The Girls Are All So Nice Here

She would
have married a boy from a good family, worn headbands and pleated skirts to church. She would have been a child psychologist and a patient mother. She would have been everything I’m not. Maybe that’s why I hated her—not because she had who I wanted but because she had what I wanted, qualities I could never embody when I tried. Because she was nice, and that was its own power.

She wasn’t perfect, and she wasn’t pretending to be. Maybe her struggle was the opposite of mine. I fought to make myself look flawless. She fought to get people to see under the flawless veneer.

People thought girls’ bodies were our deadliest weapons. They had no idea about the mountains our imaginations could move.

Flora wanted me to meet my Kevin, but I never did. I met hers.

He leaned over, scribbled in my notebook: bigmac10@gmail.com. I wasn’t going to let a lame email address ruin him. It was the kind of thing that could be overlooked, maybe even considered cute later.

Most of the other girls were outwardly nice enough, but I could never relax around them and be myself, even though I didn’t know exactly who that was anyway.

She knew how to be herself—it seemed like everyone did. I only knew how to imitate other people.