"Haven't you heard I'm the new cancer? I've never looked better and you can't stand it."

I didn't let people drag me down and she was no exception. She was nothing special anyway but she seemed to think she was. She expected me to fall apart when she broke up with me. She thought I would crumble at her feet and beg her to take me back. Because I could change, I could be what she wanted me to be. She thought she had me right where she wanted me. She thought she was so clever, so beautiful, so irresistible. Well I had news for her; she was cute but nothing to write home about. She was smart but not smart enough. She was likeable, sure but my eyes wandered all the time. She never really kept my attention. She was too self-assured for her own good.

I saw her in that fifties diner down the street from her house. She used to love going there and she actually made me like it too. I wasn't going to avoid it now just because I might run into her accidentally. She barely even came up on my radar anymore. She was just another average looking girl on the street. One that I was not interested in.

I went to the diner one night after soccer practice to get a burger. They had really good burgers. I was sitting at the counter on a stool waiting for my food when someone poked me in the ribs. I turned around slowly to find a girl with curly blond hair and a tiny button nose standing there. She was gazing at me through her thick black eyelashes waiting for me to recognize her and throw myself at her in ecstasy. But I stared back at her, not smiling, not even moving.

Her smile faltered and she sighed, letting out a long whoosh of breath. It seemed she had been sucking her stomach in to look thinner. I didn't react.

"Hi, how's it going?" she asked me finally admitting she wasn't going to win this little game she was playing.

"Not bad," I said, not asking her the question in return. Of course I remembered her, I did date her for four months, how insensitive do you really think I am?

"That's good," she said. An awkward silence followed. She wasn't used to having to keep up her end of a conversation. Her looks usually filled any gaps in conversation nicely. But I knew what she was like and I wasn't going to enable her anymore.

"So, you look good," she said, fishing for a compliment.

"Thanks," I said.

She frowned. I wasn't giving her anything to work with here and I was enjoying seeing her squirm in discomfort.

"Was there something specific you wanted?" I asked her. My food was on the counter waiting for me to eat and it was getting cold. I didn't have all day to play with her mind. Well at least today I didn't.

"I was… uh," she stuttered. She started playing around with her necklace. It was an emerald on a silver chain. I bought it for her on our three-month anniversary. She never wore it when we were together. She said green didn't match any of her clothes.

I vaguely remembered the day she broke up with me. It was in that very diner over burgers and cherry cokes. She loved cherry coke. She paid that day and that was the thing I remembered the most. I knew there was something wrong when she offered to pay. She never paid for anything. She told me she didn't think our relationship was going anywhere. She gave me a sympathetic look when she got up and left me there. I stayed for a few more minutes finishing my fries and the rest of her abandoned cherry coke. I wasn't exactly devastated. I didn't cry myself to sleep and I didn't call her every night to get her to take me back. Our relationship was bland and she was right, it was going nowhere.

"I just came to say hi, that's all," she said. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at her feet.

"Okay, well hi," I said and turned back to my food with a smirk. I was being pretty rude but I wanted her to know she wasn't as special as she thought she was. I took a bite of my burger expecting her to be gone if I turned around again. But she was really a sucker for punishment. She sat down next to me on the stool and ordered a glass of cherry coke. I didn't say anything. This was her game, it was her move.

"So, I was wondering if you wanted to hang out some time," she said taking a sip of her coke. She twirled her hair around her finger over and over. She thought she was being cute. But I knew all her plays and this one had been done. And done again.

"I'm kind of busy," I told her.

"Even tonight?" she asked. She leaned in close to me so I could smell her. Vanilla and sandalwood. I remembered.

"Yeah, even tonight," I said.

"Oh well that's too bad, I guess I'll just have to ask someone else to watch scary movies with me in my apartment all alone," she said. She didn't just throw clichés around shamelessly she was a shameless cliché.

"Well that'll be one lucky guy," I said and smiled at her. Her smirk tightened and her eyes hardened. She wasn't good with rejection. She didn't know how to handle it.

Well I was about to give her a crash course on being shut down.

"I should be going now," I said and stood up, putting on my letter jacket. She used to wear that jacket everywhere, she loved being a status symbol. She was all about the popularity ladder. That is, until she found herself slipping a couple rungs.

I started to walk towards the door, I could feel her watching me. And then she was next to me, holding my hand. She really was a sucker for punishment. I was willing to cut her some slack, let her keep her humiliation to herself but if she insisted on being difficult than she was asking for it. And believe me, I did not mind at all.

"C'mon Andrew, I know you miss me," she cooed in my ear, leaning against me.

"Actually I barely remember you at all," I told her trying to shake my hand out of her grip. But she was getting desperate now and her sweaty palm stuck to mine as if it had been glued there.

A couple in one of the booths was staring at us. I recognized them from school. This was turning out even better than I could ever have imagined. Even I had underestimated her ego. It was going to burst right through her eyeballs any second.

"But we were so good together," she insisted.

"I was your stepping stone to the cheerleading squad. I know who you are Hannah. I know exactly what you are like. You use people for as long as they are good for your reputation and then you drop them like they never mattered in the first place. If you think that is something I enjoyed then you are seriously demented. I was over you the second you walked out that door," I shot at her.

The look on her face was priceless. She glanced around the diner realizing that everyone was watching in a single horrifying second. Maybe she thought I had just spoiled her secret. As if everyone didn't know already. As if she wasn't totally transparent. She thought she was so clever, so original. But she was just like every teenage cheerleading cliché in every movie ever made. She was the mould they were made out of. And finally she knew it.

She turned on her expensive heal and it snapped right off. She stumbled to the side and had to grab onto the bright red vinyl bench to stay upright. I didn't reach out to help her. The diner was silent. She didn't turn around. She just reached down, took off her shoes and stalked out of the diner, barefoot. The door made a resounding ding and everyone went back to their food.

I wasn't one to gloat. I left the diner and turned down the street. Maybe next time when I tell you I don't let people drag me down you will believe me.