A Short Story of the Moment

I have never considered myself to be “in love.” I found myself interested, confounded by feelings of curiosity and attraction though to what still remains a mystery. I felt a lure to him that seemed unnatural, undiagnosed by the world of beauty and deceit. I couldn’t help if I found my eyes wandering towards him but feeling repulsed by what I saw. He was indifferent to my gazes and banter that I solemnly shared with him but I did not blame him. I was not forward in the slightest bit.

I felt empowered one day to talk to him, feeling sexy and brimming with confidence. A smile that could not be removed stayed in place all day, unwilling to give up its vitality within me. I approached him but as soon as I took a breath near him, my heart skipped a beat and my feelings became numb. I tried to speak, forcing something to come out but only air complied. I remained speechless for my confidence only worked for those I felt didn’t matter.

A little piece of me broke inside when I saw him with her, laughing and expressing emotions I had not let out. I could not stand the sight any longer and the green monster inside me began driving my actions as I slammed down my lunch tray and waited until he was alone. I immediately went to him and asked what he was doing that weekend and if he would like to hang out, you know, as “friends.” He nodded in agreement and arranged a meeting.

The first moments were the defining moments of the evening, the joy within me could not be compared to any I had ever felt before. The feeling quickly faded and reality settled in, the one I had not idealized was exactly as I had pictured him and that sickened me to the point of regret. The feeling I had felt transferred to him, as he began smiling the way I had and caressed the tips of my fingers. There I was, I had signaled interest by asking him on this outing so what I could I do? I agreed to a second one.

As time continued, we engaged in physical contact, an act I felt I could not help. The back of his neck was rough, his hair oily and lips chapped. The guilt settled in faster than I expected the first time, but I continued throughout the night to lead him down the wrong path. He asked if we were officially “together” and grinned anxiously as he stared into my eyes. I guessed he felt lust he understood and embraced, but his eyes meant nothing to me. Nothing captivated me, nothing about him made me feel as he did. Something had pulled me towards him once, so I said yes in hopes of salvation to bring me away from nothing.

I didn’t have to face the consequences until he grabbed my hand and told me what he had been experiencing with me and described it as love. He waited in anticipation for my response, but even I couldn’t face it. What he depicted was a fairytale, a vision he had illustrated in his own mind. After a few moments, he asked what I felt when I was with him. The eagerness slowly wilted as the moments became minutes, Frustrated, he asked if I was “in love” with him, like he was. I paused once more to think of anything to say to appease him, but the silence spoke for me and again I was alone. After days that had carried into months, into almost a year of deceit and omission, I was alone.

Another Sample of Writing (a teaser if you will)

Pool

She stared into the pool, her mind focused on the clear blue in front of her. The light from the porch was so dim that she could barely see her reflection. She bent over and touched the transparent mirror image of the moonlight water in front of her as it drifted through her fingers. She couldn’t help but feel connected with something else out there…something else in the water.
She closed her eyes and let herself fall into the water, drenched in her own sadness. She touched the tiles on the bottom of the pool and opened her eyes to the sight of the light blue water and the smooth, white tiles. She lifted her finger and felt the velvet-soft touch of the tiles. There was a crack in one of them that bothered her slightly, but she felt content in her surroundings.
She loved the feel of the water around her. All of her senses became entranced in a spell, one that only her lungs could curse. She smiled slightly to herself as she ascended up into the faint light and heard a voice.
“Who the hell are you?” A shrill voice was muffled under the waves of the water, but it still shook her eardrums.
She didn’t answer. She breathed in and went back down into the water. Her hair formed a myriad of branches that grew when nourished with water.
“Why are you here?” It was a man, shady but his dark eyes were just as intense without the help of light. His image pierced through the water like he was already inside her mind.
She stopped breathing and rushed to the top of the water. Her eyes were watering and pulled her hair back into a makeshift ponytail. She sniffled and stared up into the man’s shark eyes.
“Don’t ever come back again.” He stated and she ran. Her clothing and shoes were soaked, her vision hazy and her face flushed with terror. She ran back through the wooden fence with splinters all across the handles and jumped over the broken porch steps that creaked as she leaped onto the dirt path. The shack had been there for years but something had drawn her there that night. She thought that it would inspire something in her, but all she came back to the orphanage with was fear.


“Why are you soaked?” Mrs. Burges inquired as she felt the sleeve of Kathryn’s jacket. She held a candle up to her oval face. “It’s after midnight young lady. And before Sunday! Up to bed you go. We’ll talk about punishment later. Go to bed! Go!”
Kathryn walked up slowly, her pricked hands feeling the coolness of the stair railing and a surging rush of the bitter cold throughout her whole body. The orphanage couldn’t afford extra blankets so all Kathryn could do was put on her dry work clothes and sleep as tightly as she could under the striped sheet she washed twice a week. She was glad it wasn’t Tuesday or Friday or else she wouldn’t have anything to keep her the least bit warm.
As soon as Kathryn’s head it her pillow, she saw the man’s eyes. His red, evil face and the words “don’t come back again”. She couldn’t seem to block it out unless she thought of water, but he always seemed to be in the water, watching her. She shook her head furiously, but that only woke up the others in their cots.
The eyes of the cold-blooded man stayed in her head. She saw a woman being dropped, her blood splattered everywhere and eyes open. She wore rags and her eyes were bronze, so beautiful but so lifeless on her ghost-white face and pale lips. The bottoms of her feet and her back were torn as if she had to walk for a long time then dragged.
Kathryn woke up screaming, her back upright and her hands shaking. She was the only one who was in the room besides a little redheaded girl named Piper, who was getting dressed for church.
“Are you coming Kathryn?” She asked all smiles. “The Lord is waiting for you.”
Kathryn tried as fast as she could to compose herself for this happy-go-lucky five-year-old. Her gaze was averted elsewhere. Had this little girl heard her screaming?
“Come along, my friend.” Piper smiled with all of her face. Her seaweed-green eyes danced next to her freckles.
Kathryn was already wearing her work clothes, so she just followed Piper down the hall into the study where Mrs. Burges taught classes useful to girls. Her job was to be able to make ladies out of these social throwaways and have them get married. It was the least she could do. Her own husband had run off with his mistress as she told it, leaving her with no notice. The only way to survive was to get remarried or find a job. She was after a widower named Hudson Jones, a prominent banker in the community. His own wife had gone missing and was later found dead in the woods. The press announced she had been mulled by a wolf, cut marks all over body.
“She’s a liar.” A girl named Mariel told a late-night group. “The truth is that Mrs. Burges’s husband told her that he was never in love with her and wanted them to move to different towns to create themselves again and not be married anymore.” Mariel lit a cigarette and started to smoke. “She refused and told him that it would be an abomination to Christ and shit. Finally, he told her that he was in love with a woman he had loved ever since he could remember who had been promised to an English ambassador. He told her this for five fucking years. She didn’t give up on him. Rumor is she’s still a virgin. Well, that’s shit. He didn’t want children, didn’t want to deal with those kinds of responsibilities. She did, she drugged him up, took off his pants, and convinced him that he had gotten drunk and that they fucked. I bet she has a master somewhere that tried to impregnate her so she could have children.
“As for Hudson, he killed his wife. It’s that simple. She was cheating on him, that I know for sure. She was a dancer in a brewery, how could she not be? He said she was a disgrace. Told her to run and kill herself. She ran; he got his henchmen to beat her. Of course, they went too far and did some goddamn awful things to her, so they made it look like a wolf did it. They even shot one to prove their point.”
After everyone got over the shock of Mariel’s story, someone asked how she knew all this.
“Use your eyes people. They’re blinding you with God to distract you from the bad. People are dying and being tortured everyday; that explains this place, huh?” She blew out a puff of smoke.
There were some giggles but more coughs.

Peach Theory

Peach Theory

I can’t remember anything about that night. The night all of this started and everything that seemed certain became this horrible reality. The most frightening part was anything could’ve happened and all I can ask myself is: would it have turned out different? I’ve gone through so many different emotions and I can’t even think of the smallest detail to remind me of that crucial night. I just wanted a smell, a touch, a taste, but all of those were stolen from me. All I have to remind me of what might have been is a statement from Nikki Welling, a newspaper article, and a video tape. They all tell the same story. My story intertwined with others to create some relief for my frustration.
This is how I see it:
It was a Sunday evening during the summer after tenth grade. Nikki invited me out to Jessica U.’s party. It was a senior party, so she assumed that I would be ecstatic to come with her. We had just received our reading lists for next year, but ditched the work and went out to celebrate the nights that seemed hours longer.
I walk into the room. I look at the camera and shift away with Nikki who’s desperately trying to look cool even though she has the most awkward personality you can imagine. She turns and goes to the left of the door and I stand and eventually go to the right.
Suddenly, a bunch of MADA mothers come and bust down the door with a few narcs with their guns in the air. A few girls scream and shots are fired. I scream too and I say, “I didn’t do anything!” with everyone else. There’s a shot of me getting cuffed with these plastic handcuffs and my swollen face looking in the camera. The tape runs out.

Chapter One:

It was the morning after that everything starts becoming clearer. I walked downstairs and ran into my mother, chopping lettuce with a knife that could cut through stacks of paper. I groaned and sat on the stool by the coffee table we called our dining room. It was a small wooden table with dirty dishes from the night before stacked upon grimy magazines, some moments away from slipping onto the dusty floor. There were articles torn out and plastered everywhere, strange ones about diseases and crimes with a couple about how to achieve that glamorous movie-star look and the perfect orgasm.
“Where were you last night?” She asked.
“At a party,” I replied, resting my head on my hand, “I didn’t do anything. But you know that, don’t you?” I looked back into the hole in our wall peering into our “living room” consisting of a poker table, a small television, a beat-up rug, arm chair, and couch that my mother got from my Uncle Bernard after he was locked up for robbery and assault. There were more glamour articles in the living room as our version of décor. They rested on the poker table with tubes of red lipstick and a plastic mirror with crayon border and mints scattered in-between pages and caps that had lost their Tylenol bottles.
“Miss Stanley doesn’t seem to agree.”
“That stupid housewife, she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.” I picked at the dirt underneath my fingernails, staring at the cement floor and hoping for a way out of this conversation.
“Do you think she made it up?”
“I was just having some fun with Nikki,” I smiled to myself, automatically adding, “I’m not on drugs.” She always assumed I was on drugs. It was just easier to accept and treat than having a stubborn daughter who didn’t take any of the crap she spit out day in and day out. She always made me eat dinner with her; relentlessly insisting on being a family in the hellhole she called a house. She went nuts if I ate at someone else’s. I swear, after she talked about all that happened to her that day, I always felt a little bit better about myself on my own personal high. My mother’s misery was my drug of choice. I didn’t need to snort coke to feel better than her.
“You were at a drug party, what am I supposed to think?”
“I didn’t know it was a ‘drug party’ as you say it was. You are my mother. You should believe me.”
“And you are my daughter. You should obey me. You should have done what I told you: stay home and have done your homework.”
“I cannot believe you.” I said under my breath.
“What did you say?” She continued to chop lettuce.
“I said ‘I can’t believe you.’” I spoke more clearly. “You think that I’m this stupid, little baby but I know a lot more than you’ll ever know.”
“How dare you talk to me like that! I am you r mother!” My mother spun around and gave me an angry glare.
“You’re a bitch.” I stated without a second thought. “You don’t give a damn about me. If anyone’s on drugs, it’s you. Nice crank bugs, Mom.”
She gripped the knife beside her and my heart skipped a beat, but I stayed strong. I made a fist underneath the table and breathed in slowly. She wasn’t drunk, so if I just pushed or socked her, she wouldn’t attack me back and leave me alone. The stakes were higher with a knife, but she didn’t have a boyfriend to blame if she stabbed me again. I was lucky, the nurse had said. What’s lucky about having a mother like that?
I didn’t tell the police what she had done. That would just make them go poking around where they didn’t belong. I said I was making lunch, I was spooked by the TV and it just slipped. They questioned my mother and she confirmed my story. She told them I was easily frightened. I was a delicate creature who only needed her protection.
The only thing I needed protection from was from her.
She stood there, with the knife and some duct tape, her blonde hair disheveled and her loose, red shirt sagging over her thin shoulders with her jean jacket around her equally thin waist. The next thing I knew, I couldn’t breathe. Her hands were around my throat. I started gasping for breaths and my head was getting lighter than air. The whole room was spinning in this dim haze. Everything around me felt distant, but I could still feel what my mother was doing. I felt my hands getting tied up and my mouth being covered. I tried to kick her but that just provoked more anger. I had never seen her like that.
She took her elbow and shoved it into my back so I fell onto the floor. I screamed through the tape, but no one could hear me. The house felt unbearably alone. She slapped me in the face and punched me in the arm for almost no reason. My resistance grew thin and all I wanted to do was escape, my survival instincts surfacing. We were walking out the door. The strain was in my legs and the pain took a toll on the rest of my body. It was shaking and my thoughts were numb. I couldn’t feel anymore, but I still wanted to die. Another part of me fought the urge, but my hands shook with every breath and every move took me to a new place.
It was like I was outside of my body. All I could do was hear her push me into the back of her horrible, little car and my head bang against the roof. It all went black after that.

