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Come evening, Nicole was waiting for her in the vanity table mirror.
“Hallucinations, huh. Because why not? Man, this is gay as fuck. At least cutting yourself makes you dark and mysterious, this is just straightjacket material. Though a straightjacket would emphasize my tits, in a fucky S&M kinda way…” Jecka took a sip and picked at a hangnail. “Or maybe they could cast me in a remake of that one movie— I see dead people!!! or whatever.”
“Sorry, for blonde bimbos like you, the only roles we have are 'Girls Gone Wild victim' or 'unpaid extra in straight-to-DVD High School Musical ripoff'. Pick your poison.”
“Shut up! You're just jealous you can't pull off the slutty preppy emo look.”
“That's not a thing. Like, it can't be by definition.”
“It can when you're a hot multifaceted piece of ass like me!”
Jecka missed the Dr. Pepper can/impromptu ashtray on the bed, splashing soot on the fuzzy pale pink. Shit, this duvet was her favorite. Was it? Did she have a favorite… anything? What qualified anything as a "favorite", really?
“Hey, Nicole… Do you have a favorite duvet?”
Nicole blinked once and twice and thrice at that, rubbing the purple and blue merry-go-round around her neck. Jecka didn't want to look but looked anyway. “…I think your new benzo guy is scamming you big time.”
“No, seriously, I'm curious.”
“I don't have my own duvet, I just grab whatever's safe from my brother's Doritos grease and radioactive pedo jizz. Some of us are poor, you know.”
“I'm not rich either, two of my Juicy Couture sweatpants are actually knockoffs.”
“Wow, the starving child slaves from third-world countries won't know what hit them in the next Poverty Olympics.”
Perhaps these were questions better reserved for her quality counseling time with Ms. Amos—wait, no, Ames, Amos was that indie piano chick from the 90's singing about cornflakes or something. It was satisfying, unloading all kinds of navel-gazing crap on the counselor, make the bitch actually work for her salary.
Or it would be, if Jecka, you know, cared. She felt like a toddler again, sat down to learn about 1+1=2 and quacking ducks and mooing cows from Fisher Price bullshit her parents blew half their savings on and made it her problem, when all she wanted to do was fling it against the wall and scream incoherently.
Yeah, a little bit of incoherent screaming sounded delectable right now—except the Xanax was starting to ripple deep within her brain, so she had to think to keep her eyes open. She didn't have to think to raise the dying cigarette from her side, press it on her forearm, on her thighs, on her belly poking out of her tank top, which is exactly why she did it.
That last one on her belly was the cutest, Jecka decided, it kinda looked like a heart with angel wings from where she was sitting. “Hey, Nicole… Wanna lick it?”
“No thanks. Abusing you is no fun when you're already a miserable trainwreck.”
Jecka yawned. “Touché.”
The mirror went silent.
A wink before she finally fell asleep, Jecka swore her phone lit up with a notification. Come morning, her inbox was empty; she tried to feel disappointed, resentful, lonely — all those perfectly normal and healthy emotions for a brat, excuse me, a troubled young woman — and found she simply couldn't.
She turned around and smiled at y̵̤̙̜̏̾̕̚ŏ̸͖͓̪͋̒u̶̺̗̰̿͑͂ the one watching.