The Manic Pixie Dream Boy Improvement Project

by Lenore Appelhans

  If the Author describes our wardrobe, we pause to go find our pieces waiting on the racks offstage and change into them. But today she doesn’t.

  She continues to type furiously, setting up Marsden as the new boy in town. Marsden and Ava have their meet-cute while they wait for their respective rides. They’ve both just passed their driving tests, and they discuss the fact that Ava got a perfect score while Marsden nearly failed.

  Marsden senses something is bothering Ava, and he’s determined to lift her spirits, which he does by choreographing a Driver’s Test Dance on the spot, but then Ava’s best friend, the snobby Samantha, arrives to pick Ava up and makes fun of Marsden, even though he’s, like, so hot for a high school guy and all.

  Good times.

  It’s a tough day of rough drafting. I swear I develop whiplash from all the head nodding and bounding about I’m forced to do. By the time Ava flounces off to a side door marked “Private” and I’m beamed home, I’m so grateful for my pillow that I weep tears of exhaustion into it before passing out.

  Chapter 9

  The next day, two additional girls show up in group therapy. Angela doesn’t introduce them, so I assume they’re regulars who probably had to work yesterday. The only valid excuses for missing a meeting are work and illness, and these rosy-cheeked babes are portraits of health.

  Sadly, Zelda acts like she doesn’t register me at all. She keeps clenching her fists like she wants to punch someone. I’m dying to get her alone and find out how much longer she has to attend this group. How much longer I’ll have to wait until I’m allowed to ask her out. Waiting is the worst.

  “Attention ladies and Riley,” Angela says. “Today we’re going to start out with a super uplifting exercise. Close your eyes, please.”

  Groans abound, but I close mine. With my vision out of commission, my sense of smell sharpens and alerts me to the scent of apples and nutmeg. My mouth waters. Why can’t we start with eating pie?

  “Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt alone,” Angela instructs.

  I raise my hand. Of course.

  “Now. Open your eyes.”

  Everyone has raised a hand. Chloe has even raised both. We sheepishly put them down.

  “See? Isn’t it reassuring to know you’re not alone in feeling alone? Just think about that when you’ve got the loneliness blues.”

  It’s typical inspirational mumbo jumbo, but it’s surprisingly effective. Naturally, I’d feel even less alone if I were dating Zelda. I keep sneaking glances at her, but her gaze is locked on the floor. Lucky floor.

  “You’re never lonely if you love your own company.” Another girl bursts into our circle and plops an enormous handbag down next to the last empty chair—the one beside Angela. She stretches languidly, not seeming to care she’s late. Of all of us, she’s the most uniquely put together. She wears her hair jagged, the tips red as if dipped in blood. Her collarbones jut out, sharp as blades. If she has any soft parts, she keeps them well hidden under her giant sweater and clashing leggings. Whoever she is, she’s the epitome of the Beautiful Mess sub-type of the MPDG Trope.

  “Nice of you to show up, Nebraska.” Angela’s usually silky voice cracks a bit.

  “You know I live for therapy.” Nebraska takes a bow and arranges herself neatly in her chair.

  So this is TropeTown’s only MPDG Legacy. I’m not surprised she looks like a teenager, even though she’s been around so long. Tropes can resemble vampires in that way. I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum, though my simulated memories allow me to function as a teenager despite my lack of years.

  “Do you want to share, today?” Angela asks her.

  “Okay. Here’s what bothers me.” Nebraska twirls a finger absentmindedly in one of the longer strands of her hair. “Like, I’m offered a part, right?” She says offered because as a Legacy, she reserves the right to turn down jobs. “And I get my hopes up because I’m the title character. I think, okay! Finally. I’m going to be allowed to really explore myself within this role. Growth! Maybe I’ll even have my own happy ending. And at the beginning it looks promising. I have my own interests and hobbies. The Author writes all these juicy scenes for me where I pursue relationships that have nothing to do with the Central Developed. I state my goals and even hint at my own personal desire line. I wake up in the morning excited to go to work.”

  I find myself nodding along to all of this, even though I’m new, have only played a couple parts so far, and have never achieved title character status.

