It started with a curse. At least that was the rumor. Perhaps it was because this was a small town and had been since it’s fruition. So for generations the people of this town watched Harlow men disappear. No one considered that maybe it was just a cycle. Bad fathers raising bad sons. Of course they weren’t all bad, some were just fools, and they’d run scared from their families and end up God only knows where.When Annabelle married Thomas Harlow, she heard whispers. Wishes of good luck and nervous glances from women left behind. Everyone was so sure that just like his father before him, he’d run. Adding to the folklore of the cursed Harlow men. But they were in love. The world bent around them and no one could convince Belle to leave before he did.Years passed and he stayed. He stayed long enough that even the line of formerly scorned thought maybe this was it. A cycle could be broken. This time, this one would stay. They were wrong, of course, happy endings are such a rare treat when curses may very well be involved.

There were signs that began to creep up as they welcomed their daughter, Elizabeth, into the world. Thomas was a wreck. That first week he barely slept. Making sure every inch of their house was safe for his daughter. Holding her every second he could. Belle thought it was sweet at first until she started to grow an irrational jealousy towards her daughter.Sometimes they would fight. But they always made up. Every fight brought new distance though. Some new and painful aspect of their relationship. A relationship they thought was one for the ages. Cracks continued to grow. And the night before Elizabeth's first birthday Thomas's body was found. It was mangled beyond recognition, twisted between his motorcycle and a tree.It was then and there that Belle lost her mind. She refused to believe that he was dead because she didn't recognize him. She wouldn't go to the funeral or even acknowledge the truth. Instead she played into the narrative that Harlow men leave. That was all this was, Thomas left, which meant that eventually he had to come back.

When Thomas died his assets went to his wife. There was money, an obscene amount though no one would ever know since Belle hardly touched it. More importantly though, there was a cottage. It was a place he had told his wife about before, but the way he spoke of it she barely believed it actually existed. He was trying to renovate it for his girls. The cottage only further served her delusion that he was alive. Despite it's unfinished state she moved her and Betty in, sure that this would be the answer. He wanted them there so he could walk through the door and give them a proper surprise. Though he never did show up, Betty was raised with the ghost of him.In generations past the women who’d married a Harlow had chosen to stand tall and right in the face of all the rumors. They laughed and carried on and hid their broken hearts and damaged egos, gaining the support and sympathy of those around them. But Belle couldn’t. Not when her mind was becoming consumed with the thought that there really was a curse. This thought curled it’s vicious tendrils through her brain and took hold until there was nothing left beyond this and her daughter. A daughter she loved dearly one day and hated the next. Betty learned her mother's moods and how to navigate them. When she sensed the storm she would take to the garden. It took a few years but eventually Betty turned it into something beautiful.

Years passed and Betty grew into a beautiful and wild little creature. On the rare occasion that people saw her, they were in awe. Even as a toddler there was a grace to her, and air of something else, a spark that could set a forest on fire. And maybe if the Harlow name wasn’t already dripping with mystery and intrigue, people would have just let it go. But their curiosity could do nothing but blossom when they hardly ever saw her. When she was off in the woods with her mother who was fading into a folktale herself as she kept this wild delusion about magic being the answer.What nobody told Belle about magic was that it was real, but not in the way of fairytales and folklore. It was found in the little things. The way Betty plucked flowers carefully from the garden when she was three, a willow tree in the front yard having the perfect nook to sit in, the moon shining bright and full above their heads. Magic was not a thing Belle could find. All she came up with was dead ends and more heartache. This was the home Betty grew up in. It was not a happy home, but she found light in the darkest spaces if only because she needed to if she wanted to survive. Betty could find magic in the places her mother was unable to look. And somehow that only seemed to anger her mother more. How could her daughter find joy in anything when Thomas was gone?

