by K. M. Hayes
I opened the streaming app and typed “My Little Pony” in the search bar. The show came right up . . . at season one, episode one.
My finger hovered over the play button. I originally had planned to find the season three episode where Holly had left me. But with the option to start at the beginning staring me in the face—to know how those ponies became friends in the first place—it was tempting to start at the very first episode.
But that would mean I was serious about this.
It meant I would watch a lot more than one episode.
I knew I shouldn’t want to watch, but I did. There were so many things I didn’t know about my life right now that I couldn’t deny myself any longer. I would have to hide it—that wouldn’t be too hard—and figure out later why this desire was so strong.
So I pressed play and watched Twilight Sparkle come to Ponyville for the first time. She was a loner and a bookworm who didn’t even care about friendship, but she met Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Fluttershy as she tried to get things ready for a festival. Then Nightmare Moon showed up and Princess Celestia went missing, so Twilight and her new friends left to save the day.
With the power of friendship.
As I watched episode after episode of Twilight learning about friendship in Ponyville, it didn’t satisfy my need. It only fueled it. The show was funny, and smart, and even meaningful. I was learning new ideas about friendships and friends . . . and also finding myself craving to have more of them. That was new since for so long more people in my life only meant more potential for pain.
I smiled so often my cheeks hurt. While I felt a twinge of shame, I couldn’t ignore how happy the show made me. When I let myself watch it and like it, I was at ease and my problems were a million miles away. I hadn’t felt this way in ages.
I didn’t want to let that go.
That’s when I knew I would watch My Little Pony until there wasn’t any more to watch. And then I’d watch it again.
Chapter 12
DAD TURNED OFF the radio about five minutes into our drive to school. Since we had forty minutes left to go, I didn’t take this as a good thing. He must have had something to say, and he never had anything to say to me. Chances were it wasn’t a good something. Looking out the window like always, I tried to pretend I didn’t notice the silence. Maybe he would chicken out and keep up the routine.
It didn’t work.
“So . . .” he started. “I can’t help noticin’ something.”
My stomach hit the floor. Did he know about My Little Pony? I tried hard not to let it show—I only watched it late at night on my phone, only sketched ponies in my room, and never let myself reference it. But I hadn’t had my phone on me all the time, and my parents demanded to know the code so they could make sure I wasn’t watching dirty stuff. Maybe Dad saw my recently watched list. . . .
I gulped, wishing I could jump out of the car. “Yeah?”
Dad gripped the steering wheel, looking nervous. This was it. He was going to rip into me. “You haven’t signed up for freshman team tryouts. You’re my son and all, but you still gotta follow the rules and sign up.”
I kept my eyes on the landscape, letting out a slow breath of relief. Not that I was completely at ease, but I could handle this much easier. “Dad . . . I’m not trying out.”
There was a long pause. “Really?”
I turned to look at him, the surprise in his voice throwing me off. Was he . . . hurt? Did he really think I was trying out? This couldn’t be happening. He had to know by now I’d never play football. He could not possibly still hope for that to change. “Yeah, really.”
“Well, why not?” he said with the anger I’d expected.
I leaned back in the seat, wanting to heave an annoyed sigh. Maybe talking about how I’d watched almost all the seasons of My Little Pony would have been better. “Because I’m horrible at football, remember?”
“You weren’t that bad. I’ve coached worse.” He seemed to think this would make me feel better. “Your mom’s just gotten in your head. She didn’t like seeing you get hurt, but you would have gotten better.”
Now I was the one with nothing to say. Mostly because I didn’t know Dad held such a different view on why I had quit. It sounded like he had it in his head that Mom had forced me to quit because she couldn’t stand the injuries. He thought it wasn’t my choice; all this time he was waiting for the right moment to get me playing again. He’d never given up hope on me.
It was touching, honestly. Here I thought he hated me, but he didn’t blame me at all and had this hope I would still turn into a football player.