  Nebraska pauses dramatically, folding her arms around herself and striking a wounded pose that seems calculated to elicit the maximum amount of sympathy.

  “But then it all goes to hell in a high-fashion handbag,” Zelda says, perhaps pondering some tough disappointments of her own.

  “It always does,” Nebraska agrees. “In my latest novel, I fool around with the Central Developed and then kill myself. And he’s, like, beside himself, trying to figure out what he did wrong and searching for answers. It’s so unfair for my character to get shafted like that.”

  “You shouldn’t take it personally,” Angela says. “These are characters you play. They aren’t you.”

  “I know what Nebraska means.” I didn’t mean it to come out as forcibly as it does, but apparently this is a topic I’m passionate about, so I run with it. “Even if they are only parts, every part we take on informs our own sense of self. And when we’re forced to live the same quirks over and over, those quirks start to define us. I mean, look at us—we’re all typecast. I don’t even know most of you, and I can already guess your sub-types.”

  Zelda claps. “Ooh. A challenge!”

  All eyes are on me. I’m hit with a wave of paralyzing fear, and my inner introvert scolds my outer extrovert for always recklessly seeking the spotlight. I simultaneously want to crawl under my chair and jump on top of it.

  “Do mine!” One of the girls who wasn’t here yesterday leans forward. She has out-of-control blond curls and a vintage leather jacket. Her eyes sparkle with mischief behind her round, rose-colored glasses, and she has a giant set of headphones around her swan-like neck.

  I gulp. Okay. I’m doing this. “I bet you have a band T-shirt under that jacket.”

  She laughs, and I’m reminded of wind chimes. “Right you are.” She opens her jacket to reveal an oversized black tee with a faded and peeling graphic of the Allman Brothers. “I’m Lucy, by the way. But my friends call me Sky. Like, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

  “Okay, Sky. May I call you Sky?”

  Sky nods.

  “I diagnose you with a severe case of the Wild Child variant of MPDG,” I intone in my most officious-sounding voice.

  “Right you are!” She rewards me with her wind-chime laugh. I find myself plotting ways to hear that laugh. “And it means I go to rock concerts constantly, which I love.”

  Zelda claps, again. Is she subtly mocking me? “Sky is too easy. Try George.” She taps the leg of the girl next to her, the other girl who wasn’t here yesterday. “She’s a tough one.”

  A smile lights up George’s perfect heart-shaped face. She sports Little House on the Prairie braids and clean-scrubbed skin. There’s a motorcycle helmet under her chair, even though no one in TropeTown owns motor vehicles. She squirms in her seat and constantly pulls at the sleeves of her crushed velvet hoodie with fingers stained by purple ink.

  I take a chance. “Hmmm . . . I’m going to say . . . Bubbly Badass.”

  George extends her bare feet and wiggles her painted black toenails. “Did the skulls give me away?”

  Nebraska yawns. I can already tell she has a habit of checking out when the attention is not focused on her. “Georgina has been here the second longest of us all. She’s hired for a bunch of gigs because she’s so fresh and fun.” Though her words seem complimentary, her tone is biting.

  “Don’t call me Georgina.”

  Nebraska dismisses George with a backward twist of her wrist, causing an armful of metal b
angles to clink together.

  The room buzzes and a warm, yellow light forms around Zelda. She perks up considerably, even granting me a much-sought-after wink before she presses her bracelet button. She fades out as she’s beamed over to her current novel of employment and my spirits sink. I won’t get the chance to talk to her today, either.

  Angela sniffs. “Well, that’s all very astute of you, Riley, but today we are hearing from Nebraska. Let’s let her continue, shall we?”

  Her reprimand is as subtle as a slap. I take a vow of silence until I can slice into the pie. With Zelda gone, only pie can salvage this session.

  Nebraska’s violet eyes bore into me. “Riley, is it?”

  “Yeah.” Vow of silence broken after 2.2 seconds. A new record!

  “Finn spoke highly of you in his letters.” She sashays over to me and extends her elegant hand. “Friends of Finn are friends of mine.”

