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You can’t help but hate her.
She floats through a world on gentle breezes of perfume, always smelling sweet but never too sweet, only just a trace but never too much. If you look close enough you can see the little strands of hair on the top of her head that are out of place, but only if you look closely enough that you have to admit you are paying attention. From afar she looks polished, the cliché god-like perfection made reality, hair and make-up all put together, clothes the same ones you buy but somehow different on her. Everything lines up for her in a way they only can in television shows and really bad country music songs. She plays for the school volleyball team- preppy, girly, but still a legitimate sport- and gets good grades while struggling just the right amount through math class that no one resents her A. She makes the world look easy but never too easy, enough personality flaws and awkward moments to make her real and not a living Barbie, and this somehow makes it worse because at least with the doll you can point at it and say “this isn’t right”. You know she isn’t right, but you can’t point at her without everyone else pointing back at you.
You, on the other hand, are not like her. You trudge along with the rest, knowing you could do well in school but being simply too lazy to really apply yourself. You look fine, you have your good days and your bad days, your clothes fit right but they aren’t spectacular. You walk the middle path, representing everything that is normal, everything that is mediocre. Decent family, decent grades, decent friends, decent life. Nothing special. You aren’t extreme enough or disturbed enough to be one of the outcasts, but neither are you perfect like her and among the exalted. You are just you; middle road, normal, mediocre. Unnoticed but not in the tragic way, but in the way that there’s nothing worth noting about you; your sole function is to be a comparison to people like her, so people can point at you and say “normal” and then point at her and say “ideal”. You dare not complain, even if it would earn you some fleeting attention, because in reality what is there to complain about?
So it just makes it worse when you find her in the bathrooms that day after lunch, and you two meet eyes as she comes out of the stall because you know what she’s doing and she knows you know and it’s awkward because what do you even do in that situation? Nothing. She simply ducks her head shyly, not able to say anything, and washes out her mouth and quiet leaves. And you hate her more, because isn’t it just god-damn-bloody-perfect that Miss Perfect has an eating disorder. And you hate that you can’t hate her for that, because that’s not how it works and you are supposed to feel sympathy for her and empathize with her girl-to-girl and blame society for the images they force on women. So either way you are supposed to feel angry, but you aren’t sure who to be angry at and anger is an emotion that needs focus, so you decide to be angry at yourself.
A few weeks pass by in the flurry of high school drama, of homework and stupid teachers, of sitting at home alone at night and wondering where these “awesome parties” you always hear about actually happen because you’ve never witnessed one. You catch her at it a few more times, and wonder how much she must be doing it that you keep seeing her. But neither of you say anything, you just go about your business in a tense awkwardness. What are you supposed to do? Tell someone? Hope one of her other perfect friends tells? Confront her? And when did it become mandatory that you care? What happened to the good old days, which never really existed, where you could just leave someone with an eating disorder to their fate and there wasn’t all this pushing to be “aware” and to “care”?
But she, of course, has the answers for you. One day you are sitting in English class, trying really hard not to glare at the back of her perfect head of golden-red hair, when she reaches back and puts a note on your desk corner. The movement is totally smooth, well rehearsed, a scene straight out of a prime time teen drama. And you, ever a slave to the predictability of the universe, snatch it up with a little less grace and shove it in your pocket. When class is over you read it, and it’s the answer to your dilemma spelled out in broken English; “thnx for not telling any1, i‘m gonna get help.”
So you don’t say anything. After all, you wouldn’t want to get in the way of her self-empowerment and all that jazz. And two weeks later she commits suicide, and the entire school is engulfed in grief. Now what?
There’s guilt, of course. Sadness, tears. After all, you are only human; any time someone you know the name of dies, there’s a sense of responsibility and “what if” and “if only”. That’s what they mean when they say that names have power; you might not be able to cast magic spells with them or use them to force people to love you, but a name can cast a spell over you to force you to care. Suddenly it’s not Miss Perfect anymore, it’s Ashley and the name tastes like copper pennies on your tongue. And you just so happen to be the one with some actual responsibility, the one who could have done something but didn’t. You hear the “what ifs” and “if onlys” from the teachers and students, but you were the only one who actually could have seen the signs and done something. It’s not teenage angst, it’s not the demons of depression talking; her death is quite literally your fault.
More weeks go by and the pain begins to fade. Things go back to a strange sort of normal, people wanting to move on but feelings like it’s too soon to act happy. The school sponsors the usual memorial, a little plaque in the front hall and a tree planted out by the football field. The volleyball team frames her jersey and hangs it in the hallway between the locker rooms. The other Ashleys have to deal with everyone looking away from them whenever their names are called, but they take the unease with a gracious air of empathy. There are fewer “what would Ashley think if…” and more “what do you think of this…”, fewer tears and more smiles. Wounds heal. Some carry scars, others only healing scratches. The world realigns itself when they swore it would never be right again. And in a few years, when everyone is getting drunk in college and crying over boyfriends, she’ll only be a passing thought.
And if this were one of those stupid made-for-TV movies or horribly bad country songs, you would have saved the note. You would keep it in a box under your bed, or shoved into your wallet, and you would pull it out in quiet moments and contemplate what the world would be like if Ashley was still in it. This would be the defining moment in your life, the one that would either change you into a living saint or into a cruel bitch, and you could blame all your future behaviors on. The girl you sort of knew in high school that you caught puking in the bathrooms would be the reason for your loveless marriage, your issues with your mother, you dissatisfaction with your job, your need to finally write that novel, the reason for everything.
But this isn’t a made-for-TV movie, it’s reality. And in reality, you found the note about a year later while cleaning out your room for college. You look at it briefly, remembering who it was from only after a few moments of stumped confusion. But you remember, and frown a little. Then, with a movement that is so smooth and so well rehearsed it could have been straight out of a TV show, you throw it away.
Talk about way different...
Eve
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