joplin skitty / d9 / fin

Summer days were made for people like Joplin— stretching out under the sun, licking melted ice cream off fingers, running through the streets without a care in the world. She struts around in her high-waisted shorts, her homemade crop tops with no bra underneath. When she pauses, she pauses with her head cocked and a hand on her hip. Attention is drawn to her like a moth drawn to a flame. It seems as if the world stops just so it can stare at her.

Boys, in particular, like to stare at her. She smiles at them, a wide bright grin that brings them to their knees. Joplin knows how to get all the boys wrapped around her finger. She’s had years of practice. It’s easy for her now— give them a smile, flip your hair, giggle at everything they say (even if it isn’t even funny). A foolproof recipe for being everyone’s favorite girl at the party.

She likes being everyone’s favorite. At least, she thinks she does. It’s fun to get attention. She’s not unused to getting it, her parents were attentive and loving, but love split amongst four siblings was not enough for somebody like Joplin. She wanted all of it, and if she couldn’t get it there, she would look elsewhere. It’s easy to be loved if you know what people want. They want somebody nice, and funny, and flirty, but with no attachments required.

Joplin decided she was going to be that for people. She already is that, for the boys who come by when the moon is out, for the boys who catch her arm at parties. They don’t respect her, but they think she’s cute. She’ll take it. They make jokes about her— for a good time, call Joplin Skitty— and she forces herself to laugh along. It’s not funny, it’s demeaning, but she needs them to keep liking her, so she plays along.

She doesn’t think she has real friends. People like her for the persona she puts on, not for the person she actually is. There are people she enjoys being around, sure, but there’s nobody she can actually trust. All of her secrets stay nestled alone in her heart. It aches, the pain of keeping them there unnoticed, but she does what she has to do.

Sometimes, she dreams about losing her mind. She thinks about screaming at every boy who’s ever treated her the wrong way. She bashes their faces in so they can’t stare at any more girls, tears out their tongues so they cannot whistle. She caves their chests in with her fists and leaves their blood trailing so everybody knows what they’ve done. She makes them feel her shame, her pain, and then she wakes up.

It’s wrong to think like that, but she’d never speak it. Only think it.

She looks at herself in the mirror. Porcelain skin, dark eyes, glossed lips. She’s supposed to be perfect. Everybody thinks she’s perfect, thinks that she has it all together. How can they assume so much about her life just by looking at her? It’s unfair, she thinks, and so she screams at her reflection, “I hate you!”, watches as her face contorts in bitterness and disgust. It suits her, she thinks, the hatred, so different from the way she normally looks. These two sides of her are so different and she can’t stand either of them.

She wants to exist in the middle. There’s a grey area there that she knows exists, she just doesn’t know how to reach it. She wants to be flat, stable. She is tired of being beautiful on the outside. It’s all a trick. She wishes everybody could see how terrible she really is on the inside. She’s a fake, a fraud, an imposter. She isn’t good enough, and she never will be.