SOMEONE'S DAUGHTER || t.s.

01. stupid girl, i should've known

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁. hazel . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

Hazel Faith Alwyn wasn't a stupid girl by any means. At the age of three, she'd followed her father around the sets of the movies he worked on, listening to him reciting scripts. When he was busy filming scenes, Hazel would sneak away from the eyes of whomever was babysitting her that day to the mysterious piles of paper that her Daddy spent so much time analyzing. She began to make the connection between the shapes on the paper and the sounds that came out of her mouth; when the shapes were connected together, they made a word.

At the age of five, Hazel would sit with her father at the kitchen island and help him memorize his lines. She'd read the lines for his scene partner, and when he missed a word, she'd raise her small hand and cry, "no, Daddy!" When she didn't know how to pronounce a word she came across, Joe would shift her into his lap, direct her to sound out the word, and then help her formulate a sentence so she could understand what the word meant. No wonder she had such a vast vocabulary from such a young age.

When Hazel was eight years old, she discovered that she had a talent for reading people. After growing up surrounded by actors, Hazel knew when people were playing their characters and when they'd let their façade fall away to be their authentic selves away from the screen. Soon enough, Hazel saw that it didn't just apply to actors; people in her everyday life could be good actors, too. She saw it in her schoolteachers, when they'd had a rough night and had to put on a happy face for their students in the morning. She saw it in her friends, who were upset because of a fight during recess but didn't want to have to talk about it with the principal. And she saw it in her dad, when he came home late on Saturday nights, the female "friend" he was going to dinner with never being spoken of again.

Hazel wasn't stupid. She knew that those friends weren't just friends, that, for seven years, her father had been trying to fill the void that had been created in both of their lives when Hazel's mother ran off, back when Hazel was only two, leaving her father with nothing but divorce papers to sign and his toddler daughter to look after. Hazel didn't remember her mother, but she remembered how her mother made her father feel. She remembered his sad eyes. She remembered how on every birthday of hers, he'd go through the mailbox, hoping for some well-wishes from Hazel's mother. She remembered how he'd longed to place a present from Hazel's mom under the Christmas tree.

When Hazel was nine years old, her father came home from one of his many Saturday night excursions with a smile on his face. He wouldn't tell Hazel why, but she could hear him humming to himself as he took off his tuxedo and changed into pajamas. When Hazel came out of her bedroom, instead of asking her why she wasn't asleep, her dad asked her if she wanted to enjoy a bowl of ice cream with him. Then, they danced around the kitchen and had a pillow fight in the living room until it was far too late for either of them to stay awake.

Hazel soon learned that the source of her dad's good mood was a blonde woman named Taylor. She didn't know exactly why, but she knew that Taylor was famous and, at the moment, didn't really want to be famous. After a few months, Taylor moved to London, where she could be closer to Joe—and Hazel.

Soon, Hazel began to recognize Taylor as a constant in her life. She'd come home from school to hear Taylor playing around on the baby grand piano that Joe kept in the living room. When Hazel walked into the house, dropping her school backpack in the mudroom, she knew she could run up to Taylor and ask her to play something for her on the piano, and Taylor would always say yes. When Taylor's career started to take off again, Hazel begged her dad to let her go to as many shows as possible. In those arenas, Hazel realized that she was surrounded by people who loved Taylor almost as much as she did.