The Space Between

Sara learned early that there were lines drawn in the world - visible ones that separated properties and parishes, and invisible ones that cut through communities, marking who belonged and who didn't. In Millbrook, population 2,847, her line was drawn before she even took her first breath.

"Born in sin," the whispers followed her through Sunday school, where mothers pulled their daughters closer as she passed. Her own mother worked double shifts at the diner, leaving Sara to find her place in the world, to navigate the spaces between belonging and exclusion on her own. The church ladies spoke of redemption with sugary voices that turned bitter when they mentioned her mother's "situation."

By thirteen, Sara had memorized the geography of exclusion. The good girls sat in neat rows at the front of the class, their pressed dresses and ribbon-tied braids marking them as proper. Sara found her place at the back, among the other outcasts, where shadows gathered and judgment was forgiving. There, at the back, she met Jessie and Ray, fellow travellers in the land of misfits.

 One night, as they passed a stolen cigarette behind the abandoned mill, Jessie told her, with arrogance: "We're the lucky ones! No one expects anything from us. We're free."

Sara inhaled deeply, letting the smoke fill the hollow spaces of her soul, where acceptance should have been. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," she quoted, making Ray laugh and punch her shoulder. Jessie was the brains and Ray was the muscle of this odd company. 

The good girls watched them from afar, their eyes holding equal measures of disdain and envy. Sara caught them stealing glances at her torn jeans and wild hair, at the way she threw her head back when she laughed. They envied how she danced in the margins with grace, while they were trapped in their golden cages.

She learned to wear her outsider status like armour. When Mrs. Peterson clutched her purse tighter in the grocery store, Sara flashed her brightest smile. When the principal called her to his office to discuss her "attitude," she slouched deeper in the chair, a picture of unrepentant rebellion. The whispers that once cut like knives became background music to her private revolution.

At eighteen, she packed a single duffel bag and caught the first bus to the city. Her mother cried but understood her need to escape. Nevertheless, she feared that the cruelty of this world would unleash its fury upon her little girl. That fear had kept her stuck in this ghostly town, despite the social disgrace. "You are stronger than this town," she whispered as they hugged goodbye. "But don't let that strength turn to stone."

The city rose before her like a concrete promise but soon revealed its own invisible lines. Her accent marked her as surely as her background had in Millbrook. Coworkers at the coffee shop mimicked her drawl when they thought she couldn't hear. Customers spoke slower when they noticed her small-town mannerisms as if rural meant simple.

"Oh, you're from... down there," a date once said, his voice dripping with urban superiority. Sara didn't bother correcting his geography. She'd learned that "down there" meant anywhere outside the city's sphere of sophistication.

But something was different now. The familiar sting of exclusion met with well-practised resilience. She'd learned in those rebel years that being an outsider meant freedom from others' expectations. She wore her country roots, in the city's sleek cafes and crowded subway cars, with the same defiance she'd once worn her torn jeans.

She found her crowd again - other transplants and misfits who'd washed up on this city's shores. That crowd consisted of artists who couldn't afford to rent a studio for their craft, musicians who performed for tips, and writers who served coffee between chapters of unfinished novels. They all gathered in dive bars and cramped apartments, creating their unique constellations in the urban night.

"You've got some good stories, there, Sara-Lou," Marco told her one night at their weekly poetry slam. "All that small-town drama, it's like Tennessee Williams meets punk rock. You better do something with them!"

Sara laughed, but she understood what he meant. Her past had become raw material for art, for connection. The very things that marked her as different became the tools with which she carved out her space.

Five years into city life, Sara returned to Millbrook for her mother's birthday. The town seemed to get smaller, while she was away, its boundaries more visible than ever. At the diner, she served coffee to the church ladies who'd once whispered behind her back. At first, they didn't recognize the confident woman with her city clothes and a knowing smile.

"You turned out well, considering," one of them finally said, evidently surprised.

Sara refilled her cup with practised grace. "I turned out exactly as I was meant to," she replied, neither accepting the compliment nor returning the judgment.

Later, sitting on the back steps of her mother's house, Sara watched the sunset paint the sky in familiar colours. She thought about communities and their borders, about the human need to draw lines between "us" and "them." In Millbrook, she'd been the girl born wrong. In the city, she was the country girl who didn't quite fit. But she'd learned that fitting in was less important than finding your own space to stand.

The next morning, before returning to the city, she went to the old mill where she'd first tasted rebellion. The walls were more weathered now, but still standing. She found her initials carved into a beam, alongside Jessie's and Ray's - their mark on a world that had tried to mark them.

On the bus ride home, Sara wrote in her journal: "Maybe we're all outsiders somewhere. The trick isn't fighting to get in - it's building your own door and deciding who gets to walk through it."

Back in her tiny city apartment, Sara hung a photo of the Millbrook sunset next to a poster of the city skyline. The two images matched each other perfectly, like different chapters of the same story. She'd stopped trying to erase her past or prove herself to anyone.

When people asked where she was from now, she told them the truth - all of it. The whispers, the pity and the judgment; the rejection, the rebellion and the escape. Mostly, she talked about the discovery that every community has its margins and that sometimes the most authentic life is lived in the spaces in the middle, between inclusion and exclusion.

Sara took Marco's advice and started writing about ill-fitting shadows that live among normal folks. She adopted the pen name Sara-Lou and kept dancing in the margins, choosing her music, depending on her mood.