Run, Girl (If You Can)

Aaron happened to be walking by the entertainment room to go to the bathroom when he heard a bit of conversation through the ajar door.

"And Violet is just a perfect goddess above us all who doesn't get scared by anything," Kaleb said snidely.

Violet's reply was cool, calm, and collected. "I don't get scared by dumb things but that doesn't mean I don't get scared."

"Define a fear that isn't dumb then. I'm very curious!"

Aaron sighed and shook his head. Those two were at it again. They were so close when they were younger but the older they got the more they were at each other's throats.

It was obvious they still loved each other so Keeley chalked it up to teenage hormones. He wouldn't know because he never had a sibling growing up. Meeting Gray as an adult had been an entirely different problem.

Aaron trusted his wife's judgment since she had lived with a sibling for ten years. He just hoped they would stop heckling each other so much. Some days the house felt like a battle zone.

He was about ready to head back to Aiden when his daughter's reply stopped him cold. "Failure."

It was true that Violet wasn't afraid of things like clowns, spiders, or scary movies. But failure? That sounded an awful lot like how Aaron had been when he was younger and failure meant extreme punishment.

Why would she be afraid of failure when he and Keeley had never punished their children for it? Was it simply in her nature? Or had she somehow developed a complex because people praised her all the time?

"Like you would fail at anything. You're good at everything you do," Noah said cheerfully.

Aaron walked back to the living room where Aiden was waiting feeling perplexed. His friend noticed immediately and frowned.

"What's up with you?"

"I just heard a rather odd conversation passing by the room the kids were in."

He explained what he had heard, feeling more and more unsettled. Why would Violet fear failure when she had no reason to?

None of their other children had that fear that he was aware of. They all knew if they screwed up they could simply try again. It was how Keeley had always worked with them. She wanted to instill the value of not giving up into their children and Aaron could get behind that.

"I've got nothing for you, man. It might be a teenage girl thing," Aiden said with a shrug.

Aaron knew that private schools placed a high emphasis on grades and accomplishments that would prepare their students for college. Was she like this because of school? But she had brought home straight As for as long as he could remember.

He should talk to Keeley about this. She knew more about the female mind than he did. She had been a teenage girl twice so she should know what to do.

The conversation turned to how cute all their kids looked in their Halloween costumes. Aiden gushed about how cute Elsa was in her unicorn outfit and Aaron rolled his eyes. He wasn't annoyed though.

He had done the same thing when Violet was little and dressed up like a princess. They grew up so fast.

She used to be an adorable, cherubic little girl who was quiet but ultimately happy. Now she was a moody teenager who always fought with her brother. Honestly, he had no idea how to help her or Kaleb at this point.

The very thought of his own inadequacy troubled him, like an itch he couldn't scratch. Violet was already far too much like him. If she feared failure on top of the traits they already shared, he worried she was in for a rough time. After all, the majority of his lives had been hard.

===

"She told this to you directly?" Keeley asked doubtfully.

Everyone else had gone home and the kids were in bed. She was busy wiping off her vampire makeup in front of the vanity mirror as her husband told her his concerns. 

Aaron sighed worriedly. "No, I happened to overhear it on my way back from the bathroom. Why would she think that way?"

"It's hard being a teenage girl," she said honestly. "Even the most sociable and popular girls have self-doubt issues of some sort. You know Violet has never really attached to people at school. That's probably part of it. She might think she has to be perfect in order for her classmates to like her."

Keeley might be onto something. Violet's only school friends were in choir and orchestra, which were both performance based. If she screwed up somehow the entire group's sound would be affected.

The same went for ballet. If one person was out of sync with the others, a routine could be ruined. Oh, why did most of her hobbies have to be such traps for perfectionists? At least reading wasn't like that.

This did seem like the simplest explanation but Aaron was concerned it might go deeper than that. He was afraid that this might somehow be his fault because she was his daughter and was so much like him.

He didn't attach to people as a child either but he thought it was because of not knowing how due to a lack of attachment to his parents. Violet was very loved and didn't have any problem loving the people who cared about her back.

So what was it? Was a difficulty connecting to other human beings somehow genetic?

Every relationship Aaron ever had before meeting Keeley was superficial. The people he spent time with at lunch weren't even really his friends. She had taught him how meaningful a human connection could be.

He hadn't gotten that until he was seventeen. Violet had experienced meaningful human connections from birth with a select number of people. Her parents. Her twin. Noah came along only a year and a half later.

She was able to connect with her younger brothers too once they were born. So why not anyone else? Was this something she would grow out of or would she be plagued with loneliness and a disconnect from the majority of humanity for her entire life?