7. What Holly Heard:

I knew high school would be a dramatic time in my life, but I was really disappointed that I had regular boring friends with ordinary boring secrets. I never got to investigate my bestie’s murder, only to discover it was committed by my other BFF who tried to kneecap me with a hammer, forcing me to kill her with a hamster habitat. I also didn’t have a boyfriend on steroids. I didn’t have a boyfriend at all. High school was so lame.

6. Secret Admirer:

Obviously, I was a theatre kid, and NEVER, not ONCE, did I have a homicidal stalker so overcome and obsessed with me she threw someone off the lighting rig to prove her devotion. Rude.

5. Switched:

Top three things I looked forward to in my teen years: Prom, which I didn’t get invited to, getting my driver’s license, and jumping off an old stone wall while holding hands with my BFF to switch bodies so I could go on a solo killing spree without repercussions only to trick her into switching back into our own bodies just as the cops show up. Literally every little girl’s dream. Imagine my disappointment when not only did I NOT switch bodies with my best friend after we jumped off that stone wall, she stopped speaking to me, and I had to go to therapy. 

4. First Date:

I didn’t read this one, but, like, I obviously didn’t date in high school, so ouch.

3. Halloween Party:

 Imagine my dismay when I found out my parents never killed a wealthy couple in a teenage hit and run, only for me to lose out on the chance to save my friends from a house of horrors set up by the dead couple’s adult child bent on vengeance twenty years later. 

2. The Prom Queen:

If I had been invited to the prom, I would have known that typically most students don’t kill their competition for Prom Queen. I didn’t get to finish this book. My mom took it away because of all my “notes” in the margins, and it “looked bad” and would “give people the wrong idea.” 

1. The Stepsister:

I was so stoked when Mom married Rick. It was the summer before my senior year, and NOTHING cool had happened. So finally, here was my chance to get chased through the woods and trapped in an open grave during a blended family camping trip. But no. I didn’t get anything that cool. I just got stuck having to share a room with stupid fucking Stephanie and her goddamn parakeets. 

Megan’s collection of essays about how much millennial student debt sucks, This Book Brought TO You By My Student Loans, is available at Clash Books. You can check out her short fiction and essays here.