My name is Candis Sadie Elizabeth Horowitz and I am the protagonist.

I promise, I'm the good guy.

That's the thing with Suburbia. People have their morals completely mixed up. You're a bad person if you don't do you homework, if you rob liquor stores, if you fuck the wrong boy. You're bad if the older people say you're bad. Mommy and Daddy tell you to go to your room and you do it because they told you to, because they're right and you're not. Mr. Teacher gives you a detention because you're a bad person, because you showed up late for class, because you talk too much. President Whats-his-face decides to put you into prison because he thought you were forming a conspiracy against his power. And so it goes. The world keeps spinning as long as it's round but I guess it's never really round at all when it's always the same circle to come back to in the first place.

But that's just the way it is.

Me, I'm just stuck here. You know. Chillin'.

There's a girl in my school, her name is Penelope and she's the antagonist. I promise, she is the real villain. You hear her name and you think of destruction. Behind smiles and compliments are snarls and fake emotions. Evil isn't what reality makes it, it's what a world of pretenders and fiction will do to you if you close your eyes for too long.

Close your eyes for too long, and you go blind.

And Penelope is so fucking blind that it's contagious. You look at her and you're supposed to think of good things. Rainbows. Butterflies. Weeping willows. You don't think of war or graveyards or severed limbs. But I do. I can see past everything. I know what evil is when I see it. And I know, wrong is not the law. Wrong is not the opposite of right. Wrong is perfection.

You just know she's the bad guy when you hear her name. Penelope. One of those kids who never wears a shirt with a stain on it and always has their shoelaces tied, one of those girls who smiles her way through good grades and eats her vegetables and has never used the phrase "fuck shit bitch fuckhead" in her entire life: girls like that are the bad ones, those are the ones you have to watch out for. And the beauty of it is that you never know that they're the bad guys until it's too late, until you notice that their faults become your backdrop and you're stuck in the background of someone else's story. Fuckheads like that, girls like Penelope, they do it purposely.

Glory is like oxygen. It can't be created, it can just be passed along so that it's shared by everyone, so that everyone can survive.

Except not everybody shares.

My dear friend, I have been stabbed with the short end of the sword. But no dagger will cut deep enough to undo years of damage, will it?

I'd known Penelope for all of her pathetically perfect life. She comes out of the womb and I have to hear about it from every place I fucking turn. The new girl on the block. She was set up for perfection even before she popped out of the damn uterus, and now look what happens.

A sponge, sucking in all the water. Saturated and sopping, the fucking sponge can do whatever the fuck it wants. And me, I'm desert dry. Sitting on my windowsill staring into the sun, hoping more than anything that I don't go blind.

You stare into the sun for too long, your eyes start to tear. You can't see. And then, you can. You can see right past it, right into the solar system. Even with a sun covered partially by a cumulus cloud, you can see past the sun into a clear, blue sky, and it gives so much more light and feeling than the sun ever could.

It's interesting. Really, it is.

From day one, it was the end. If only I could remember back to the glory days, where she never existed. I was too young then, too naive to believe that a pathetic child could take something as precious as my own value away from me.

Lives are priceless, after all. But then again, they really are worth something, if you think about it. Ten dollars for that new haircut, and everybody loves you more because you got it right the first time. Wear the right clothes, the right shoes on the right feet. We're not so much humans as we are mannequins, eventually turning to faceless dummies wearing matching outfits.

It's like Nazi Germany, except more modern. It's like Communist China, except societal standards own the government rather than the other way around.

Fucking Penelope.

I remember so long ago, the school play. I was in the fifth grade, her a meek third grader. And she gets the lead role while I'm a chorus member. I'm a tree. I'm scenery, I'm a background object that stands on the risers singing with badly tuned instruments played by charitable school faculty members. And the day the cast list went up, I went home and I cried. This hadn't been the first time she'd taken something away from me, something I wanted so dearly. I needed that role. I wanted to be the girl who danced around the stage in the nightgown, singing a lullabye, the one soloist in the entire school play. Instead, I was sitting on the edge of the stage in a home-made costume, accompanied by a fucking piano.

I don't need help from anybody. No piano in the world is necessary for me if they want me to get the right tune, the right song.

Nothing is right these days.

