Despite what they may tell you, not all popular people are brainless.

You probably think this is a weird way to begin a letter, and you wouldn't be wrong. The thing is, I think I wrote this on a whim, which is probably why I'm sending it to a completely random person (a.k.a. you). I tend to do a lot of stuff on a whim, you see, which probably explains why I’m not a virgin (and why I regret it) but that’s going off a tangent.

You won't suspect who I am. Ever. Nor will I tell you. Ever. I can, however, say the following: if you see me around—even know my name—you'll think of me as nothing but another faceless guy sitting at the school's social epicenter, with nothing but parties and girls and fun in mind. A stereotype, if you will. That's okay. That's all we know, stereotypes. After all, I can tell you from experience that we indeed follow the guidelines to the bone.

I wonder why. I wonder why we have to act a certain way to be part of a certain something. Who made those rules up? Are you even still reading?

I think I'm lonely. I think I've been lonely for a while now. It's kind of odd, if you think about it, because we at that dumb table all seem to be the sort of people to hang around with everyone, know everyone and everything, but here I am, writing this crap you probably threw away ages ago. Pathetic, isn't it? It's got to be the ultimate form of irony, to try so hard to get friends that you end up alone.

It's too late now, I think, to try to fix things, which is why I'm writing this in the first place. This is the one thing I get to vent. Once it's done, I'm back to the status quo. Cruel, sarcastic me. Fake me. Real me is a wimp, you see, and this is my best-hidden secret: beneath all the guidelines/stereotypes, I'm just a wimp. Wimp wimp wimp.

God, that felt good. I think I'll write it again, somewhere else. Separately.

And as for you, if I happened to choose a shitty recipient for the letter (mind you, it was done at random, although at least I know you're a girl) and you want to expose me, don't even. You won't be able to guess. Even if I sent it to the closest thing I have to a friend, they wouldn't even suspect. You can try, though. I dare you.

If you don't, and if there is the smallest semblance of good left on earth, then I guess the rest is a thank you.

I wish I'd never decided to fake being someone else. I wish the things that made me take that decision hadn't happened, but what can you do against life? In exchange for giving you an open ground to explore, it turns you into its plaything. If I had known having a friend worth a thousand is better than a thousand friends worth one, I wouldn't have messed up. It wasn't until those people left one by one that I realized maybe a bit of the acting had slipped into my own personality, poisoned it.

I wish I could go back. Doesn't everyone?

You'd think I should just hand you the letter so we could become friends, and so I could meet genuine people and be genuine myself again, laugh and cry and do all that power of friendship shit so that the story had a happy ending and an Aesop. Ah, I wish it was that easy. I still don't know you. You're a girl, and you're in my grade, but what else? For what I know, you could sit in my very same table (in which case, fuck you, unless you're like me).

I wish, I wish, I wish. Maybe I wish too much and do too little. Maybe that's why I'm so fucked up in the head now.

I want to go back so bad.

Don't you?

—A Nobody