  I shake her hand, stunned. Letters? Finn wrote Nebraska letters? File that under More secrets Finn kept.

  “You can return to your seat now,” Angela says, her cheerful veneer chipping at the edges. “And apparently I need to go over the rules of group therapy for the forgetful among us.”

  Nebraska looks from Angela to her bracelet. She flips Angela her ring finger and pushes the rarely-used lever that allows Tropes to visit their workplace without being summoned. The room buzzes again, and the familiar light forms around her. Instantly, she’s gone. Apparently Nebraska would rather go off to hang around her unsatisfying job than accept Angela’s authority.

  Angela stomps over to the pie and stabs it with a fork. “Pie is served.”

  None of us move. Angela forces a smile. “You’re all welcome to go whenever you want.”

  Even so, we wait until she leaves before we serve ourselves slices of pie.

  I take a bite and gag. It tastes like turnips.

  Chapter 10

  Let’s talk about expectations for a minute. You expect a pie, especially one smelling of apples and nutmeg, to delight your tongue with its tart sweetness. All you want is for that apple pie to fulfill its duty as an apple pie. You do not want to put that apple pie in your mouth and taste turnips, even if you’re a fan of turnips.

  It’s the same principle with Tropes. Tropes continue to exist because they’re expected, and people derive satisfaction from a certain amount of fulfilled expectation. (Even Manic Pixies are predictable in their unpredictability.) Obviously, that amount varies, which is why some Readers gravitate toward Trope-heavy tomes and others seek out experimental fiction. But we Tropes get hired for the avant-garde stuff, too, because even the most adventurous of Readers needs something familiar to latch onto every once in a while.

  Authors come to us to fill out their fictional landscapes, because not every situation or character needs to be Developed. Some of them just need to be apple pies that taste like apple pie.

  Chapter 11

  “Can anyone help me move a giant pane of glass out of my apartment?” Mandy asks us after dumping the disappointing apple pie in the trash.

  The remaining girls all come up with excuses. Chloe needs to go to the employment office. Sky is off to knit fingerless gloves for her favorite Washed-Up Rock Stars. George mumbles something about a stripper pole and a sloth, and no one really wants to ask more questions about that.

  I agree, because I’ve got nothing better to do, and because with those doe eyes, Mandy could get a guy to do just about anything for her, even a guy who is gaga for another girl.

  As we walk to Mandy’s place, she chatters on and on about Chloe’s joblessness, Sky’s obsession with music, and George’s quirky array of hobbies. She makes sure not to step on any cracks in the pavement. Nothing out of the ordinary for a Manic Pixie profile.

  Mandy’s apartment is located in the same sprawling complex as mine and features the same floor plan and standard-issue furniture. But that’s where the similarities end, because glass takes up every free inch of space. Glass chickens. Glass cucumbers. Glass cupcakes, for fox sake.

  Obviously I have to ask. “What’s up with the massive quantities of glass?”

  “That’s all Clark. My ex, as of last night. He’s a Sensitive Nice Guy who spends too much time at the glass factory.”

  “So what sins did he commit to become your ex?”

  Mandy rolls her eyes. “OMG . . . maybe shower me with useless glass knick-knacks?”

  I pick up a flat, brown, smooth piece of glass resembling an ear.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s meant to be a spleen,” she says.

  “Well, Mandy, spleens are actually quite useful organs. They help us fight off infections.”

  She mimics my know-it-all tone exactly. “Well, Riley, glass spleens are actually quite useless. Especially when given as a part of an ill-advised Grand Romantic Gesture after a big fight.”

  “Good point.”

  Mandy extracts two pairs of work gloves from a drawer and throws a pair at me. “Catch.”

  She has excellent aim. And she may look fragile, but when we heft the pane of glass between us, she carries her share of the weight.

  “Where are we going with this?” I ask as we maneuver the cumbersome pane through her door.

  “See, this pane of glass represents my relationship with Clark,” Mandy explains. “If we can carry it all the way to the factory without it breaking, then I’ll give Clark another chance.”

