“CONSIDERABLY LESS SPECTACULAR THAN WHAT I’D IMAGINED,” Ellie told Alex through the phone that was balanced between her neck and shoulder. The mirror reflected back the image of a girl with blue-dyed and roughly cut hair, thick eyeliner, and a newly claimed freedom.
“Not everything comes with a grandiose ceremony of huge crowds and flower petals falling from the ceiling.”
She rolled her eyes. “Obviously, but the gesture would’ve been nice.”
“I’ve pulled out all the stops for this, you know. So, quit your whining,” he said, pulling on his coat. “Everyone’s coming.”
“Is this all necessary?” she asked.
“Yes, El, it is. We’ve thrown parties for all flipped coins; now it’s your turn.”
Ellie Walding still had yet to figure out where Alex’s fascination of ‘flipped coins’ came from. He talked about it all the time, every chance he got. He had this entire speech that he’s told her at least once a week for the last two years. It came out of nowhere one day; they were at some kid’s party, drinking, and he mentioned it for the first time. Ever since, he’s been totally and completely immersed in the idea that to be a truly free person, you have to break through the barriers set by society.
She promised him a while back that if she didn’t get Class President, she’d flip. She didn’t know exactly what that meant then, but she did know that she hated every second of being her mother’s professional puppet. She thought she had a pretty good idea what that meant now.
Thirty minutes later, she climbed into the front seat of Alex’s (borrowed) truck. Another thirty minutes later, she was walking into a house full of already drunk teenaers.
“TAILS!” they all screamed in surprising unison. Intense cheering followed as she wove through them. Alex pulled her up the stairs to the balcony overlooking the living room.
“You have to jump,” he told her, nodding towards the railing. A crowd of heavy drunks swamped the floor below. She shook her head and stared at him with wide eyes. “This is the grandiose ceremony of coin flipping that you were wanting.”
She peered over the rail, where the crowd below was staring up at her with their arms interconnected to form a net of human limbs.
“They’ve all done it, too,” he said, looking at her thoughtfully. “It’s just a part of learning to trust these people. The people whose curiosity refuses to be stifled.”
Ellie looked at him long and hard in that moment, questioning his sanity. He looked sincere and the people below looked just as so, ready to catch her with the same way others have caught them. I can’t, she thought to herself. “I can’t,” she said aloud. She shook her head and backed away, stumbling into the wall behind her. Alex just stared at her with confusion written across his face. “You may have tricked these people into your little game….” She didn’t know where she was going with this. Her heart was pumping faster than the too-loud music, and she was frantically trying to slide toward the stairs in too-tall heels.
Ellie Walding realized in that moment that people were not either heads or tails. People can be the edges, too. The side that touches both sides, balanced between the two presets. She has wanted to break away from the overbearing and dominant heads for as long as she can remember, but tails wasn’t the only other option. Tails were people like Alex, who had a long history of drinking underage and throwing caution to the wind and doing illegal things on a daily basis just because he wants to prove something to the heads of society. Alex Wahlburger needed to be accepted by people who didn’t want to be accepted, but accepting. Ellie was done trying to be either/or, she just wanted to be.
She felt the drop of the first step of the stairs under her foot and she ran down them as fast as she could.
Fuck tails.
Fuck heads.
Fuck everybody that had anything to do with the formation of society. Everything was harder than because of them. But Ellie Walding found herself. She knew who she was now.
YOU ARE READING
Flipped Coin
Short Story[finished] Ellie Walding wanted to be everything she wasn't with every fiber of her being.