When Betty was four she was out in the town with her mom. A rare occasion and brought on by her restless energy. Sure, she could fill her days running through woods until she hit the cliffs edge. But the birds didn’t always talk back. And sometimes she wanted to be somewhere that didn’t feel like it was suffocating her, a feeling she wouldn’t be able to articulate until she was older still. As it was, at four, she could simply feel her unrest and tug at her mom until they were outside walking along the main street of the town.It was there that Betty fell in love for the first time as she looked into the window of the small dance studio and saw something that would change her forever. The second she saw a girl on the tip of her toes, sunlight streaming in to illuminate her, Betty yearned to be that girl. To move the way she did, wrapped in soft pink and glowing. As her mom tried to keep walking, Betty yanked back so hard that she fell and scraped her face on the pavement. But she didn’t cry. Didn’t do anything else but point and look up at her mother pleadingly. “Please,” she said, little voice desperate because it felt like an impossible thing she was asking for. To beg to be anywhere but the woods she called home felt like a betrayal. But Belle gave in. One look into her daughter’s eyes and she knew that saying no would not just be futile, it would be cruel.

So Betty began to dance. And that tiny studio become a second home to her. A safer home, really, a place that she could be nothing but herself. She was made for this. There was no doubting that. The older she grew, the more intense her passion and obsession became. Dance was everything to her. It was where she found her own magic. Here she could be truly free. Unfortunately her joy only fueled her mother's madness. Several times when she would come home her mother made it a point to remind her that she didn't deserve this happiness, that it was her fault the love of her life was gone. That she wasn't trying hard enough to bring him back. Again Belle would sit her daughter firmly down at the table, gripping her hand as she tried to harness some made up magic to bring Thomas back. Bruising Betty's hand until one day it finally broke.She was 13 the first time it happened. Both her and Belle were surprised by it. For a moment it seems her mother snaps out of the delusions. She's present and worried and holding onto Betty as she sobs out apologies as she rushes her out the door. When they get there, Betty lies. It isn't the first or the last time she lies to protect her mom, but it's this time that hurts the most. That sticks in her mind and plays on a loop in her darkest moments. Because this time could have been the one that saved her if she had just told the truth. But she naively hoped that the change she saw in her mom would be a real one.

Betty’s life was a narrow space. There was school, which was always tedious and she did not have the patience for. And there was home, where her mother had become more ghost than woman, haunting the space as she waited for something that would never come. Then, there was the studio, always waiting to welcome her back. Because of this Betty had some trouble making friends. While she loves the people she dances with at the studio, most of them are just small town girls doing this for fun or because their parents made them. So the few that weren’t were…competition, technically. Which made it hard for her to let her guard down with them despite such a shared passion.The only person she ever really let in was her dance partner, James. She met him at 11 and was paired with him from day one. Very quickly she had to learn trust and he gave her every reason to do just that. Along five years of dancing together, they very stupidly fell in love. It would be easy to say it was simply because they were made to be in each other’s orbits at all times. And for Betty she kept so much distance between herself and the world…well who else could she have fallen in love with? But she was so sure it was more than that. For her anyway, it absolutely was. He was the only one who knew what her home was. Who knew how deeply she feared ending up like her mother. Or being stuck here for the rest of her life. She gave him everything in her, every inch of her heart, because she didn't know better.

At 16 her world seemed perfect. She was a beautiful girl, beloved in this small town, working towards the only dream she knew how to have with a boy that loved her. Home may have been a mess. With her mother so withdrawn that she no longer spoke. But Betty always did her best to think around that part. After all the home itself was lovely, and the woods surrounding it still felt like a warm hug. It seemed as if nothing could topple her. She wasn’t prepared for what 17 would bring.