  “Carrying a large pane of glass through town is tempting fate in a big way.”

  She grins and smacks an imprint of her red lips on the glass. “Exactly.”

  Well, you can guess what happens next, I’m sure, because this situation has played out so many times, it’s become a Trope. Someone’s riding a bicycle or driving a car and the inevitable crash goes down. You expect it. And when that glass does break into a trillion tiny shards, you’re proud of yourself because you saw it coming.

  In this case, it’s a clown car that does the deed. And it’s my clown phobia that forces me to flee the scene. Mandy skips after me, giggling.

  “That was fun.” She spins and screams out, “Hey Clark! I’m done with you. And with your glass chicken, too!”

  When we get back to Mandy’s, she makes space on her linoleum entry floor and rolls out a plastic tarp. She arms me with a hammer and tells me to let loose.

  “Are you sure?” I heft the heavy tool and take a tentative swing.

  “Smash first, ask later.” She sets the chicken sculpture on the tarp and pounds away until a mound of yellow shards feathers the tarp. She carefully picks up the broken pieces and glues them to her wall in a circular pattern with outward spokes, like a child’s version of the sun.

  I reach for the spleen, but she places a gloved-hand on my arm to stop me. “This must stay whole. It symbolizes my need to concentrate on healing right now rather than be pulled into more foolish escapades by my errant heart.”

  We spend the afternoon gleefully shattering glass and affixing it around the spleen, the centerpiece of her mosaic masterpiece.

  Her art inspires me to ask if I can take some of the red glass home. I want to paste a heart on my wall as a reminder to take more chances.

  She fills up a plastic bucket with the remains of a pair of giant lobster figurines for me and collapses on her couch. “See you tomorrow in therapy.”

  I blow her two friendly kisses in farewell. She catches them and pats them onto her cheeks.

  Mandy’s front door faces the complex’s inner courtyard, a wide space that features tennis courts, a swimming pool, a playground with a jungle gym, and even a netted baseball diamond. When I walk out with my bucket, I’m distracted for a moment by a lively Little League game. Harried Helicopter Parents shout insults at the Stoic Umpire while an Unconventional Coach gives a Defining Moment Pep Talk to the Spunky Underdogs in the dugout. I don’t need to stay to know how this one will turn out. Same story, different day.

  Chapter 12

  Back in my apartment, I throw myself passionate
ly into my heart mosaic. I choose a spot opposite the sofa, so it can confront me when I wake in the morning and before I fall asleep at night. I spend an hour pasting the red shards into a fairly accurate depiction of an emoji heart (not an actual heart, though I’d excuse you for thinking that since Mandy has an actual spleen on her wall).

  As I admire my handiwork, I hear scratching at my door.

  When I open up, Sprite is sitting on my welcome mat. She rubs up against my legs and meows. She sniffs at my door frame with interest.

  “You want to come in?” Normally, I wouldn’t offer, but I haven’t had visitors in a long time.

  Sprite blinks like maybe she understands, but I know she can’t because she’s an Add-On—an accessory for Cathy, without the same level of agency those animals I saw in the Healing Center elevator have. She scampers into my entryway.

  Maybe Sprite has transferred a little of bit of Cathy’s zaniness to me, because I start to pretend Sprite is Zelda visiting me in cat form. To complete the illusion, I fumble in my pants pocket for the silver oxygen pin I found outside the Healing Center elevator the day before yesterday and attach it to Sprite’s silver collar. (Yes, I’ve worn the same pants three days in a row, and I’ll probably wear them again tomorrow. I am a guy.)

  Sprite saunters into my living room as if she owns the place. She is at least familiar with the layout and the furniture since Cathy’s unit is identical. All of the units in this complex are standard-issue singles, with the exception of the family units, which are twice as large. Beyond the basics, we can personalize by visiting the Shopping District, but I have to admit I can’t be bothered to spend much of my free time bargain hunting and dodging Mopey Mallrats. Also, collecting experiences trumps having a bunch of trinkets. Regardless, Sprite has to check everything out. She stands on her hind paws to get a better peek at the bookshelf.