#GirlsShitToo

The Dreaded Senior Project

"Did you see any of Valerie's Snaps this morning?" I asked. Alex and Benny had come over, and we were lounging on my unmade bed atop my wrinkled gray comforter, admiring the posters of metal bands covering my walls, eating junk food, and sharing the music we got for Christmas. Benny, lying on his stomach, took up over half of my bed, and still his legs extended multiple feet off the side, like a plank off a pirate ship. My tallest and densest friend, he looked like he belonged on our school football team's defense (and he had until he'd quit last year), but he also looked largely huggable. At least he looked that way to me. Alex had long legs, too, but he was sitting with them crossed, looking through my iTunes library, trying to get us all to determine the best metal music of 2015.

But honestly, my mind was somewhere else: I was still thinking about this morning, when Valerie Devant had posted a series of selfies of her with her new car in the background, embellished with the text, "Out w/ the old, in w/ the Audi." Yep, I got a newish mountain bike frame and an iTunes gift card for Christmas, and Valerie got a car. Must be nice. Not that I wasn't thankful for my mountain bike frame, which my stepdad had probably acquired after a dangerous trek through Craigslist. My bike was awesome. Even Alex and Benny agreed it was way metal when they saw it, and they didn't mean it was made of metal.

"Dallas, I don't even understand why you go on Snapchat," Benny said, brushing his shaggy brown hair to the side. "You never post anything," Even though Benny looked like a sports star, his hair outed him as a skater.

"I know why," Alex said. "She likes to lurk all of Valerie's Snaps."

"Shut up." I tried not smiling, but failed, because it was true. As much as I disliked Valerie, I had a huge and unexplainable crush on her. And I couldn't help thinking that even with her sexy new car in the background, she still looked better. I always wanted to replay her snaps, but I didn't want her to know how often I lurked her.

"I thought you decided you hate Valerie," Benny said. "Weren't you just complaining about her asking why you were wearing the same shirt twice in one week?"

Valerie had actually asked that question when we were in middle school, and she was so condescending when she did. That was before I came out as a lesbian, and it was like she was measuring my feminine worth, implying that worthy girls don't wear the same clothes repeatedly within a 7-day timespan. Since then, it had become a tradition for me to wear one shirt twice each week—to stand with all the girls who disagreed with constricting fashion roles, and to stand up for all those girls who legitimately couldn't afford more than a week's worth of clothes. How did the Valerie Devants of the world make them feel? Lately, Valerie didn't seem to care as much about me wearing the same thing, or at least she didn't bring it up until I did. It was in class a couple of weeks prior, when she was trying really hard to read my shirt, and I had asked her, "Are you gonna go on another rant about how I shouldn't wear the same shirt twice in a week?" And she had responded by saying, "I can never tell when you aren't wearing the same shirt, anyways. You're always wearing a black shirt with an unreadable logo. They might as well all be the same."

So I corrected Benny. "She told me all my band shirts look the same."

"Well, all her selfies look the same," Benny said. "Hot! And that car?" He made a low whistle.

I didn't disagree. "I wonder how much time she spends getting ready each morning." I guessed it was probably well over an hour, maybe even two. No matter how hard she tried to fool us, she didn't ever "wake up like this," with perfectly curled and tousled hair and glowing skin and bright eyes. I loathed her because I knew I'd never measured up to her standards, and I felt sorry for her for thinking she had to try so hard to surpass everyone else's. I felt sorry for all the girls like her. The ones who followed those scripts because they thought they had to. "You guys really have it lucky," I told Benny and Alex. "You don't have to do your hair or makeup."