Cheap An Indoor Kind of Girl

In Frankie Barnet’s exquisite and funny debut collection of stories, characters stumble through their daily existence, frequently feeling confused, rejected, bored, disillusioned, or misunderstood.

Someone at a party describes you as an “indoor kind of girl.” What does that even mean? You don’t know, but you spend the following week obsessing about it. You watch three seasons of Keeping Up with the Kardashians in two days. You get a pet turtle. You absent-mindedly paint what ends up looking like your high school’s football coach, but naked. You go backpacking in Australia for a few months. You try speaking with a New York accent in public, just to see if people like that version of you better. The comment still haunts you. An “indoor kind of girl.” You feel like you’re that person, but you’re not that person.