A/N: Wow. Marissa turned out a lot more sinister than I thought she'd be when I started writing this. Who knew?
***
Marissa's smarter than she looks.
Truth be told, that's not difficult. Marissa knows she's pretty – not beautiful, certainly, as her features are just a bit too sharp for conventional beauty; but she's got the Girl Next Door market absolutely cornered. She doesn't appear too intelligent, too threatening. All-American, button-nose, big-eyed, Sandra Bullock-esque, endearingly awkward, carefree… these are the adjectives that have been used to describe her for as long as she can remember.
And she can't remember not being pretty. Her earliest memory, in fact, is of winning the Beautiful Baby pageant and starring in a Gerber commercial. After that her mother tried for years to interest her in acting; dragged her to classes and auditions for commercials and movies. And always, always, Marissa was brushed and combed and starched and pressed and immaculately, absolutely, undeniably pretty.
A casting director once said she looked 'coltish', with her long skinny limbs. That's exactly how she felt: curried and shining like China on a show day.
She hated every minute.
For a while she tried hard not to be pretty. She stopped wearing dresses; would, in fact, kick and scream and cry if she wasn't allowed to wear pants, despite the fact that she was really too old to be throwing tantrums. She abandoned Barbie and Ken to the bottom of her toy chest and started running around outside instead, rolling in the dirt and coming home covered in grass stains. And in a last-ditch effort to ruin her looks, she took scissors to her hair and tried to copy the hairstyles of the boys in her class.
Then her mother took her to the salon and she ended up with an adorable pixie cut and she looked even prettier than ever.
So, by the time she was 10, Marissa had resigned herself to a life of prettiness.
It wasn't all that bad, really. Being pretty meant she didn't have to pay as much attention in class. She didn't get in trouble as often, even though she played more practical jokes than most of the boys. She was automatically popular. And of course she was the first girl in her fifth-grade class to get a boyfriend.
A boyfriend who was, it turned out, exactly as dumb as he looked, because six years later he still hadn't figured out that it was all an elaborate cover.
Marissa's starting to reevaluate her earlier rejection of a career in the movies. Turns out she's a pretty good actress after all.
Either that, or everyone around her is incredibly stupid.
Because no one, not Luke, not Ryan, not even Summer – absolutely no one gets it. They don't understand that they're all just a part of the mask, the costume. The boyfriend, the best friend, the tempting bad boy: if Marissa's life were a movie, their roles would come straight from Central Casting.
Hell, Marissa's life practically is a movie. "The California Princess" or something like that. A low-budget rip-off of some Audrey Hepburn classic. With her father gone she's even got the requisite rough patch. And now, like the heroine in any romantic comedy, she'll struggle through adversity and emerge, lip gloss still un-smudged, glittering and wholesome and glowingly in love.
Marissa is fucking tired of being wholesome.
And she's certainly never been in love.
Luke? Luke is a joke. Luke is practically a Neanderthal. Luke seems to think that it's normal for her to lie there, basically unresponsive, while he's kissing her.
Luke is so boring that she sometimes does her physics homework in her head while they're making out.
And Ryan? Well, Ryan's better than Luke, at least. She likes that he's shorter than her; it gives her a feeling of power that she doesn't really feel with Luke. Not that she shows it – she plays the harmless girl with Ryan, too, and he eats it up just like everybody else. He may be new and different, but his reactions are old hat. He does alleviate the boredom most of the time, though she certainly hasn't gone so far as to think about him when she's with Luke.
She has thought about Summer when she's with Luke.
Only once, of course. It was too weird; Luke was too big, too heavy, too muscled, and he smelled all wrong, and it ruined the fantasy. It's much nicer to think about Summer when she locks herself into the bathroom with a waterproof vibrator and plenty of batteries.
Now that she really thinks about it, Summer may not be quite as stupid as the rest of them. Sure, she hasn't figured out Marissa's little secret yet – that's to be expected. But recently, she's been acting like she'd like to rewrite the script a little. Play a different role. Marissa's noticed the lunches, the lingerie, Summer's hands low and warm on her back for just a second too long. And she's certainly noticed the way Summer's breasts press against the lace of her bra when she takes her top off.
And if Marissa's not mistaken, none of that is accidental. Or at all innocent, even though Summer's still playing the ingénue. That's okay; Marissa understands the need to play a role. It's safer to hide behind a harmless façade while you figure out what the other person wants. Better to seem naïve while you tease apart their words and decide exactly how to play them. Marissa's been doing the same thing, because it's her movie. Obviously any script rewrites are going to need her final approval.
But maybe today Marissa will finally peel back her pristine mask and let the dirt underneath show through. And she'll peel back Summer's along with it. Summer has been looking a little too wholesome these days.
Marissa doesn't look like she's good at corruption. But she is.
