Cecily is telling me a story, some anecdote about how she once found a cockroach in a jar of peanut butter or how she kayaked around Maui last summer or how the guy in the ranch next to hers is so obviously (OBVIOUSLY! she smacks together pink lipsticky lips) in love with her.
I nod appreciatively and tsk tsk at the appropriate intervals, legs slung over the bed, face set into a friendly but noncommittal expression. This is playing out disgustingly like a teen sitcom – I am the cooperative, pig-tailed friend of the quirky, boppity, well-dressed, relatable Cecily. I doggedly accompany her through the linoleum-paved halls of a generic high school, armed with poorly-delivered knock-knock jokes and pop culture references. We paint each other’s toenails, hate our third period science teacher, frequently roll our eyes, swoon over the jock-who-already-has-girlfriend, cannot open our lockers, design our own clothes, speak with improper enunciation, tap dance, compete against each other in the class presidential elections (before eventually losing to some bucktoothed third party) and fervently drink the juice of whatever beverage company is sponsoring the show.
Now I just need to find a good male third wheel. Someone short. Named something you’d call a dog (Elmo?). Preferably with an odd hairdo, so Cecily and I and other minor cast members (eclectic vice principals/demonic siblings/parakeets) can continually poke fun at it for the two or three seasons the show will run. Against the weirdest situations and the evilest of adolescent villains (CHEERLEADER! RUN!) the three of us emerge victorious, though frequently coated in some kind of weird substance (GOO! FLOUR!) to provide hilarity!
TEEN DRAMA SHOWBIZ, guys. It’s a realistic portrayal of the life of an adolescent. Except, you know, minus the life part.
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