Midgar High School

To Be Like

I don’t – I don’t think I get it. Look, I know I’m not the smartest kid in this school – that’s that Shera’s job, all with her preppy shirt and her raising her hand and me me me! – but it’s not like I’m dumb. I get decent enough grades. I’m acing Mr. Reeve’s math class. So why doesn’t it all add up?

To be liked. I needed to know what it took.

Yeah, I watched him. I was a goobery little freshman and he was already on Varsity and he just was so freaking cool with the hair and the attitude and I just figured hey, that’s what I want. I admired him. And so I went for football, I spiked my hair, I watched him. I figured I’d learn from the master just what it took to be cool.

To be like him. I decided that was it.

The key, apparently, is not to like anyone else. I watch him, all the time. He picks on the little ones, the shy ones, the dorks who play their card games in the library and bond together. He picks on the loud ones. He picks on teachers. Keeps them all in his thrall – all except that Reno kid, who just keeps talking back. And then he just hits harder.

And I’ve learned that too. I’m mean to everyone, now. It’s like a reflex – hit them, hit them before they can hit me. At this point, Yuffie’s the only one who will call me on it. Nobody else will look me in the eye.

To be liked by him: I wanted this one, I wanted it badly.

But I’m not really his friend at all. I appear to be, but on the inside, I’m not. I know that. Him being with me is like looking in a mirror. A broken one. One that’s not too sure of its reflection anyway.

I admired him. I never liked him.

Because I’m not. I’m not mean to everyone on the inside. It’s not what I really think, at all. Yesterday I even sat with that Tifa girl at lunch, the one who wears the long black stuff and is always carrying around that scrappy sketchbook. He never would have done that, but he was too busy hitting kids in the library to see me. She’s actually really pretty, if you can get past all that messenger of the damned stuff I really don’t understand. And: she was nice. I liked her.

And look at that Zack kid. Biggest loser I ever saw – he’s nice to everybody, even Professor Snape – and yet, he looks so – happy. Maybe you’re not a loser if you like everybody, because everybody likes you?

I am like…

I’m trying to fit in here. But I think I’m trying to squeeze myself into a crack that’s already full, that’s too small for me, that’s the wrong shape. Earth to Strife: Square peg in round hole. Retry or Quit?

I don’t think I actually like him. And I don’t think he actually likes me. I’m just there to be his second, I think. To have girls land on me so that he doesn’t mess up his hair.

I’m not sure what I am. I feel like a carbon copy, like a clone. Like there are two voices inside my head. One is telling me to be cool at all costs because that’s the key: to be like him.

But the other voice … wants to know how someone can be so cool if nobody in the school actually likes him.

To be like him. To like him. To be liked by him. To be liked. My English becomes confused, Ms Scarlet. Please diagram my sentence. Please tell me what I mean.

I don’t know what I’m like any more. I don’t know what I like. But I think – I might know what I want. And it’s not to be admired. Only to be liked – to be like me.