“If My Daughter’s A General, Then I’m A Ballerina”
My name is Allara Dornne, and the moment I stepped into the ballroom of the West Crest Hotel, I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. It wasn’t the missing name tag. It wasn’t the way the staff paused, unsure, before guiding me to table 19 tucked beside an emergency exit like a polite afterthought.
It wasn’t even the looping slideshow on the far wall—smiling faces, baby photos, caps and gowns—where my image never appeared. It was the silence. That sharp, familiar silence that falls over a room when a person walks in who no longer fits the story everyone agreed to tell.
My mother stood under the chandelier in a deep green dress, the kind she wore to Finn’s fundraisers. She didn’t turn. My father laughed into his whiskey with three men who once told me I had leadership potential; none of them looked my way.
My younger brother—tonight’s star—moved through a ring of classmates like a politician in a receiving line, shaking hands, accepting praise, being called class of ’03’s proudest export. Finn Dornne, managing director of Bellwick and Crest. They beamed like they’d built him from gold and good breeding.
I stood at the edge of the room and held myself still. Heels pinching. Spine straight.
Hands calm. The posture had been trained into me for years, not by finishing schools or alumni banquets, but by conference rooms with no windows and air that always smelled faintly of recycled breath. I had learned to make my face neutral when a room wanted a reaction.
I had learned to become uninteresting on demand. If anyone had asked, I could have said I wasn’t here to be seen. But that would have been a lie.
There’s a difference between being forgotten and being erased. Tonight, I needed to know which one my family had chosen. I walked to my table without a word.
The tablecloth was wrinkled. One water glass had lipstick on the rim. There wasn’t even a centerpiece—just an off-center salt shaker and a folded card with my name printed in plain black ink.
Dr. Allara Dornne. No rank.
No division. No acknowledgment that I’d done anything after high school except vanish. Someone had gone out of their way to be precise in my dismissal.
I sat down slowly and tucked my clutch under the chair. My phone stayed dark. My gaze stayed lifted.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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