Chapter Two:

I woke up with a horrible headache that made it painful to even move. Breathing felt like a chore even though the tape around my mouth had been taken off. The only part of me that was restricted was my hands. They were still stuck together with her makeshift handcuffs. My legs were still sore. My first instinct was to scream at my mother.
“What is the matter with you, you crazy bitch?” I shrieked and the car immediately swerved to the right.
“Do not yell at the driver. It’s the cause of most accidents in this country.”
“Who are you to criticize me about my passenger etiquette after you’ve just kidnapped me? You psycho!” I yelled.
“Do not talk to me like that.” She was monotone. She was always like that after she did one of her crazy stunts. She had once driven me for an hour and pushed me in front of our neighbor’s house and claimed I was a runaway. Sometimes she had her moments of complete mental dysfunction, but none of them were like this. Her zombie-like state always seemed to fool people, but I couldn’t figure out. I didn’t know that woman.
We began to drive again, except I had no idea where we were. It was all trees, grass and road. The rows of trees passed along one by one, all too perfect and in-place. The green gave me a migraine and the image of the green and brown turned blurry and bright even as it was starting to get dark. How long had we been driving? As my mother swerved between lanes, I could feel the vibration of the dirt road. My head viciously grappled with the pain, but my will was too weak in comparison to deal with it. The stinging sensation made it difficult to look for anything besides what I had already seen to figure out where I was. I just closed my eyes and felt the pain pulsating against my head from the road.
When I woke up again we were in front of this large, white building that resembled both a hospital and office. It had the cross and handicap rail, but the windows…it was the windows that made me think of an office building. Except that there were bricks all around; maybe hundreds of thousands of them that were surrounding the premises with an iron gate closing it off. What were they trying to keep inside? Who were they trying to keep out?
“Get up Hilary.” My mother poked me. She led me to the door where a police officer un-taped me and put on plastic handcuffs. From one hell to another, I sighed to myself. I was escorted into the building like I was the criminal. That’s what this hell was. Maybe hell altogether, I figured. I was about to enter a cell of the worst kind.
This one traps you into your own mind; you can never escape yourself. No matter how hard you try.
The nurses looked like they were in costumes with their weird hats with the Red Cross symbol on it, white dresses and matching shoes. They looked like circus people.
“Excuse me, why am I handcuffed?” The officer seemed to be a reasonable man. He could un-cuff me if I was charming enough.
“You are a security threat. Please sit down miss.” He pointed to a red chair and there I walked and sat down while my mother read one of those interior decorating magazines. He unhooked my cuffs for a minute just to tie it down to my chair. As he left, all I felt was disbelief and resentment.
“I hate you, you know that? I hate you.”
“That’s just the drugs talking. I am not listening to you.”
“I am not on drugs!”
“The tests prove otherwise.” She shook her head. “I am so disappointed in you Hilary.” She said as she caressed my cheek.
Since I couldn’t move my hands, I jerked my head away and scowled.
“I am not on drugs. Your pain is my drug.” I scowled again.
“Be careful dear. If you stick with that face for too long, it’ll be stuck that way.”
I could not believe her and told her so.
“You want this to be normal? Take me home. Where are we anyway? An asylum? A nuthouse? Because let me tell you something: I do not belong here.”
“You obviously have anger-management issues. It must be from withdrawal. You always seem so happy after a dinner with me.” Her tranquility sickened me to the core.
“I have friends! I have a life! You have nothing. Nothing! Nothing at all to live for! Why do you even wake up in the morning? Not that you ever sleep.”
“I wake up because I know you’ll be there to cheer my day.”
All I wanted to do was hit her.

Chapter Three:

“All finished!” She pulled out the forms and handed them to a woman with spectacles that seemed to emphasize her large, yellow eyes.
“Excellent.” The woman said and motioned me forward to follow her. “We’ll be putting you in a special ward where you can have group therapy three times a week and plenty of rest to get your mind off this whole experience.”
“So this is a psychiatric hospital.” I breathed in the faint smell of industrial strength cleanser and cotton balls.
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” The woman gave me a superficial smile and pointed me to room 319.
I was about to go in when I got the sudden urge to just say what was on my mind.
“Hey let me ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.” The woman was still trying to be pleasant, with all of her insincere smiling and kindness. I’ve always thought of insincerity as a personality’s toupee. You can spot it from a mile away, you know see what is really underneath, and you really wish that they’d stop lying to themselves and everyone else.
“What is with these costumes that you seem to be wearing? I mean, these nurse outfits look they came straight out of an old movie! Are there any female doctors or male nurses here? Because what I’d like to know is how you can participate in the misogynistic, male-empowered nuthouse that is trying to detoxify a girl who is already clean? Must you try and cleanse all of society? There are others like me, and believe me, I will find them and you will be sorry.”
“I’ll see if I can find you a doctor with whom you’ll be comfortable with. But, please, go into your room and rest. You’ve had a long day.” And with that, she left.
“What about these handcuffs?” I yelled after her.
“Please wait for your doctor.” She called over her shoulder.
Room 319 was like the rest of the hospital: white walls, bluish tiles on the floor but with one exception: there was a window.
It was small, with barbed wire across it, but it was a window nevertheless. I could see that I was, indeed, in the middle of nowhere. The only sight I saw was one of trees in the distance, peeking from behind the brick wall that dominated the window. The branches curved over the wall, so I could only see a glimpse of the outside world. Security seemed to be of the utmost importance.
I had a roommate who was hooked up to a machine, so close to death when I first saw her. Her blond hair cascaded down to her hips, her pale skin and lips were chapped, but she still looked like a princess. She didn’t look more than twelve.
When Dr. Riley came in to greet me, I asked about the girl.
“She is a little bit of an odd case. She’s in a drug-induced coma after she tried to kill one of the orderlies. She is in a great deal of pain.”
I instantly found a median between sadness and fear and asked the doctor to please remove my handcuffs. He complied and left me alone.
I sat on my bed and stared at her. Why I was with a sociopath to be? Was my mother trying to kill me? I kept on my thought process until I fell asleep with that image in my head of my new roommate, lying there with the moonlight pouring on her milky-white complexion. She seemed to…float above the floor. How a girl like that could try and hurt someone?


At exactly seven o’clock, a nurse came in and shook me awake.
“Time for breakfast!” She exclaimed a little too loudly. My head was still killing me. It didn’t help there was a plate of bacon, sausage, and bird crap in front of me.
“Could I please have pain medication for my head?”
“No, sorry. Standard procedure for all those in for rehabilitation.”
“Isn’t this a hospital? Isn’t your job to cure people of their ailments?”
“We are. We are curing you of your addiction.”
“No, I am already cured. What you’re doing is keeping one of your patients in pain.”
“Alternative treatments will be available during group therapy such as hypnosis.”
“Hypnosis? I’m not a middle-aged, dysfunctional workaholic trying to quit smoking.” I gave myself a smile. “Although, I was living with one.”
She obviously had no sense of humor.
“Your group therapy session will be at ten o’clock down the hall and lunch will be served in the cafeteria at noon. You will have some exercise at two o’clock and have the afternoon to study and read the required reading material in your room. Please do not disturb the other patients during your stay. On days without therapy, you will be in the adolescent ward for classes on a variety of subjects. Have a pleasant stay.” She walked out.
“You said ‘stay’ twice! Why is breakfast served in bed but lunch isn’t? Where’s dinner? When’s dinner? If you want to treat patients, why are you trying to kill them with bacon?” I sighed.
I froze as I heard a weak laugh behind me. I turned around. She was awake.
“Another failed drug.” Her voice was soft and delicate.
“What do you mean?” My heart fluttered with fear and curiosity, trying to decide which instinct to trust.
“This medication was supposed to keep me from talking for forty-eight hours, but I’m awake, aren’t I?” The smile on her face looked almost…painful.
“Why don’t they want you to talk?” I felt something build up inside me, something just wasn’t right.
“About the procedure. They don’t want us to get close.” Her lip began to quiver.
“Why? What procedure? Are you alright?”
“The trials…the ones…with… my reason…being here.” It seemed like she was slipping in and out of consciousness. She was starting to lose her breath. “No more rooms.” Her breathing became extremely heavy. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”
No more rooms? “You mean, here, in this ward?” I had to know.
She nodded and rested her head down before she made a little smile with the corners of her lips. Suddenly, the lights on her monitor were blinking. Her lips were open but she wasn’t breathing. At first I thought she was dead, but I had to do something.
“Somebody help her!” I screamed. “She’s not breathing! She’s not breathing!”
Nobody responded. I ran out into the hallway to the nurses’ station. There was no one there. “Help, somebody! Goddamn, she’s not breathing! Somebody! Somebody!”
Dr. Riley came out and ran to our room with a team of nurses behind him. They followed him and I followed them. Dr. Riley put his ear to her lips and asked for the nurses to do CPR. That’s when she started having violent seizures. Her eyes rolled back while she made this kind-of choking sound and all I felt was this terror. Not of her, but rather for her life.
“Get restraints!” He yelled. “Let’s get two grams of Rondaveir, now!”
The nurses did as he said without hesitation and he injected it right into her arm. The seizures got less violent, but slowly drops of blood fell into Dr. Riley’s hand and her pillowcase. She was coughing it up. Her face was quickly turning yellow. Her eyes were still rolled back as she made a hissing noise. She kept on trying to sit up straight, but the doctors kept trying to restrain her.
“Oh God,” I whispered to myself. Every part of me was frozen. All I could do was watch as they injected all kinds of medication into her. The seizures eventually stopped, but I heard Dr. Riley say that her liver was failing and her lungs were full of blood. The doctors rolled her out down the hall to get her into surgery. I didn’t know how long I had been standing there until a nurse came in and told me I was late for therapy.


It was then I decided there was no use trying to fight my mother and the hospital. They thought I was a junkie, so I was going to pretend to be one and get the hell out.
“My name is Hilary Carlson and I am addicted to marijuana.”
“It seems here, your tests show you are a heavy methamphetamine user.”
I was speechless.
“I have never done meth. You must have your results mixed up with someone else.”
“I’m looking at your chart right here.”
“Liar!” I yelled. “Goddamn, there is absolutely no way I have meth in my pee. How did you even get my piss?”
I saw some smiles on people’s faces, but I don’t know what the hell they were laughing at. There were girls that looked like they had absorbed the fat from the skinny ones. The boys looked uncomfortable with socks that pooled above their sneakers. You could see the bones in their faces. One of the fat girls was loudly chewing a piece of gum.
“We drew blood from you.”
“No, you didn’t. See, I would have remembered something like that.”
“Well, your chart says you had blood drawn.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Denial will never get you anywhere Hilary.” The group leader was a petite woman with round glasses and pulled back brown hair. She looked like she had never seen the light of day.
“Oh, shut up!” I groaned and sat down.
The woman shook her head and wrote something down.
“I was talking to myself.” I lied.
She gave me a half-sincere smile and put her pen down.
“Look, I don’t know why the tests say that, but it isn’t true. I don’t touch that shit.”
“Alright, well, I suppose you will have to have some time to yourself. You may leave now.”
“What? You want me to go?” I narrowed my eyes. “What’s your angle here?”
“You have to Hilary. You have an introductory meeting with Dr. Zeborbin.”


