What Are Friends For?

Dear teen female protagonist,
Spending X amount of hours in your world has afforded me to speak freely. You are the WORST FRIEND EVER!!!

Hearing the story through your point of view has left me privy to your derisive and long-winded inner monologue. During which, you bemoan everyone around you including your so-called friends that you tear down at every turn while smiling in their face. You have very little interest in them, their home life and their social affiliates. Instead, you catalog them in tired and cliché stereotypes.

So you’re telling me your BFF’s only goal in life is to go shopping and get laid? Is she really so much prettier than you that you can’t see her intellectual side? If she doesn’t have one, then why are you hanging out with her? Wouldn’t that make you just as empty and shallow as she is?

Does the only male friend in your life have to be the biggest flamer on the planet or does subtlety and diversity elude you? Does the Gay Pride parade have to roll by every time he sashays through the room? Does the only ethnic person you know have to talk like a guest on Maury? Does every Goth person have to wear the entire Hot Topic inventory and have poor hygiene? Are all pretty girls bitches or sluts? Does every nerd you come across have acne and stigmatism?

Mostly, why do these friends only matter when it’s convenient for you? When some hot guy gives you the eye, you barely remember their names until someone’s life is threatened, and you can play the selfless martyr. And they don’t even complain when you fall off the face of the earth then resurface after a break up. And you get mad when they don’t throw a parade to welcome you back into the fold.

For such a world-weary, smarter-than-her-years recluse, you sure pick a lot of dumb people to hang with, and they bring nothing to the table on an intellectual or emotional level. On the same note, you scoff at the immature, reckless tomfoolery of your peers, yet you do more irresponsible shit in a single book than your entire class combined. Your hypocrisy is staggering and your loyalty depends on the weather. You’re quick to judge and berate a girl for her promiscuity, yet two chapters later your tongue is down a guy’s throat who’s not even your twu-wuv.

As vast as your vocabulary may be, you lack the basic common sense given to all God’s creatures. You preach equality and women’s liberation, yet you ditch your support system for a pretty face and washboard abs. You claim to be a good person, but you lie, manipulate, and talk trash about everyone you know.

Some readers are baffled by your convenient close calls and secretly pray for your demise. How you manage to survive the end of a book was not by your inner strength and cunning, but a stroke of luck and contrived plot manipulation.

But your knack to escape certain death doesn’t bother me. A witch’s hex, and angel’s wrath, a vampire/ werewolf’s bite is too good for you. In fact, dropping you into the lion’s exhibit at the zoo wearing a suit made of pork chops is too good for you. I rest easy in the hope that in the distant future when you least expect it, when you’re cozying up to your hot, creepy, otherworldly boyfriend, you’ll get snuffed Kill Bill style. And just like everyone on The Bride’s hit list, you have it coming.

Hugs and kisses,

Jaime