Page 14 of Barbie: Dreamscape

This is concerning.

But these tears won’t slow. They keep running and running, until finally, a sob rips through my lips.

Everyone is gone. Everyone has a purpose. Everyone has a new community—except for me.

Now I wish my life really was a dream, so I could wake up from it.

Life goes on, even though it feels like my soul was left in that empty box-shaped room.

It turns out the blank, vacant space was a look into my future.

After days of crying, I finally go quiet. I feel like a void, hollow and useless.

I find myself wandering the school halls before classes start, ending up at my mother’s statue, and just… staring at her. I can’t find the words to tell her what happened.

So I don’t say anything.

I stand there for hours, only moving when the younger students stream out of their classrooms, looking at me like I’m some kind of warning.

I can’t even find it in myself to feel embarrassed. Or upset.

I just feel…

Nothing.

Misty and Bonbon continue to wake me up each morning, though I long to stay in bed. Today, they pull back the covers and—

I don’t want to get up. And it’s too cold. And what is the point of getting ready in the first place, when I have nothing to do and nowhere to go?

But when I try to tear the covers away from their beaks, to hide beneath them like maybe I will wake up and all of this will just have been the worst possible version of my nightmare, they start snapping at my hands.

“Won’t you just leave me alone?” I say weakly.

They don’t. They just stubbornly start to braid my hair even as it’s splayed across my pillow, and so I sigh and get up, slowly making my way to the bathroom.

Wardrobe folds open, and it must sense my ever-worsening mood, because it does so with far less enthusiasm than usual.

“Let’s see,” I bite out. “What should I wear that says, ‘Look at me. I’m an absolute failure’?”

Wardrobe has been offering a new shade of pink I’ve never seen before—so pale it’s almost gray. This morning’s sartorial options are no different.

My teeth slide together. Frustration blooms through my chest, filling the hollowness. Suddenly, after days of being numb, I’m feeling everything at once.

“What do I wear to show that I’m a mistake? That I’m so meaningless the Fates couldn’t even figure out what to do with me? What outfit says, ‘Trailblazer and Record Breaker in All the Wrong Ways’? How about ‘Town’s Biggest Disappointment’?” I throw my hands up.

I always keep my emotions packed down. I keep them folded nice and tidy, like my clothes, like my laundry.

But where has that gotten me? What good was any of it?

Now, it all comes spilling out.

You’re the best! a banner across my wall says, atop hundreds of assignments with 100% written on them.

I don’t think. I just rush over and start tearing each paper off the wall, then ripping them into the world’s worst confetti. Over and over and over. All my work is soon in tatters.

All that studying. All those nights holed up in this room. All this effort. All this hope and confidence.

Only to end up with nothing.