She'd come up to me on the bus, her arm reaching for my shoulder that horrid day of casting. With the wisdom of a third grader, she fucking dared to ask me what was wrong.

And I looked at her square in the eye and said: "Get the hell away from me, you stupid loser." Back in those days, where "heck" was the replacement for every other bad word, she just gasped and glowered slightly, tears in her eyes.

"Come on Candis, tell me what's the matter!" she exclaimed.

"I think you know, you jerk."

"What?" she asked, bewildered. Perfection doesn't account for stupidity. "I'm going to tell Mom."

That dumb girl, that thief of identity and all feeling, she gets off at the bus stop and runs to her house, trying not to let the tears show, trying not to let anyone else acknowledge the fact that she'd been shot down by an older girl on the bus. I knew that I was better than her, I knew that in the end, I was the one truly above her. And now, she was crying. Oh, it felt so sweet to know that I could cause the pain in that girl's glimmering eyes.

Imagine the most beautiful girl you have ever seen, and that's Penelope. Now, imagine her with a giant red X permanently inked across her face, and that's how I see her.

The best I could do for the following years was to act as if she never existed.

And she always tried to make a relationship with me. She would dare to talk to me, eye me, whisper something but I would always turn away. I did not associate myself with people like her. And yet she never quit, which I found strange. That crazy girl.

Interesting enough, nobody ever thought that I was right when it came to Penelope. Everybody disagreed. They said she was something genuinely great. They said I was jealous.

Ha. Jealousy. I don't even know what that is.

Nobody ever believed me either. I always argued that she was the crazy one, but everyone else insisted that it was me. My mother paid for therapy for me at a local psychiatric office, hoping that I could get over my sick obsession and hatred of that girl. It wasn't until years later that people began to see that I was right all along.

I was in my junior year, her, a freshman. And very rarely does that girl ever take the bus, what with her after school activities and all. As for me, I usually had better things to do after school. Often, I wouldn't come home until late at night, not bothering to do my homework. What did it matter? In my great relief, our school was big enough that I hardly got to see her in school. As for out of school, well, despite the fact that we lived close to each other, our coming home late meant less interaction. I hardly saw her, the way that I liked it. My mother seemed to worry about me, but even worse, she began to worry about Penelope more. It was strange to think of my own mother valuing the attention of another girl more than me, her oldest daughter. After all, I saw myself as an only child. I was supposed to be spoiled rotten and appreciated beyond belief. But no, she chose to devote her sympathies away from me and towards the girl I hated so much.

On the few days that we happened to take the same bus during the school year, it was always the same routine. I would get on, sitting towards the back, my headphones blasting and my eyes closed. She would take a seat in the very front, chatting with her friends and flashing her perfect smile to any other stranger that caught her eye, complimenting them on their fucking T-shirt. And we would get off the bus at the same stop. She would get off the bus first, muttering a "thank-you" to the bus driver and then walking home. Me, I would follow, getting off the bus with my school bag and wandering off to my house and locking myself in my room before any interaction with my family members could distract me from whatever my current interest was.

And then there was a snow day. All after-school activities were canceled and all students were forced to take the buses home due to the severity of the winter storm. Our bus was packed with random passengers, and I was more than thankful to get off the bus. Apparently, Penelope was too because she skipped off the bus silently, quickly walking to her house.

But then, she stopped. She stood on her driveway and slowly turned around, gasping at the bus that was slowly pulling away.

"Wait!" she screamed, but it was too late. The bus had pulled away from the stop and was continuing on the route. She continued to scream, standing stationary in the driveway: "Wait! Wait! Wait!"

My mother noticed the commotion and came outside to investigate the screaming girl. She was crying now. Penelope was fucking crying, and it wasn't even my fault.

"What is it, dear?" my mother asked, and Penelope grimaced, her tears still flowing, and turned to face my mother.

"I...I didn't get to say goodbye!" she shrieked, and she collapsed into hysterics, with her beauty and the red X that I had mentally programmed onto her face now framed in the falling snow.

My mother stood there, half concerned and half confused. Her mouth was open, gaping at the hysterical girl lying in the snow beneath her.

"Honey, what are you talking about? What happened?" She kneeled down next to Penelope, her knees getting soaked upon contact with the ground.