Which would make it harder to dash his dreams.
Of course, I didn’t have to. I could try out, and maybe he’d put me on the team. I’d be a real high school football player. Never mind that Dad was the coach and would put me on the team whether I deserved it or not. Never mind that everyone would know that. Never mind that I would hate every second of it.
The easier path would be to pretend I was that guy and not the guy I really was—the one who pondered important topics like “how did Princess Celestia and Princess Luna get their cutie marks, anyway?”
But I couldn’t.
As miserable as these last years had been, I was more miserable when I tried to be someone I wasn’t. Now that I’d found something that made me happy, even if it was weird, going back to football would kill me. I was sure of it.
“You fall asleep, Son?” Dad asked after I’d left the conversation on hold for too long.
I shook my head. “I . . . I just don’t know what to say.”
His brows furrowed. “So you’re not even gonna try?”
“I did try!” My voice was so loud it surprised me as much as my dad. But I kept going. “I didn’t quit ’cause Mom wanted me to—she saved me from this conversation. Or at least I thought she did. Dad, I’m not just bad at football. I don’t even like it. I can’t try out feeling like that, I’m sorry.”
“I see.” That was all he said, and then he turned the radio back on. We drove to school without a word, and even when we got there, he didn’t say good-bye or look my way.
I tried not to feel bad about it—this was how I thought our relationship had been for years—but I’d officially crushed my father’s hopes and dreams for me. And I had done it by choice. I thought we were distant before, but as I watched him completely ignore me as he headed off to his class, I knew this was only the beginning.
**************
When I sat in the hall instead of at the football table, Jake didn’t come and find me this time. I pulled out my homemade lunch, figuring Dad had told the guy I was a lost cause and he didn’t have to be my friend anymore.
It was a relief, and yet it also hurt. Maybe I didn’t like football, but I liked Jake. He was funny and seemed pretty nice for a jock. I wished, as was becoming my habit, that real life could be like Equestria. None of the ponies liked the same things and they still stayed good friends. Logically, life should be like that—we should celebrate our uniqueness—but it wasn’t and that was depressing.
As I ate my food, some people whispered as they glanced my way. They were probably confused. Or maybe they knew I had officially become uncool. I waited for the teasing, but nothing happened.
About a week after freshman tryouts, the whispering hadn’t turned into mocking like I expected. Instead, it died down until it seemed as if no one saw me at all. No one waved. No one smiled at me. The only person who ever said anything to me was Emma—and that was after school when no one else was around.
At lunch and in every class, I was a guy no one really noticed. I didn’t stick out in any way. I didn’t shine in any way, either. I was just there.
It was exactly what I’d wanted all these years.
But after a couple weeks, it was lonely. Sometimes I thought I should reach out to someone, make friends like Twilight Sparkle had. Maybe I could eat with Emma and her group if I asked. But I chickened out and
went back to my spot in the hall. I sketched ponies and thought about the show I’d become obsessed with, wishing for the kind of friendship I watched unfold each episode and not knowing how, exactly, to find the courage to go out and get it.
Chapter 13
I KNEW MY love for My Little Pony was bad when I began having urges to share my drawings. I’d never wanted to share my drawings before. Even as I lay on my bed sketching Rainbow Dash, I felt it coming on. I’d drawn her eyes just right, and her hair looked perfect. Her hair wasn’t nearly as hard to draw as, say, Rarity’s, but I was . . . proud of it.
And that feeling made me want to see if other people liked it as much as I did. Except I couldn’t show anyone. It had been a month since freshman football tryouts, and I was as alone as ever. Maybe even more so.
Quincy had gotten so focused on the pro-gaming thing that half the time I was there he barely talked to me. Not that it made me mad. I thought about how if I were in my own room I would be watching MLP and drawing. So half the time I did just that instead. Except I didn’t tell Quincy why I wasn’t coming over as much—my new interest wasn’t nearly as acceptable for a guy as his was. Okay, it wasn’t at all acceptable.
