Like Me

by Hayley Phelan

I felt nervous, as if we were strangers and the person who had introduced us had just left.

He assured me it was fine, and I was left with the shame of having apologized to a man, this man, for not arbitrarily having my period at that moment.

I looked into his eyes, which were the color of antifreeze fluid, and gave him the most evil smile I could muster.

I knew now that she had been discarded, forgotten as if she had never existed at all, and then replaced. And I—I had helped it along, destroying her even as I poured myself into her mold,

They had me plead temporary insanity. I kept telling them I wasn’t insane, that I’d meant to do it. I was glad I did it and would have done it again if I could. But nobody listened.

though the Internet is endless, our memory and attention spans are embarrassingly finite.

That’s how fame works—it’s like love without the personal connection.

“There,” I said. I looked good, better than I’d looked in months. I felt something squirm inside, like a worm coming to life again, something repulsive but oddly compelling.

I realized then that everybody was pretending, all the time, but that for most people, for the people we call “normal,” the pretending part eventually falls away and the act simply becomes their life.

I know that as long as I’m a marketable product, I’ll never be let out of that hall of mirrors.