I like the narrator’s resigned tone and the way her loneliness comes across. It is particularly sad that she has a “best friend” who she barely knows and who is little more than a social alibi. You have a real talent for capturing the mundane sadness of teenagers. Admiring a boy who is already “taken” is a common enough occurrence, but you have portrayed it here in a refreshing way. The “alien girlfriend” is well sketched and Lacey’s snarkiness towards her understandable. The final sentence is spot on.

I didn’t find much to criticise, but since you said you are planning a rewrite, I’ll go through some niggles:

to eventually decide, to effectively silence me - split infinitives

twisted probable future serial killers - Seems a bit of an overkill of descriptors, also awkwardly phrased. Maybe pare it down to something like “I imagine them as future serial killers.”

I squeeze and push my way through the traffic, violating several people in the process I'm sure, to make my way to the library. - push my way/make my way; may want to avoid repetition here

she and dear Julian stop by to see a movie – It wasn’t clear to me at first that Lacey works at the cinema, I thought they were coming to her house; may want to clarify that

and it's really costing me - Not sure what that means, is it an Americanism? Costing him nerves, perhaps?

Then I catch mono from a soda can confusion at work, and I don't go to school for a week - Mononucleosis has an incubation period of four to seven weeks, so I doubt Lacey would be able to identify how she caught it. Presumably she really caught it off Julian (it’s kissing disease after all), so perhaps this is just her excuse? Anyway, I like that you use this disease, because the conversation at the end works really well, but you might want to make sure you get the medical details right.

Names: I’m not sure if you did this on purpose as some kind of oxymoron, but to my mind the name “Heather” has connotations of a sober, level-headed, practical, down-to-earth girl, exactly what this Heather is not. On the other hand, “Lacey” suggests to me a flightly, superficial personality. It seems almost as if the names should have been swapped, but maybe that is your intention. If not, I’d revise the naming of the characters.

RG Rule 10 review

Opening
It was a little disorienting at first with the ‘AP class’ cause not every school uses the same short forms (AP Attitude Problem? haha) but I worked it out by the time we got to the CGPA. I thought at first the opening was setting up for a MC Faces Big and Pressing Problem kind of plot, but it didn’t quite turn out that way. However, it did introduce Lacey’s general frame of mind, ie distracted/preoccupied without being obvious.
Character
By the second paragraphy, it’s established that Lacey is very self-aware and a little cynical about herself but she isn’t over-angsty (thank god). It took some time to realise that she’s a girl, at which point the possibility of this being about more than just friendship started increasing greatly for me. Which is not to say that it can’t happen if Lacey’s male – I think this relationship is gender-free to a certain extent. In spite of her apparent understanding of her own condition (she acknowledges that she’s physically attracted to Julian while being not completely emotionally connected to him) she nevertheless comes across as naive in the way that she misinterprets Julian’s treatment of her.
Relationship
This is the bit I like most of all and hate most of all. The build-up was at the same time very plausible, while being very sweet and totally sigh-inducing and then... came the crash. Or rather the glider-landing, cause you let us down so gently I had to read it twice to confirm that this was not going to be a happily ever after. I felt that Julian was a little mean at the end when he teased her over the kissing, but that could be me misinterpreting him as well.
Theme
You have a knack for describing alienation, and I mean that in a positive way. You don’t take the extreme of ‘the world doesn’t get me that’s why life sucks so I want to kill myself’ but the feeling of not fitting in is no less clearly or powerfully conveyed. Oh well, you left enough ambiguity in the ending to give us hope so I can still choose to be a romantic if I want...

I don't really care for how the narrative tone fits the subject matter. I feel like Lacey's voice is a bit stiff for a high school story. It's not too far over the line, it was just annoying me a bit. If you made it a bit more conversational, I think it would work really well.
I love Julian's character, though. I thought he was the best characterized in this story, even though you leave a few things about him out, he's still compelling, and a good romantic lead. His dialogue was really fun to read, and I thought you did well with making his voice stand out.
I didn't like the ending. Just didn't. It seemed rather flat to me.
Overall, good work.

You have really good skills in this type of short one-shot type story. I didn't see too many error mistakes, just a few sentences that ether were run ons or too short. The present tense kinda bugged me at first, not many stories use that, but I found that gave the story a cool aspect. I really liked this, especially the dialogue at the end. Good job!

i think its beautiful in an angsty, personal way. thanks for sharing. i fell for both characters.

I don't really know what to say. im pretty much speechless. you are amazing and everything you do is amazing

i like it because it's essentially about nothing and yet that nothingness still compelled me to read. maybe because there was the hint of something more although it never came. it has the incomplete feeling, the kind of tug of life.

not perfect but i like. i like it quite a bit, actually.

The thing I liked about this story was that it didn't end up how I wanted it to, and most likely not how everyone else wanted it to, either.

This wasn't fantasy, it was reality and I want to think that Julian is a jerk even though he seems really nice and I don't know what to think of him in the end. Same with Lacey.

That's another thing great about this. It's very human 'cause who knows how exactly to describe someone?

Good job.

I feel a bit lame reviewing all your stuff (in that I seem to have read it all in one go...) so I'm doing my favourites. And I figure your writing deserves way more reviews anyway.

I sound like such a sycophant.

So anyway, I liked this a lot. Again completely relatable. I don't think that's a word but you know what I mean.

Also. "I'm not a writer, but I like to pretend." is bollocks. Hope you're still writing.

You prolly recognize me by now. I don't know what to feel about this story xD It's like… kind of sad and kind of… whatever-ish kind of feeling.

I can relate. Her life is a little bit better than mine though...

Boo. This made me sad :(. But it was also hilarious. I'm sick, and that sucks. I have a cough, and I guess that sucks too. But me laughing sucks for everyone. Mainly because it sounds like I'm pooping. So I caused discomfort for people while reading this.

I felt guilty though, when she was going on about all her classes and GPA and blah blah blah eat a fish. Mostly because all I could think about was how I failed that math quiz, and how I had a test, and how I had homework that I SHOULD be doing. And how I was never going to make it anywhere in life because I have B's in anything that matters. And blah blah blah eat a fish.

I can relate.

Kudos :).

and here i was ignorantly thinking that this was multi-chapter. continue this please? too brilliant to leave us (me) hanging. :'(

i found this story about a year ago, and have found myself going back to it every month or so since. it's definitely up there on my list of favorite short stories, published works included. maybe that means i don't read enough, but i read a lot more than a lot of people that i know. you somehow managed to capture loneliness in under 3,0 words, and make it funny and true and even uplifting, in the way that only tragedies can be. normally, i don't bother to review unless i have something helpful - read: critical - to say about a story. and normally, i have something to say, because i'm the sort of bitter person who can only see the flaws in things. so i haven't reviewed this story in the past. but today, for the first time, i actually looked at the number of reviews for this story. i was shocked to see that it wasn't in the hundreds, as i had always assumed. and i guess it can't hurt, to know that someone somwhere out there has read something that you wrote and really, really liked it. (and, for that matter, someone somwhere is absurdly excited that this account isn't actually dead, as she had previously assumed.)

this was adorable/depressing.

i can definitely relate, especially to the part about how the fact that he finds her to be an acceptable partner makes it okay to say yes. i really hate boys sometimes.

totally adding it to my favorites.