The only large writing project I’ve ever finished was a collection of short stories I wrote in middle school. I acknowledge how tragic it is that my literary peak may have occurred when I was thirteen, but these stories are the home of my most cherished character creation to date: myself.
Well, a version of myself: my middle school alter ego, Stephanie Goldberg, a clever sixth through eighth grader who was born out of codenames I created with my friends so that we could talk about our classmates (read: crushes) without anyone else knowing. Combining my tendency to take creative writing assignments to extensive and weird places, and my desire to seize control of my middle school destiny, Stephanie and her world were born.
Forget awkwardness and bumbling and braces—Stephanie was a middle school queen unmatched in her mischief with a strong propensity for finding herself wrapped up in nonsensical, fantastical, highly improbable schemes. She captivated her classmates—a medley of child geniuses and aloof locker neighbors and fearless friends—with her inexplicable access to disguises and contacts, while simultaneously wearing them out with her constant shenanigans and sass. She was feisty and funny and weirdly obsessed with Creamsicles (which is odd considering my own neutrality on the frozen confection). And she definitely did not have side bangs or a crippling fear of boys.
The escapades I sent her on were grand: she confronted a band of vampiric teachers in a graveyard with a super soaker full of holy water, she discovered that the flawless (yet horribly mean) It Girl of eighth grade was a cyborg, and she consistently outsmarted her nemesis, a self loathing middle aged dictionary company president. Wrapped up in incoherent (though enthusiastic) prose, she became a capsule for my most random thoughts, a vessel for my junior high daydreams, the cornerstone of my growing passion for writing.
I love her a lot.
Stephanie never made it out of middle school and I blame her boyfriend. With the aforementioned “crippling fear of boys,” true middle school love never lined up for me so I figured at least Stephanie could enjoy a romantic interest tailored to perfection: the ever goofy yet always dependable boy next door Nick. All was well and good, but as I faced Stephanie’s transition to high school, my ideas became swamped with cheesy romance and inflated drama. For goodness sake, I put her in a love triangle. She deserved better. So I left her in middle school, innocent and witty and charged with tween ambition, saved across sixty-five rambling pages on my home computer.
But now, as my first year of college is coming to an end, I thought it would be nice to imagine where Stephanie might have ended up. Surely her adventures would have continued throughout high school as well as they could, with her coursework and investigative journalism gig. I imagine her becoming slightly anarchistic with the punk edge that I had always desired, but still incredibly gentle and true to her friends. She would have had a super healthy relationship with Nick (once she got herself out of that god awful love triangle), parting upon graduation so that Steph could go to Brown (duh) and Nick could go to film/medical school. And with a mini fridge full of Creamsicles, Stephanie would’ve taken on college with full force: getting involved in student activism, writing op-eds for an edgy underground newspaper, masquerading as a funny girl for a female comedy publication. That, or mellowing out and becoming a stoner. All of the above, maybe.
So Stephanie, this is my ode to you. However your storyline would have turned out, I’d have adored you still. You could be stubborn and bizarre and brazen, but you were unapologetic about it. I’m sorry that all your stories are probably really cringeworthy to read now; I got excited about capitalizing random words and didn’t know anything about constructing a coherent narrative back then. But you are my cringe-y creation, sweet Steph. Thank you for being the middle school bad-ass I could never be. May your fictional existence be filled with shenanigans and abundant Creamsicles forevermore.
Love, Sarah
(Your Mother/Creator/Supreme Literary Overlord)
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