RELEASE DATE: 01 August 2021
Everyone adores Morgan.
Except Daddy. But Morgan can fix that.
Never mind the price.
A short, heart-wrenching tale about the unintended consequences of our desires—and superpowers.
Just So Long As You’re Happy
It would be easy to write this story flippantly, because Morgan was a flippant kind of girl—or at least, that was what everybody told her. She was flippant, they said, because she never took anything seriously, always got what she wanted, never told anybody how she really felt. She had dark glossy locks and perfect brown eyes, Junior Gaultier dresses and Alexander McQueen shoes—and a memory with crystal clarity of the time she’d overheard her mother whispering in the bedroom to the man Morgan had called Daddy: She’s not yours. It’s all my fault. How can you forgive me?
Morgan couldn’t, but Mummy had not been talking to her, so Morgan did what everybody told her to: she became flippant.
And the fact that the man called Daddy never really met her eye, never offered hugs or kisses, always turned his face away when tucking her in at night… That was okay, because Morgan could make him love her anyway. Morgan could make anyone love her.
Of course, she didn’t realise how truly special that was until she was in school; until then she’d—reasonably—assumed that all little girls were adored by everyone, that anyone could make other people feel special just by smiling at them, that the natural proclivity of the world to follow her orders was just nature taking form.
But then, when she was eight, Morgan found Amber crying behind the shed at school.
“They’re bullying me,” Amber had mumbled through tear-streaked lips. “They hate me.”
Morgan rocked back on her heels. “So make them like you!”
Amber shook her head. “I don’t know how! It’s easy for you. Everyone loves you. All you have to do is, is, exist!” Amber’s eyes grew narrow as she flung herself to her feet. “Well, I don’t love you. I hate you! I hate you and your stupid hair and your stupid smile, and everybody else is just stupid!”
Morgan did what she always did when confronted with conflict, and shot Amber a beaming smile.
“Don’t!” Amber shouted, stomping her foot and fisting her hands. “Don’t do that to me! If I don’t want to like you, then I don’t have to!” And off she stormed.
Morgan leaned back against the shed and frowned. All she’d done was smile. But then again, she’d expected it to work, and it hadn’t. Maybe Amber was right. Maybe Morgan was making people like her, only not in an ordinary way.
Morgan ran her lip between her teeth until she tasted blood. If she could make people like her, then Daddy… She chomped down hard on her lip and rose to her feet.
No. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter why he loved her, only that he did.