The cigarette dangled from her slim fingers, elegant.  Smoke filled the air between us, her cherry frosted lips parted, calling my name in a smooth melody. I stuttered, breathless. It seemed impossible that she could know the name of someone like me.  “Aria,” she called to me, her green eyes bored into me, flints of ice the precise color of springtime. The name sounded good coming from her; I always thought I was much too plain for its exotic flavor. Introductions were always awkward—the forgettable girl with the unforgettable name. Hearing it from her then made me wish that it was hers instead.  Her deep, husky tone snapped me back to the present. “Can you hear me?” she asked, flicking ash from the tip of her cigarette. I nodded, unable to speak. A dark speck of ash muddied her flawless skin, and I ached to brush it away. “I’m Natalie.” She held out a hand, which was just as graceful as the rest of her. The introduction was completely unnecessary of course—everyone knew about Natalie. She was the very definition of teenage popularity—loved by those who are in awe of her beauty, hated by those who are jealous of it. I knew that she and I were in different worlds and that I could never hope to belong in the wealth-fueled bubble of carelessness and fame that the striking people of the world belong to. Trying to fit in with them could only resort in a certain and shatteringly delicious rejection. I reached out to take her hand.
That summer was the best that I ever had. Somehow I had been granted a backstage pass to the group of gorgeous individuals known as the popular. Natalie and I spent long days  swimming in the icy ocean thirty minutes outside of town and drinking coffee at a local cafe. We spent nights smoking and drinking with her slightly less flawless friends, gazing up at the stars or attending obnoxiously loud parties. I could never figure out how to smoke quite like they did. When they smoked, it looked sexy, it looked cool. But as much as I tried, as much as I studied their casually nonchalant demeanors, so determined to never let anything drag them down, the more confused I got. This kind of self-confidence had to be inborn—I couldn’t smoke those damn cigarettes like they did because I simply wasn’t designed like they were. That had to be the reason. I accepted that I could never be as good as them, because it was in my nature to be inferior. Of course, Natalie had another explanation. She always did. That girl was always right too; I doubt she ever said a stupid thing in her life. How could she? She was perfection.
I told her my theory on a night at the end of the summer when it was just the two of us. She looked at me with those flat, hard eyes and told me something that I couldn’t quite believe. “They’re just as self-conscious as you are.”  I shook my head in disbelief. She nodded and sighed, taking a swig from the bottle of Absolut in her hand, “Every one of them is constantly thinking about how to act, how to better retain their popularity. What you see is all a pathetic act. None of that is inborn. They are entirely consumed with the prospect of looking better than anyone else, even when in reality they are just the same as anyone else.” She let out a disgusted laugh and something sinister slithered behind her emerald eyes. “I guess they are stunning, but those bitches are as empty and shallow as I am.” I nod even though I can hardly believe what she is saying. Natalie took another long drink and said, “Every day I look in the mirror and feel a certain repulsion toward the person I see in the mirror. Aria, I’ve been just as awful as the rest of them. I’ve manipulated people, I’ve betrayed my closest friends, I’ve just done the most foul things in order to keep up my image. It took me eighteen years to figure out how much bull s*** all of this is. What I didn’t realize till now is that the more I’ve played the part, the more I’ve destroyed myself. ” Her dark hair was slowly falling out of its ponytail, and I realized it was perhaps the first time I’d seen her look anything but perfect. Suddenly, she grabbed my shoulders and glared at me fiercely, the scent of alcohol strong on her cool breath. Her trademark blood-red lips are smudged and faded. The cracked flesh parted as she told me something that I won’t forget till the day I die. “Don’t ever be like me.”
That night as I laid in my bed, I mulled over everything she had told me. It didn’t take me long to decide that everything she said was, if not a lie, than irrelevant. I could simply not imagine a door that could not be opened by being as pretty, as graceful as all of them. Even if it was an act, so be it. Her warning flashed in my mind. I disregarded it just as quickly. Of course I’d be like her. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough to live with untouchable. Maybe I was. Maybe somehow, I could learn how to act too. I would show her.
Around six our months later, I was excited to show Natalie what I had learned from her and her friends. We hadn’t talked at all in the past month, and she hadn’t been around any of our usual spots. She tried to call me a few times, but I was too disappointed in her to answer. Natalie had been all I wanted to be, until I discovered that she was a terrible actor who cracked underneath the spotlight. I went to see her to make amends, to try to tie up loose ends. At least that’s what I told myself. I knew, deep-down that I went there to gloat. When I pulled up to her curb, I checked my lipstick in a brand-new compact. The glossy red lipstick looked perfect. Satisfied, I walked up her drive and knocked on her door. No one answered, but her car was in the driveway. I sighed in annoyance and pushed open the door. I took the long, elegant staircase two at a time, automatically heading towards to second door on the left. As I walked, I remembered countless sleepovers and hilariously dirty Never Have I Ever sessions. Maybe, just maybe, we could have the again. I paused at her door, and then pushed it open, desperate to see envy in those green pools.
The suicide shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did. Seeing her hanging there, paler than ever before, struck a chord deep within me. I knelt down on that plush white carpet and cried for god knows how long. My tears created tracks in the face I had so carefully applied, but for once I didn’t care. For a single moment, as I stared at my old friend, hanging there like a rag doll, I realized what she had been trying to tell me on that summer night so long ago. She had drowned in a world of superficiality, and none of us bothered to save her. I saw the monsters that we all were, and I had to run to the bathroom to throw up, for once not on purpose. I stared at my reflection, and I imagined I heard her voice. “Don’t ever be like me.” I failed. I knew I would, but I still tried to. I lost myself as easily as Natalie played her role.  I wandered drunkenly out of the bathroom and glanced around her room, looking for something that she had once showed me at three in the morning. I dragged myself over to her nightstand and grasped the smooth, cold black handle. I raised the gun to my mouth as my eyes flick once more to the shell of a girl I had once known. The cigarette still dangles from her lank fingers.