Title: Who
Author: alianora
Email: mudpies@silverspiral.net
Disclaimer: *checks tag in Michael’s jeans* M-A-R-I-A. Nope, still not mine.
Summery: File it under "Random"

"I mean, its impossible, right, that she is not who she says she is?"
"Well, no one is who they say they are." -Liz, Maria "The Morning After"

"If you wake up in a different time, in a different place, is it possible to wake up as a different person?" -The Narrator, "Fight Club"

Ditzy DeLuca. Best friend to Perfect Parker. Born in Roswell. Raised in Roswell. Bound and determined not to die in Roswell.

And not nearly as ditzy as people believed.

When your mother is a hippy/new age young mother, and your father was a deadbeat who ran off at the first sign of trouble, people are not generally charitably inclined to like you anyway.

So you do what you can to convince them otherwise.

It starts small. An oblivious smile when you overhear someone making fun of you and your mother. Handing out tiny hippy aliens as a joke. You swear it started as a joke.

But it gets out of hand. As you get older, and your smiles grow more strained, you find you have been shoved and made to fit into the shape of what Roswell thinks you should be.

And it is uncomfortable, but no one listens when you complain. And then someone comes along, who smiles and thinks you are kidding when you talk about getting out of Roswell. Someone the whole town knows and accepts. And you want so bad to be a part of that acceptance, that you make the mold your own.

You stop complaining about the fit, and embrace it instead. You make yourself into a mockery and revel when people call you "kooky."

But they say it with tolerance in their eyes. Maybe not affection, but you are accepted and tolerated as long as you stay who they think you are.

You see it happening to others around you. The beautiful girl becomes a snob. The non-athletic boy, a geek. The son of the sheriff, a bad boy. Because that is how all beautiful girls, non-athletic boys, and sheriff's sons are supposed to be, right?

And the girl who smiled at you, and let the town accept you, she makes her own mold somehow. And you marvel at her strength. But as she does, she pushes you further into the uncomfortable shape you have bent yourself into. Not on purpose, no, but she never seeks to discover what is behind the plastered on smile and "wacky" ideas, and you find yourself as a sidekick in a role you did not audition for.

And you wonder if anyone will notice that you could be, that you are someone else. Someone who wants to escape from this town and the mold it made you.

And the years go by and no one does. What do you do then?

And then one day your friend tells you a secret. A secret she swore to never tell anyone. And even while you are reacting like she expects you too, you are inwardly rejoicing.

Certainly someone from another world can reject the molds, and see inside a person who is cramped and bleeding from years of being forced to be who she is not.

But then you meet them, and spend time with them, and discover that they too have spent most of their lives forcing themselves into an image Roswell will approve of.

The scared beauty has become the snob she was accused of being.

The quiet boy keeps to himself, and the town ignores him.

And the other. The wild boy with hurt eyes; he does not care what the town, what the world thinks of him. Yet he finds himself labeled a criminal, a troublemaker, a "problem."

But he proclaims to not care, and you wonder at that. How can someone who does not care still live up to the town's expectations and still be stuck in the shape given to them?

And you decide that you should be afraid of the princess and slightly nervous around the wild boy. Of the quiet boy, you barely even think of, except when hearing your friend talk about why they must not be together.

So, disappointed in the abilities of those from another world, you continue as you have been. A motor mouth klutz whose claim to fame is being a future scientist's wacky sidekick.

But then, your car gets stolen, and you with it, by the boy, the alien you swore you were going to be nervous around. And you are nervous, but for different reasons than you had planned.

He is trying to chip away at the mold that holds him captive. He is determined to get out, to escape. And you find yourself staring at him in wonder in a tiny by the hour motel room as he describes your life in terms of spaceships and longing.

And you wonder if he has not made another mold for himself, one more desirable, but a mold he might not fit just the same.

But for just one second, one tiny moment in time, you both stare past the town's expectations into the eyes of someone who knows, who understands.

And you are frightened and attracted and oh, so confused. To fit your mold, you should be scared of this boy. Roswell thinks he is trouble, therefore he is, and you might not be accepted anymore should you choose to look beyond his label.

There is something about him that draws you, though, and you find yourself staring at him through a locked glass door that you decide not to unlock.

You do though, and for a little while, your world is shaky and you cannot see past the hunger in his eyes.

But your friend catches you, and reminds you of what people think of him, and what you are supposed to think of him.

Her disapproval shows on the little lines on her forehead, and you are unsure of what you want to do and what you should do.

Then he takes the choice away, making it for you, and you are convinced that you jinxed it. He left because you tried to force the two of you into another mold, one that said "relationship" instead of letting yourself and him be free from labels for the little while you were together.

Then you find out he is just as confused as you are by labels and expectations and molds, and you discover that although he professes not to care what others think of him, deep down he believes that he is "trouble" and a "problem."

This scares you too, as you wonder if you truly are just a sidekick, but have convinced yourself otherwise.

And then you suddenly wonder who you would be without the town telling you. You suddenly feel lost and adrift and faceless.

But then you happen to look into his eyes. And you do not have to force yourself to see beyond "criminal" and "problem," you just do. And you see a lonely boy who is scared to feel, to care, because then all of the labels would come crashing down on his head and he would be broken beneath them.

And you see yourself as he sees you. He believes you are strong and that you are beautiful. You get flustered because "ditz" is not usually associated with "beauty."

But his eyes are warm and he almost smiles and you realize you fell a long time ago.

And you start to realize that labels are not all that important, because who you are can depend on the people around you, and who they believe you to be, as well as who you believe yourself to be.

And you finally recognize that the shape you are in is pretty comfortable, that you have room to stretch, to move, to change the mold itself.

You begin to wonder how you can remove the label "sidekick" from yourself, but pretty soon, you realize you already have, because seeing yourself differently causes others to see you differently.

And maybe the town of Roswell is not so bad after all.

END