EXT.-FESTIVA-DAY
Amy is staring at her REFLECTION in the rearview mirror.
AMY (V.O.): Nick never loved me.
A semi slowly drives past Amy: in its metallic siding, we can see her warped image flickering.
AMY (V.O.): He loved a girl who doesn't exist. A girl I was pretending to be. The Cool Girl. Men always use that as the defining compliment, right? She’s a cool girl.
Amy twitches in fury. She veers off the highway, rolls into the parking lot of an old, defunct gas station.
INT-BATHROOM-DAY
She looks at herself in the warped mirror. Takes out scissors and begins angrily sawing off her hair.
AMY (V.O.): Being Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker and dirty jokes, who plays videogames and chugs beer--
The hair is flying, she is sawing it off with a VENGEANCE.
--loves threesomes and anal sex and jams chilidogs into my mouth like I’m hosting the world's biggest culinary gang-bang-
Squirt of the hair dye onto her hair.
--while remaining a size 2, because cool girls are above all hot.
In the mirror she is decidedly un-hot.
AMY (V.O.): Hot and understanding. Cool girls never get angry at their men, they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner. Go ahead! Shit on me, I don't mind, I'm the cool girl.
The brown dye sits like a glob of crap on her head.
AMY (V.O.): I waited patiently-years-for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, organize scrapbook parties...
She picks up and deposits the long blonde hair cuttings into a Ziploc marked AMY HAIR.
AMY (V.O.): ...and make out with each other while we leer. And then we'd say, yeah, he's a cool guy.
She steps outside the restroom, packs her Amy Hair.
AMY (V.O.): Instead, women across the nation colluded in our degradation! Pretty soon every girl was Cool Girl, and if you weren't, then there was something wrong with you.
She eats a candy bar robotically, pinches flab at the top of the jeans she barely squeezes into.
AMY (V.O.): But it's tempting, to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it's tempting to be the girl every guy wants. When I met Nick I knew that's what he wanted. For him, I was willing to try.
She selects a cheap sundress from her stack.
AMY (V.O.): I couldn't have been Cool Girl with anyone else. I wouldn't have wanted to. Nick teased things out in me I didn't know existed: A lightness, a humor, an ease.
AMY (V.O.) (contd): And I made him smarter, sharper. I forced him to rise to my level.
Back in the bathroom, she sheds her tight jeans, SIZE 2, and her spanx, and puts on the dress, SIZE 8. She shampoos her hair, rinses. Assesses. She looks shockingly different.
AMY (V.O.): I was happier for those few years, pretending to be someone else, than I ever have been before or after.
EXT-FESTIVA-EVENING
Driving SOUTH. DARKNESS settling in. The trees get lush.
AMY (V.O.): But then it had to stop, because it wasn't me! I hated Nick for being surprised when I became me.
Driving farther—a sign for Lake of the Ozarks. The roads get smaller and smaller, til we hit dirt.
AMY (V.O.): He couldn't believe I didn't love wax-stripping my pussy raw and blowing him on request. That my fantasy baseball team was not a labor of love.
Pulling into a small group of cabins: The HIDE-A-WAY CABINS.
AMY (V.O.): It had to stop. Committing to Nick, feeling safe with Nick, being happy with Nick, made me realize that there was a Real Amy in there, and she was so much better, more interesting and complicated and challenging, than Cool Girl.
She leaves manager’s office with a key. Heads to CABIN three.
AMY (V.O.): But Nick wanted Cool Girl anyway.
Enters a cabin room. Goes to the bathroom. She is sunburnt from the day. She dons a pair of wireframe glasses.
AMY (V.O.): Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your soulmate, and having him not like you?
She is truly transformed. She smiles.
