Upending

Here are all of the ways I am not going to fulfill your ideas of a dystopian heroine. I’m not the girl who doesn’t know she’s beautiful. I’m not the tomboy who grew up with just her dad and knows how to throw a punch and fix a car. I’m not quiet and smart and inherently good. I’m not the poor girl everyone is rooting for to catch a break and conquer the world.

I grew up in a tony suburb of Philadelphia. I was pretty, popular, did well in school, involved in the right sports (tennis and horseback riding), and dated older guys from my mother’s carefully chosen families. I didn’t think about it then. It was just my life. I kept taking one step then another down this path and it was easier to just keep going with that momentum. Changing course seemed unnecessary. I enjoyed the comfort and adoration and I didn’t even stop to wonder long enough to feel ashamed of it.

I was a debutante, of course, and the night of the ball felt like the perfect time to lose my virginity to my then-boyfriend. I know this shit could write itself, but I’ll tell you the story anyway, so there is no confusion. I chickened out last minute, he didn’t care, and later all I could remember was the gold heart-shaped locket he’d given me cold against my bare chest.

Suffice it to say I was cracked open. I had this hard outer shell that I wasn’t even aware of until it was gone. Suddenly everything stung this new, tender flesh and I noticed things I didn’t want to about my life, my parents. Last-minute I applied to Stanford University knowing I was supposed to go to UPenn like (my parents) planned. Through enough begging and pleading I was allowed to go, under the guise I’d transfer after two years when it was time to really buckle down and secure the right network to make matches in both my personal and professional life. All I knew at that point was that I wanted to be a California girl. Somewhere in that idea held what I needed.

I didn’t come back after two years. Or four, despite threats from my parents to pull funding. I graduated during what is referred to as the End of Days. Right before the free fall. When our own daily individual woes still captured most of our attention. I can now pinpoint every red flag and wave it high with the type of misery that only comes from knowing you’re too late to do anything about it. Like a scene from any kidnapping movie, I was ambushed, sedated, and taken into the back of a van. And that was the end of that. All of my California dreams floated out the van window they had open.

My name is Ophelia and I now live in a mangled version of the United States. We are in the middle of a civil war. The fringes of the east and west hold on for dear life, their only hope is support from foreign countries and their stronghold over the coastlines to be able to keep supplies from reaching the New World Order. Pockets of rebellion throughout the south and midwest fight on for their hard-won territories, barely keeping them at bay.

In this new life, my long hair can be braided or put in a bun. I wear a simple blue dress every day and white ones to bed. Contouring is a thing of the past, I’m just happy to get my hands on some lip balm and moisturizer. I think that’s when I’d really lose it, if those last two things were taken away from me. They feel disproportionately necessary for my survival. I am treated with the utmost respect, if you consider a gilded cage respectful. I cannot make a single real decision but people bow and curtsey in my presence. I am fed a bland but perfectly nutritious diet. Everything in my room is white, which would actually be kind of chic under different circumstances. There are never any threats. But fear of the unknown is a powerful thing. It keeps you in line anyway.

We are meant to be as pure and natural-looking as possible. Very back to basics. My vanity prior to this helped some. While I was thankful for my thick hair and full eyebrows, I wasn’t such a fan of its rapid ability to sprout anywhere else it could. I’d laser myself practically hairless back in high school after complaining to my mother enough. I think she knew how close I was to perfection and that one little flaw stood in the way of the masterpiece she could show off and eventually pawn off. We aren’t allowed to shave now and in some perverse way, I’m grateful for the pain I endured in the name of beauty. It lets me feel like a woman in charge of her own body and how she wanted it to look.

We are being assessed and paired off with men deemed worthy of us so we can be married and shipped to where we are needed, symbols of the perfect nuclear family to set an example for others in our city or town. What they should aspire to, even though the system in place means they’ll never get it. I was paired off quickly, something I believe my parents had to do with, to a man named Liam.

SIX MONTHS LATER

Alex, one of our personal guards, stared at me, clearly surprised I hadn’t figured it out.

“Ophelia, he is one of us.”

The room vibrated as all the blood rushed to my head, whooshing in my ears, making me ask again.

“It was the only way to see where your allegiance lies. All we had to do was both feed you information and see who it got back to. Whose secrets you kept.”

I just stared at him until the violence rose in my throat and bubbled out.

“You must enjoy these games, don’t you? Men always have. Good cop, bad cop. Trust me, love me, lose me, fear me, worship me, need me,” My voice got higher and higher, scratching the top of the ceiling now.

“You get off on this. You all do. You’re all fucking sick. And you should be ashamed. Not us. Not Eve. You. You are the ones who took sin and ran with it. You are the ones who made the world a boys’ club and women your playground. You are the ones who got greedy, who started wars, and toppled economies, and ruined our environment to line your pockets and prop up your cock.” Now I could barely speak, my words were so garbled by my anger, I felt each one like a birth.

“You think you’ll save us? Men?” My chest heaved as my body unsuccessfully fought back the hysteria. “We will do what we’ve always done. We’ll clean up your fucking mess and save ourselves. But I don’t know if we should be so forgiving this time around. You are semen. That’s it. We don’t even need you for the act, we have tools to do the deed ourselves. I don’t think I should be afraid. I think you should be. When this is all over, I think we may just come for you.”

I walked calmly out of the room and into the hallway, all of the anger left behind in the room for him to fester in. When I looked up there Liam was, leaning against the doorframe like he was James fucking Dean. I snorted and moved past him, but he grabbed my arm. The look I gave him made him release me so quick it was like my skin burned him. His eyes looked almost black, I could see them search mine quickly.

“He told you.”

I kept my face black.

“You have to know, I was doing the best that I could in the worst situation.”

“And you should know, the one thing I couldn’t forgive was being another piece in a game, lied to and used. Even if it’s for the resistance. God, you sound like them. I wish you were. At least then I could trust that I knew who you were.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Oh, I mean that. Which is why I’m going to turn you in. You both.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“Stop telling me what I would and wouldn’t do.”

“What do you think will happen to you? You’re no longer a virgin - “

“I was never a virgin.”

He stopped. “What do you mean?”

“I was never a virgin. I was raped in high school. I lied so I wouldn't go to the labor camps. And then you...”

He looked like I had slapped him.

“Don’t say that. That was consensual.”

“Yes, but you don’t think there was a power dynamic at play between us?” I was at the height of cruelty and manipulation now. It was consensual. I wanted him like I wanted a popsicle with the gumballs for eyes when I was five. Blind need, nonsensical and single-minded in it’s intensity. Willing to scream and throw myself on the ground for it. But what I said was not untrue. He walked through the world as a man, not seeing who parted to make way, who he stepped on unknowingly.

He opened and closed his mouth. I was exhausted, so I simply walked away.

I sat in the kitchen because hiding in my room felt childish. Eventually, Alex came in, grabbing a few contraband beers and putting one in front of me. Then Liam, opening cabinets and drawers. I almost asked what he was doing but then he found a box of mac and cheese, the good kind. I wanted to fucking kill them, but at the same time, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders, the immense relief to not be alone in this. We were in this together now.