Chapter Text
Carrie Wilson cut her hair.
She hadn’t had a haircut in almost six years, aside from a few trims to prevent split ends. She’d always taken pride in her long hair; long and blonde and soft, always curling just right over her shoulders, always dancing just right in the wind, always swinging just right in its ponytail. A perfect, pretty curtain. It swept like velvet, tugged so easily over her face, over the cracks in the china.
Her dad pulled out pictures sometimes. Those nights when he wasn’t pacing or strumming his guitar or crying- he thought she didn’t know, but she did, that everytime he locked himself in his room he lost his mind a little bit more- he would sit with her on the couch, one arm slung around her shoulders, flipping through a book or scrolling Twitter or something, and she would just tuck herself up against his side and scribble out lyrics. Sometimes he’d pull out photo albums. They’d look through them together. Baby pictures of Carrie. Pictures from the wedding. Pictures of her mom.
Her mom had long hair. Long and blonde and soft.
“Just like mine.”
Her dad ran his fingers through her hair and kissed her head. “Yeah. Just like yours, baby.”
Without that pretty, perfect curtain, who would she be? She wouldn’t look like the pictures anymore. She wouldn’t be able to tug that velvet over her face. She’d just be Carrie; just a fragile china face about to shatter.
She kept her hair long. She was picture perfect that way.
.
.
Julie played the Orpheum. The best night of her life, Carrie was damn sure. Julie Molina, up on stage, sparkling in the light, shining like the fireworks, with curls flying everywhere, with a vibrancy that struck Carrie’s bones. She was beautiful.
Dad closed the door of his bedroom behind him when they got home. She settled onto her bed and pretended she couldn’t hear the crying. She could always hear it. He thought she couldn’t. He thought that she believed him when he said he was meditating all afternoon, that he was writing lyrics, that he missed dinner because he got caught up with the chords. He thought she couldn’t see the exhaustion underlining his eyes. The way he fell out of touch after a while, tumbling into the dark part of his mind she’s not supposed to know about. She always knew. She just pretended not to see it.
But Julie played the Orpheum and Carrie’s notebook had been sitting open in front of her for twenty minutes. So what’s the point in pretending?
She knocked firmly. Once, twice, three times, and then a fourth just in case he was thinking about ignoring her. He didn’t get to ignore her.
Dad had never really ignored her, though, so he opened the door. “Carrie. I was just-”
“No,” she said, cutting him off. He blinked. “You’re about to say you were meditating or writing lyrics or something. Stop lying to me.”
He blinked again. “Carrie-”
“Stop lying to me,” she repeated.
Dad stared at her for a long moment. She stared back, because his eyes were red and her hands were shaking and this house was so big and white and empty and both of them hated it and if they didn’t stop lying to each other she was going to scream the whole place down.
“Okay,” he said softly. He stepped aside to let her in. Carrie instantly gravitated to the bed. Every night when she was little, she’d come in here, her little feet pitter pattering along the floor, and scrambled up to curl into his side. He’d always whispered, “Are you okay, honey?” and she’d always nodded, because it was okay once Dad was there. It was safe once Dad was there.
Somewhere along the line, she’d given up on that. Because Dad lied. Because Dad cried alone in his room. Because Dad wrote songs she wasn’t supposed to know about, things with minor chords and lyrics about guilt and anger and fear, fear, fear. Because Dad was scared too. Somewhere along the line, it had become so much easier to lie.
But they both hate it. So he settled down next to her with an arm slung around her shoulders and she curled into his side and it was safe. It was safe when Dad was there.
He had a photo album.
They didn’t open it.
He kissed her head, though, and said, “Are you okay, honey?”
“Are you?” she retorted, although it wasn’t much of a retort when her voice was small and cracking down the middle.
“No.” The exhaustion in his voice when he admitted it almost made guilt curl into Carrie’s stomach. It was heavy. Years and years of fatigue in just one word, sinking down into her bones, her muscles, her brain, soaking her in that same broken, tired sigh. “Not really.” Carrie closed her eyes and leaned into him. “You know,” he continued after a pause. “You know. I’ve been thinking of moving.”
She tightened her grip. “Yeah?”
He kissed her head again. “Yeah. Somewhere more to the East, maybe.”
“Rhode Island?”
“Sure, baby. Rhode Island.”
Carrie smiled, just a little bit. “I thought you said you’d never move out East,” she said.
