And the truth is that I’m not, Ed, is what I wanted to tell you. I’m not different. I’m not arty like everyone says who doesn’t know me, I don’t paint, I can’t draw, I play no instrument, I can’t sing. I’m not in plays, I wanted to say, I don’t write poems. I can’t dance except tipsy at dances. I’m not athletic, I’m not a goth or a cheerleader, I’m not treasurer or co-captain. I’m not gay and out and proud, I’m not that kid from Sri Lanka, not a triplet, a prep, a drunk, a genius, a hippie, a Christian, a slut, not even one of those super-Jewish girls with a yarmulke gang wishing everyone a happy Sukkoth. I’m not anything, this is what I realized to Al crying with my hands dropping the petals but holding this too tight to let go. I like movies, everyone knows I do — I love them — but I will never be in charge of one because my ideas are stupid and wrong in my head. There’s nothing different about that, nothing fascinating, interesting, worth looking at. I have bad hair and stupid eyes. I have a body that’s nothing. I’m too fat and my mouth is idiotic and ugly. My clothes are a joke, my jokes are desperate and complicated and nobody else laughs. I talk like a moron, I can’t say one thing to talk to people that makes them like me, I just babble and sputter like a drinking fountain broken. My mother hates me, I can’t please her. My dad never calls and then calls at the wrong time and sends big gifts or nothing, and all of it makes me scowl at him, and he named me Minerva. I talk shit about everybody and then sulk when they don’t call me, my friends fall away like I’ve dropped them out of an airplane, my ex-boyfriend thinks I’m Hitler when he sees me. I scratch at places on my body, I sweat everywhere, my arms, the way I clumsy around dropping things, my average grades and stupid interests, bad breath, pants tight in the back, my neck too long or something. I’m sneaky and get caught, I’m snobby and faking it, I agree with liars, I say whatnot and think that’s some clever thing. I have to be watched when I cook so I don’t burn it down. I can’t run four blocks or fold a sweater. I make out like an imbecile, I fool around foolishly, I lost my virginity and couldn’t even do that right, agreeing to it and getting sad and annoying afterward, clinging to a boy everyone knows is a jerk bastard asshole prick, loving him like I’m fucking twelve and learning the whole of life from a smiley magazine. I love like a fool, like a Z-grade off-brand romantic comedy, a loon in too much makeup saying things in an awkward script to a handsome man with his own canceled comedy show. I’m not a romantic, I’m a half-wit. Only stupid people would think I’m smart. I’m not something anyone should know. I’m a lunatic wandering around for scraps, I’m like every single miserable moron I’ve scorned and pretended I didn’t recognize. I’m all of them, every last ugly thing in a bad last-minute costume. I’m not different, not at all, not different from any other speck of a thing. I’m a blemished blemish, a ruined ruin, a stained wreck so failed I can’t see what I used to be. I'm nothing, not a single thing. The only particle I had, the only tiny thing raising me up, is that I was Ed Slaterton's girlfriend, loved by you for like ten secs, and who cares, so what, and not anymore so how embarrassing for me. How wrong to think I was anyone else, like thinking grass stains make you a beautiful view, like getting kissed makes you kissable, like feeling warm makes you coffee, like liking movies makes you a director. How utterly incorrect to think it any other way, a box of crap is treasures, a boy smiling means it, a gentle moment is a life improved. It's not, it isn't, catastrophic to think so, a pudgy toddler in a living room dreaming of ballerinas, a girl in bed star-eyed over Never by Candlelight, a nut thinking she is loved following a stranger in the street. There is not a movie star walking by, is what I know now, don't follow her thinking so, don't be ridiculously wrong and dream of an eighty-ninth birthday party celebrating feebleminded smattering ignorance. It's gone. She died a long time ago, is the real truth of what slayed me in my chest and head and hands forever. There are no stars in my life. When Al dropped me home exhausted and raw, to climb out over the garage and realize it all again crying alone, there weren't even stars in the sky. The last of the matches was the only light, all I had, and then those, those you gave me you bastard, those were dead and nothing too.
