The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Breaks Down The Winning Submission From The Buzz’s Campus-Wide Fiction Contest, 2022. Written by Yoko Zhu Graphics and Design by Tamar Ponte
She takes her coffee with artificial sweetener and settles on a single boiled egg. The employee cuts it in half, divides the hard yolk, dashes red pepper on it, then hands her back the plate. Mel eats it with her fingers, nibbling at her lunch, making the most out of a tiny thing. She follows the nutritional plan Erica typed up for her. Simply looking at the list with its caveats and mathematical buzzwords like deficit and macronutrients wears her out. Erica, with her woodland deer frame and long limbs, moves through the world with a serpentine ease. It’s Erica who Mel emulates, but always finds herself falling short. Between sips of coffee, Mel writes her self-hatred in an overly bombast poem. It’s not very good, but she doesn’t expect it to be. Once in a while, she allows herself to fall short; it makes herself feel better when she’s accomplished a significantly impressive piece. From her peripheral vision, a stranger sits down across from her. It’s a small table, the kind where you have to be mindful that your knees don’t bump into the other person’s. Mel sneaks glances at him. His hair is onyx ink spilled on a table, aglow in the sun’s light. The stranger’s vacant gaze is drawn to the window, observing for the sake of observing, analyzing nothing in particular. He was the kind of man Erica would’ve devoured instantly, possessing a stark beauty that made everyone else seem flat, dull. She’s certain she’s amalgamated with all the East Asian girls he’s ever seen, fused into one monolith, because that’s how Mel always
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