Dr. Zeborbin was a fat, balding man who had gray whiskers coming out of his ears and nose. I thought he was going to die right in front of me.
“Can you tell me about your family?” He asked.
“Oh, nothing much,” I smiled. I got the feeling no one should be trusted. “My mother and I didn’t get along.”
“How so?”
“She is not a very nice woman.”
“How so?”
“She hit me.”
“Didn’t your father do anything?”
“He died when I was seven.”
“How?”
“A hunting accident.”
“It says on your history that your father was unemployed.”
“He inherited money. He did not have to work. Hunting was a favorite hobby of his.”
“You were on welfare, Miss Carlson.”
I laughed a little. “I didn’t say it was not a lot of money.”
“You didn’t grow up near any gun ranges or hunting grounds.”
“I lived in Montana and Texas. We didn’t move to Maryland until after he died.”
“When was that?”
“I was seven at the time.”
“He died of a hunting accident?”
“That’s what I said.” I smiled. Was this guy even paying attention to me?
“You lived in Minneapolis when you were seven.”
The smile fell from my face. “I have never lived in Minneapolis.”
“That’s not what your mother said.”
“She is a liar.” The words came out so naturally.
“Really? She told us a story about your father being stabbed to death.”
“That is a lie.” I feel tears swelling up in my eyes.
“He was involved in some money laundering…”
“Stop it.” I could have sworn a tear ran down my cheek but when I tried to wipe it off, it had evaporated.
“…your mother said you would cry every night…”
“Shut up.” I bit my lip.
“…you started hitting her…”
“I don’t know anything about that. All she has told you are lies.” I controlled myself. “I never hit her. He wasn’t stabbed. He was shot on a trip that he went on with his friends. She paid one of them to do it. I know she did. I never lived in Minneapolis, her boyfriend head a heart attack while we were on a trip there to visit him. He was like a dad to me, OK? I did cry, but all she wants is sympathy. She wants justification for her meth habit and don’t you give it to her. May I leave now?”
“Of course,”
As I walked out, I stared at the bluish tiles, looked up at the fluorescent lights and only asked that no one knew everything about me. How easy it would be to lie.

Chapter Four:

I ventured out into the hallway, turning corner after corner just to pass the time. Every room seemed more depressing than the last, old men dying without their wives holding their hands, little girls with eyes so big and sad, alone and just sitting there. I wanted to get the image out of my mind, but I knew if I returned to my room, that girl might be there and that was something I was just not ready to face.
I found a spot near the stairwell, a small bench that overlooked the trees. The room was high enough to see over the brick fence. I could see the vibrant greens and the tranquil blue of the river trickling down in-between the blades of grass with the perfect, grey stones lined up to surround it. My head began to swell. Oh God, what’s wrong with me? I could only lie on the wall and close my eyes when a shrill voice awakened my almost comatose state.
“You’re Hilary, right?” She smiled eagerly with a round face, long brown hair and eyes that squished in between her equally squished nose. She almost looked Asian with her tan skin.
“Yeah, why do you wanna know?”
“I saw you, during group therapy?” The girl smiled eagerly. “Man, you really told her off.”
“Yeah, well, all I have is the truth now. Bitch took away my freedom.”
“Pat’s harmless you know—”
“My mom, she’s the bitch that took away my freedom.” I could only assume Pat was the group leader.
“Oh, you’re really not addicted to anything?”
“You don’t believe me either?” I decided to just walk away, but she kept following me.
“I do, I do, but…tests don’t usually lie.”
“See, ‘usually’ is the word I have a problem with. I’m not like everyone else.”
“I can see that.”
I stopped in my tracks and turned around to look at this irritating being.
“I’ve never done drugs before in my life. You think I’d come here willingly?”
“I did.” She said defensively.
“Why? Who are you?”
“I’m Darcy Corrington. You should meet someone.”
“I don’t have to do a damn thing.” I said bitterly.
“Well, that’s true, but you should know why I’m here.”
“Why’s that? Why should I?”
“Because behind every human thought is reason and my reason might change your mind about me.”
“Yeah, right. If there really was reason behind every thought, the world wouldn’t be in the shape that it’s in. We wouldn’t be knee-deep in our own fat, constantly trying to kill ourselves with everything from prescription pain meds or just plain pain from overworking ourselves until we die in our garages, no one even bothering to check until the stink pisses everyone off.”
“I can’t imagine why they think you need therapy.”
“Ha, ha, I’m leaving now.” My tone was still bitter as I turned away again.
“You don’t know everything about this place. You need to know the people here. I can tell you want to.”
“And how’s that?”
“You haven’t moved more than five feet away from me. You want to know the reason I’m here.”
I rolled my eyes and turned back around. “Fine, tell me.”
“Like I said, you need to meet someone.” Darcy walked towards the stairs, down to the children’s ward. I had passed it before but I had never been inside. Unlike the rest of the building, it was carpeted with brightly colored blocks scattered around the round “magic” rug where story time was held. There were pictures of children’s hands plastered on the walls with a border of numbers and letters. The only sounds were those of nurses quietly whispering to the babies and the whirring noise of the airplane model that spun round and around from the ceiling.
Darcy looked at me solemnly as we walked towards a little boy. I thought I was going to break down right there.
He had no legs and only one arm. He seemed utterly alone playing with his blocks until he saw Darcy. His grin seemed to light up what was once a spiritless body. He hopped up and down in his wheelchair and reached out with his right hand, grabbing for her with his only four fingers. He didn’t have an index finger. He grinned at me too, but I couldn’t smile back with a tear running down my face.
He had the most beautiful chestnut brown hair, like Darcy’s, and big, curious brown eyes. He called out for her, “my Darcy! My Darcy!” and she instantly came to his side as I slowly followed.
“Hilary, this is Eric, my brother. My Eric! My Eric!” She laid her head on top of his. “Won’t you say hi, Eric?”
“Hi, Hilary!” He waved to me. “Come over here, silly goose!”
“OK,” I said softly. I was still a couple of feet away from them, but I came closer to see a small scar above Eric’s left eyebrow. “What happened there?” I asked, pointing to it.
“Eric fell out of his wheelchair a couple of days ago.” Darcy explained, looking over at him. “He should have asked someone to get the paintbrushes for him.”
“Darcy! Stop treating me like I’m a baby. I am six and a half years old, you know.” He smiled back at me.
“Really,” I wiped off some tears with the back of my hand.
“Why are you crying Hilary?”
“I just had a grueling therapy session.”
“What’s that?”
“When you talk to someone about your feelings and problems.”
“Oh, yeah! I talk to Miss Marie about being in a wheelchair.”
“And what do you say?” I got down on one knee like Darcy had done.
“It’s OK, I can’t run or nothing but it looks hard anyways. Darcy says I’m lucky to be here.”
“Why’s that?”
Eric laughed. “You ask a lotta questions. Miss Marie says it’s good for people to ask questions, then you learn lotsa stuff.”
“Yeah…I mean, yes, yes you do.” I finally cracked a smile. “What else do you talk to Miss Marie about?”
“Regular stuff, what I like doing while I’m here.”
“What do you like to do?” Darcy seemed to get agitated with all my questioning.
“I really like drawing. You wanna see?”
“Yeah, I would.”
“Darcy, to the wall!” He said laughing, shooting his arm straight up in the air, gradually leveling it so he was pointing towards a bulletin board. Darcy pushed his wheelchair towards it. We weaved between toddlers and small children, some with nubs for arms or legs, some off in their own world, staring at the ceiling and others that just didn’t seem to want anyone to look at them.
But none were like Eric.
“Which is yours?”
“Right there,” he pointed, “don’t you see it?”
“I see.” For a six-year-old, he drew an amazing portrait of a bear. It bared its sharp teeth, clawing at the viewer, menacing yet so warm with the rich colors it was painted with.
“Well, don’t you like it?”
“I love it.” I turned to him and smiled. “You’re a very good painter.” For some reason, I started welling up again.
“Thank you muchly.” He grinned. “Miss Marie says I’m an artist.”
“You are.” Darcy kissed Eric on the forehead. “We have to go to lunch now, OK? But we’ll see you again.”
“Okie dokie, nice to meet you Hilary!” Eric looked back at his art, smiling contently as we walked away.

Chapter Four:

“I hope you don’t mind me asking, but why is your brother like that?”
Darcy and I were sitting in the cafeteria downstairs, eating ham sandwiches and chips that were as stale as they were tasteless.
“I don’t know. There was a drug that my mom was taking while she was pregnant, but doctors don’t really know why he has only one developed arm. It’s a medical mystery. He is very creative, no brain damage so who knows?”
“So why are you here?”
“My dad was abusive after Eric was born. He called him a freak, blamed my mother for everything and told her it was her problem now. He beat her. He didn’t stay for much longer after she went to the hospital with Eric. She wouldn’t give him up. She was in her forties, she would never get another chance to have a kid when these letters started coming from Monopan Corporations.”
“What’d they say?”
“I don’t know, but they had to promise her something good because five letters later, she’s gone and when she comes back, she tells me Eric drowned in the bathtub when I was twelve. I started using drugs to dull the pain when she caught me and told me I could see Eric. He was still alive. Last year, she sent me up here and I’ve been here ever since.”
“So, you’re clean now?”
“Yes, but I can’t go back. Not to her. She lied to me.”
“Looks like we have something in common,” I gave her a sad half-smile.
“Looks like it.” She agreed, taking a bit of her sandwich. “But, listen, you really need to get to know the rules. You can’t be bitchy to everyone, you can’t ask too many questions like you can’t question authority all too much or you’ll pay.” “What does that mean, ‘you’ll pay’?”
Darcy gave me a hard look.
“You have to trust me.”
And for the first time in a long time, I felt I could.


I went back to my room to find the girl there sleeping. All I could think was, thank God.
I tiptoed to my bed to lie down and stare at the ceiling and start wondering about my stay at this rehab/psychiatric center. Would I get a change of clothes? If not, some new underwear? What about my period, what then? Where’s the shower in this place? If I can’t have a tampon, can I shower? Is there a shower allowance?
Does anyone even care?
My train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a shrill scream from the girl next to me. She was clutching her stomach in agony when she sat up and started howling, pounding on the bed like she was having a tantrum, crying and begging for help when for no reason she stopped and fell onto her back before the doctors could reach her. It was at that moment I realized she had passed out.
Dr. Riley came in right afterwards.
“Were you the one screaming?” He asked me.
“No, she was.” I pointed at the girl with no name. “She passed out.”
“It’s a side effect of the medication; she should be fine in a few hours.”
“She was screaming in pain.” I said defensively.
“It’s all in her mind. Her emotional pain is so intense that her body is hurting itself. With hard work, she will be all better soon.” His smile is the last thing I remember before things get hazy again.


What I really remember is the color, with the bright radiance and the circles of light surrounding me, I felt invincible for some reason. I was hearing music, familiar music that faded as quickly as it came. I stared into the light before I had my first episode when I traveled back in time when life was just a little bit simpler.


It was January when I was in seventh grade. Nikki and I had just become best friends at Osling Junior High and we were both bored in history class. We were partnered together to work on this diorama of Spanish settlers in the United States and write an essay as if we were one of the settlers.
“Oh my God, this is so stupid.” Nikki rolled her eyes as we were working. She had plastic green army figures that she was painting tan to look more real.
“Yeah, I know.” I agreed. “I don’t see why we should have to do this. Like it serves any real purpose in the real world.”
“O.M.G. I love that show.” Nikki laughed.
The first response in my mind?
What kind of idiot did I latch myself to?
“Yeah, well, I agree.” I restated. “It’s stupid, plain and simple.”
“Sure is.” A voice said behind me.
And there he was: Samuel Owen Michaelson.
Now, he went by Sam by pretty much everyone, but there was already a girl named Sam in the class who liked not Sammy, but “Sahmi” (which I thought was completely ridiculous) and silently named her Sam but the hottest guy I had ever had the pleasure to call eye candy was always Samuel Owen Michaelson.
God damn.
I was always ambitious, but guys seemed to be easier targets to hit. And believe me, I just felt myself swelling with ambition for S.O.M.
“I know.” I turned around from my seat and could feel myself getting redundant, but pressed on. Nothing less than a perfect bull’s-eye. “Why should we have to use our valuable study time to construct dioramas that will be in the trash within a week?”
“That is the question.” S.O.M. smiled. I knew while drop-dead, walk-away-so-I’ll-have-a-chance-to-breathe-but-never-leave-my-side gorgeous, he was an academic at heart and didn’t buy any of the whole “get your hands on learning” aspect unless you were under the age of eight and played with blocks with numbers on them.
“But I guess I could talk forever about it.” I looked away with my “shy” smile, though it was anything but while lightly tossing back my hair. “You better get back to work.” I bit my finger, not hard, but just enough to let him know I had, that I was nervous.
Of course, guys are sometimes idiots.
“Hils! There is blood on my butt! I think I’m bleeding on the inside!” Nikki started harshly whispering while S.O.M. was in ear range.
Of course, this also comes on handy.
“You do not have internal bleeding. You got your period. Let’s wash up in the bathroom.” I whispered. I handed Nikki her sweatshirt from the empty seat next to me. “Put that around your waist.” There was no way in hell I was giving her mine.
“OK,” Nikki followed me to the bathroom to stuff toilet paper in her underwear. She was afraid of tampons after the health lecture on toxic shock syndrome and didn’t have any money to buy them anyway from the vending machine inside. Pads were also not an option because she didn’t want to look at her own womanly functions.
Luckily for her, being stupid was an option I wasn’t going to let her take.
“Look, Nikki, I’m trying to look at for you. Either stick it up your vagina or wear a diaper and/or pad. No one likes it, no one cares. Deal with it.”
“OK,” she nodded obediently, “I will.” And she went inside the stall.
I scowled to the mirror. “Idiot,” I said silently to myself, wishing I had brought some cigarettes to smoke. I didn’t smoke, but I thought about the scene. I started imagining myself inhaling the smoke, while mumbling “idiot” while putting the cigarette out on the sink in the dimly lit ladies’ room. It seemed like something in a movie.
I smiled, thinking about S.O.M. and waited for Nikki to come out of the stall so we could finish the damn project before I had to kill myself.


