Killing Kelsey Cooper

First things first: I don't really exist.

Or rather, I didn't until about...three months ago? Yeah, yeah...it was three months more or less, because it was in August that I decided I was sick to death of Kelsey Cooper (even the name is annoying, as I think you'll agree; so bland, so white bread, topped off with alliteration, which I’ve always found cloying) and suddenly realized that I would have to get rid of her.

So I did.

Oh, not right away. Don't be silly. Something like this can’t be rushed into. It requires planning and preparation. That's just common sense; I mean, anything worth doing is worth doing well. And I flatter myself that I did do it well. And everything went just swell for quite awhile, better even than I had hoped. Until the roof caved in.

God, I'm babbling, aren't I? That's so me. I go off on tangents and lose my focus, and what really kills me is that Kelsey always did that, too. It’s like I can’t be rid of her, even now.

Listen, maybe the best thing for me to do is just tell it to you the way it happened. We'll just pretend that I can remember the events and things that various people said exactly, even though of course we both realize that's impossible. Just work with me, okay?

You're in? Awesome. So here we go: It's the end of summer vacation, that part of it where you're really secretly sick to death of summer vacation and also not so secretly dreading going back to school. It really doesn't help that all the adults in your life tell you over and over how damned happy you're supposed to be living "the best years of your life" when they clearly don't remember those years at all, or they wouldn't say that.

Like, really? You want to be a 15-years-old again? With zits and braces and glasses and not enough money for all the stuff the other girls have? I mean, not all the other girls, but the popular ones. And having finished freshman year and realizing you've got another three years of this crap and oh yeah, at the end of all that is having to figure out what to do and be for the rest of your life? Yeah, super fun. Sure.

Oops. Tangent.

Okay, start again.

It was August. Brown grass, the first few leaves on the trees just beginning to turn yellow. Hot. Dry. Nothing I planned to do had actually worked out the way I wanted. The summer job I’d hoped to get even though technically I can’t work until I’m 16 hadn’t materialized. I got a really ugly haircut. I not only didn’t lose the ten pounds I had promised myself to lose, I gained three. I felt like my real life wouldn’t actually begin until I lost those ten pounds. You know? Whenever I pictured myself in the future, it was always Slim Me, Confident Me. The Me Without Glasses and Braces and a Super Ugly Haircut.

And now it’s too late. It’s nearly time to go back to school, back into the sausage factory, back to waking up crazy early and the bus ride and sitting in class and taking standardized tests and then having hours of homework to do once I get home. No time for self-improvement, no energy for anything unrelated to school. I began to feel the first stirrings of panic as the days ahead unspooled before me in my mind, each one exactly the same as the others. Trapped.

“Yeah, I know it sucks that summer break is practically over, but what can we do? It’s like this every year,” my friend Madeline said after I’d bitched her ear off for awhile. Most girls named Madeline go by Maddie (or, God help us, Maddi), but Madeline insisted on going by her full name, which is probably one reason we were friends.

“I’m just venting,” I sulked, a little put out to not receive any sympathy and also realizing I was being kind of a jerk, which didn’t improve my mood. “I mean, who says we can’t do anything about it? That’s what’s pissing me off, the feeling that I can’t DO anything about my own life.”

“Well okay, I mean, what do you propose to do?” Madeline asked. “Quit school? We can’t support ourselves. We can’t even drive!”

“I know, I know,” I said around a mouthful of knuckle (I gnaw on my knuckles sometimes when I’m frustrated). “Don’t remind me.”

“So?” She just looked at me and waited, eyes wide.

Unable to come up with anything, I shrugged.

“So I mean...until we can support ourselves, we’ve got to do what our parents want us to do.”

“I know all that! I’m not talking about school, it’s not about school. It’s about...ugh. I’m just so sick of myself.”

“What do you mean?” Madeline asked, now looking at me tentatively. Almost...alarmed.

“Don’t look like that,” I said.

“No, but what did you mean, really? You wouldn’t…”

“Madeline! No. God, no.”

“Okay, good.”

“God!”

“Okay, I just had to ask.”

“So you asked and I answered. I don’t want to die. I have no interest in dying. None.”

“Good.”

“I just...don’t want to be me anymore.”

“Okay, well...I think I get that.”

“You do?”

“Sure.” Madeline shrugged, looked down at her fingers, where she was vigorously peeling away her nail polish. She can’t keep a manicure longer than two days. “I...feel that way sometimes.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, sure. Of course.”

“That’s like...really weird.”

Madeline stopped peeling Passionflower Pink from her fingernails and turned her eyes to mine. “Okay, wow. That’s just...wow!”

“What?”

“Thanks a lot. I said I understood why you’d feel that way and then you –”

“But that’s totally different. I’m just dumb old me and you’re...you.” It really made no sense at all once I heard myself say it. “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Madeline had taken a breath to yell at me some more, but as I apologized she let it all out and I knew I was forgiven.

Much later, in bed waiting for sleep to come, I recalled our conversation and kept coming back again and again to the moment when I said out loud how sick to death I was of myself. I realized fully – maybe for the first time – just how true it was.

Something had to change. If it didn’t...I was afraid even to finish the thought.

My bedroom door cracked open and Mom was silhouetted in the hall light. She whispered in case I was asleep.

“Sweetie?”

“Mmm?”

“So you are still up. Having trouble sleeping again?”

“Mmm.”

“Aw, I’m sorry, baby. Anything I can do?”

“Nope. I think I’m gonna listen to my meditation app for awhile. Hopefully that’ll do the trick.”

“Okay. Sweet dreams, Kelsey.” She air-kissed me from the door and I caught it with my hand. We do dumb stuff like that. I like it.

As she closed my door again, I rolled over onto my side and grabbed my phone. I wasn’t opening any meditation app, though. I was writing down what had just come to me in a flash: that for anything to change, I would have to take drastic action.

I opened a document and began outlining my plan to get rid of my old self so I could make way for my new self. I – unwisely, in retrospect - titled it Killing Kelsey Cooper.