Mistaken For... Part 1

At thirty five, Daphne Greyhound considered herself very independent,  athletic, patient and mature. She’d finally established stable relationships, got along as well as possible with her family and was quite sane.

At seventeen, Daphnée Greyhound found herself flat, plain, thought she looked like a brush, couldn’t stand her stepsisters nor her stepmother, She’d never had a boyfriend and her name wasn’t Daphnée Greyhound but Daphnée Abernathy.

She lived half of the year with her father and the other half with her mother and clearly, she preferred Gotham to Quantico. Alright, at her father’s she didn’t have to go to school because her time was mostly spent training her archery skills and was thus home schooled. But there was a reason why her mother had nicknamed the huge blue mansion « the hen house ».  After that the Colonel Samuel Abernathy had divorced Sylvia Greyhound for very good reasons, she’d subtly pushed him toward Claudia so she could file the divorce paper first and earn a maximum of pecuniary compensations, he’d married Claudia Callough with whom he had three other daughters. And if he’d encouraged Daphnée to be independent, strong and had always congratulated her when she excelled in archery or sent her fist in a bully’s face, he left complete freedom to Claudia for the education of her daughters.

Whereas Sylvia was venal, cunning, rude and acted like the stereotypical blonde ditz, Claudia WAS the stereotypical blonde ditz. Of the « white picket fence » category. She didn’t work, acted like the perfect housewife, agreeable and well raised, thought that women should stay at home, only wore dresses and would have never realized how chauvinistic her words were even if someone had tried to screw it into her skull. Mary, Edith and Margaret were carbon copies of their mother, acted the same way, had the same goals in life and when the laughed in a synchronized fashion, Daphnée was starting to get shivers running down her spine.

Sometimes she wondered if Claudia wouldn’t be sacrificing poor, defenseless baby animals to Cthulhu to obtain such a result.

But if she had to choose between spending an entire afternoon with Claudia, who tried to tell her as delicately as possible that she was as feminine as a drill sergeant on steroids, that she’d end up lesbian if she didn’t start paying more attention to her appearance, and spend as much time with her sisters who humiliated her constantly, she’d choose Claudia and her awful herbal tea.

The last time she’d spent more than three hours with the harpies, she’d spent the whole evening afterward crying. The next day she shaved her head because she was sick and tired of everyone mocking her hair and started dressing like a boy. If nature had wanted her to look like a guy, she might as well do it right. Her stepmother was horrified, her father told her she was being overly dramatic and imagining her ex husband’s face sent her mother into a hour-long fit of giggles. Then she took her shopping to get her more fashionable clothes. With Sylvia’s help she ended up looking more attractive that the other boys in her high school. Seeing so many girls flirting with her for a whole month was enough to make Daphnée start wearing skirts and putting on make up. Her hair grew and Sylvia was able to rub it in Claudia’s face each time they saw each other. That said, Daphnée’s skirts were as short as her mother’s and what was underneath could be seen at the slightest breeze. Each time it happened, her stepmother looked like she was going to faint.

If she was lucky, she’d get an ulcer. Because Daphnée was seventeen, and everyone’s a bit immature at seventeen.

There was only one thing about which she was serious and that was archery. Watching her train was very impressive for her coach and her teams. She could spend entire days aiming, shooting ten arrows one after the other, reload and do it again, all this while being completely emotionless. She’d read about the Huns’s « Lightening Strikes » in history classes and was determinate to resurrect the technique. Shooting seventy arrows in the bull eye  had lost it’s interest by the fourth competition. But during this year she’d had to stop the mongol training. After hours of negotiations, she’d managed to enter America’s archery team. She could have entered earlier, but her parents agreed on the fact that her science grades would have to get higher than the lowest of the low first. Poor Daphnée thus had to get her books out of their plastic warps and learn everything she’d skipped since primary school. It took a while.

Daphnée wasn’t an idiot and after six months she was able to proudly bring home a row of As in science… and a row of Fs in literature. Hey, they’d never said that she had to keep her other grades up !

After this show of cunningness worthy of Sylvia, she spent a whole year living solely for her passion, going from a competition to another, making friends with her teammates. It’s well known, true friendship is forged in stress. The Olympic Games were absolutely grand, not because of the opening ceremony where she’d been way too stressed to enjoy anything, but for the competition. She’d never been through something so intense, and had to take pills in order to sleep, for the anticipation would have kept her awake otherwise. Then she’d had to enter the final round, a iron ball in her stomach, conscious that she wasn’t allowed to make any mistake. United States hadn’t won the gold medal in individual rounds since South Korea entered the games. She was the youngest, the best, all the hopes of millions of people were on her. The pressure was such than when thousands of spectators turned toward Daphnée when her time came, she nearly fainted.

