Teena Pemmican, District 9 [DONE]

I guess you could say that I’m your normal teenage girl. I have a younger sister and brother, a mom and a dad, and sometimes I imagine myself riding on a Pegasus while being chased by multiple boys on top of their trusty steads. Except those boys also have dragons breathing fire at them, and they’re dressed in armor. They tell me how beautiful and smart that I am and then we all dance and have the most beautiful moment of all with a three-way kiss because I don’t have to choose between any of them.

Okay so maybe not everyone has the same dreams that I do. I do a lot of daydreaming taking care of my dad’s bar. He’s kind of sunk his heart and soul into this place, and so I think that means that we’re supposed to as well. He’s not bad because he usually tries to believe in us even though none of us has any particular talent. He always tells me that I’m special though, especially when I explain to him some of my daydreams. Like when I told him how we were learning this story about mermaids, and no one ever talks about what they actually look like. Do they have fish faces or human heads? And if they have fish tails do they have human parts too? Where are their merginas? That’s when he stopped me and told me to sweep up and that I needed to concentrate on making sure that the floor was clean.

I can’t help that I’m a strong, sensual woman—I would say my thoughts usually range from thinking about kissing boys, touching their butts, to what would happen if there were horses that you could ride over water and what they would be called—you know, things that help to keep busy. It’s not easy of course. There’s plenty of reasons to feel not great, considering my younger sister Eloise and brother Herschel tend to remind me. Like the fact that they say I have the shape of a sack of potatoes with two skinny sticks coming out of the bottom. But I think that’s okay because everyone has something that they’re interest in, and beauty is supposed to come from the inside and not the outside. Not that it doesn’t make think about how lonely I could wind up being if no one liked the way that I looked.

But everyone has something that they don’t like about themselves. There’s my glasses, or my knees, or the way my hair sort of gets sweaty and then sticks up in the back. You just have to concentrate what you’re good at and then realize that maybe—well I don’t think I’m the best example because I’m not very good at anything right now. But someday I can be great at something, and then we’ll live just fine and I’ll marry James from across the way and we’ll have babies and they’ll look like him but be smart like me and then we’ll have our choice of where we’re going to live, and my best friend Tammy will be alone and jealous and realize how much of a jerk she really is.

The bar is kind of a dump. But it’s a dump full of love. Imagine a giant trash can that’s been decorated with streamers and under a flattering light. That’s sort of the place that my dad runs. Except there’s probably a little bit more hair everywhere than there should be, and we don’t really serve a wide selection of things. It’s not bad, though. I mean it could be a lot worse where we never have any food or I could have lost one of my siblings. But instead we just have a bunch of drunk men come in—there’s always a lot of people who like to drink which is a good thing? I like to name some of them when they’re sleeping so that I can have something to daydream about.

When I’m not too busy sweeping the bar or staring through the glass at the hottest fourteen year old on the face of planet earth across the street, I’m doing normal things. I consider myself a connoisseur of good writing, with a consistent tableau of erotic friend fiction, and erotic zombie fiction. There’s something for everyone’s sensibilities, with plenty of romance, horror, and butt touching—what more could a girl ask for? The answer would probably be more kissing because what’s not great about that? And what’s that like? Because I’m not asking for me, I mean, I’m asking for a friend who obviously doesn’t know because she’s not really sure and only ever kissed someone on the lips for like two seconds, not full on tongues on tongues in each other’s mouths.

At the end of the day, I like to consider myself a good person. Because there’s nothing worse than doing what you’re not supposed to do and hurting someone else. It’s kind of one of those things that you imagine—that you’re doing something wrong and everyone is staring at you, and you start getting all wet underneath your arms and you can just imagine everyone laughing, and suddenly you’re in your underwear just yelling—ah! Ah! Ah! You know, just the sort of, you can picture it. Super embarrassing for anyone.

But no one has ever really wanted to know that much about me. I have dark hair—usually straight—and um, dark eyes? Brown eyes? I wear my glasses so no one ever really notices. And I put my bra on one boob at a time just like everyone else. I’m no hero. You can just call me Teena.