My arms were all contorted uncomfortably, as were my legs, but it didn’t seem too long since I had been out of it.
It had been six and a half days.

Chapter Five:

The girl next to me told me what day it was.
“What? What were they doing to me?”
“Tests, I suppose. I was sleeping during most of it. Treatment’s really knocking me out.” The girl seemed to have more energy than before. She was upright, nodding, even smiling.
How strange.

Unedited- UNRESTRICTED

Unraveled – The (Almost) Completely True Stories of Lindsay Thornburg

So, where to begin?
I have no idea how to start this; I’m no writer mind you. I am simply…Lindsay. I guess I should just start from the beginning, but that leads me back to my first question: where exactly to begin? Where is my beginning?
I hate this part.
I’m supposed to be writing all of my feelings and secret desires and whatnot but…the truth is: I don’t really have a lot.
Sure, I wish my hair was less stringy and flat, I could actually have a real chest but I wouldn’t want to read about people wanting superficial stuff.
People aren’t that interesting anyway.
Just bear with me as we begin what are the almost completely true stories of me, Lindsay Thornburg.


Part One: 7th Grade, the Beginning of It All
I guess it all started on that very first day in seventh grade. And I don’t mean the day when I was at the school. This was before then, at the “meet and greet” at this donor’s house to get familiar and not be considered a newbie the minute you step on campus. Of course, don’t show us the campus because that wouldn’t be practical. Let us all be fascinated with the rock slide that dips down into the donor’s insanely large pool.
All of us were given these cheesy nametags with our names already written in blue ink with little smiley faces next to them. We were on our own for the first fifteen minutes, looking around for people who might not ignore us. I came across a girl who was standing by herself and smiled shyly at me. It was at that moment we were all called into the center to be split into smaller “diverse” groups of people.
I was sent into Group Five with four other people. There was one boy with shaggy brown hair that covered half his face named Xander, another brunette with curls all around named Toby, a bottle-blond tanned girl named Shandra and the shy girl I saw earlier whose full name was Angelique, but preferred Angie. If I had a name like Angelique, I would nickname myself Angel or just stick with Angelique, not be Angie. Who does that?
And she had that Russian supermodel bronze and beautiful thing going on. I was so jealous. She wasn’t the fake-bake dumb blonde stereotype that had personified in Shandra, who happened to have a lot of blackheads.
“Let’s begin by saying our names and an animal we like that starts with the same letter.” The coordinator, Mrs. Burns, said.
“Ugh,” Xander snarled, “I’ll go first. My name’s Xander in case any of you’ve forgotten. How about zebra as my animal?”
“Doesn’t that work?” Shandra asked.
“Xander starts with an x, not a z.”
“Oh,” Shandra sighed. She pointed at Toby. “You go next.”
“Uh…OK, my name’s Toby. And an animal I like is…” He breathed out heavily. “Um…any suggestions?” He looked hopelessly lost.
“What’s that animal that’s like a dinosaur but really isn’t? Like that alligator thing?” No one had any idea what the hell Shandra was talking about.
“How about ‘turtle’?” Angie looked for approval from Group Five.
“Yes!” Toby smiled. “I do like turtles.”
“My turn,” Shandra pointed at herself. All the attention she could get I suppose. “What animal starts with an s?”
“Snake!” Xander shouted instantly, catching the attention of other groups around us.
“Ew, I hate snakes.”
“Sea star?” Toby asked.
“What’s that?”
“A starfish?” Xander laughed.
“Aren’t they’re like…wet?”
Xander just burst out in hysteria.
“They live in the sea, what else do you expect?”
“Seals?” Angie tried again.
“Oooh, seals are cute!”
“You know, they live in the water too.” Xander smiled.
“I don’t care.” Shandra replied. “I’m Shandra or you can call me Shandi.”
“Isn’t Shandra with a c?” Xander asked.
“What do you know zebra boy?”
“You’re calling me stupid, Miss Like-The-Alligator-Thing-Like-You-Know?”
“Shut up.” Shandra rolled her eyes.
“OK, your turn…” Toby pointed at me, struggling to find my name. “Lindsay.” I supplied. “My favorite animal is a leopard.”
I was thinking “leper” but, lucky for me, it sounds like leopard.
“A leopard? Awesome,” Angie nodded. “Mine’s an alligator.”
“Sorry, what’s your name?” Xander inquired.
“Angie,”
“Angie,” Xander repeated, “short for Angelique, right?” He seemed to be the only one who was paying attention to what anyone else was saying.
“That is such a pretty name.” Shandra’s glacier blue eyes got huge right then and there. They did that anytime there was make-up or sucking up involved.
“It really is.” I nodded.
“Why would you wanna call yourself Angie? You’re not like an Angela or something.”
“Angelique is just a little out there I guess. It’s French.”
“What does it mean?” Shandra’s eyes were still bulging out of their sockets.
“Messenger of God, you know, like an angel.”
“Oh my God, that is so cool!”
Angie just smiled.
“OK!” Mrs. Burns called. “It’s time for lunch, let’s hop to it gang!”
I wish I was making this up.


I sat with Angie and Toby at a table near the door to the pool house. She had waved me over and gave me one of her shy smiles.
“Hey Lindsay,” she laughed. “You know Toby, right?” She cracked up again. “What am I saying? We were in the same group.”
“Yeah, hey,” I smiled and sat down across from Angie.
“Toby and I were on the same Little League team when we were younger. I just like realized it.”
“So you’re going to the same school now?” I thought they were some kind of Cory-and-Topanga-like couple who spent all their whole lives growing up together and ended up getting married.
“Well, sort of. It wasn’t planned, I mean.”
“It’s a small, small world.” I said.
“That’s what I think.” Toby chimed in.
“So you said your name is French?” I asked to change the subject. Toby could make any situation awkward, even with potential friends. Scratch that, especially with potential friends.
“Yeah, my mom grew up in France when she was younger but married the young and handsome American boy with the strange accent.” She laughed as if she was the one who married the American boy or her dad I guess.
But that’s just weird.
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just blurted out: “The American dream, right?” I didn’t even know what the American dream was. My American dreams just included what every other American girl dreams about: money, boys and overall appearance. Mostly breasts. Or at least the ones I’ve talked to.
“I guess it is.” She smiled, but I thought it was just out of sheer politeness. That’s what the French are famous for, right?
Or…something like that.


When I arrived at school the next day, I was confident that had a place to sit at during lunch and a girl to pass notes to and a boy to have a platonic relationship with. I wasn’t going to be Toby-crazy anytime soon. I had my suspicions he was crushing on Angie anyway.
I love it when I’m right.
Angie wasn’t in my homeroom, but she was in almost all of my other classes except for art. She had chosen to focus her many talents composing songs and singing. I had no desire to be on stage, be it acting or singing or playing an instrument of any kind, so I stuck with art. I thought it would just require painting and color theory and whatnot. I didn’t think it would require some kind of presentation.
I’m used to being wrong.
“This year, you will learn about using techniques in sketching for the most part.” The teacher was a petite woman named Patty with colored red hair, wide-rimmed red glasses on her wrinkled face and crocked, yellow teeth illuminated by her dark cherry lipstick.
The woman loved red.
“You will also be learning more about contemporary art and incorporating shading into your self-portraits. All of you are deeply encouraged to sign up for an art show to practice for the two art shows we will be having at the end of the first and second semesters.”
Art shows?
“Um, Patty?” I raised my hand.
“Yes, dear?” She asked.
“What exactly will we have to do at these shows?”
“Well, you will present the piece, your inspiration and talk about how…it expresses your individuality. After you finish your pieces, you will type these inspirations in the form of summaries and hand them in before your shows. The more pieces you decide to present, the more you will have to write. But the more you show, the more ambitious it will appear to be. Ambition deserves respect and attention to detail and I will grade you as such individuals. Ambition is the one tool you must not be lacking.”
Ambition was the one tool that was missing from my toolbox.
“Let’s see…” She fumbled with her huge, red binder with papers so crumpled, it was amazing she could find anything in that thing. “You won’t have to do your art show until January. It will be the perfect transition after winter break.”
Yeah, perfect.


Angie introduced me to an Asian girl with short, ink black hair with purple tips at the end of her many layers named Maya. She looked pretty tough at first but turned out to be a sweetheart. I think it was the hair that led me to believe otherwise.
“Angie and I were best friends at summer camp. We’d always hang out on the jungle gym after dinner and fight for the swings.”
“The good times,” Angie laughed. She stabbed her chicken nugget with her fork and ate it. Hostile…
“Hey, when did you get so tan?” Maya asked and carefully placed her chicken nugget in her mouth with her fingers.
“Tanning lotion and twenty minutes in the sun last week,” Angie laughed, “I’m normally as pale as paste!” She giggled. “I guess I can be pretty fake.”
“What do you mean?” I was curious to know, well, what she meant.
“I mean, I dye my hair, tan, the make-up…” As she was disclosing all of this information to me I couldn’t help but feel a small sense of power over Angie and so soon? It seemed like almost a strange and cruel joke by the people who write the script for my life. Wait…what?
“…really, I mean. You know what I mean Lindsay?” She tipped her head like the insecure girl in all of us (yes, boys too).
“Totally,” I nodded, trying to support my new friend. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I didn’t have any friends at Kessler Elementary, but Georgia and Olli were just my elementary school friends. We didn’t have any of the same interests anymore and I was OK with that. Sort of. We still IMed and stuff. The relationship respirator for pathetic, continuous friendships with no end in sight.
“I’m sorry I’m just dumping on you like this.” She looked sympathetic towards Toby and me and went back to angrily stabbing her chicken nuggets.
“I don’t think you’re fake.” Toby said, his eyes directly fixed on hers.
“Aw, thanks Toby.” She said, smiling and her chicken stabbing got less severe. I thought there was some kind of hidden message in this lunch. Maya’s tossing of chicken in the air, how Toby’s smile changed when he saw Angie, or even how Angie’s smile changed when she saw me. Maya smiled the same at everyone.


There is something strange about seventh grade. For some, it’s the easiest year they will ever have. For others, it is socially challenging or emotionally challenging or just academically wrenching. I didn’t get a free pass like Maya.
For Maya, everything came so easy. She got straight B’s with a handful of A’s while still hanging out with her other group of friends from Hunter Hills Independent School on the weekends and going to both HHI’s parties and our school’s. She was friends with everybody and was so incredibly outgoing and witty when she wanted to be. She even started her first long-term relationship with her girlfriend, Nadia. It all came so easy.
Angie went through her good times. She took AP classes with a 4.1 GPA but usually had to skip some weekend plans to catch up on assignments she had waited until the last minute to finish. She had her first boyfriend and her first break-up, but still managed to stay positive. She liked to look good, but I always wondered how much sometimes…
Toby was a science guy, but didn’t too well in other departments. He had crushes on both Maya and Angie that never seemed to go anywhere. He wasn’t the type to just let romance into his life but he wasn’t about to give up. It was all about the search for new things for him. He found his strengths in science and his weaknesses in writing.
As for me, I just…floated. Avoiding what Patty called “careful analysis” of others’ artwork. She always emphasized when we talked, “careful criticism, don’t say, ‘I don’t like it’, tell us why; constructive recommendations for your peers.” I tended not to speak in art or any other classes. Either it was that little overachieving bitch Lynn that was always talking or Rita with her infamous comment on American history, “slavery was, like, bad” or some other shit that came out of her bubblegum-glossed mouth. A guy named Rick was almost as bad as Lynn but managed to stay under the radar so we all knew his opinion but didn’t make us all feel like idiots. Most of the time.
I couldn’t help but feel under a little stress. It was a new school. I had to find out my place and if I’d make it through the year without a breakdown.