"The bus driver," Penelope sobbed. "I...I didn't get to say goodbye. I say goodbye to him every day and today I forgot. I feel so horrible!" Her tears came more quickly now as she broke into heaving sobs. I was too amused to walk inside, despite the bitter cold of the falling snow.

My mother and I stood there for a full minute, shivering in the cold and waiting to see what Penelope would say next. She said nothing. All she had to offer were heavy sobs and discouraged moans. I don't think I'd been more excited in my entire life. Here was Perfect Penelope, sporting an anxiety attack. I was almost proud of her.

Finally, the silence was broken by my mother, who blatantly stuttered: "Come on, honey, let's get you inside." Penelope was swiftly dragged away into her home, the door closing behind her.

The next few days involved no potential to avoid Penelope considering she hadn't gone to school. Every day for the rest of the week, she sat locked inside her room, sobbing still over her bad karma. God forbid perfection doesn't get to say good-bye to its transportation. But this was exactly the case. Penelope cried her eyes out continuously inside her bedroom while I marveled silently at her weakness. Yes! Penelope had grown into a mad-woman! (Actually, it was more like a mad-girl, considering she was nowhere near mature enough to be considered a woman. She was, after all, merely a teenager.) The strange nature of the situation did not bother me at all. Who was I to argue about the insane reasoning behind Perfection's tears?

Perfection is an element that is not supposed to cry. With every tear that fell from Penelope's eye, I felt closer to some sort of Enlightenment. This was bliss. Seeing something crafted so beautifully becoming completely destroyed by self-implied actions, well, that was just like finding intricate beauty inside a cardboard box. I was content.

Friday, I returned home from school and found my mother in the kitchen, putting the dishes away. I dropped my books in the closet next to the front door and joined my mom in the kitchen, smiling falsely as I helped her empty out the dishwasher.

"Mom," I asked suddenly, breaking the peaceful silence, "what do you think is wrong with Penelope?"

My mother shook her head, shuddering slightly. "I don't know, hun. I really don't. She must be under some psychological stress. I think she needs to see a psychiatrist of some sort, but she won't move from her bed or leave the house. I don't know what to do." She proceeded to pick up a dishtowel and intensely wipe down one of the cups that had been lying in the sink.

"It's not your business to do anything," I reminded her. "It's hers."

"She's a teenager, not an adult. And she's never acted like this before! And over what? Not being able to say goodbye to a smelly bus driver at the end of a school day? This doesn't make any sense!" And she flung the dishtowel she was using to dry one of the cups at the counter, which slid across it before falling off onto the floor on the other side.

"I'll talk to her," I suggested, not entirely sure where I was going with it. I was almost excited at the prospect of speaking to this girl for the first time in years. It was quite an opportunity. I honestly wished I hadn't said anything.

Moments later, I found myself visiting Penelope's bedroom. What a strange and uplifting feeling. The room was a mess and a huddled mass of blankets on the middle of the un-made bed appeared to be a teenage girl, crying. Oh, if there was a Heaven, this room was surely the place to be. Pictures of her and her friends, normally showing a batch of smiling faces, were turned down to face the tops of the night-stands. Even her birth notice, normally reading: "Penelope Cassandra Horowitz" was turned down as well. I found myself laughing on the inside when I saw the laundry piled up in the corner of her room, undergarments in plain sight on top of the pile. I was giddy.

"Hey," I said silently. She responded with a sniffle. It was a good start. "What the fuck is up with you?"

She sniffled again, then said something that I couldn't quite register. It may have been an exasperated groan or another bout of crying, or maybe even actual English words disguised by a tightened throat and a stuffed nose.

For a moment, neither of us spoke, then:

"Seriously. What the fuck is up with you?"

"What's up with me?" she managed to squeak out. "What about you? You haven't directly spoken to me in years. You talk about me all the time. Why are you doing this to me?"

"Why do you care?" I shot back. "What are you, obsessed with me, you sicko?"

"That doesn't make sense!" she screeched. "If I can't get anything right with you, the least I can do is make things right with other people, and I failed. I disappointed that bus driver. I say good-bye to him every day and he's going to be upset that I didn't do it the other day."

"That bus driver does crack when he's not on duty," I told her. I didn't think I was lying, but it was certainly possible that I wasn't being completely honest. "Seriously, I don't know what you're all so caught up about."

