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Twenty minutes of my life about to be wasted on an assembly that could have been an email.
I learned early on that it’s either kill or be killed. And if I had to stop and feel bad for every instance I’ve had to step on someone’s toes to keep the crown, I’d be very bored.
Most people think the three of us are friends, since we’re almost always seen together. But we’re not friends. Our relationship is a transaction. I need a close, attractive circle. Small, because the smaller your group, the less people know about you—and the more they want to know. And, in return, Ava and Ruby like how powerful the three of us are together.
Even though I know I shouldn’t care, it annoys me that when girls know what they want and how they’re going to get it, they’re seen as cocky. But guys who know what they want? They’re confident or strong.
Hello, Niveus High. It’s me. Who am I? That’s not important. All you need to know is … I’m here to divide and conquer. Like all great tyrants do.—Aces
Jamie is the only guy I’ve actually liked as a friend, the only one I didn’t secretly hate. The only one who feels long-term. It’s hard to read someone like Jamie, though. We may be best friends, but I swear … most days I have no idea what that boy is thinking.
Like the time she told us F. Scott Fitzgerald was really the reincarnation of William Shakespeare. To which Ava said, “And I’m the reincarnation of Jane Austen’s asshole.”
I didn’t invent this twisted system that pits us against each other and makes us do crappy things for status—but I do know how to play it.
I think we choose our own destiny. We choose who we befriend, kiss, and date, and I guess I choose Jamie.
Note to self: Don’t delete numbers of the people you hate. They might come in handy someday.
In this home of worn leather sofas, tabletops with cracked edges, mismatched chairs, and exposed pipes, there is so much love. Even if that love is for a version of me that isn’t real.
I know dreams are dangerous; they give me too much false hope.
I don’t straighten my hair because I hate it; I straighten it because everyone else hates it for me.
They say love and hate are the same, just at different ends of the blade.
“Who the fuck names their cat Bullshit?”
She seems to have a thing for other people’s boyfriends.
But the world isn’t ideal, so why poison my mind with thoughts that won’t make a difference?”
Dreaming can be dangerous.
“Okay, but do you have enough tape to fix me if I am broken?” My stomach flips and my heart does its thing.
Wow. Is that all the convincing straight boys need?
Growing up, I realized quite quickly that people hate being called racist more than they hate racism itself.
“I work hard for everything I get. You’d still get in with affirmative action or whatever scholarship they give to you guys, while I have to work twice as hard.”
I want to tell him that people like him, boys with white skin, they never work twice as hard. Boys like him don’t have to carry the weight of generations and generations of hate and discrimination.
Elie Saab is not something you get tailored to fit you; either you’re perfect or you aren’t. You don’t fix a Saab original, you fix yourself,
Dreaming is dangerous. But I allow myself to this time. I think we deserve a happy ending.