Rita Cummings was the girl to be. She wasn’t all too smart, but seemed to have better social skills than anyone else in the place. She was persuasive when it came to getting people to come to her parties, not so much when it came to debating the American principles during the eighteenth and nineteenth century and their impact on slavery. She was also very photogenic with her bright pink lip gloss and golden blonde hair that swayed whenever she walked.
“She’d make an excellent realtor.” Maya commented.
I had started to notice what people were wearing. She wore a lot of bright colors that exaggerated her tanned skin and the purple in her hair. She always showed a little skin, but all the girls did. I remember Maya was wearing extensions that made her hair as long as Rita’s and was twisted into two pigtails. They were all wavy and purple with curled bright green ribbons that held them in place. She had this huge, green kimono-like top that matched the ribbons in her hair with a micro-mini and green lace-ups.
It was visually confusing, but very cute.
Angie was just in a t-shirt that read, “WILL WORK FOR PANCAKES” with a stack of flapjacks and maple syrup on a baby blue background and jeans and plain, white flip-flops. Her hair was in shambles, tied only with a white rubber band with only some Chapstick on her discolored lips. Yet she still seemed more appealing than Maya.
Girl’s gotta envy that.
“Did you hear about her list thing?” Angie asked.
“What list thing?” Toby was just in his tan t-shirt with some strange symbol on it and jeans. Nothing new.
“Rita made this list of why people should like Rick Timmins. I’m not even joking here—seven of the reasons were ‘he’s cute’.”
The whole table burst out in laughter.
“I can’t believe that.” I exhaled.
“I know, right?” Angie looked just had that look of, “what the hell was Rita thinking?”
“She doesn’t even mention all of his academic achievements, ‘because just look at those eyes’.” Maya’s impression of Rita put a smile on Toby’s face.
“You like him, Maya?” The corners of my mouth turned upward.
“Na, he’s not my type.” She looked at Angie. “What about you Miss Angelique Voulet? He likes you.”
“No he’s doesn’t.” Angie’s face illuminated red.
“Oh my God, she’s blushing!” Maya laughed. “So whatcha think? You gonna ask him out?”
“I can’t do that; too embarrassing.”
“Sure you can.” Maya encouraged. “C’mon, I’ll help you even. Get his attention.”
“Um…” Angie’s nervousness got the best of her and the ability to form sentences had disappeared. This didn’t help when Rick actually passed our table and Angie nearly peed in her pants.
“He likes you.” Maya repeated.
I nodded.
“Do you think I should do it Toby?” Angie’s gaze at Toby nearly melted him.
“Uh…maybe,” He shrugged. ”I’m not the best person to ask.”
“You’re a guy right?”
“Guilty,” Toby grinned. “What gave it away?”
“Can I just ask him out?” Angie asked.
“It depends on his ego, social geography, and…his ego.”
“What do you mean ‘social geography’?” I asked.
“Everyone’s sitting at different parts of the cafeteria. Certain parts are unanimous with social groups. Maybe the—” Toby scanned the cafeteria “—artsy types won’t mind or those who just aren’t complete jerk-offs. Classic types might not be right ones to ask out until they get the chance to do it themselves.”
“I get it!” Maya cheered.
“So…?” Angie’s face still had the mark of confusion.
“Rick hangs out with the egomaniacs who think of themselves as guys who can do pretty much anything they want. They care about themselves, so even if Rick isn’t one of those guys, his ‘friends’ would rag on him if a girl asked him out. They’d ask where his balls went or something. Did you take his balls Angie?” Maya started to laugh and the whole table laughed with her.
“Maybe…” Angie gave us all a sheepish smile and we went back to insignificant jabber.


Boys and girls. It’s a funny thing. During all that preschool and kindergarten phase, we all played together for the most part and then somewhere along the line, we all just kinda drift, you know? It’s like we love each other, we hate each other…and now?
We can’t seem to get enough.
“Rick’s so cute.” Angie sighed. Her head was resting on her chin while she gazed out the window. We were all at Toby’s almost mansion.
We’re talking seven bedrooms, a guest house that’s probably bigger than mine, a kitchen with marble counters and hand-crafted wooden décor on the cabinets, and a room that was meant just for a Jacuzzi and a bar filled with Coca-Cola and a myriad of other sodas.
There was also a small vial of some kind of beer that was present. Toby claimed it was a test manufactured by his parents to see if he would take it. They were some kind of executive team for…something.
Hello, Jacuzzi? Who the hell cares? The fact is: Toby’s loaded.
“I think he’s cool.” I said. Angie and I were on Toby’s bed on our bellies while Toby stayed on his beanbag listening to his iPod and reading some kind of gaming guide for World of Warcraft I think but it could’ve been anything.
“Do ya think so?” Angie asked. She sighed again. “I just don’t know if he likes me like that.”
“I think so.” I reassured her.
“Hey, Toby?” Angie yelled.
“Yeah?”
“Can I use your computer to IM Rick?”
“What do I care?” Toby shrugged.
Angie jumped up into the air and began to log into AIM as her very classy screen name: pyxyang9.
When I asked her what it meant, she just laughed and said it was a long story. And so began the adventure. Rick was on and we waited for contact.
“He knows your SN, right?” I hunched over her to look at the screen better.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” Angie bit her lip. “Screw it, I’m talking to him.”

pyxyang9: hey rick
pyxyang9: whts up

And we waited for a response.
“Ugh, why isn’t he answering?” Angie scowled.
“He’s probably busy or something.” I bit my lip too.
“Oooh, wait he’s typing!” Angie grinned with those slightly crooked but gleaming teeth of hers.

ritzDL7: hey ang
ritzDL7: nm u

Angie breathed out, slowly but anxiously.

pyxyang9: nothin much jc

“Now what?” Angie exhaled. “The convo’s pretty much done now.”
“Ask how his math project’s going.” I suggested.

pyxyang9: hows the math project going

Typing…

ritzDL7: shit
ritzDL7: lol I ned 2 do tht

ritzDL7 went Away at 6:28:09 PM

“What the hell Lindsay?” Angie sounded mad, but I knew boys couldn’t interfere with our relationship. At least, I hoped it wouldn’t. But then again, I didn’t know her too well either.
“Just trying to help,” I shrugged. “You can talk to him tomorrow.”
“Yeah, but, still…” She sighed.
“Oooh, I have an idea!” The light bulb in my head went ding! Do light bulbs ding or do they just light up? I’ll ponder that later.
“What is it?” Angie was now on Toby’s crimson butterfly chair that was pretty manly considering it was a butterfly chair. C’mon, it has the word “butterfly” in it, how manly can it be?
“After the project’s over, ask him to celebrate with you at Tino’s. It is a month-long project after all.”
“He probably has plans.”
“It doesn’t hurt to ask, does it?” I asked and put my hands on my hips. “When’d you get so pessimistic?”
“When I found out love hurts.” She looked up at the ceiling and groaned.
“Well, I gotta go anyway. I need to work on my paintings for the art show and my mom’s going to kill me if I don’t help making the Hamburger Helper shit and I’ll have to eat the leftovers.”
“What’s so bad about that?” Toby plucked one of his headphones out of his ears.
“Have you ever eaten Hamburger Helper leftovers?”
“They’re OK.” Angie shrugged. “My mom’s no chef; she sometimes has to buy boxed dinners when she comes home late.”
“Well, you’re obviously not eating the hamburger that’s being made at my house.”


My mom is a very stressed woman.
It’s gotten to the point where she it’s physically manifested itself.
She has panic-attacks ever since my dad started working longer hours and she had to take on more household responsibilities as well as the stressful life as a PA for some shock jock who can’t clean his own sheets. She takes medication now, but instead of ignoring her when she asks to do something we better do it or else we put her at risk for a panic-attack, or worse, an ulcer.
And I don’t want to send my mom into a state of complete mental dysfunction because I didn’t pick up my socks.
And when she says I better be home my 6:45, I better be home.
When I say we, I mean me and my sister, Amelia. She’s two years older than me and…how do I put this?
She’s on the promiscuous side.
She asks more questions during health talks than anyone else.
She gets home later than she should.
She hits more home runs than Babe Ruth.
Getting the point?
OK, that last thing was a little mean, but Amelia likes boys. She likes boys a lot. Sometimes I wonder if she’s really a lesbian that’s just trying to prove she’s heterosexual by…being with the guys in our school.
So…yeah.
Fine, you’ve caught me. I’m not smart enough to think that up by myself. It’s really Maya’s theory about Amelia after the Christmas party incident when I was in eighth grade.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Hamburger Helper, anyone?
“Hey, can you get that fork for me Lindsay?” Amelia asked. She was polishing a spoon with one of my dad’s old t-shirts.
I handed her one of the forks from my pile and gave it to her. I had already helped Mom with my kitchen chores and was just helping Amelia with her assignments. Mom got a debilitating headache and had to take some aspirin and a nap, so I just had to make sure the meal wasn’t going to get cold before she got back down to join us.
“So how’re things going?” Amelia inquired.
“Fine,” I shrugged. What did she care?
“Making friends?”
I nodded.
“Not doing drugs?”
I nodded.
“Getting a reputation?”
More nodding.
“A bad rep?”
“Nope, just hanging out and chilling.”
Amelia smiled warmly and nodded in approval. “Glad to hear it. I’m going to check on dinner.” And she walked off.
You have to understand, that was not the way our conversations usually went. She had to have been in a really good mood. She…she…
You’ll see.
“Oh, shit! I think I burned the fucking Hamburger Helper! Come and help me fix it!” I ran into the kitchen with the cheese turning a shade of charcoal and her hands flapping like she was a strange, little chicken with its head cut off. “Fuck!”
Mom came back downstairs with her head groggy and her hair in disarray, yawning uncontrollably.
“What’s going on here?” She squinted at the sight of the level of brightness in the room.
“Lindsay burned dinner!” Amelia shouted.
“That is so not true!”
“It was your job to watch to make sure this didn’t happen!”
“You went into the kitchen!” I yelled back.
“You should’ve followed me! I’m not good with appliances!”
“You’re not good with anything remotely complicated!”
“Oh, yeah?” Amelia took a deep breath. “At least I’m not a friendless loser who still IMs her old elementary school friends to see if they’re doing well at their school!”
“Hey I have friends you slut!”
OK, I know. I suck sometimes.
“Girls!” Mom shouted. “Take a deep breath. Amelia, stop blaming your sister. You’re the oldest; you need to take responsibility for your actions. And Lindsay, apologize. Do not call your sister names. Labels make and break people and I don’t allow that in my house.” She was still obviously groggy, so she did the coolest thing she could do at that point:
“Why don’t you just order some pizza from Tino’s?”
We happily agreed and went back to our little game of…something. Insult tag?


“What are you even supposed to wear to a bar mitzvah?” Angie asked, her glossy invitation in her right hand. “And what is with this invitation? It’s not until January, that’s not for, like, three months.”
It was October. Halloween was right around the corner and Rick hadn’t talked to Angie since that IM conversation, which was almost two weeks ago.
She hadn’t gone for my celebration idea for the math project.
“A dress,” Maya said, “an appropriate dress.”
“What does that mean?”
“No shoulders, at least not a lot of shoulder. Don’t wear heals, that’s just tacky and go for knee or below.”
“How do you know so much?” Angie asked.
“HHI is full of Jews, I’ve been to my share of bar and bat mitzvahs. Most of my friends were in seventh grade anyway. I was a member of the Everett Club.”
“What’s an ‘Everett Club’?” Toby asked.
“The Everett Club is a club at HHI that focuses on curriculum and after-school concerns that Student Government is too busy to deal with. Like if the AP classes are interfering with something or updates need to be made to extra-curricular activities. Both are ancient and still need to be accessible to students. I was the representative for the sixth grade and eventually made it on the board. There were a lot of cool people who were in the Everett club. We spent nearly every single day trying to sort out the weird complaints from reoccurring problems. It was actually a very successful club.”
“Look at you Miss Authority.” Angie giggled. “But why is it called the Everett Club?”
“Yeah, I really don’t know.”
“It sounds interesting.” I smiled.
“It does at that.” Toby nodded.
“Cool.” I said.
“Cool.” Angie looked over the invitation again. “So…what am I going to wear?”


