Like Me

by Hayley Phelan

For all that talk about selling one’s soul, no one seems to be in the market.

The eyebrows made her look Nordic, pure, childlike.

i guess. what do pure eyebrows look like?

people see many things in my face, but what they never seem to see is me.

She only had two hundred Followers, though you’d think by the way she posted—Here’s a pro health tip I swear by: try adding coconut oil to your coffee! Or I absolutely love rainy days! What’s your favorite kind of weather?—she had closer to two million. It was an embarrassment I found hard to

no one is likable so far. i get it's self-aware, but geez

we sat at Joe’s booth and pretended to listen to what the men were saying in order to fuck us while we steadfastly consumed all their booze until the only mixer left was cranberry juice,

But sleeping with one or two could be useful. Money would always find its way to us.

they escorting! they're looking for a sponsor

Her mouth was open. I could see the wetness of her pink tongue.

beginnings of stalker territory. girl, you looking too close

That’s what I thought love was: someone who constantly wanted to take your picture. My mom had been like that with me when I was little.

But Gemma, Gemma looks right at me.

though they were instantly familiar to me—the same horde I saw at all of the castings: tall, perilously thin, and white, white, white, just like me.

Some of the higher-end labels had started casting models of color in campaigns (usually surrounded by a halo of white girls), but the mall brands and beginning designers that I went up for apparently lacked the imagination, or the courage, though it shouldn’t have required either.

She only has eleven hundred Followers,” said one of the others. That was something they’d started doing, giving your social media stats alongside your height, weight, and shoe size.

There was only one way I knew how to seek revenge. Make the men want me.

?

The thing most people don’t understand about going out and getting wasted every night is that it’s not easy. It’s not always fun. It can be hard work.

It hit my brain like soda water bubbling up to the top, making those little snaps and pops.

and those incongruous breasts, soft fruits blossomed from that ascetic tree branch.

a poetic way to talk about some titties lol

“He’s your father, Michaela.” “I know. I have no choice in the matter. You do.”

They walked away and I stood there for a long time, my heart beating as fast as a criminal’s.

It was the kind of thing brands had started posting recently, as if they were moral entities instead of capitalist enterprises, as if they had values beyond customer retention and profit margin.

Vodka soda no longer tasted like nail polish remover to me—it tasted like nothing, looked like nothing, and smelled like the void. Drinking it was like drinking emptiness. How many did I inhale over the years? Millions, it felt like. Gallons of emptiness.

an innocent eagerness to his face, like if you slapped him, he’d just blink really hard, surprised but not broken, still willing to trust.

“Doesn’t she look just like a child?” he gushed. “This innocence! Barely sweet sixteen.”

Oof... >.>

“What kills me is that that is what passes for sexy today, that kind of plastic blow-up doll. Who wants to go to bed with a blow-up doll? How fucked up is that?” I wasn’t sure it was any less fucked up to want to go to bed with a sixteen-year-old, but I remained silent.

Benoit, I was beginning to learn, didn’t necessarily require a response in order to have a conversation with someone.

“What do you like to listen to?” he asked, causing the name of every song or band I’d ever heard to flee my brain. I made an indeterminate noise with my mouth.

this girl, who was no longer me, exactly, but someone else. I saw the girl on Gemma’s bed fondle herself and I imagined climbing on top of her and splitting her open.

“Oh come now, a fine, respectable lady like her?” he said in an ironic, highfalutin voice. “She’d never sully herself with such smut.” I laughed, though I didn’t think it was funny.

Benoit turned to look at me. “That’s why I love working with girls like you. Hungry, unformed.” He smiled and his teeth glowed a sickly blue in the artificial computer light. “Shameless.” I wanted to hit him.

I wasn’t worried anyone would report it again, not now that it was about feminism.

I got into bed, still dripping wet, and put the covers over my body.

Girl, what???

My thumb had ceased being a thumb; it was simply a lever that generated names, numbers, colorful symbols, data for my eyes to process.

When the vitriol started rolling in, I really got excited. Everyone knows you’re not anyone on the Internet until someone has threatened to rape or kill you,

indeed, my days before going viral were already growing less distinct in my mind.

I wanted to stay in to prolong that happiness and guard it selfishly, as if to expose it to real life might taint it.

Her face was pretty, but I found a few full bodies of her and she was short and chubby, which was fine if you knew how to pull it off, but she clearly didn’t.

Oof, tell us how you really feel

“You just do everything in your power to make them love you, okay?” He wasn’t using the we this time. “Anything they want.”

Once I held the purse strings, it would be me she’d have to listen to, not my father.

“What do you think?” Cate asked, a knuckle rubbing back and forth on her bottom lip. “I think I look like pure sex,” I said, and they both startled, as if a piece of furniture had spoken. Clearly the question was not for me.

“I remember Gemma telling me about the mud on her cover shoot,” I said, laughing nervously. “I’m sure that dry-cleaning bill was no fun either.” Of course, it was bait: I wanted to see how they’d react to the words cover shoot. I wanted them to know I knew Gemma, that I was on her level.

Cringe

I turned away from him abruptly and nodded to the man beside me, whose skin had somehow grown even pinker over the course of the dinner, taking on the hue and texture of a pig’s skin,

I turned to Andrew and said, “So nice to meet you, Aaron.” Then I walked away.

“Fuck it,” I said, and when she doled out the shots, we threw them back in unison.

this girl is a bottomless pit for alcohol.

I remember, I was lying on the bed naked, and Cowboy Hat, now hatless, was kneeling on top of me, trying to get his pitiable stiff to work.

such a matter of fact sexual assault

The man began choking me, I suppose because I’d uttered something of my thoughts to him. I might have called his prick “little lady.” I may have pointed out its resemblance to a mole rat. The man could not take a joke, apparently. I squirmed beneath him, his hands tightening around my windpipe. I slapped him across the face, and then I heard Benoit shouting, and the man was pulled off me. Benoit held the man’s shoulders; they were both panting.

there is a lot going on here. o_o

And it wasn’t even a few hours of my life, it was a few hours of my body’s life, which was separate from me. I’d been training for this, after all; every girl has.

I suppose it was rape. That’s what we argued at the trial, that I was raped—because a woman’s sexual past still explains everything, is both cause and effect of everything in her life.

I stood there watching him, my chest going up and down, though I had the strange sense I wasn’t really breathing.

she’d be happy, and she always said it exactly like that, with the just and everything, as if she were haggling over the price of happiness with some unseen overlord.

looked at my phone I saw that it was dead. Without my phone, there was no time. Where time should have been, there was just an empty container.

I turned on my side, but like a relentless alarm clock, my anxiety kept pinging me with new details. Ping! My eyes, clearly unfocused. Ping! Had I cried?