Buzzfeed, Boys, Black Magic

love potion number 9

It was two days from the solar eclipse.

I woke up with an uncontrollable eye twitch. Abby didn't notice it until after Mike had "left for work" in his office down the hall.

"Dude, you look like you're about to be committed," she said, holding a spoon of fruit loops in front of her lips.

I shrugged, nibbled my banana and felt my eyelid flutter.

"How was your night?" I asked.

"Fine," Abby said. "Sometimes I think Mike's still in love with his ex."

"Doubtful," I lied, "who'd even want to date somebody like that? Everyday she'd make you look bad."

"Well, see while he was falling asleep, I went on Buzzfeed-"

"Post-coital Buzzfeed? Really?" I felt betrayed by this admission. "They're the enemy, Abigail. Is nothing sacred?"

"You'd do it too, don't lie," she grouched, "they've poisoned your mind as much as mine."

"Look at us. We're not even women," I gestured at the Buzzfeed app open on my phone. "This isn't what women do. We are girls. Sad, squirmy little girls."

"Would you shut up for a moment," Abby dropped her spoon. It clattered against her cereal bowl.

Something about the noise silenced me.

"Now look," she grabbed my phone. "Look who's on the front page?"

There was Mike's ex-fiancé. In burgundy workout clothes that she probably actually worked out in. With calves like hers, it was highly improbable that she put on a sports bra and yoga pants just to eat Tostitos and nacho cheese dip and hate-watch Bachelor in Paradise. Pictured beside her were four equally sophisticated women, two in business suits, one in Olympic swimwear, and the last in a crop-top that only an Instagram influencer could successfully wear.

Headline: These 5 Women from this year's Forbes 30-under-30 will inspire you and also make you SO insecure (lol don't hate yourself).

"Wasn't she just on Vox?" I choked.

"She's doing a press tour," Abby said. "Listen to the first sentence of the article: 'Do I feel sorry for anybody dating these women's exes. You'll never measure up.'"

"What the fuck?" I growled.

Abby turned my phone screen again toward me. It really did say that.

"They're mocking us," I can't really describe the sheer rage I felt. "It's personal now."

"But they're not wrong," Abby said. "Like, I'll need some kind of black magic love potion to compete against the memory of that. Do you see her calves?"

I wanted to say that life wasn't a competition. That even though Mike's ex was perfect in a lot of ways, Abby was perfect in just as many. And that the only person who was putting Abby in competition with the ex was Abby. But it appeared, somehow, that Mike's ex had won Buzzfeed's favor. And in the blood-lusting, bitter mood of the year, I began to wonder if the be-yourself-be-kind-love-others messages I had heard so often repeated in my youth applied to this strange new world.

Perhaps good things could only be won through black magic, after all.

***

"Niacin," Janice pointed at my eye. I flinched.

"What?" I pushed her long, French-manicured claw away from my face. I was too young to lose an eyeball. That would really ruin my lunch break.

"You need vitamin B3," she said, and scoffed at my hot pocket. "You eat all this garbage and yet you're starved. Starved of nutrients. That's what all this obesity is. People starving."