Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Girls like her don’t come to group.

Girls like her wear cigarettes like necklaces and breathe with corrupted lungs because corrupted lungs are the new black. Girls like her drop out of school and lose contact with their parents because they want to have something to talk about. Girls like her don’t come to group.

Girls like her don’t fucking come to group.

She’s sitting there with her matchstick legs and her skeleton smile and her rhinestone cigarette and she leans back in her chair and says her name is Stella Artois and she doesn’t want to be here, and God, I fucking hate her. I want to walk over to her and rip her stringy hair out of its roots and slap the smile from her face and stub out her cigarette in the hollow of her collarbone.

Shift in seat. Hold breath. Press into eyes with knuckles. Release air from lungs.

‘You haven’t said much lately, Jack,’ says Group Leader. ‘How’s life?’

I tell Group Leader that life is great.

Stella Artois says, ‘It doesn’t look that great.’ And I hear rather than see every eye in the circle turn to her; I hear rather than see her shrug and smile. ‘I mean,’ she says, ‘he looks as fucked up as me.’

Girls like her don’t come to group.