A Pretty Little Parody [PLL]

1. An Interesting Development

Once upon a time, there was a girl. She was preppy and blond and wore colorful polo dresses and played tennis at her local country club and got straight A’s from the first day of kindergarten to the last day of senior year. She went to an Ivy League school and met a preppy blond boy from the filthy-rich Peterson family who was in love with Ralph Lauren, golfed every Saturday, and also got straight A’s from the first day of kindergarten to the last day of senior year. The two fell in love and married and moved to the suburbs, and proceeded to have a set of blond, preppy twins.

It is extremely unlikely to have twins in the first place. It is even more unlikely to have the twins be of different sexes, like in this preppy blond couple’s case. In order for that to happen two eggs are released at the same time from the mom and fertilized at the same time by the dad. They develop separately in the womb and are born at the same time. (Sorry for the health lesson, but I thought you’d want to know.) So, naturally, the couple was very happy and very proud that they’d achieved such a thing. They named their daughter Sasha and their son Eli. And for a while, they lived happily ever after.

Sasha and Eli both had blond hair (Sasha’s was long and wavy while Eli’s was kept short and trimmed, but they were both blond nonetheless), huge, clear, round blue eyes; heart-shaped faces, and winning smiles that melted hearts. If you cut off Sasha’s hair or let Eli’s grow, they would literally look like the same person.

Things went smoothly at first. Sasha attended dance lessons and declared she wanted to be a princess just like her mommy when she grew up. Eli and his dad played Frisbee in their wide, expansive backyard every night. Both of the twins and their parents were very, very happy.

They started to see a change around the time the twins entered the second grade; namely, a change in Eli. Before, Eli had been content in being a boy. He liked his polos and khakis and the Playboy pinup calendar that hung in his room. He was friends with all the boys in his neighborhood and looked forward to Little League practice every weekend. Now he was stealing dresses and princess crowns from his sister’s closet, painting his nails pink, and playing with dolls whenever he had the chance. He threw a huge tantrum whenever either of his parents tried to go near him or his hair with scissors. And, worst of all, he began insisting that people call him “Ali”.

Eli’s parents were shocked. How could their perfect, bouncing baby boy turn out to be a queer? His mommy and daddy had both been perfectly straight and normal. They tried everything--banning him from eating sugary foods, letting him watch porn, cutting his hair off in his sleep--but nothing seemed to work. Eli (or “Ali”, as he now insisted to be called) was determined to be a girl.

It wasn’t long before the people of the neighborhood began to talk. Sasha and Eli’s family lived in a tiny suburban development where all the lawns were manicured, all the hedges were trimmed, and each home had exactly one mom, one dad, and two children. The neighborhood had no secrets, and it became known that the boy twin had something wrong with him. People began avoiding Mrs. Peterson at the country club. Mr. Peterson lost his job at the firm he was working at and was forced to become a grasscutter in order to feed his family. Their children no longer talked to Eli at school and they shut their doors whenever he walked by their houses.

What a shame, they all said, that Eli Peterson was one of those people. Both Sasha and Eli were stunning with their blond hair; huge, clear, round blue eyes, heart-shaped faces, and winning smiles that melted hearts, but it was said that Eli had a little extra sparkle, something that had gotten him noticed. What a shame, the people thought as they looked at the little boy sitting on the family’s front lawn in one of his sister’s princess costumes, his hair almost past his shoulders, looking like the loneliest person in the world.