The story of my life is, to put it not-so-simply, Skye.

I haven’t talked to Skye since graduation (which she refused to walk at), and last I heard she was on more drugs than I could count and was planning on moving to Chicago with her boyfriend of a few months, where they’d live off his salary as a construction worker and she could be a tortured artist. They, of course, broke up. I’m sure she’s moved out by now and is probably living with some guy she just met. She’s destined to be a crack whore, literally.

I remembered in middle school, Susan, her and I went sledding – back in the day when she was still called Chey. Anyway, she had a steep incline up to her front door so we went sledding to pass the day. I asked if I could use her inner tube and she said no. I thought she was a bitch from that day on. Her mom scared me, too.

In 8th grade our lockers were next to each other and she had this chocolate candy that looked like rocks.

In 11th grade, when I got busted for smoking pot, my mom called her mom to tell her things she probably already knew. I had to talk to her mom, but she didn’t seem mad at me. She kept getting busted, weekly it seemed like, for drugs or drinking, but her parents never really did anything about it. Maybe that’s why she’s the way she is now.

We also had English together that year, with Mike. We did our Shakespeare skit and filmed it in one of the study rooms at the new library. Afterwards we accompanied Mike out back for a cigarette and proceeded to rip the warning labels off of the new air conditioning unit. After poking around at the scrap metal and soldered cubes (one of which is still sitting on my bookshelf), he took me on a ride and we got high, and that was the best high I ever had. On the way home, after laying in the grass with sober Skye (for once), he drove us home. The sky was green and everything else was yellow. It was beautiful, and still, to this day, I don’t know what I saw in him. I wanted him so much, but he was all over Skye. And I don’t know why I wanted him, because he was a swastika tattooed Nazi with zero hygiene, but I guess I trusted him enough to not lace the drugs with anything worse, and enough to consider getting him to do a tattoo for me.

Senior year we had Creative Writing together, and it was probably the only class that she was better at than me. Now, I feel like a fool for unloading everything on her about the ex (crazy Palestinian #1). I’m sure she got sick of it just as I got sick of hearing about “her angel”. But I remember walking out of the classroom and out of the building every morning with her.

She’s beautiful only because of her ridiculous excess makeup. She’s strange and obsessive, creative and a little demented. But she’s easy, that’s for sure, which is, I’m sure, what all the guys see in her. I can’t help but hate her a little bit – even when I loved her.

And she’s the perfect representation of my life. I’ve always been inferior to her, despite her having to repeat sophomore biology twice. And I always will be inferior to someone, somewhere. I want to be good enough. Maybe even the best. But someone is always better than you at something. That’s the rule.