Bad Romance

by Heather Demetrios

According to her, I’m always walking on thin ice. It’s the topography of my life. Cold, about to break, always uncertain.

It takes me to New York City, to a group of bohemian friends, to my future.

We are the music-makers and we are the dreamers of dreams.

I admire the guts it takes to give up. Only tortured artists do that, and being a tortured artist is my most fervent longing.

I feel like our friendship is like those outfits you see in Vogue where nothing matches but it looks totally awesome. We’re plaid and polka dots and stripes.

How do boys do that? How do they make your whole body combust just by looking at you?

This thing you’re doing—the look, the stop, the awed stare—you stole it right out of the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. You’re ripping off Colin Firth like nobody’s business and I don’t even realize it.

Here, we wear other people’s skins and it helps us forget our own, lets us pretend, for a little while, that we’re okay.

I blush, pleasure blooming in my chest. I don’t know it now, but there will be a garden inside me soon. And it’ll grow thorns.

Medicine, law, business, engineering are necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, and love—these are what we live for. It’s basically my mission statement.

“Just keep in mind that the dude has some unresolved issues,” Lys says. “And it’s not your job to fix them.”

You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say.

Each lie reminds me I’m an actual person with rights and desires and the ability to make choices on her own. Each lie is power—control over my life.

there are so many ways to drown.

In fairy tales, the princess doesn’t tell her knight in shining armor that he came at a bad time.

Maybe the only way you really know you love someone is if they can break you with a single sentence.

When you’re a stupid girl in love, it’s almost impossible to see the red flags. It’s so easy to pretend they’re not there, to pretend that everything is perfect.

I know I have to fight for this. It wouldn’t be my life if I didn’t have to go into battle for what I wanted. The universe doesn’t hook me up. It doesn’t give a damn about me. I’m lucky if it puts a sword in my hand before throwing me out into the shit.

No day but today

I’ve become a dandelion. You blow on me and I scatter in a million directions.

I want to be like Viola—weather the storm, then start over, using nothing but my wits and charm to see me through to my happy ending.

My friendship with Gideon feels like that game: like those bricks in Tetris, we’re trying to fit together as quickly as possible. Quick, before you find out about us and then Game Over.

And we’re just the tiniest speck on a tiny planet and we’ll live for not even a second of a star’s life. And yet. We’re stardust.

you, me—we’re the stuff of stars.

Namaste. It means “The light in me recognizes the light in you.”

Sprouting wings begins with a tingle that spreads across your chest, then your whole body, all the way around to your back. It doesn’t hurt at all.

“The only reason you should stay with someone is because you make each other happy. Any other reason is bullshit.”

It would be so much easier to cut you down with a smile on my face. But I’m not an ass-kicking ninja warrior queen.