Fast forward to Halloween: Angie, Maya and I went out to Rita’s petty party that involved a round of both Spin-The-Bottle and Truth-Or-Date, but we don’t go for either. We gorged on Nerds and Snickers and Angie ended up vomiting by the end of the night. Maya felt sick but only had a false alarm in the girl’s bathroom when I was helping Angie clean up. I felt like vomiting. Rick saw Angie in her fairy costume covered with a pinkish-brownish layer of sick all over her. Needless to say, she was traumatized.
Fast forward to Christmas: We exchanged gifts in homeroom as a result of Secret Santa. I got this set of pins with hearts and beads from Shandra, who vaguely remembered me. Like she was that memorable. I gave a Starbucks gift card to a random guy named Leo and re-gifted the pins to Amelia. Rick vaguely acknowledged Angie and asked if she was alright. She said “fine” and began her love cycle once again. Angie went skiing with her parents, Maya stayed home while her strict aunts and uncles stayed over with gifts galore and sound advice and Toby went to Maui, all around East Asia and spent New Year’s Eve with Wolfgang Puck and Fantasia in Los Angeles.
I stayed home and watched my cousins latch onto Amelia because she was “such a good role model” while I was the one who wrapped everyone’s presents with duct tape because someone took the scotch tape and hid it in her locked desk.
What I’m trying to say is: nothing had really changed by the weekend before Terry Krane’s bar mitzvah.
“So…what am I going to wear?” Angie stood in front of two dresses: a spaghetti strap black one with pink polka dots and a sash around the middle and a turquoise one with a thin blue layer of fabric over the satin.
“Go with the blue one.” I said.
“You’re right. It looks better on me anyway.” She had forgotten Maya’s rules with her shoulder-bearing, short dress with matching two-inch blue wedges.
Oh, well.
My dress was simple. It was light purple with a gold belt and a shawl that wrapped around my shoulders. It was OK. I didn’t have an extensive closet compared to Angie’s walk-in fortress of fabric.
I had three drawers and nineteen hangers. Most of them were empty.
My drawers were full to the brim though. That I can’t deny.
So not the point though.
“What’s going on with Rick?” I asked.
“Ugh, he isn’t calling.” Angie slumped onto her desk chair. “I mean, he can’t like me if he’s not talking to me or asking me out. He just can’t.”
“You like him and you’re not talking to him or asking him out.” I pointed out.
“He should ask me out.” Angie whined. “He just…ugh! He has to!”
“Sure, fine, don’t ask me for advice.” I whined right back.
“Sorry Linds, I’m just…ugh! I’m…he needs to ask me out!”
“Whatever.” I yawned. “I think I’m going to go home and start doing the packet.”
“Crisis!” She wailed. “Crisis over here!”
“He’ll ask you out eventually!” I called as I slammed the door to her room.
“Fine! I’ll ask him to Tino’s! Happy now Lindsay?” I didn’t catch what she said afterwards, but I’m sure it was not as civilized as it could have been.


pyxyang9: RICK SAID YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
pyxyang9: HE SAID YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
pyxyang9: OMFG HE SAID YES!!!!!!!!!!!


How nice for her.
Don’t think that I’m insensitive, but I was feeling kinda lonely during this time of boy-girl pairings and first kisses and intense schmoogerschnabber.
I had just made that up. I told Angie that and she gave me the infamous LOL.
I signed off and congratulated the ecstatic Angie over the phone and she giggled and laughed and asked what she should wear. I told her she’d look awesome in anything and she sounded like she didn’t believe me, but she accepted it anyway.


ONE WEEK LATER. The all caps was for dramatic effect, but I may have used all of that when I inserted Angie’s “he said yes” IM to me. Dramatic or not, it was the day of Terry Krane’s bar mitzvah.
I guess it was dramatic for Terry Krane, him becoming a man and all. Not so much for Angie who had already clicked with Rick. They weren’t “together”, but everyone pretty much knew that they were together.
Whoa…confusing.
“Rita must’ve gotten mad when she heard.” I said as were getting ready in Angie’s room. Angie was applying mascara to her naturally long eyelashes, but everything else about her face was completely manufactured. I guess she was trying to outdo Rita to impress Rick. It was no secret that Rita had a thing for Rick. I mean, it even sounded good. Rita and Rick, does alteration mean anything to you?
“Not so much. She made out with Leo to soften the blow.”
“What?” I asked. “She barely knows him.”
“Do you think that stopped her?”
That was the beginning of Rita’s “slut” stage. She went trough many. There was the “born-again” stage, the bohemian stage, the I-read-books-I’m-better-than-you stage.
Getting the point?
“What the hell?” And I start laughing. And I mean HA-HA-HA laughing, not small hiccup-like giggles that won’t go away.
I controlled myself until Angie’s mom dropped us off. It was the first time there was any serious physical contact between the male and female species. Or gender. Boys and girls seem like different species until sixth grade.
Of course, I’m special. It took me another year to figure that out.
We were dropped off in front of a humble synagogue with stone steps and most people seemed to be dressed a little less formal than we were, but Angie gave me one of those smiles of hers and I knew it was going to be OK.
I mean, we looked hot.
Well, Angie did and that was good enough for me.
They didn’t have assigned seating for the service, so Angie and I took a seat far back enough that we weren’t near Terry’s relatives. There were like eighty of them. Then I saw Rita talking to Leo and Leo looking a little disappointed but was compensated with a kiss on the cheek.
For some unknown reason, except for the fact that there is something completely wrong with me, I started laughing hysterically.
All of a sudden, Rita’s head snapped back to me and her eyes gave me an angry glare. She started to walk towards me and I felt my insides burning of humiliation.
“Something funny Lindsay?” She asked with her hands on her hips.
“Nope,” I replied, still smiling despite my brain telling my mouth to shut the hell up.
“Freak,” she muttered and walked away.
“What is your problem?” Angie asked.
“Nothing,” I shook my head, “absolutely nothing.”
“Then why are you smiling?” By this time, she was smiling too. “Beautiful.”
“I gave that guy a Starbucks gift card!” I managed to say as I started laughing again when Leo turned to me.


The service was s-o-o-o-o boring. There was a lot of standing and sitting involved and lots of pretending to read Hebrew.
The after-party, however, was a completely different story.
Rick and Angie were completely flirting with each other, tons of arm-touching and giggles on Angie’s part. Rick just seemed to be enjoying the show. He’d lean in to say one nice thing to her and suddenly she would be hooked again and go crazy, “he’s so sweet”, “he’s so completely cute”, “I just love when he says things like that”.
Feeling another rhetorical question coming on?
That’s what I thought.
Xander was there too but he just seemed to be making fun of Shandra and Rita. He didn’t like Shandra (that was for sure) but Maya had a sneaking suspicion that he liked Rita and that was how boys expressed themselves.
I wasn’t so sure. He had a thing for Nadia (I don’t even want to try to spell her last name). She was like Toby in that she was damn wealthy but didn’t like to flaunt it. We found that out when we learned that the donor’s house we visited was actually her uncle’s.
Apparently he was the poor one in the family.
The thing was Maya also had a thing for Nadia. She didn’t exactly tell us, but made no effort to hide it and neither did Nadia.
Xander liked what he couldn’t have.
I was sitting by Terry’s pool when Jay Saunders came jumping by. He had a lot going for him, being cute and all. He wasn’t exactly smart, but he wasn’t stupid either. He didn’t make an effort, but he wasn’t about to fail anything. He liked to stay below the radar. He was just cute enough that I bit my lip whenever I saw him, but Rita was not on his trail.
Xander was still the one that made me think of our first days as the new kids. He was not an outsider but mocked the ones that considered him one, giving him the advantage with about seventy-percent of the school. He was just one of those guys. He just made me feel…I can’t even say.
I hope he isn’t reading this.
Hi Xander.
Anyway, Jay came by. He had these wispy black/brown hairs that were just flat. I don’t know how to describe them. They seemed…flat.
“Hey Lindsay,” He greeted me. I didn’t know what to say. I barely knew Jay. He was in my homeroom but we didn’t know each other. He was only a “hey Jay” to me.
Hee hee. Rhymes.
But so not the point. I hardly saw him.
“Hey Jay,” I replied.
“So…uh…how’s stuff?” What kind of question is that?
“Stuff is good.” I nodded.
“Glad to hear it.” He said rather quickly. “So…I was thinking…” What? What was happening? He was sweating, just a little. He…what was happening?
“What?” I finally asked after a long pause.
“Do you wanna go out sometime?”
Oh, shit. My first ask-out. What the hell was I supposed to say? Jay was pretty much perfect, but I didn’t like him. There was something about him that irked me, but I wanted to say yes. I did. But I couldn’t make the words come out until the worst word came out:
“Punch?” And I walked away with my punch cup in one hand and hitting myself with the other.
I walked straight into Terry’s living room all “pimped out” as his grandmother casually joked during the luncheon. All of Terry’s relatives laughed. The rest of us were just like, “what?”
Ugh, I just turned down the most normal and cute guy I had ever met. Quiet, polite, not completely annoying, and…ugh!
Now I sound like Angie.
Well, whatever.
“I just turned down Jay Saunders.” I complained to Toby.
“I just found out about Rita’s new Gucci bag.” Toby replied. “Believe me; I’m suffering more than you are.”
“Jay Walkens!”
“Rita’s super-sized ego!”
I grunted, but he probably couldn’t hear me under Chingy.
“Look, it probably wasn’t as bad as you think it was.” I managed to hear. “What happened?”
“I offered him punch.” I sighed.
“You off’d him with a punch?” He asked. “You killed Jay Saunders? What?”
“No Toby!” I sighed again.
“That’s probably why he turned you down.” He smiled.
“You’re not even listening!” I buried my face in my hands.
“Relax Lindsay, you’re getting too anxious.”
“Go to hell Toby!”
“Gladly,”
I stormed off, mad at Toby’s indifference. Angie was intoxicated with Rick, so she would be completely giddy and of no use. I figured she was better than Maya who had found some HHI friends to hang out with.
Angie was getting chips at the buffet table, Rick-free, so I grabbed her so hard that some of the chips actually fell out of her hand.
“Hey!” She squealed. “I gotta get these to Rick!”
“I need to talk to you Angie.” And my cell phone buzzed. “Hey,” I greeted Amelia, exasperated and left Angie to deliver chips to her “boo” as she playfully called him.
“Mom asked me to check in on you. Everything OK little sis?”
I was feeling unusually open with her, so I just said it:
“I turned down Jay Saunders.”
“Is that Joel Saunders’s little brother?”
“I think so.”
“OhmyGod, he’s so completely cute.” Amelia giggled with excitement.
“Hey, Amelia, me for just a second,”
“Right. Sorry. Just, don’t get hard on yourself. He’s probably just not right for you. That’s why you turned him down. Don’t beat yourself up about this. Things are meant to happen. I honestly believe that.”
Sometimes I forget how helpful Amelia can be. That night, I felt her love and affection. She was an expert on affection.
“Thanks,” I smiled to myself, “that actually helps.”
“No problem. You owe me forty bucks.” She said without skipping a beat.
“What for?” I was not about to pay her for this advice. Even she wasn’t that good.
That’s what she said. I mean, he said. Or she…you know, whatever you prefer…
“I lent some money to you last week for your dress.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Don’t you remember?”
“No I don’t.”
“You calling me a liar sis?”
“Yes, I am.” I couldn’t believe her. She just wanted me to pay her for her cheeseburger diet. Mom had cut her off a long time ago.
“You wanted that purse to go with your dress.”
“That’s not dress money.”
“It’s purse money, its still money either way. You owe me.”
“Fine, I’ll pay you tonight.”
“Good luck with Jay.” And she hung up.
I wasn’t actually planning on paying her back. With any luck, she’d forget and just think I paid her.
I wandered around the house, trying to find Angie. She was nowhere to be found. I waited in the dance room, hoping to catch a glimpse of her seducing Rick, but no such luck. I finally found her chugging down some Altoids next to Rick, while he was taking a call.
“Can we go home Ang?” I whined. I slumped over on Terry’s couch.
“Just a minute.” She whispered. “I’ll see you later Rick.” And there was a quick cheek kiss. They had agreed on minimal PDA unless of a kissing emergency.
They happen. Oh, they happen.
He didn’t even react, he just kept talking and laughing with the person on his cell phone and waved at Angie when she waved good-bye. Even if he didn’t kiss her, a wave was enough to make her tingle with excitement.
But she seemed a little less ecstatic than when he waved or smiled or something than before. I pulled her arm and she followed like a zombie. I guessed she was just tired. It was one o’clock in the morning.
Angie and I grabbed Toby out of the dance room and walked home. Maya was getting a ride from her HHI friends, so she stayed there to get the scoop while we were out.
It was a long night indeed.


