Page 44 - The World's Best Boyfriend

how beautiful you are. A hard-on in the pants of a boy you barely know isn’t
appreciation.
But I’m not beautiful. Look at me! I’m ugly and fat and undesirable.

You’re not ugly! Looks aren’t the only thing.
No, I’m ugly! Look at the other girls from school, their thin, shapely legs, and
their perfect complexions. They are the ones who get stared at, not me, no matter

what I do. Look at my skin! No one will ever look beyond that. I’m fat and I’m
ugly.
Shut up. It doesn’t matter. At least you’re not dumb like the other girls.

You’re a national-level debater. No one can touch you there. You’re funny and
you’re smart.
But all that makes me a boy, not a beautiful, desirable girl, and that’s what I’m

trying to say. Why do you think I was leading that guy on to strip? Wanting to
know if I can turn him on? Wanting to know if I can turn anyone on? Because it
makes me feel good, it makes me feel wanted.

So do you feel better now?
No. I don’t know.
Then don’t do it again.

I might.
There will be someone.
There won’t be anyone. Do you want me to remind you what happened the

last time there was someone? He called me the ugliest girl in the world.
Forget him. It’s been a century since then.
Feels like yesterday.

Shut up.
Shut up.
She deleted Sameer from her Skype list and texted him that her parents got to

know about their little escapade and they would get him jailed if he ever tried to
contact her again. She pulled the blanket over herself and lay there staring at the
trophies she had won in the past few years, thinking of all the moments she had

decimated her fellow competitors, mostly boys, razed them to the ground,
insulting them and questioning their intelligence, and yet here she was, wishing
that she would be fairer, more beautiful, skinnier—she would trade all the

trophies, all the little and massive victories over those boys, for just one of them
to come to her and tell her that she’s beautiful.