Everyone's their own Gossip Girl *BOOK PREVIEW*

Gossip #16:

When Michelle was little, all she ever wanted to be was a doll. The true living meaning under perfection, not a fragment of it. She wanted to be perfect, and the only way to achieve that was by becoming a Monica.

Michelle searched around the lower cabinets, digging under the toilet paper rolls, the bin of hair product, and the loose tampons making their stay in the dusty corners. Her chubby fingers dove into the bin and she had pulled out a huge bottle of hair spray, big enough to fit inside her whole bag. She closed the cabinets and pulled her heavy body up, her floppy belly pressed against the corner of the counter.

She grabbed her hair and braided her side bangs across her face, trying to make it as much as it looked when Monica had done it. She grabbed a blonde bobby pin, clashed against her deep hair, and sprayed the front section of hair, making it has tough as a rock.

“Mom!” she yelled as she kicked herself off the counter as she sprinted down the stairs, her thighs dancing and the baby fat underneath her eyes forming. She hopped off the stairs, her heavy steps making clear she was coming in. “Mom! Look!”

Her mother spun around from her conference meeting, glaring at Michelle.

But Michelle didn’t care. She needed to tell her this new discovery. “Mom!” she yelped as she managed to pull herself over the arm of the couch next to her mother. “Look at me! I’m a Monica!”

Her mother’s discouraging face signified there was no way she was a Monica. Michelle’s whole face drowned gray as she glared at herself through the large mirror stapled onto the wall. She wasn’t a Monica. She wasn’t blonde, she wasn’t skinny, she didn’t have her posture, and she clearly didn’t have the skills of manipulation and charisma to be one.

She wasn’t a Monica. She was a Michelle. An ugly, fat, pig-like, disgusting-

“Michelle!”

The voice ripped through the room like a pair of throwing knives and two heavy hands shoved Michelle’s petit body over, her face buried under her pillow. She woke up, put her hands against her ears and pulled herself up, glancing around.

She sighed when she realized it was a bad dream and relaxed, her back against the bed frame. “David, you scared me.”

David handed her the tray over the coffee table hovering over the surface of her bed and arranged her meal in front of her. David was the home’s butler who honestly didn’t do much of anything since neither Michelle or her parents were around much.

She sat straight up and bent over, grabbing the wine glass and taking light sips. His speciality was bartending and would serve the minor some of this most practised, complex drinks with little embellishments to the side like parasols and limes, once had even offered a gummy worm. Today, there was a Chinese doll made of porcelain and human hair sitting on the edge of her tray.

She raised an eyebrow over at David who cleared his throat, nodding over at the little gift. “It’s from your father. He made a recent stop to China and picked out a whole array of little souvenirs.”

“A doll?”

Knowing her dad, Michelle would have expected a PRADA fragrance or some kind of necklace that was too big and heavy for her thin neck. It was almost impossible to believe that a doll was gifted from her dad. An authentic one, too.

Michelle could pass the idea of her dad gifting her Barbie to boost her standards, but not some Asian hand-crafted doll that probably had more memories than her own life.

“Well, tell Mom that I said thanks,” Michelle groaned, dismissing David.

David blinked. “It’s from your father.”