Penance

by Eliza Clark

where she was this cool Veronica outsider and we were the bitchy Heathers.

love this reference

Sometimes I would think ‘it’ll be okay if I don’t talk today. Joni and the others will leave me alone if I just don’t say anything.’ But then sometimes I’d try to talk normally anyway and they would always say something, like I’d said something wrong or weird, so I’d just go back to my phone.

relatable

death by one thousand cuts.

tswift!!!

‘Well . . . I was kind of a Violet, I think. A bit mouthier than her but . . . I suppose I think a Violet is a student who is just kind of . . . weird and doesn’t know how to do anything about it. They just don’t fit in, and they don’t understand why they don’t fit in. The other kids probably don’t either – there’s something about them that’s off. And so they do absolutely nothing to help themselves with that – apart from maybe melt into the background, which is sometimes the best you can hope for. In my experience it’s just this intangible thing like . . . whenever I opened my mouth I said the wrong thing. I got the wrong haircut. I wore my tie wrong. I wore the wrong thing on nonuniform day. I walked wrong, I liked the wrong stuff. As far as my peers were concerned: I was just fundamentally incorrect. And kids, they’re very instinctual, they’re very primitive, in a lot of ways. And they can smell difference on you. It’s difficult when you’re constantly doing something your peers think is wrong and you don’t understand what that is, or why.’

sadly relatable

Dolly was feminine but she wasn’t basic the way Joni was, and basic people were straight.

lol

Real people were scarier than monsters, she decided.

DOYLE: So we’re at the part I know Andy’s been waiting for. KOONTZ: [in a cockney accent] Hello, guvnah? DOYLE: Yes, hello, Andy. KOONTZ: [in a cockney accent] Is it time for lesbians now, guvnah? DOYLE: Yes, it is time for lesbians.

also the part i've been waiting for

‘There’s a bit of you that’s always a teenager, isn’t there? It’s the most traumatic time of loads of people’s lives, and . . . even the most mentally healthy and put-together adults are still . . . there.’

because Violet was always talking about ‘making a Frankenstein’s monster’ and if any one ever said ‘Frankenstein’ she would always correct them and say ‘Frankenstein is the doctor, not the monster’.

@ me

A few weeks before we broke up when we weren’t talking much she sent me a picture of the school shooters she liked, Matthew and Brian, and she captioned it THIS COULD BE US BUT U PLAYING :(. It was at like 3 a.m. and I ignored it.

this is so strange how could you not break up immediately