Problem Solving

Characterisation

"Me too.. you should talk about it" I try

"Too complex.. too.. boringly sad"

"Well now I really wanna know" I say, she laughs a little. Humourlessly and kind of awkwardly I think. I hope that I'm not making her uncomfortable.

"I was just different. Not a lot to it." She lies. I can tell. She thinks there's a lot to everything so I don't believe her for one second. "I can show you pictures"

"Please" I say, she makes a face.

"I hoped you wouldn't have said that.." she goes onto her phone and scrolls far far back "to think that this atrocity was taken just a year ago.." she hesitates a second before showing me. I sit closer to the screen.

Damn.

It's not even Electra. What makes her Electra is gone. She's someone else.. someone in black, with brown hair, pink lipstick and heavier eye makeup. She's just as stunning. If not more.. in fact, it adds a whole new layer to her.

In the picture, she looks so very scene and.. so cool. Cool in a different way to the cool she is now.. I look at her in real life then her in the picture. She's far more real in picture. Digitally real.. I kinda want to grab the girl in the picture, even though if I could I wouldn't know what to do next.

"Shocking isn't it?" She asks

"I don't think the word is shocking.. I don't know what the word is... but I can't express how much I wanna see more" I say, it comes out softly and I wanted to perhaps be a little less... sappy.

"Really?" she gives me a look I've never seen her give before.

She's judging me.

"Yeah I.." I give a little shrug "I really like her."

"Why?" She asks, strangely serious.

"Everything.." I look at the picture more "she's so.... real."

"I'm real" she half heartedly reminds me. She sounds like she doesn't even believe herself.

"No one's actually real.. but she feels it." I pause "I know that made no sense but I think she's so pretty and so interesting and has so much depth.." I remember I'm talking to the girl I'm crushing on hard "I mean of course you're pretty and interesting too, and of course you have depth or else you'd never have been her... it's just insane how you're her and you."

I sound crazy. But she doesn't look at me like I'm crazy. She seems to understand.

"I did tell you.."

"You did." ....

"So who are you? Now that I've exposed myself"

"I'm me, I'm Lana.."

"No ones around, you don't have to be so defensively shallow." She says. It takes me by surprise a second. And then I get such a sudden urge to tell her who I really am that I kind of can't hold it in.

"I'm Elizabeth Grant." I get my phone out so I can't see her reaction, because frankly, I'm scared of it. I scroll through my pictures to find one of when I was Lizzy. "Lizzy Grant.. Nothing but drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, bad behaviour, sex... but the unglamorous type."