Karyn was like, super happy that Paige wanted her to join the squad. So happy that the weird sad feeling from earlier went away. For awhile. But then Paige started talking to her about other things and Karyn just couldn't follow it at all. There was something there in Paige's wry observations. Something familiar. Like when she was in French class and she'd studied super extra hard and almost understood what people were saying. But just like in French, she couldn't make the final connection. Oddly, this surprised both of them. Had she ever been able to keep up with Paige? She felt like she should, but then there was like, another her in her head that said she shouldn't. That she was the dumb one in the group. Sarah had said so too, and Sarah was like, way smarter than her. Everyone was. Even Mandy. But...had she been able to keep up with Paige, once? To match her wisecracks word for word? Everything felt so fuzzy.
After a bunch of awkward silences that Karyn filled by giggling, Paige must have realized that Karyn just wasn't getting the jokes. She started looking at her real funny like she was totally worried about her. It made Karyn want to check her make-up.
Nope, that wasn't it. She didn't know much but she did know how to look hot. She blew the other her in the compact mirror a little kiss.
Things just got worse from there. Several times in class she caught Sarah staring at her and smiling evilly, like something was sooo funny. It made her skin all goose-pimply. The feeling didn't go away no matter how much gum she nervously stuffed into her mouth. It just got worse and worse. But the reassuring smack between her lips helped. It grounded her. Like, it was her signature noise or something. Still, the gloomy feeling stayed. Like she had lost something. Or was about to lose something. And she couldn't figure out what it was.
Then she heard the last bell. School was out. The week was over.
Everything was over.
She could feel it, deep down, and she didn't know how and it made her want to cry. The fog in her head thickened. She felt like there were fingers in her brain, reshaping her. She was being moulded. No, not just molded into something else, but whole parts of her self being chipped off. Lessened. Like she was being carved away. Hobbies, minor interests, boring basic needs. They dropped out of her mind. What was it she did when no one was around? When she wasn't at school and there was no one watching her, no one to impress, and she wasn't getting ready to be seen? What did she want to do after school? What was her dream career? What was her childhood like? The fog was consuming everything, all her thoughts from before her tweens and plans for after her twenties. Those thoughts had no place anymore. New thoughts and feelings replaced them...but they never matched what had left. She was smaller. She could feel it. Gaps in her mind like the hole a baby tooth left. And then that analogy too vanished, leaving only a nameless unease begging to be filled with pink and blonde and gum and underwear and pop music and cute boys. Because only those things and nothing else could quiet the wind whistling through her emptying head.
The questions themselves vanished shortly after their answers. None of those things mattered anymore. Certainty came. Scary, bad certainty.
She knew who she was. What she was. Karyn was the dumb blonde. Paige's bimbo. She felt it, the sappy sticky bubblegum core of her being. That's all she was. She was the girl that the others loved to laugh at. The butt of the jokes smarter girls like Mandy Valejo made at her expense. But that was ok. She'd just giggle along with the others, when she finally got the joke. It was her role, and while it wasn't what she would have wanted, it was all she could be. Maybe it wasn't so bad. The girls thought she was funny. The guys thought that too, but they also thought she was hot. Karyn herself didn't think much at all. She was a stereotype. She knew that now. She wasn't a person like the other girls. It hurt to think it, but it was true. She didn't have dreams, or thoughts, or interests. She didn't know about colors besides 'pink' and 'ugly'. Her voice-box tingled, and she knew that she could never again make herself talk in anything but the most ridiculously girly, put-on, nasally helium-high voice. Her face went numb, and suddenly she only had two facial expressions, vapid smile and ditzy pout. She was boy crazy, but she didn't know why. It's just what girls like her did. She loved clothes and shopping and gossip that she couldn't follow but she had to spread anyway because that was another thing girls like her did.
And when no one was around, when she wasn't shopping or gossiping or doing her makeup or flirting or being comically stupid in public, she realized, she wouldn't be doing anything at all. She would stare at a wall in her room until she fell asleep, ready for a new day of being the blonde bimbo. Because she wasn't a person. She was a stereotype. A robot dedicated to filling a role Sarah McMillan grabbed from shallow observations and teen comedies. And she wanted to cry.
She'd heard somewhere that when you died you saw your life flash before your eyes. She was a short girl with a shock of curly red hair and a wicked grin. She saw Paige McMillan, smiling a smile that didn't reach her eyes. She saw Mandy, glassy eyed and stupid. The images flickered, melted together. She saw the girl from before, only now she was becoming blonde and tan, with Paige's coloring and Mandy's brainless gaze and then there was nothing left of her.
She saw Sarah McMillan, leering like the cat that ate the canary. But she was real. Students hurrying home parted around them. Paige gave the two of them a strange look and walked off, wordlessly.
And she wanted to cry.
(This was written fairly stream of consciousness, not sure how good it is, and it may be too dark. I just got to thinking about Sarah's original wish and thought, y'know, a stereotype isn't really a person. What would it be like to go from a 3 dimensional human being to a cartoonish prop? And here's my attempt at that.)
