Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute

by Talia Hibbert

I have this small problem where my feelings leak out of my face, and my feelings are often intense.

I’ve never minded people saying I’m annoying or weird or a bitch because I don’t think those things about myself are bad. It never occurred to me that some people deal with the weight of everyone else’s judgment and their own. That never occurred to me at all.

“You’re the bane of my existence. Did you know that?” She grins. “I hoped.” I really can’t stand this girl. I wonder how long I get to walk with her.

“Even if neither of us ever did anything interesting in our entire lives, it wouldn’t matter. You don’t need to be special or significant to have value. You’re just important, always, and people either see that or they don’t. They either love you, or they don’t.”

“When I pulled you on top of me and, you know, gazed dreamily into your eyes and said I liked you, I did not mean as friends. Obviously.”

“You said it’s not fair. Because you, Celine, are the kind of person who cares about fairness. You’re the kind of person who wants justice, and that’s not him—that’s the opposite of him. It’s all you. So you’ve been doing the most to balance the scales. So what? That doesn’t make you pathetic. It makes you yourself. You just needed to figure out on your own that…that fairness is about you being happy, not him being punished.”

Me and Celine, we’ve been best friends. We’ve been enemies. We’ve even been a secret. But right now? We’re everything. Anything. Whatever we want.