In Defense of Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith
("How Could You Be Friends With Such a Mean Girl?")
ONE
The first time someone calls Karen plastic, she is inside a bathroom stall and she hears her name coming from some bitch's lips, as they call her and her two best friends cold as plastic.
She cries to Regina on the phone that night: "Why, why, why doesn't anyone like us?"
Regina says, "They do like us. They like us so much that it hurts."
The next day, Regina trips those girls in the cafeteria and the girl calls her a "bitch." Karen smiles.
TWO
Sometimes, after the Burn Book Incident, her new friends ask Gretchen why she was friends with such mean girls. Why would she do such a horrible thing?
The thing about being friends with someone who is mean, Gretchen tries to explain, is that meanness seems so much bigger in hindsight, and it is so hard to see when you are not its victim.
Meanness camouflages itself when you're living it. And they, they just saw the girl trip someone in the cafeteria or call someone a skank, but they didn't see Regina defending Karen or Gretchen.
They see Regina make fun of a girl, whereas Gretchen sees ten years' worth of sleepovers. It's so hard to walk away.
THREE
It's hard not being friends with Regina anymore, I know. Sometimes, at night, Karen has to remind herself of all the bad things, again and again and again and again. Instead of counting sheep, she counts snubs and insults and cruelties.
Sometimes though, she sees Regina in the hallway and forgets they're not friends anymore. When she smiles, Regina smiles back, and she swears it is beautiful.
FOUR
Walking out onto the football field for graduation, Karen, Regina, and Gretchen somehow end up waiting in line together. It's not alphabetic; it's just fate: these three friends brought back together again. It is awkward at first, as reuniting old friends always is. But in the hot sun, in their ugly robes, they talk like they haven't talked since kindergarten – since before magazines and insulting their own bodies and Burn Books became the ties that bound them together.
FIVE
Sometimes, most of the time, it is so hard to remember the bad. The toxicity has leaked away. It is just Karen and Regina and Gretchen, and they are not friends anymore. They would give anything to be Plastic again.