cursed by the name I was given, I always spoke my truth. And the truth was that my body didn’t fit the mold anymore. I held back the fact that I would have been blind to it, if not for the snickers and overheard corner conversations of those I thought were my friends at the studio. Even the most honest, loyal, and truthful people want to bury their insecurities.

When—unbeknownst to me—Dad called out Madame Gloria on it, she denied it had anything to do with my body’s changes. She told him that I wasn’t training as hard as I had been, that because of it, I’d lost the confidence it took to fill the roles that she needed me for in the past.

When I began eating less and less, in hopes that my body would change, my parents, who had already nearly begged me to quit the dance school, decided to end my enrollment without my knowledge. I was pissed at first. But then, in staying truthful with myself, I had to eventually admit that it was causing me mental harm, and if it continued, it could cause

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