not gen z not gen alpha i’m something worse

i’ve realized that i can’t keep doing this. this blog has been effectively ruined (and it’s all miss everett’s fault). people know. people are aware of what i am. and the whole point is i was trying not to be.

so yeah. i’m deleting this, and starting over one more time. i’ll have zero ties to 4ai. i won’t play the line. i’ll be so good at pretending to be a normal, average girl.

but before i go, i want to at least tell the whole story from my point of view. something more… sophisticated than me crashing out on a google doc. something more profound. i can be profound. just watch me.

-

my life was pretty average - at least, for most of it. two parents that loved each other (mostly), no siblings, so i was the eternal golden child - a typical american suburban life. i lived in virginia, and went to a school called alpine high. nice, quaint little place. i was the school oddball - i never shut up, had unconventional interests, and dressed the way i wanted to. i had a multitude of pins and trinkets on my backpack and a grin on my face. i didn’t raise my hand before i spoke in class. i teased anyone and everyone. the world just felt like a fun, silly joke to me. probably because i was bored out of my mind. i was bored of subburbian, of being normal and american and so, so average. the reason why i latched so hard onto true crime and alternate reality games. they fed my mindless delusions that maybe, maybe, there was something else out there in the world. maybe the reality i lived in could be exceptional.

i was a freshman in high school. fourteen years old. at the peak of my insufferableness. i was, unapologetically, the biggest loser around, along with my best friend, oliver bell. there was only one person that people disliked more than me, and that was luna everett, a girl in the grade above me who did witchcraft and talked about seeing ghosts and dressed funny (i think people also hated her because she was trans, which was never why i hated her. i hated her because i liked feeling like i was better than someone. everyone else was transphobic. we are not the same). and i was deeply obsessed with a years old murder case about a girl named rayla brown, a high schooler who went to our school and died, her murderer being a complete mystery. this enthralled me. i felt like i was meant to be the one to solve this case. i was in the perfect position to do so, and one of the main suspects - rayla’s boyfriend at the time of her death, jay lamb - was my fucking band teacher. insane. i gave him a lot of shit, that’s for sure. i think i’ll go down in history as his least favorite student.

eventually, i figured out i wasn’t alone. i learned that people were also trying to solve this mystery online. there were people just like me who were so deeply obsessed with this murder case. and i felt like i had a place where i belonged.

it was lola. of course it was. i figured it out - not on my own, though. those other solvers on the internet played a big role. i am the reason lola everett is in jail. i thought i was a hero. but ultimately, no one cared. lola everett had been rayla’s best friend, furiously in love with her to the point where that love turned to hatred so quickly. it’s more common than you think.

and she killed her. and i figured it out.

we didn’t stop talking, though. even though i was the one who brought her to justice, lola always seemed weirdly fond of me. she expressed to me how i did the correct thing. she made me feel like i was a hero.

and i was. i just wish someone else could have told me that.

i sunk deeper and deeper into her lies. luna - who was her little sister, isn’t that funny - ended up being able to communicate with rayla’s ghost, which sounds insane and is a whole story for another day. i think that was another reason that lola kept talking to me: the prospect of seeing rayla again. she’s never cared about anything else. her entire life is a temple to rayla. she couldn’t talk to luna, so i was the next best thing. and i fell hook line and sinker. i played her games. when she told me her theories - her ideas that there was more to this world, her philosophy of everything repeating itself - i believed. because i wad fourteen and desperate to be special and stupid.

i’m seventeen now. lola everett has utterly ruined my life. becoming involved in all this - its not been good for me. i’m so scared that i’m going to kill oliver, or he’s gonna kill me, a fear that literally makes no sense - but lola installed that fear into me. i think she likes the idea of me and oliver being the new her and rayla, but this time, me, the rayla standin, is the one that gets the kill. i guess that - justifies herself, in her head? makes her and rayla equally in the wrong?

you can see that this is a very fucked up person. right.

i still can’t bring myself to hate herself for it, though.

i’m signing off. permanently. one more year of this shit and then i’ll go to college somewhere far, far away and i’ll leave this mystery for good. i’ll became an accountant or something and live and average, boring life.

i’ll have to leave oliver and luna. they know something is wrong with me. i can’t let them become as affected as me. they’ve already had it rough - oliver’s uncle died. luna’s entire family is a nightmare.

i don’t know who i am anymore. am i person? am i code? am i words on a page? am i rayla brown? am i julie greene? thanks to lola, i have no idea.

i tried to start over but she just brought me back.

they’re making a movie out of this murder case, i hear. i wonder if i’ll be in it. i probably shouldn’t watch it, for my own sake. but i know i will.

lola’s going to reblog this. she’s going to plaster my emotions all over her private memorial and you know what? that’s fine. i want people to hear my story.