Thankfully, she didn’t. The young girl removed all expressions from her face, squared her shoulders and walked toward the chair. When she sat, she felt instantly better. The spectators were unimportant, the rest of the team didn’t exist. Her universe was now only composed of her, and the aim sixty meters away. Her thought left room for her instinct. The first arrow was always the hardest. She raised her arm at shoulder level, barely feeling it’s weight, and pulled the arrow toward her so close that she felt the string vibrate against her cheek, heard the plaintive sound it made. He inspired once, twice and released.

Perfect.

Three arrows later, she’d won the gold medal and had beaten the world record with seventy three arrows. She surprised the entire world by remaining completely expressionless when she received her prize. She was too shocked, her head was ready to explode because of the stress, the joy and the excitement so her brain simply paused. It only when she was back into her quarters that she started yelling on top of her lungs and kissing everyone on the team before calling her mother. Who would have preferred it if she’d stayed in the same state of shock instead of rupturing her eardrums over the phone.

Today, she was coming back to the United States. Daphnée felt completely drained and yet the most physical part had only begun : the publicity. She would have to answer questions, making photo shoots to please her sponsors… Basically, she was going to play doll. Ew. But for the time being, she was in the plane and was taking advantage of the flight to rest. Her trainer shook her shoulder to wake her up.

« C’mon, wake up Abernathy. We just landed in Gotham. »

What ? How the hell did they land already ? She’d just fallen asleep ! It was unfair ! Someone give her back her six hours without photographers ! She sighed deeply, showing how displeased she was, mentally grumbling and making long faces like only teenagers can do, but she finally got up. Only one more flight and they’d meet the team’s advertising agent. And the journalists. Oh well, it could have been worse, her mother’s  company could have taken care of her. If there was one thing she didn’t trust Sylvia on, it was the management of her time and money. Knowing her she would have made her daughter go through three surgeries before making her modeling for every sport brand possible. Just thinking about it made her shiver.

She tried to take her bag but one of the bodyguards caught it when she reached for it. She glared at him, but he just chuckled and pushed her toward the exit. Taking a deep breath, she walked with her head high. She was really starting to be fed off of being treated like a doll and yet things were going to stay like that for years. Maybe professional competition wasn't for her after all. But what else could she do ? She was good in foreign languages after all the time she spent in other countries but apart from that… The young girl was abruptly taken away from her thoughts when her coach took her arm to drag her toward the airports hall because she was behind everyone. Daphnée rolled her eyes an clenched her teeth when she saw the journalists. Think positive Daphnée, do not bite the journalist like she bit her teachers in preschool. Back then she was cute so  it was more or less accepted, but now she was flat as a board and the newspapers said that she looked like a wanted murderer so if she did it she’d be sent to Arkham. Trying to calm herself, she fantasized being dressed like an amazon, riding a huge pony, shooting cute bunny rabbits in a huge meadow, completely alone. The idyllic sight was shattered when she heard one of the vultures yelling to ask her if she was a sociopath.

Holy patience help her.

She kept  looking straight ahead and dug her hands into her pockets. Surprisingly, she found something other than tissues and took a pack of watermelon chewing gums out of it. Ohhh ! She liked those ones ! Without thinking, she opened it and put two gums into her mouth. Since the trainers had put her on what she called the « flat water and carrot » diet, she tended to pick up everything that seemed sugary and comestible. Sometimes she didn't even realized it. The first thing she’d do back home would be to serve herself a huge portion of vanilla ice cream with double the amount of whipped cream and four time the amount of caramel. She was already salivating. Nowadays her dreams were filled with cheeseburgers and junk foods. It was becoming serious ! What if she had a fit in the middle of… ohhh.

Feeling on the verge of fainting, she stopped and clenched her trainer. There you go, it was the carrots’s fault. She took three deep breathes before realizing that the sweets had a weird aftertaste. Before falling, she had on last thought.

Daphnée Virginia Greyhound, seventeen and world champion, beaten by chewing gums that were past their use-by date.

Totally worth it.