“Yeah.” He sighed. Pet her hair again. Her spine relaxed a bit more at the gentle touch. “Your mother hated it out there. Said it was too crowded. Too loud. But it’s already so loud here. And she never liked anything I did, anyway.” There was a laugh somewhere in there, but it was broken and exhausted and sliced at Carrie like splintered bone. “Out here, it’s…” he trailed off. Sighed again. “Is any of it worth it?”
Carrie tapped her fingers on his shoulder. A slow beat. A drumbeat. “No,” she said, with only a second of hesitation. He kissed her head.
She kept the beat going. He tapped it on her arm in return, and they went back and forth, trading little patterns. Thrum, thrum, thrum. It was safe. It was safe now that Dad was there.
“You know,” she said, and then paused. Just like him. She’d always been a little bit too much like him. She had the dark place in her mind, too, but she didn’t think he knew that. They were both too good at lying. “You know, I love theatre.”
He laughed faintly. “You’ve dropped out of every theatre class you’ve ever taken.”
“Not doing it,” she amended immediately, her nose wrinkling. He laughed again. “But watching it. Reading it. I like that a lot.” She stopped talking. He didn’t interrupt, though. Dad always knew when she had more to say. “There’s so much- there’s structure to it, you know? There’s structure to the plot, to the flow, to the theme.” Her voice wavered. “And- and, you know, there are a lot of themes that stick around. Famous ones.” He pulled her in closer. The safety of his touch sank down into her bones, chasing out the exhaustion that had settled there. “Julie played the Orpheum tonight,” and then her voice gave out.
Her dad swallowed hard. “Julie and the Phantoms played the Orpheum tonight,” he repeated. His voice was hollow. That old guilt, the one she wasn’t supposed to see, was coiling through his eyes.
“Yeah. And that- that makes sense. Thematically.” She was crying. She hadn’t meant to be crying. “Because I- I was born with everything. And she worked for so much. But I worked too. I worked too, Dad.” Her voice broke in half, splintering back down her throat. It was so hard to force the words out over the scraped skin. “I don’t want everything! I don’t, I just- I just wanted my music, I wanted my music to be enough, and it’s not, and it’ll never be, and- and I’ll be worse than her, and-”
“Carrie, you’re amazing,” he interrupted firmly. He twisted them so that he could grip her shoulders, looking into her eyes. There was steel in his gaze. “You have worked. You’ve done so, so much. You have put your heart and soul into your work, and I am so, so proud of you. You don’t have to be better than Julie. It’s music, baby. You do it for you. Do it for you.”
Carrie sniffled. “I’ve never done it for me,” she replied faintly.
And Dad knew. Dad had always known.
“You don’t have to be better than Julie,” he repeated, softer. “You’re not competing with her.”
“But-”
“Carrie, listen to me.” His smile was slow, small, but it was real. It was real. It was safe. “You don’t have to compete with Julie. That’s how you lose, okay? I know it feels like you’ll never measure up. But that’s the great thing about it, baby. You don’t have to. I’ll always think you’re better than her. You know that. It’s because I love you.” He squeezed her shoulders and then took her hands tightly. “Don’t compete. Just be yourself.”
“That’s what Disney Channel says.”
“Well, sometimes Disney Channel has a point.” He tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “It’s not you versus Julie. It’s you versus the version of you that you’ve created. Flynn isn’t going to break through that mask unless you show her there’s something underneath.”
Because Dad always knew.
“Okay,” she whispered. She drew in another shaky breath. “But what if…” she swallowed. “What if there isn’t? What if… what if I’ve done too much for too long? What if there isn’t anyone under there anymore?”
Dad’s smile widened, but it was so sad, and she loved him so much. “That’s a scary thing to worry about,” he said quietly. “But you don’t need to be afraid, Carrie. If you can’t find yourself under everything, then I’m here to help you, okay? No more lying. You can build yourself back up. If you can’t find who you are, then find who you want to be, and I will do everything I can to help you feel like that.”
“Pinky promise?”
He wrapped his pinky around hers. “Pinky promise, baby. Always.”
Carrie took a deep breath. “Always,” she repeated. She met his eyes, pulling that steel into her smile. It was safe like this. Even shattering herself open, even breaking apart all the china, it was safe.
She was crumbling, and that was okay.
.
.
Her mom had left. Walked right out on them. Carrie was only three. She didn’t remember.
She flipped the photo album open. It was late. Midnight, maybe? Dad had gone up to bed after making her promise to get at least a little bit of sleep before school tomorrow. It had been a few days since Julie played the Orpheum. Carrie hadn’t been back yet. She couldn’t face those hallways. Not like this.
