Lailah, with her thickly drawn eyebrows and mascara smudges, with her organized caramel colored hair, is looking for someone. Lailah slides out of a midnight blue Tesla, runs to her classes with stray papers in her arms, does her homework in the final minutes before it’s due, tells everyone your secrets.

Lailah with her revealing top and her news of the day, rushes to tell you the gossip she’s stolen. Lailah, calls your mom about a joke you didn’t mean, tells the principal about a joke you didn’t mean, texts your landline about a joke you didn’t mean, is looking for someone to pay attention to her. Lailah, worrying about your future, following you into the bathroom with her I care about yous, makes you to dig your fingernails into the palm of your hand. Desperate to be Instagram famous, Lailah looks into your phone’s camera and strikes a pose. Spoiled milk the color and the consistency of scrambled egg slips down her throat and she tries to swallow. Lailah of the diss track about everyone she knows and the sad songs about what she could’ve said to the older guys she used to know, passes you a brand new eyeshadow palette, that you know is shoplifted, under the table in English class one day, and thanks you for being her friend.

Lailah and her binging and restraining, stops herself from sending her third text to her

ex-boyfriend. Her loud text alert cuts through the silence of the music room where we

hang out and she checks, but it isn’t him. Her narcotic, her phone, feeds and satisfies her need

for attention. She’ll soon send a text, check your privilege, ho, to one person in a group chat with twenty people.

Back home, Lailah cooks and eats dinner, pasta or cold cereal, alone again at the end of the long, beautiful redwood dining table, her parents each in different rooms, watching TV. Lailah, whose stomach is always empty no matter what she eats, who doesn’t complain that they’ve chosen to keep forgetting to show her parental love, goes downstairs and watches reality TV, trying to feed her hunger, while mindlessly annotating her History textbook. Lailah falls asleep to the flashing lights and the heated drama of her show, still wearing her full face of makeup.