But I had kind of stopped caring because MLP filled the hole school left every day. Maybe I didn’t have friends, but I tried to remind myself I wasn’t bullied either. It wasn’t so bad—I could come home, draw, and watch a couple episodes to beat away the sadness.
In fact, as I finished drawing Rainbow Dash soaring through the clouds, I realized I hadn’t felt this happy in a long time. The picture looked awesome. I wished I were a little kid who could go downstairs and stick it on the fridge to show off. But I wasn’t Holly, and no matter how good it was, my parents would freak out.
I still wanted to share though. I’d wanted to share the last four drawings—ones of Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy, of Big Mac and Apple Bloom. This desire terrified me on so many levels, especially because it wouldn’t go away and was only getting stronger. I didn’t know what it meant, but it would be the death of me whether I kept it hidden or gave in and shared.
This drawing was too cool. Maybe because Rainbow Dash was so daring, I got a bit daring myself. I opened an app on my phone I rarely used—Tumblr. I had made an account because Quincy told me it was cool, but it had never seemed that great until this very moment.
Because I could make a new, anonymous account.
I could post my drawings there.
Maybe no one would see them, but it would be like sharing in a way. And no one would know it was me. That would be the best part.
It surprised me how long it took to find an MLP name that wasn’t taken. Clearly there were more fans than I thought. I eventually settled on A. J. Canterly: Pony Sketcher. I almost put in “artist,” but I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t a real artist who’d taken classes and studied; I just liked to draw cartoons. I wasn’t even sure cartoons were art—“art” brought to mind those stuffy painters and sculptors I had learned about in history.
I took a picture of my Rainbow Dash and in twenty seconds posted it on my new Tumblr with a #mylittlepony tag. I stared at it smiling, my heart racing as I thought about how anyone in the world could see this drawing of mine. Not that it was likely, but it was still possible and that scratched the itch of my desire to share.
Then there was a knock at my door and I instinctively shoved my drawing under my pillow. The door whooshed open before I even answered, and my happy feelings turned to fear. Dad stood there as I hurriedly tried to log out and change Tumblr to my other account.
“What’re you doin’?” he said in a suspicious tone.
“Nothing!” I said too quickly. I held up my phone, showing my other account. “Just looking at my Tumblr.”
He held out his hand for my phone, and I tried not to cringe as he scrolled through the content. He clicked the close button and tapped on another app. He probably suspected I had been looking at something a lot dirtier than My Little Pony, and I said a tiny prayer that he’d stick with checking my web browser and not hit the video streaming app where I’d recently watched pony episodes.
He looked me in the eye. “You weren’t doing anything your mother would cry about, were you?”
“No . . .” I wasn’t exactly sure how Mom would react to my MLP obsession. “Of course not.”
“Good. You get a girlfriend if you want stuff like that.” He handed my phone back. “Your mother says it’s dinnertime and told me to come get you, so get downstairs.”
“Okay.” I headed out the door before him, confused about why he hadn’t hollered for me to come down like usual. I sat at the table across from Holly, who was stealing berries from the fruit bowl Mom put out at every meal. Dad sat down at one end and Mom at the other.
“Did you guys talk?” my mother asked in her sugary sweet tone that meant someone was in trouble.
I raised an eyebrow, looking at Dad. Was that why he came all the way up? Mom had demanded that we have some father and son heart-to-heart? It made sense, seeing as we hadn’t said more than a few words to each other since I told him I hated the very thing he had devoted his whole life to.
“We talked,” Dad said.
“Yeah,” I added. Technically, we had talked but probably not in the sense my mother wanted.
“Good. Let’s eat.” Mom handed me a bowl of mashed potatoes, moving on as if her mission had been accomplished. And like always, Dad and I managed to continue our silent agreement to thwart her attempts to bring us together.