Rita had tried to seduce Rick, but he resisted and told her he had a girlfriend.
“Fuck, did you hear that? I am somebody’s girlfriend! Holy shit!”
Maya looked unbelievably uncomfortable.
“What is it Maya?” Angie was still smiling.
“Um…nothing.” Maya shook her head. “It’s not important.”
“No, what? There are no secrets here missy.” Angie gave Maya what only looked like a devious smile, but her face had been contorted by all the giggling and smiling.
“I found out that Rick liked Rita. They had a thing.”
“What do you mean?” Angie’s face dropped.
“I think they had something in the beginning of the year. They were tight.”
“I never noticed that.”
“It ended a month ago.” Maya shrugged.
“Rebound? I am somebody’s fucking rebound?” And she started crying. It was a good thing we were only in Angie’s kitchen and not school.
Unfortunately, she confronted him and he told her he was only using her to get Rita jealous. He said sorry. Also not at school, but she did cry.
She called him a soul-sucking bastard and spit in his food. This was at school.
Hostile…but she still cried and was sent home in the middle of the day because of the wheezing that came with the crying. It sounded like she had some kind of lung inflammation, but what do I know?
I barely passed science.


It was a rough week for Angie. She had trouble getting over her week-long relationship. Cry me a river.
Sure I had never had a relationship with a guy that had been remotely romantic unless you count my oh-so-graceful “punch” episode with Jay or even my relationship with Toby. If you can count a guy who’s in love with your best friends even though there is a good chance one’s a lesbian or bisexual and the other…well, there’s really no hope, is there?
Toby’s not bad-looking either. He has his good qualities with big, brown eyes and brown curls at the end of his hair had gotten more matted since seventh grade started. He just wasn’t spectacular like Angie seemed to think Rick was.
And he was.
Well, until he used her. He lost some of his spectacular-ness after that.
Anyway…
“It’s going to be OK, if he was right for you, things would’ve worked out better.” Was that what Amelia said? I couldn’t quite remember.
“But he was so perfect!” She sniffled. She sat cross-legged on her floral bed and wept. Her nails were painted with á la Sharpie.
“If he really likes you, he’ll make it up to you.” I tried to encourage her.
“What if he hates me?” She asked.
“He agreed to go out with you, right?”
“To get back at that soul-sucking bitch!” She screamed.
“You alright in there Angel?” Angie’s mom asked through the door. I liked that Angie’s name as Angel had a double-meaning as her name and as a term of affection.
Lindsay isn’t exactly endearing.
“Go away Mummy!” She bawled. Her wheezing became more apparent than ever.
“Maybe you should get that checked out.” I suggested.
“I’m fine!” She started hiccupping then.
I gave her a half-smile.
“Don’t worry about me Lindsay.” Angie smiled back. Which was code for, “Don’t leave me; I’ll melt without someone to help keep the tears in.”
“I’ll be happy to stay.” I lied.
And she wept louder. I could sense Angie’s mom by the door but she had gotten the hint and was just going to stay out of it.
I wish that Amelia could apply that same concept to my life. But we haven’t gone to her relentless questions and spying.
Yes, I said spying.
I sat there for two shitty hours just waiting for her to finish crying about her “ex-boyfriend”. I didn’t want to seem rude, so I kept my mouth shut and listened to her whining.
Her favorite terms were “soul-sucking” and “not fair”.
“It’s just not fair Lindsay! It’s just not fair!”
Like it ever is.


I had just realized that my art show was in one week and I needed five paintings that represented my inner self. Ugh, so annoying. So I came to school early that Monday morning and went straight to the art room.
It was weird being at school without a lot of people surrounding the hallways. Usually they were packed with gossip queens and kings, guys who came to school stoned and hyperactive Julie-girls. A Julie-girl was a follower of any kind. They were the ones that followed whatever Rita was wearing, but Angie and I considered Rita to be a Julie-girl too of fashion magazines. Then there were the Samanthas. A “Samantha” was just a girl who wasn’t a follower of Rita, but was part of their own group dynamic. Like, Rita may be wearing paperclip necklaces but unless the group leader is wearing it too, the other members will follow.
You know?
But I’m getting completely off track.
The hallways were empty, the janitors were there even. One was polishing the window and another was mopping the disgusting, orange tiles that would give anyone a headache. I passed the row of lockers that greeted me and went down the “secret” hallway through the nurse’s station with doors that led me to the back doors of administrative offices. We weren’t actually allowed down that hallway, but since no one was there…who would know?
Then I saw them: the security cameras. I tried my best to dodge them, but I was sure I had made a mistake, so I just ran back to the main hallway and headed down into the eighth grade area.
The studio was downstairs in the basement, so whenever we had classes, I would have to go down a set of stairs by the science room and push hard on the wooden door that always seemed to jam up. All the other doors were wood too, but this door looked like it would give you splinters. Patty always swore she would sand it one day whenever we complained.
“It could be worse.” She would smile and then write an assignment on the board.
Art was supposed to be the easy class.
We had to learn about color theory and the history of lines and stuff like that. The room itself was crammed with posters all over the walls and the ceiling and weird mobiles hanging shaped like birds and airplanes. There were no windows and just a lonely light hanging from the ceiling like in one of those classic interrogation rooms. I pulled a canvas from the area behind a huge fan to keep everything preserved or something.
To make the paint dry faster? Maybe. I don’t even know. Art was not something that was in my heart so I just drew myself doing random things, like skateboarding and running.
And so I painted my magnificent self on the canvas.


My paintings were not a hit, which meant less talking and explanations from my note cards that I had written. I loved it all.
It gave me a pang of failure to not have a popular exhibit, but I didn’t let it show. No talking, no presenting. Patty finally came back with a powdered donut, entranced with my skateboarding painting. I actually didn’t know how to skateboard, so I hoped she wouldn’t ask if I knew how to do…a skateboarding trick.
“Very good Lindsay; I can see the honesty in your paintings.”
Ha. Irony.
“Thanks Patty.” I said awkwardly.
“Well, I hope that you’re very proud of your work. You should be.” And she left.
She walked over to the next one over, to a new kid’s self portrait. It was just a tornado with the many aspects of his life twirling around and his face sort of visible, like he had started doing his face but changed it to a tornado. She spent almost ten minutes with him and whispered something which made him forcibly laugh while she cackled.
She genuinely smiled and gave him a “good job” nod.
It was then I really felt like a failure.


So they made a new rule in P.E. that actually inspects our gym uniforms.
Like for dirt.
We. Are. Playing. Sports. Outside.
In. Fucking. Mud.
It’s stupid too that those who don’t have uniforms get N/As for all the uniform requirements which basically means instead of maybe six Ds, you get just one.
No one wore their uniforms again.
Ever.
Why tell this story? I don’t know, it explains the world’s cruelty towards me who wore her uniform every fucking gym class and got six Ds for not pressing my uniform. And being a “bad sport”. I’m scared of soccer balls.
Isn’t that a disability?
Conquering fears has never been my strongest suit. I loathe confrontation and being someone who actually raises her hand and voices her opinion. I end up sounding like Rita.
She has no shame.
“I think that white people should just let go of the past, you know? So what if there were slaves? It doesn’t make them better than us or anything.”
What the hell? I doubt slavery makes anyone a higher class than anyone.
January was rolling into February and we were still on slavery. Kill me.
“I believe that white people are subconsciously are being manipulated by the media to believe that those that are different than us, like immigrants, by advertising only white people to display those of great wealth or…being happy.” Lynn said.
She always brought the discussion back to society or the media.
When I first came, everyone was like: “ask Lynn to read your paper, she’s so damn smart”, “ask Lynn, she’s perfect” and I believed them.
It was my essay on the Industrial Revolution and its effects on the growing industrial America. She filled all the margins…but not necessarily in a good way.
“Good point, but how does it affect society?”
“Not clear enough; bring it back to American society.”
“Thesis is not clear enough; where does society come into play?”
OMFG.
We get it.
Society = bad.
At least someone other than me had the guts to say so.
“The American society does not focus on slavery today through the media.” Xander blurted out. “That’s just stupid.”
“Subconsciously, mind you.” Lynn blurted back. She didn’t like to be contradicted. She liked to shoot anyone down who tried to make their point seem more important. Her eyes would flame up.
“Subconsciously or not, the media isn’t trying to poison us by telling us that slavery is good.”
“That’s not what I said!” Lynn said.
“Well, you’re not saying that the media thinks it’s bad either. Which is it?”
“They think it’s bad!”
“So they aren’t talking about slavery if they think it’s bad. They aren’t telling us that people that are bad are different then. That was your original point, wasn’t it?”
“Well…they still aren’t saying that we’re all equal.”
“There will always be some segregation, but it’s a lot better than it was, like, two hundred years ago, don’t you agree?”
“Yes…”
“Then maybe in another two hundred years it’ll be even better and people will stop bitching about these kinds of things. Society isn’t full of manipulative people who try to corrupt us, but that might explain why Bush was elected.”
There were some giggles and smiles.
“Believe it or not, we’re all people who are just trying to make it. If every ad was trying to incorporate every race, ethnicity, and religion on the planet, you could hardly see everyone’s faces. No one is ‘politically correct’ one hundred percent of the time. It’s stupid if you expect everyone to be held to that standard when you’re a hypocrite yourself.”
I could see Lynn’s face inflamed with anger, but she let it go.
“I see your point” was all she said.
It was so well-put, especially by a seventh-grader.
I wanted to marry Xander right then.


Xander had suddenly earned a reputation of being smarter than Lynn and more capable of putting together a plausible argument faster than anyone else in the dump we called “school”.
At least I’m sure that’s what “Xan the Man” means.
It didn’t last long though, though he was still being called Xan.
He had instantly turned from a below-the-radar Shandra-loathing hothead into Xan.
Xan, the guy who was invited to all the parties.
Xan, the guy who lived life like he was Superman.
Xan, my hero.
Not that I liked him. Well, sort of.
I thought about him, but only those moments at Nadia’s uncle’s house and the argument with Lynn. Jay was also in my thoughts, but only as the one I should have said yes to. I felt pangs of guilt and humiliation and I ignored him from then on out.
Like I said, I’m not that good with confrontation.
But, come on, “punch”?
“Punch”?!?!
I feel embarrassed just writing it down.
Imagine saying it to someone who could potentially become your date.
That’s when Valentine’s Day began to roll around.


“Rick was supposed to be my date; that soul-sucking bastard.” Chicken nugget stab.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” I said. “He’s going to be just as miserable as you.”
“Like hell he is!” Angie devoured all the chicken on her plate. “If he wants fucking Rita, he can fucking have her.” She said with her mouth full.
“Don’t be so harsh Ang, he’s just a boy.” Maya commented. “No offense Toby.”
“None taken,”
“Well, he was just so cute.”
“Don’t be so superficial.” Maya narrowed her eyes. “People are so much more than their looks except for a few choice people.” She pointed her fork at a certain Rita and Rick. “C’mon, what did he do that made him so special?”
“He was here for me.”
“You were with him for less than a week.”
“What made him special was that he made me feel special.” Angie whimpered. “Stop trying to turn him into a horrible person. He was sweet.”
“He dumped you for the dumbest and most superficial girl in the whole school. You said you hated him.”
“I still like him OK? Sue me.”
“Why? Why is he is so different than anyone else?”
“Because…” Angie trailed off then got back on track. “He just is. Does there need to be a reason?”
“Yes there does!” Maya was emotionally poking a stick at Angie.
“I’ll tell you later.” Angie said softly.
And later came.


