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001. Childlike Mother And Motherly Child. ————————————
Mary Jane Roberts was a fucking enigma.
Her wildness was something almost mythical, like a storm brewing beneath the surface, waiting to unleash itself. Her grandmother called her "uncouth," shaking her head with a mix of exasperation and a strange kind of pride. Mary Jane didn't care for either. She hated the way people talked about her as if she were a tornado—fascinating to watch but better left at a distance. She didn't set out to be this way; it was just how things turned out.
By the time she was eleven, Mary Jane understood that something was deeply wrong with her mother. It wasn't the kind of wrong you whispered about with friends, like your parents fighting late at night or drinking too much. This was darker, stranger—something you couldn't explain in hushed tones.
"You see him, don't you, sweetheart?" her mother would ask, eyes wide and pleading, voice trembling as she pointed toward an empty chair. "He's sitting at the dining table. You see him? Tell me you see him!"
Whoever he was, Mary Jane couldn't tell you. She wasn't sure her mother could either. These moments always left her skin crawling.
She remembered the desperation in her mother's eyes, the wild hope that her daughter's agreement might somehow validate the impossible, make everything normal again. But Mary Jane would only shake her head, her lips pressed into a thin line, until her mother's face twisted into frustration and grief. It became a routine, this dance of denial and despair.
At eleven, Mary Jane made a decision: she would stop looking. She'd ignore the empty spaces her mother pointed to, ignore the whispers, ignore the way her mother's voice sometimes rose and broke as if talking to someone only she could see. Pretending felt safer, like bracing herself against a door that something was pounding on from the other side.
By her thirteenth birthday, the whispers about Isla Roberts had spread through Wiskayok. People no longer looked at her with pity but with thinly veiled discomfort.
"She's a strange woman," one of Mary Jane's aunts muttered during the party, thinking Mary Jane couldn't hear. "Such a shame."
A strange woman.
A shitty mom and an even shittier wife, Mary Jane had once thought bitterly.
Her father, though, still clung to the woman he'd fallen in love with—the one he said used to light up rooms with her laughter. Mary Jane couldn't understand it. She'd never known that woman. All she knew was the shadow left behind, the one who whispered to invisible figures and locked herself away for days, leaving Mary Jane to fend for herself.
And then one day, her father was gone.
It wasn't something people talked about openly, not even in Wiskayok, where people lived for gossip. Mary Jane overheard fragments of hushed conversations—phrases like "a terrible accident" and "such a tragedy." But some people weren't so sure.
Her grandmother warned her to stay quiet, but Mary Jane didn't need the reminder.
She already knew the truth, even if no one else dared to say it outright. She'd been there that night. She'd heard the shouting, the crash, the deafening silence. She'd seen the blood. And she knew who held the knife.
By thirteen , Mary Jane had perfected the art of deflection. If someone asked about her mom, she'd shrug and say, "She's fine," then change the subject. Most people didn't want to dig deeper. The ones who did usually regretted it.
Her grandmother never let her off the hook so easily. "You can't run from blood, Mary Jane," she said one evening, her voice heavy with warning. "Your mama's troubles don't stop with her. You've got to keep your head straight. You hear me?"
Mary Jane always rolled her eyes. Keep her head straight? Easy for her grandmother to say. She wasn't the one cleaning up after her mother's outbursts or dodging stares at the grocery store. She wasn't the one explaining why her mom never came to school events. She wasn't the one scrubbing bloodstains out of the carpet after that night.
And yet, in the quiet moments, Mary Jane sometimes wondered if her grandmother was right. Late at night, she'd catch herself glancing toward the empty dining chair, her breath hitching at the flicker of movement in the corner of her eye. But she always shook it off. She wasn't like her mother. She wouldn't be.
By the time she joined the Wiskayok High soccer team, Mary Jane had built walls so high that even she had trouble seeing over them. She threw herself into the game, channeling all her restless energy into something tangible. On the field, she wasn't the girl with the crazy mom. She wasn't the girl with the dark past. She was just Mary Jane Roberts—the fearless forward who played like her life depended on it.
Her teammates didn't ask questions, and she didn't volunteer answers. That was the unspoken rule. The soccer field was sacred ground, a place where nothing mattered but the game.
Off the field, though, her wildness still simmered beneath the surface. She drank too much at parties, picked fights she couldn't win, and sought out boys who were guaranteed trouble. It was easier that way, she told herself. Easier to be the reckless girl with bad decisions than the girl who couldn't outrun her family's legacy.
But no matter how far she ran, she couldn't shake the feeling that something was always watching her. The same something her mother had begged her to see all those years ago.
She didn't know if it was guilt, fear, or something else entirely, but she refused to look too long. She just kept running.
And sometimes, when the night was too quiet, she thought of her father.
She remembered the way he used to smile at her, the way he'd sneak her extra ice cream when her mom wasn't looking. She remembered the way his voice had sounded that night—loud, desperate, scared. She remembered the silence that followed, thick and suffocating, before her mother's sobs broke through.
And she remembered the blood.
Her grandmother had found her curled up in the hallway, too afraid to move. "Don't look," she'd whispered, pulling Mary Jane away. But it was too late. Mary Jane had already looked.
No one ever asked her what she'd seen, and she prayed no one ever would. Some truths were too heavy to share, even in whispers.
So Mary Jane buried it. Buried it beneath layers of sarcasm and defiance, beneath reckless choices and sharp-edged laughter. She wasn't her mother. She wasn't her father. She was just Mary Jane Roberts, the girl who ran fast and hit hard, the girl who laughed too loud and lived like nothing could touch her.
And for the most part, it worked.
Except for the nights when it didn't.
Especially when she sees Jolene fucking Patterson again.
authors note yes it's been a two months😪 (or more but idc) HAPPY NEW YEAR BAES ; I'm planning atleast one more or two more chapters before we start canon epidsodes as right now part one is basically a big introduction to the characters and their family lives etc.
also big big big big dedication to Selena 🫶🏾 for the gifs !! duable #icon
