Here is a girl. And here is another girl. The first girl has more books than friends. The second girl has even less books and even less friends. The second girl has enemies; parents who don’t understand and ex-girlfriends of boys she entertains. The first girl avoids conflict at all costs. What if these two girls are the same? But not the same? Identical and opposite all at once. What if these two girls are working towards becoming a third girl? She inherits a heart of gold from the first girl and a world of regrets from the second girl. The third girl has no say in how the actions of the first girl and the second girl will affect her. She can’t control the second girl (who can’t remember the last time she embraced her mother, but can list off a dozen pairs of hands that have handled her body like she is reciting the national anthem) and she can’t bring herself to push the first girl headfirst out of her comfort zone for she is scared of where she might land. The third girl is a pushover; a bystander to her own destiny.
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The first girl has never kissed a boy – never even thought about it. She is disgusted by her old friends who spend their time drinking vodka straight in the houses of boys they do not know. The first girl is a caution sign. She can’t hold a conversation without stumbling over words. The first girl is an old soul in a world where things feverishly go out of style. She has built four walls around herself. (Please don’t try to knock them down – she is quite comfortable there.) The first girl is daisy chains and green tea. The first girl only stays out late when she has choir rehearsal. She sleeps early and wakes early and smiles at the bus driver. Her parents love each other and she loves her parents. The first girl makes honour roll. The first girl has dreams. First girl laughs loudly. First girl is confident. She thinks she’s happy simply because she does not know what happiness is yet. The first girl is a lost promise that sits inside of the third girl. Everyone says she is bright, but she’s really just lost in the dark.
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The second girl consists of nothing bright. In fact, she spends most of her time blacked out. She kisses bottles and then she kisses boys who call her by the wrong name. The second girl does not care. She is smarter than the boys who use her and have no idea that she is using them right back. The second girl drifts through her life with a permanent scowl. The second girl knows the phone is ringing, but never answers it. Second girl is on a steady diet of vodka and street drugs. Second girl is manipulation. Her parents no longer love each other and she isn’t very fond of them either. The second girl still makes honour roll, but she cries while she does her homework. She wins the heart of every boy she comes across just so she can crush it in her delicate hands. The second girl truly believes that she was born to the wrong world. She is all too familiar with beds belonging to boys that she is not all too familiar with. The second girl wants to run away, but has nowhere to go. The second girl is a ghost inside of the third girl, haunting her from the inside out. The second girl is a ticking time bomb of self-destruction. Three. Two. One.
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Now back to the third girl. She is the one this is really about. The third girl has to face the consequences of everything the other two girls did. She is in charge of smashing the first girl to pieces and putting the second girl back together. She is the protector. She erases bad memories and highlights good ones. She misses the first girl and despises the second girl, but she does not play favourites. The third girl is still evolving. She is a little bit damaged because of the first and second girl, but she does not blame them. Everything they did was right for them at the time. The third girl is still learning to forgive. She scribbles poetry in the margins of library books and then returns them early. She is driven to the point of exceeding the speed limit. She believes. The third girl would be the first person to leap at the throat of anyone who ridicules the first and second girl. She does this simply because she knows no one else will. The third girl is hope.
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All the girls exist together. The first and second girl are torn apart and stitched back together so her arm is on her body and her brain is in the wrong head. This dis-figuration is the third girl. The first and second girls are stubborn; the third girl is stubborn to the power of three. The first and second girls are always wrong no matter how desperately they try to convince you otherwise. Sorry about that, but the third girl refuses to lie about the war taking place inside of her body. None of the girls (and I can tell you this now) are very good at steering. It doesn’t matter who takes the controls – it will always end in blood. But that’s okay. There is always room for a fourth girl.