❝ she's like the lonely shade of blue ❞

Truthfully Betty was no stranger to people talking about her. It had been going on for so long that it was just par for the course by now. Until she heard a rumor that couldn’t be ignored. James had cheated. A week before her birthday she heard this and wanted desperately to ignore it…and probably could have if other little things hadn’t started clicking into place. In one shattering moment her world fell apart. The only person she could truly trust was gone. Replaced by a monster in her eyes. A terrible and cruel creature that sought to destroy her and succeeded.He tried to deny it at first and she begged herself to just believe him. Wouldn’t it be better to sink into a lie? To keep everything safe and in order. But there was just no going back for her. So she dumped him. Willfully shattering her world into a million little pieces. He was the only person she really talked to at school. And he was the one she danced with. Competed with. Did damn near everything with. Never in her life had she felt so alone.When her birthday came around she already had a small party planned at the studio. While the others there weren’t her best friends, they were friends enough that they provided a support she’d not expected. No one was all that pleased with James. He may even have been asked to leave the studio if this wasn’t an ounce of a town. And while Betty was hurt enough to burn the world down…she still wouldn’t steal dance from him. That kind of cruelty was beyond her.

But when he showed up at her party she had no qualms kicking him out. Despite how broken and hurt he looked, the way he pleaded for forgiveness, begging her for just one more chance and he’d make it all better. In that moment all she could see was her mother. Sitting in a window, ready and waiting to give the man she loves a second chance. “Betty, please.” His voice, once honey sweet, trickled into her like a poison. “My name is Elizabeth and you have no reason to utter it again.” She closed the door on him without another word. Elizabeth doesn't last long, instead going by Liz. She's not as soft as she once was. A heart closed off to anything but dance.Of course 17 proved to be worse than just losing love. Midway through she suffered an injury to her ankle. And for too long she tried to dance through it until she was told that if she didn’t stop she’d never dance again. To think she could lose the only honest thing she’s ever loved scared her to the point that even after a long and strenuous healing process, she was afraid to dance. Afraid to lose it forever. Her free time was no longer spent in the sun warm studio. It was back in the woods. Carefully swaying among the trees and trying desperately to hold herself together until she could leave.

The day after she turned 18, Elizabeth left her mother and their little house and the town that had raised and destroyed her. She took the money she’d saved and her vw bus and left it all behind. All she knew was that she couldn’t be there anymore. No one had seen it coming. They thought she was just becoming withdrawn like her mother. But she was planning. For two years she just drives. Sees what she can and calls it healing even though the truth is that she's just running from it all. Locking away the trauma in a box and pretending it doesn't exist anymore. Something that gets easier with every mile.When she gets a call from her cousin, she's surprised by the invitation. Apparently her and another cousin have an apartment in New York and they want Liz to join them. She'd only met either of them a few times. Random family reunions that other Harlow women had managed to bring her to despite her mom wanting no part. Everyone knew that it was Belle who had kept Betty distant from anyone connected to her father's side of the family, so it was never held against her.As much as she has enjoyed moving around...Liz craves something. The truth is that she's just lonely. But she doesn't know how to face that so it never occurs to her that that's exactly why she says yes to the offer.

In this new life, Liz thought she could be absolutely anything she wanted. This was her time to explore and discover a new passion. Something else to dedicate herself to. But nothing really panned out. It was still dance that kept her captive, stuck in needing to do it, but being so afraid of hurting herself again and losing it forever that all she could do was cry...or at least she would if she ever let herself think about it.When she first gets there she finds a job with a florist. She may not be able to have dance right now, but she at least has her green thumb. At night she works as a bartender, finding a strange sense of peace drowning in the music. Every night is something different, bands of all kinds crowding through and making their mark. She envies them. Their ability to go for their dream and it not turning into a nightmare. Her cousins had insisted she didn't have to work at all. That she could just focus on finding herself, healing, anything she wanted. But Liz doesn't want to be so indebted to them. It takes almost a year for her to even trust that they won't pull the rug out from under her.A couple of years in, Liz starts dancing again. Only a little bit in the middle of the night when she's not working. It feels like coming home. But she's still scared. Too scared to push herself fully into it again. So for now she keeps it quiet. Trying to stoke the old fire that once burned so brightly in her heart.