The High Price of Living

Bridget

Before Everything happened I was That Kid – the one who sat one the sidelines while the cheerleaders did their routines and boys stared at their too-short skirts and fantastic cleavages, the one who read at parties if she even turned up for them at all, who preferred laptop movie marathons to painting her nails and gossiping with five other girls. 

And I was okay with it. I was fine being that kid, and everyone around me knew and didn't think much of it.

Victoria was always the opposite – The Girl to my That Kid. She was co-captain of our high school's cheerleading team, the girl everyone wanted to by noticed by, the girl boys got into detention for. The girl, in every conceivable way, who was everything I'd never be.

It's funny how life has a way of surprising you, pushing you headfirst into situations you could never have seen coming.

Like: a girl who lost sleep over the friends she didn't have being skyrocketed into popularity practically overnight, having people she barely knew come up to her to talk, suddenly overwhelmed with requests to grace their lunch tables.

Like: the way she got pulled into it, faster and easier than water down a plughole, dizzy with attention she'd never experienced before, though she'd vowed just months before that she would sooner eat glass than wear makeup to school.

Like: how she became an unrecognisable person in the blink of an eye, how she became someone the old her would have stayed away from, laughed at, prayed she wouldn't turn into. And how she never even realised what was happening.

These things happen, and I'm not trying to say I blame life and its arbitrary workings for the person I am today. I'm just saying that, if I had the capacity to change so completely in such a short time, who's to say I didn't have the capacity to ignore my sister's slow spiral into darkness that led to her death?

The ironic thing is that Mr. Norman is telling us not to be late for the early-application deadlines for college.

I don't even pretend to be listening as he gives lengthy instructions and offers to proofread our essays, write recommendations for "deserving students".

Ariel Springfield passes me about eighty notes, all written on the same lilac stationery she uses for girls she "trusts", all asking me why I wasn't at Cameron Smythe's after-school party yesterday (Yes. I know people arrogant and stupid enough to have a party on a school night). I stop reading after the sixth one and drop them into the black holes of my rollerblades as she hands them over, alternating between the left and right skates like that flower-petal game from elementary school: he loves me, he loves me not.

'Bridget!' Ariel says in a shout-hiss as the other teenagers in our homeroom start streaming into the halls.

I turn to her with a forced smile.

'Hi, Ariel,' I say. The crowd of teenagers funnels around us, automatically giving the alpha female space (that's me).

'Why didn't you reply my texts?' she asks with a perfect pout that I've seen in all its stages of refinement. In school (who am I kidding? More like in life), Ariel is the closest thing to a friend that I have, which I know isn't saying much. But still. She's clueless and much prettier than she knows she is (i.e. she doesn't actually need makeup) and has no idea what she wants from life. In other words, the exact opposite of me.

Take our outfits today, for example.

Ariel's in this ridiculously short cheerleading skirt that just covers her butt, with a white halter top and a denim jacket that looks like it came from the Under-6 department in Gap. Her already doll-like face is made more porcelain-ish with layers of foundation, lipstick, blush, and of course, eyebrows that have been tweezed with military precision. Plus her eyeshadow. Did I mention she always wears eyeshadow? Today it's a sparkly purple-pink that makes her look about seven years younger than she is.