This is a story about Marissa. Marissa was a pretend friend before she was a real one, back when you were thirteen. It was convenient—her mom didn’t let her watch TV, but yours did; you could walk to each other’s houses; you sat together at your brothers’ Little League games and stayed after to watch the boys from your class. You lusted over her entitled relationship to fun. Marissa flirts with the boys and they flirt back. Even her crush flirts back, which you didn’t even know was possible. In your universe, it isn’t.
If you’re mad at Marissa, she finds a reason to get mad at you. She has a way of turning the tables. She commits the crime, but somehow you end up apologizing, and maybe you even owe her. The scales of the world tip in Marissa’s direction.
Marissa isn’t really emo. (She listens to Good Charlotte.) She’s a poser, but the boys don’t care. Wanting her makes them not care about anything else. Marissa tells you you’re jealous that boys like her and not you, and then goes back to painting her nails silver and watching Mandy Moore in the movie. She tucks a piece of thin long hair behind her ear with a sense of satisfaction and ease that you have never experienced and probably never will. Not in this universe. Everyone you can’t be is a Marissa, and you are surrounded by Marissas.
This is a story about you. The night you spill the bottle of Disco Fever polish on the carpet in your bedroom, you feel pitiful. Everything about the moment—those dumb songs in A Walk to Remember and Mandy Moore’s horrible dumpy cardigans; Marissa’s puka shells; the sting you feel and keep feeling—reminds you how pitiful you are. Reminds you of your place.
You’re the Laney Boggs in She’s All That. You spill the nail polish and ruin your carpet. You swallow the words down.
But this is not a story about you. This is a story about me, and I am the hero.