Here was the thing about photo albums: they didn’t always tell the stories they were supposed to.
She was sitting on the soft white carpet, wearing Nick’s soft socks, wearing a big white cardigan, holding a root beer in her hand. She should look at good photos. Nice photos. Nostalgic photos. She flipped to the photos of her parents instead.
It was easy to see why Mom walked out. It had always annoyed Carrie, a little bit, but now it swelled up in her stomach like a storm, striking at her insides with lightning and lancing rage. In every photo, there was Mom, with her pretty blonde hair, laughing, lit up, and in every photo, there was Dad, standing behind her, watching her, smiling. He had a hand on her waist in one, looking down at her with a grin. She had one hand in his back pocket, the other outstretched to grasp the hand of one of her friends. She was laughing again. Laughing, laughing, laughing, and Dad was smiling, smiling, smiling, and Mom had walked out, because she was so vibrant and alive and she loved to laugh and it wasn’t interesting enough in this big empty white house with husband still learning to be happy and a china doll.
They hadn’t been enough.
Carrie hadn’t been enough.
It was easy to see why her mom left. She flipped the page again. It was her and Julie with Flynn sandwiched between them, sitting on the Molina’s front porch with glasses of lemonade. She took a sip of her root beer, humming under her breath. Flynn was leaning into Julie’s side. Carrie was laughing. She probably didn’t know yet.
When had she realised, anyway? Eleven? Twelve? By thirteen, surely, because she’d seen Flynn do a tumbling routine at cheer practice and nearly pulled her into a fumbling, chapstick kiss as she stood up, grinning so wide, so proud.
Maybe there were cheer pictures somewhere. Flynn had quit after eighth grade, and Carrie had quit after ninth, but they’d looked cute back in middle school, wearing matching uniforms and chasing each other around the field after the games. Flynn would always tackle her down onto the ground. Carrie always pretended to get mad about it. She’d stomp her foot and whine and everything. Flynn always just laughed.
Was that part of it? Was it because she whined so much? If she hadn’t pouted and rolled her eyes so often, would they have stuck with her?
Probably not. But it was food for thought, at least.
Carrie took another sip of her root beer and flipped back to the pictures of her parents. The anger came flooding back through her veins as soon as she caught sight of Mom, grinning so wide, so proud, with Dad pushed back behind her. That was her grin. That was the grin Carrie had seen in the mirror when she nailed a tumbling pass, when she nailed a routine, when she showed off a song and made Flynn and Julie applaud. That was the grin she saw in the mirror the first time Nick called her pretty. That grin was in all her good memories, all her good photos, all her nostalgic scrapbooks. That grin was hers, goddammit.
Mom stared up at her with crinkled eyes and pretty blonde hair flying everywhere. Carrie stood up so quickly that she almost spilt the root beer.
The sink was cold underneath her fingers. “Fuck,” she whispered, staring into her reflection. It was Mom, it was her, it was Mom, it was her, it was wide eyed and pale and crumbling china and if she turned her head just right then a velvet curtain came rushing down, and just like that-
Just like that, she was picture perfect.
A pretty, perfect curtain turned her into Mom.
She was moving before her mind caught up. Everything was blurry, shaky, shuddering in her bones, in her lungs, something like anger or fear running through her whole body, taking her over. Claiming residence in weak, cracking hands. Jolting her feet to the cabinet, back to the mirror.
Her mind finally whirled into the realisation of what she was doing, but it was already happening.
Without that pretty, perfect curtain, who would she be? She wouldn’t look like the pictures anymore. She wouldn’t be Mom. She wouldn’t be picture perfect.
She’d be the person underneath the mask.
She ached so badly to be the person underneath the mask.
.
.
It made sense, in hindsight. It wasn’t as sudden or impulsive or insane as it felt in the moment. It was an explosion of anger, of guilt, of fear, of a thousand lies that had built up and up and up until there was nothing left and no space left to fill and they could do nothing but burst out of her like the fireworks on Julie’s stage.
It was natural.
Julie played the Orpheum, and Carrie Wilson cut her hair.
.
.
“You look good,” Dad told her, sitting at the kitchen table with a real estate website up in front of him. She leaned in to look over his shoulder. “Your hair. It’s nice,” he added.
Carrie gave him a smile and a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Dad.” She pointed at one of the listings. “What’s the inside like on that one?”
He flipped them through the pictures. It was nice. Golden wood floors, a garden out back. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room with a big window. It was so much smaller. It was so fucking pretty.
“That looks like heaven,” she said softly.
