Laurie Flynn

People thought girls’ bodies were our deadliest weapons. They had no idea about the mountains our imaginations could move.

She wasn’t perfect, and she wasn’t pretending to be. Maybe her struggle was the opposite of mine. I fought to make myself look flawless. She fought to get people to see under the flawless veneer.

She would
have married a boy from a good family, worn headbands and pleated skirts to church. She would have been a child psychologist and a patient mother. She would have been everything I’m not. Maybe that’s why I hated her—not because she had who I wanted but because she had what I wanted, qualities I could never embody when I tried. Because she was nice, and that was its own power.