It was then that I got a strangely empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Here was this girl sitting before me, now reasonably less-than perfect. On one hand, I had never felt better in my entire life. It was as if my life had finally fulfilled itself. It was as if I had reached Enlightenment in my own, ironic way. But at the same time, I was lost. Penelope was my excuse, was the brunt of my hatred. Here she was, a huddled mass of nothingness and over-reacting emotions, and what was I? I was nothing without her hatred. It was a strange and impulsive moment for me. She had to go back. She had to go back to being perfect, or my life would mean nothing. I knew it right then and there.

"Penelope!" I snapped, my eyes widening at the prospect. My head was back into gear. Imagine: Perfect Penelope, healed my none other than I, Candis Sadie Elizabeth Horowitz. It would be an outrage. After all, no one would expect me to be the one to bring her back. It was a moment the moment of truth. I, perhaps, would be the one to be bathed in light by my peers instead of this pathetic child. I could save her. It was genius. Not only would I be able to regain my purpose or existence, but I could receive the glory and fortune I could only dream about anytime Penelope strutted down the street holding a brand new trophy for god-knows-what. I was giddy again, but for a completely different reason.

Maybe I would be famous. They could even make a movie about me. I felt even better than I had minutes before.

"What," she muttered.

"This isn't you," I told her, I told myself. "Get your head back into the game. Do you really think that not saying goodbye to a crack-whore like our bus driver is really going to make that much of a difference in the world? Think about it. Greetings won't compare with ending world hunger or saving the polar bears from extinction! You can do that instead. You can make up for it by doing something even greater. You're bound to be remembered, maybe not by making people feel good, but by moving on to bigger and better things!"

"I still failed," she moaned, her eyes now the only points visible from underneath her comforter. Her face dropped into her hands, covered by the blankets, so that she was then completely invisible underneath her sheets.

"You failed no one," I reminded her. "As long as the bus driver doesn't think you've failed, then you can't even think for a second that you could have failed yourself."

I noted that everything I was saying was just a fucking lie. But I hoped it was working.

"You know," she said. "You can't do this. You make me completely miserable for as long as I remember, and then as soon as I'm brought down, the first thing you want to do is make me feel better. I don't get it."

"Of course you don't," I pointed out. "You're delusional. Go back to the way you were, and you'll understand everything."

"I never understood everything. I hardly understand anything." Oh. This was news to me. Fuck.

"But people respect you," I said slowly, thinking as I spoke. "That's good enough, isn't it?"

"Is it ever?" She asked, her face peering out from underneath the blankets now. It sounded like she was beginning to cry again. "Just like that, my life became meaningless."

"Why is that? Just because you forgot to socialize with a crazy bus driver?"

"That's just it!" she screeched, her voice now raised beyond anything I'd ever heard in my entire life. "Everything I ever believed in and wanted for myself and for others was erased. And by what? By my negligence! I've never been more ashamed."

"No one cares about your shame!" I said.

"Stop yelling at me!" she cried.

"I'm not!" I whispered. God, she really must have been crazy or something. I wasn't even yelling.

She continued to sob quietly. I waited for a response of some sort, but none came.

"Listen," I started, but she interrupted me: another first, as far as I could tell.

"Get out," she whispered.

"But I-"

"Get out!" she screamed, emerging from her blanketed shell and picking up one of her pillows. She whisked it at my head, missing me by only inches. "Get out! Get out! Get out!"

I left the room, my euphoric nature slowly dissipating. Fuck.

The truth is, perfecting perfection does not guarantee success. Perfecting failure is a whole new story because you have nothing to start with, where the only way out is up. But walking out of the room, well, that was just a perfect ending itself. I could tell you that within days, Penelope would have gone back to her old self while I would have gone back to hating her. Or, perhaps, I could tell you that Penelope slowly began to wither away in her bedroom, refusing to eat until she was finally comatose and hospitalized until she was taken off life support after six years.

It doesn't matter. Perfection never really mattered anyway. Maybe it did to me, but I really don't count for much either. Welcome to the fucking world. Welcome to your own fucking death.

And welcome to life. Fuck.

My name is Candis Sadie Elizabeth Horowitz, and I swear on Penelope's life, I'm not the antagonist.