He kissed her head. “Yeah. It does, doesn’t it?” He was smiling at the screen. “You’re going to school today, right?”
She nodded, heading to the fridge to grab breakfast. “Yeah. I need to get caught up on my work.” She made a face. “Can we have pizza for dinner?” She didn’t normally care much about her homework, but she’d already fallen behind in music and dance. She couldn’t afford to fall behind in her grades too.
Dad snorted. “Didn’t we have pizza two nights ago?”
“...Yes. And?”
He gave her a smile over his shoulder. “Sure, we can have pizza.” She cheered, clapping a few times, and then grabbed her backpack. “Have a good day at school! Love you!”
“Okay! Love you too!” she yelled back. She made sure not to slam the door behind her. Dad always flinched when doors slammed. He thought she didn’t see that, but she always had.
Walking to school had never been her first choice, but it was a bright, bursting morning, full of color and sound and a bounce in her step, and every moment felt like a little gift. Like walking these streets was something she was lucky to do. She hummed along to the tune in her head and stopped by the bakery a block over from school, because she liked cookies and she wanted a cookie and who was going to to stop her, really? The lady behind the counter gave her a polite smile. Carrie couldn’t help but grin back at her. “Have a lovely day!”
“You too,” the employee said, her smile a little more genuine.
Carrie ate the cookie on her way to school. It was good. It made her stomach sink a little less when she passed the sign.
“Carrie?”
She spun around from where she’d been shoving her things into her locker. “Oh! Kayla! Hi!”
Kayla smiled distantly. There was a confused wrinkle between her brows. “Hi? Uh…” She tilted her head. “Are you feeling alright? You look… not like yourself.” She gave Carrie’s outfit a significant glance.
Suddenly, the big pink sweatshirt felt a little suffocating. “I’m fine,” she replied, the edge of a snap in her voice. “I’m great, actually.”
“Okay.” Kayla looked unconvinced. Carrie tried not to roll her eyes, because what if that was the reason, but she didn’t try very hard, because why did Kayla give a shit what she was wearing? Sweatshirts and jeans shorts were comfortable. All Carrie cared about right now was being comfortable. “I’ll see you in chem?”
“Yeah. See you in chem.”
Kayla vanishes in a swirl of fruity perfume and perfectly straightened hair, and Carrie gnawed at her lip, staring after her. There was something empty in her chest.
Nick stepped into her line of vision. “Hey.”
“Hey, Nick.” She was wearing his socks. Would he realise that, if he glanced down?
He shifted uncomfortably. “Look, I just wanted to say, uh- we sort of left off on bad terms, and I-”
“Hey,” she interrupted. His eyes jolted to hers.
She wanted to say something sharp. She wanted to say something twisted, or draw out a cruel little joke about how he came back groveling. She wanted to look down at him. Just like he’d looked down at her the night of the party and decided she wasn’t worth it. For a moment, she burned to make him feel like he wasn’t worth it.
But he was.
She felt a little sick admitting it to herself, but he was. And Carrie didn’t want to lie anymore.
So instead, she said, “It’s okay.” Nick blinked, clearly surprised. “It’s okay,” she repeated. “I shouldn’t have said… anything that I said. And I mean, Julie’s really pretty. I bet she was really fun to dance with, right?”
He swallowed nervously. “I mean, yeah. But I still… I feel bad. Just ditching you.” He looked like he was afraid she’d laugh at him.
“Nick, look at me.” He pulled his gaze up from his shoes. “I know I hurt you. And I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry. But you moved on. That’s… that’s what anyone would do.” Her voice wavered a little, but she swallowed it down. “You deserve to be with someone who doesn’t hurt you. You were worth it, and I wasn’t, and that’s okay. I promise that’s okay.”
Nick looked conflicted. “Carrie…”
“It’s okay,” she repeated. Her eyes were stinging, but she bit her tongue. She wasn’t going to cry. “Please, just… don’t apologise.”
It took a moment, but he heaved out a breath and nodded. “Okay,” he agreed softly. There was a pause. “Your hair looks nice.” Carrie smiled, tucking a strand behind her ear. He smiled back. “Do you want help with your books?”
“That’d be nice.”
It hurt to watch the way his eyes tracked Julie down the hall, but she just breathed through the sting, because it really was okay. She hadn’t lied. He deserved something better. He deserved someone who didn’t doodle pom poms on her notes and write songs about chapstick kisses. Nick had always been sweet, and he’d always been kind, and he was a good friend. If Carrie was going to let herself crumble, she needed a good friend.
It was a first step.
It was okay.