“You look so pretty!”  Her friends tell her on Saturday night. 

She believes their sweet nothings, because she wants too. 

Full heartedly; she stands tall, shoulders back, proud. 

“Thank you” she responds. 

Party lights blare, boys come and go, she runs into the girls of the pretty committee and the cities hottest night clubs. 

She’s sweating, the first thing that’s truly her.  She is coming out, up to the surface like an ugly beach ball floating to the top of the sparkling and shimmery pool after being held down as a joke or some type of game.  

Yeah, some time of game. 

The girl goes home early, her roommates still surviving out there in the wild night.  She hops in the cab dizzily and closes the piss colored door, to the outside world, and all noise is muffled, save her erratic breathing from the struggle she just endured.

When she gets home, she closes her apartment door and staggers to the bathroom sink to where her roomate keeps her medicine hidden.  Night has come and gone, 4 am now and she stands shrivled, shoulders sagging, alone.  

She gazes at her face in the mirror, like a cake.  The makeup is the frosting.  The part everyone loves.  She removes it slowly, mechanically.  And underneath, is the sponge, the part of the dessert that we toss into the trash or to our dogs to devour under the table. 

And she stares; at her bare skin as seconds turn into minutes.  And she ponders her looks, coming to the realization that she is not pretty, not ugly, not anything but fake. 

Those friends, who told her how pretty she looked, did not say how pretty she was.  Would they?  If they knew what she really looked like, what her past held, what devilish sins she had committed.  Somehow the past doesn’t seem to matter to these piranhas.  All that matters is the here and the now and how you look and how you make those people you call friends look. 

That’s all that matters, reputation.  And if you don’t like it, then change it.  Coat yourself in makeup and smile pretty for the bright lights that have become you.  Because isn’t this who you are now?  Just another pretty fake face ruined by the popularity struggle.