strobe

holly, aka the other thing

Who's she?

Good question. She was Holly - an eighteen-year-old from a nowhere town somewhere in the north of England. In fact it was her eighteenth birthday that night. As if by some sixth sense, Holly always knew she would never reach adulthood. She hadn't been born until just before midnight, so technically she did die before then.

What else can we say about Holly?

She had been a very ambitious child, but secondary school scuppered her plans. She never knew if it was her fault or the other thing that caused her to mess up her GCSEs. Holly never spoke about the other thing because other people didn't want to, and she barely had friends as it was.

After a while, Holly began to hate the other thing because it stopped her from doing what everyone else was doing. Living in the small town she and her friends lived in, they all had to learn to drive as soon as they were seventeen. But Holly sat at school, pretending to be happy, and closely concealing her tears, when all her friends proudly announced they had passed their tests.

The year before, her friends had started to get summer jobs. Holly had applied for several; she even got a job offer. That was until she mentioned the other thing, and then suddenly the vacancy was filled.

It seems hard to describe Holly without mentioning the other thing. Maybe that's why she went. Perhaps she chose to ignore her limits just to have one chance of being Holly, and not the other thing. 

But in the end, they were one and the same.