You could ask her why she does it. If you were curious enough, enraged enough, bored enough to seek her out and demand an explanation, you could ask her why she is so eager to rip apart all she knows just for the chance to be 'even'. She wouldn't tell you, she doesn't know herself. She could explain it in words, could tell you about her life before the shining model of all that is beautiful and sleek and magazine-cover perfect appeared in her life and miraculously became her best friend. She could describe in detail how she would walk quietly as a shadow, how she would laugh behind her hand and shrink back when she was looked at, how she would stutter when she was called on in class and how the others would giggle at her when the words wouldn't come. She could explain that while being friends with a goddess was novel, it wasn't comfortable and it always made one feel younger and smaller and slower and more awkward and altogether more pathetic than they ever felt in an empty classroom during lunch break, eating a bento alone because they didn't want anyone to know that no one would sit with them willingly.

And then she could tell you about a moment where everything changes, where the tiny ball of compressed self-hatred and jealousy and anger and depression explodes, or implodes, or even both, with the resounding sound of an epiphany: the realization that this beautiful, wonderful best friend is the person you hate the most in the whole world

besides yourself

and she would say that there was the moment where everything was one giant turning point, one enormous, many path-ed crossroad, only every way eventually led straight down and she only knew that now. She wanted him, she'd tell you as earnestly as someone could while laughing and crying at the same time, she'd wanted him for only her, and for only her purpose and goals. She'd wanted him, and the other one too, suave and mysterious, and, yes, someone Juri knew and was therefore all the more attractive. And yes, she wanted, she wanted to hurt her so bad. It wasn't, she'd explain, that she was a bad girl, she wasn't hateful, she wasn't cruel. No, it wasn't her fault.

It was just that she was a weed and her friend was a rose, a stupid, gorgeous, hateful rose, and sometimes, roses needed to be

trimmed

put down level with the other flowers, because it wasn't fair for them to be any different or any more special than anyone else, but once they were down there, it would all be better, right? Right?

By this point she would be trembling, fragile arms shaking with some emotion between mirth and grief and maybe even a little triumph added to the mix. After all, she'd say, roses and weeds are fertilized with the same shit . And maybe she'd laugh that high-pitched, girly little laugh before she'd wrap her arms around herself like she was her own lover and sigh in a way that would make you think of winds in dead trees. Miracles, she'd sigh to you, believe in miracles, and do you know why? That's what it takes for them to notice you down here. I don't believe in them. Not any more.

You wouldn't be satisfied with the answer, but then again, neither is she. And that, at least, is some consolation.