For once, I didn’t feel bad about it. I was too consumed with thinking about which drawing I might post next and what pony I might sketch tomorrow. Finally, I had something that was mine. I had to hide it, but it was mine and it made me happy. I felt free to be myself, even if I didn’t know who I wanted to be yet.
And honestly, that was better than my dad’s approval.
Chapter 14
NOW THAT I was in full drawing mode, I found a more secluded place to eat lunch where I could sketch ponies to my heart’s content without risking anyone walking by. Oddly enough, that place happened to be at the very end of the art hall in a space on the wall where lockers were supposed to go but had been taken out or never put in. I fit there pretty well, and even if someone walked down the hall, they wouldn’t see me.
I’d posted three more pony sketches to Tumblr, and to my surprise, I got a new follower about every day. Nothing amazing, but seeing that someone liked my drawings did something inside me. Whatever it was, it made me want to draw more, to share more, to keep going down this new path I found myself on. I tried to think of myself as a Cutie Mark Crusader—a pony still finding out what he was good at, what his “destiny” was. I had to try things if I was ever going to figure it out, not sit around moping about how bad I was at football.
I sketched Princess Luna since it was cloudy outside and she seemed to fit the mood. She was my favorite of the royal ponies because she didn’t come off as perfect. She’d made mistakes—big ones—and I liked her for it.
As I finished her body, I decided maybe this time I’d add a background. So far I’d only been working on the ponies and new poses, but today I imagined Princess Luna standing on a balcony looking at the moon. May as well make it happen on paper.
I wished I had colors. So far I’d been drawing only in pencil since that was all I had. It wasn’t like I could drive myself to the store to buy colored pencils, and I was afraid to ask Mom to get them because she’d ask why. And I didn’t have an art class or project for an excuse. Hopefully soon.
Footsteps broke my concentration. First one set walking fast, and then a bunch of stomping in the quick cadence of running.
“Get back here!” a guy yelled. “I’m not done with you yet!”
“Leave me alone!” This voice was familiar, but I’d never heard it so scared. It was Skye.
She screamed, and I heard a loud slam against the lockers. I carefully peeked around the corner. There were three guys—the tough punk-looking
ones who I’d heard had a band. The one in front had Skye by the shoulder, and he used his other hand to pull her white Rarity ears from her head.
I pulled out my phone, scared at how far this had gone. But I knew from previous experience that proof was more valuable than Skye’s words if she went to the principal.
“Give those back!” She reached for her headband, but the guy was much taller.
“Not until you say you’ll go to Homecoming with me.” The guy’s smile was gross, the kind that clearly had dirty thoughts behind it. “You should be happy I asked at all, since the whole school thinks you’re a freak.”
“So I should be grateful an asshole took pity on me?” She scoffed. “No way. I might be a freak, but I have standards.”
He shoved her into the locker again. “Why can’t you just shut up and look good?”
To my surprise, I rose to my feet, keeping the camera steady. That guy was scary as hell. He could probably beat me to a pulp. But the way he talked to Skye made me angry. Not that I knew the first thing about girls, but I was pretty sure threatening them into going on a date was about the stupidest thing a guy could do.
“You want me to shut up? Fine!” Skye thrust her knee towards the guy’s crotch, but he pulled back just in time. As if this wasn’t the first time a girl had tried to defend herself against him.
“You wanna fight?” He laughed. “You think I won’t hit a girl?”
I snapped. Not that I could fight the guy, but I had to intervene. I took a deep breath and cried, “Hey!”
They looked at me in confusion. Then they spotted the camera phone, and the guy snarled, “What the hell are you doing?”
“Just making sure Skye has video proof of your assault when she wants to press charges,” I said, sounding way more confident than I expected. I wasn’t even shaky. I was just plain mad.
The guy’s eyes widened, his hands up in the air. “I wasn’t really gonna hit her.”
“You shoved her. Twice. I got that on video, too,” I said. “Now give back the headband and leave her alone. Or I’ll report you myself.”