“I gave him a BJ.” She said so directly that she had to repeat it for us to actually grasp it.
“What?” It was just us girls, no Toby. He had gone to be with these guys he had gotten close to and was spending less and less time with us but he still usually ate lunch with us. After we had heard this news, we understood why she didn’t invite him over. Plus Angie’s mom would’ve gone ballistic if a boy had been a room with a boy.
Naughty things could happen. That didn’t stop Angie apparently.
She’s not slut though. Do not think I mean that.
But this whole he-left-me thing made it seem so much more apparent why she was upset she was the rebound. Why she thought he was a “soul-sucking bastard” but still felt he was sweet.
Of course, she might have just been on her period and gone crazy.
“Oh, Ang,” Maya hugged Angie so tightly that I thought Angie was going to burst. “When did this happen?”
“Terry Krane’s bar mitzvah!”
“The actual service?”
“No!” Angie laughed between the tears. “The party! The party afterwards! In the bathroom!”
“I see.” Maya pursed her lips. “Did he force you Ang?”
“No! He didn’t. I wanted to, but…I wasn’t sure.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“No. I…I…wanted to.”
“But you weren’t sure.”
The tears began again.
“You’re just making her more upset.” I whispered softly.
“Time can only heal her wounds.” She whispered back.
“Stop talking about me, I’m right here! Jesus Christ, I’m fucking right here!”
“Eat some cookie dough, get fat and cry into a bowl of ice cream.” Maya hugged Angie again.
“I don’t wanna get fat!” Angie cried and buried her head in her pillow.
Happy Valentine’s Day to me.


Nadia asked Maya to be her valentine later on. Maya said yes and she came out to us that she thought she might be a lesbian. She said it felt right with Nadia and she wasn’t going to question her relationship with her until she found out what sex she was truly attracted to.
It made me think about my sexuality.
I think it made all of us question it.


During spring break, my family and I went to Ohio to visit my grandma who wanted to watch TV and hold my face. She really liked to hold my face.
And yet Amelia was her favorite. She always got better gifts than me. Gift cards, massages by the handsome Oliver Paxton, dinners, even a limo ride to her sweet sixteen.
What do I get?
Socks.
Pajamas.
Home Depot gift cards.
Everything a girl could ask for.
I didn’t understand this inequality, but Amelia told me not to question it. Granny Applesmith was old and we needed to not disturb her about trifling subjects like gifts she didn’t have to give us.
I hated that she had to be all big-sister-like and be right.
Her name wasn’t really Granny Applesmith, obviously, in case you wanted to know. But we liked to call her that.
She was Judith Goldstein II, a woman of moral values and wealth.
But that’s pretty irrelevant.
After spring break, the rest of the school year floated by and summer began. Angie, Maya, Toby and I went to the movies when we were altogether and hung out individually intermittently. It wasn’t all too exciting really. Lots of late nights and mornings, parties for Maya and catching up for Angie although what she was trying to catch up on was completely beyond me. Seventh grade was over. We had changed just a little. Things had begun and ended so fast that it ended up feeling like nothing had ever stayed the same.
But seventh grade sunk into me. It was the year of crushes, the beginning of some romances and the end of most others. What was sure seemed to be changing every minute but I was sure that eighth grade would be different.
It just had to be.


Part Two: 8th Grade, A Sure Thing
I stepped into my homeroom with a newfound certainty. There were a lot of new kids that were hard to place socially.
First surprise: Angie and Maya were both in my homeroom.
“I can’t believe we’re together!” We laughed and hugged and laughed some more.
“It is a new year.” Angie was back to her old self again. It took a while but she could shrug off the whole Rick thing now. Or she was really good at faking it. “It’s time to make a pact.”
“Honesty,” Maya said, “we have to be honest.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because we can’t keep things from each other,”
Sure we could.
“We have to be honest to a certain degree.” I said. “Let’s not go overboard.”
“OK,” Maya nodded, “agreed.”
Angie nodded as well.
“Alright,” I smiled with all my teeth, “we’ve got a pact.”
Second surprise: Lynn was also in our homeroom.
It really wasn’t that big a deal except she rolled her eyes when we were all hugging and affectionate. Did I mention she has, like, zero friends except for some other people who don’t know what a bitch she can be?
Don’t feel sorry for her. She could be nice if she wanted to. She could make good conversation. Plus, she had already had a boyfriend and a slew of out-of-school friends that she could connect better with. She could be friends with any of the new kids.
Most of the kids in our homeroom were new but I didn’t really mind. It wasn’t like I had to have people I know to make me feel comfortable.
I’m not that insecure.
I have got to stop using italics.
A disease I tell you. A disease.
There I go again.
Third surprise: Actually, that’s about it.
But you’ll just have to wait and see for sure, won’t you now?
The surprise didn’t come until Angie said:
“I met someone while I was touring in England!”
Oops, skipped that part.
Earlier in the year, in seventh grade, Angie applied for this “global experience” tour to develop musical and acting skills in a studio somewhere in England. She was very excited when she got accepted and thought it would be the perfect place “to get away from it all” like she had this hard life here.
Trust me, other than her break-up with Mr. Handsome, this girl had no problems except with her anger for chicken nuggets.
“He’s not actually English. He joined the tour late.”
“What’s his name?” Maya inquired.
“Ty,” She smiled to herself as she said it.
“Oooh, Ty!” Maya laughed.
“He lives half an hour away! Can you imagine? He’s sweet and cute and so completely devoted to me! To me! Can you believe it?”
I actually couldn’t.
Face it: the girl invites drama into her life.
I met Ty that weekend and he was just as Angie described. We all started hanging out together and helped each other with homework.
Ty was a year older which made it even cooler for Angie.
Toby was doomed.
I mostly hung around because Ty was a math genius and helped me with our pre-pre-algebra lessons. I hated letters after that year. Stupid x’s and y’s.
They think they’re s-o-o-o-o special.
After awhile, we became closer. He was a fun guy. He didn’t make stupid jokes, but he did make observations that made me laugh.
And Angie liked him the more she was with him, which got old quickly for me and Maya. And Toby, of course.
Nadia and Maya were still going strong. Nadia was sure she was bi, but Maya was still completely uncertain of anything. She thought she loved Nadia, but couldn’t get over the fact that it was a big deal to clarify sexual orientation.
Angie did not help things.
“I love guys, don’t you?” she smiled like someone out of a bad romantic comedy. “They’re so cute and dependable. I could not live without them, could you?”
Sometimes Angie is just an idiot. Even with all of her AP classes. Like that really makes you smarter or something.
I could tell how infuriated Maya was. I could also see her “it’s not all about looks Angie” persona showing.
I wanted to sock Angie in the face.
And I’m one of her best friends.
But this went on for awhile and Maya just sat there, taking in all the crap. She was very quiet and all, not saying a damn word and just smiled.
Once Angie finished, Maya got up and announced to her friends:
“I am coming out…for the second time. I am a lesbian.”
She had never looked more relieved.


“Today is the beginning of the rest of your lives.”
Tell me that’s not intimidating.
Ms. Lynley was a stout, very annoying English teacher who licked her fingers whenever she turned a page in books she assigned to us that made my back feel like I was giving a piggyback ride to someone.
Someone with a serious weight problem.
“This is your last year of middle school, study hard people. You will need the skills you learn this year for the rest of your academic career be it two or twelve years.”
There was some muffled laughter.
“Now, we’ll begin with some fun writing exercises to warm up.” She passed out several sheets of lined paper and plopped herself behind her desk.
There is no such thing as a fun writing exercise.
“It may seem arbitrary, but I want all of you to describe your summer in detail and hand it in.” And she began to test out old pens from previous years that made a scratching sound on her ancient desk.
Oh yeah. This was going to be a fun year.


Write text here.
I cannot think of anything.
Filling up space.
So, so random.
Ugh, I want to say something that was very positive the first month of school, but honestly?
Nothing was ever so boring.
So I’ll just skip to October.
That’s when things finally start to get interesting. For Angie I mean.


“So if you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?” Maya asked.
“Brazil.” I replied.
“Brazil? That is so completely random.” Angie laughed.
“Hey, you asked and I answered.”
“So how are things going with Mr. Perfect Ang?” Maya asked.
“Ty has been so awesome lately. We’re going out tomorrow for a little get-together before I leave to see my aunts in Washington.” Angie suddenly sprung up and immediately sat herself back down. “Oh! That reminds me, Ty needs someone to help him bake baked goods for the Halloween dance in two weeks.”
“Nadia’s in the hospital, I can’t go this weekend.” Maya said.
“Why is she in the hospital?”
“She asked that I don’t tell anyone her condition.” Maya shrugged.
“Is it serious?”
“Not one word.”
“Please tell me Maya.”
“No.” Maya stated.
“I promise I won’t tell.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“Respect her privacy Angie. Stop trying to pry into her life.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“Don’t give me that. This isn’t about trust. It’s about your respect for boundaries. Honestly, not everything is your business so just leave it alone, won’t you?”
And Maya left.
“What a bitch.” Angie rolled her eyes.
“Don’t you get it Angie?” I asked.
“What? She knows that she can trust me. I have not done a damn thing to her and she’s taking everything out on me!”
And I just sat there. Sometimes she just didn’t get it.
And I always wonder why she was so smart when all she did was whine and act like a child for the entire world to see.


I couldn’t believe how many new kids there were. They were like an infection, multiplying in numbers and unexpected. It has the last year of middle school. I mean, honestly.
A virus was among us.
Angie didn’t mind it so much and neither did Maya. They were excited at all of the new faces. It just seemed plain annoying to me. Too many new names to remember and all of that. But all the more to invite to another one of Rita’s little parties.
“Did you get an invitation Linds?” Angie asked me.
“Yeah, but I have no idea why.” It had all of this yellow glitter and orange and red leaves with brown writing inviting me for an “awesome time at Rita’s place” at six sharp. “Rita doesn’t even like me that much.”
“Why haven’t I gotten one?” Angie pouted as we walked down the yellow and red walls with the words, “GO THORNS!” written with orange paint. I hated that there was a lot of orange, red and yellow around.
Stupid autumn.
“Maybe it’s because of that little present you gave Rick.” I whispered.
“Shut up, Lindsay!” She giggled but then stopped cold. “Oh my God, did he tell her? Did that son of a bitch tell Rita about our hook-up? Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” Angie groaned and opened the door to math class.
Math class was a bore. Mr. Eugene Granes was a burnt-out, thirty-five-year-old man with abused sport jackets, a buzz cut and a face that sort-of sagged when he talked. Just writing about him makes me want to yawn. You couldn’t hear him when he talked; his voice was so quiet that he seemed impossible as he wrote the equations on the board. Only Lynn seemed to hear him and was adamant about doing her work by herself. She wasn’t about to go and help anyone because they would take her answers and call them their own. She was very secretive. She was the only one who was allowed in the “secret” hallway to eat lunch with her new best friends, Tanya and Charlene. Both upstanding and smart people, but they were nicer than Lynn.
As we turned in our badly-done homework and left the dull classroom, Angie groaned again.
“I’m not going to Rita’s party.”
“It didn’t help that you got sick and rode the porcelain bus in her bathroom.”
“’Rode the porcelain bus’? What?”
“You puked Angie. You puked at her last Halloween party.” I sighed. Sometimes…Angie…I can’t even talk about it.
“Lindsay Thornburg?” Mr. Granes called after me. Sometimes his voice can be heard by human ears and not so high that only dogs can.
“No, no, no.” I said softly to Angie before turning around and politely saying, “Yes Mr. Granes?”
“We need to talk about your last test.” He waved me over. I’m pretty sure that was what he said. He went back to his soft-talking routine.
“Alright,”
We sat down at the rectangular table in the middle of the room for discussions and checking homework.
“A lot of your work has been sloppy lately, you don’t show your work, blah, blah, blah, boo, boo, blah…” There was a little bubble of spit building up in the corner of his mouth.
I tuned out and nodded, looking at the board with algebraic equations on the board. It was all just numbers and letters to me.
When will I ever need that stuff? Who works with numbers and letters?
“…can you do that Lindsay?”
Perfect. A question I could give a simple answer to.
“Of course.” I smiled.
“Great, you’ll come on Saturday then.”
Huh? What did just agree to?
“I’m sorry…could you repeat your request again?” I asked. I was on the ball. I had sentences like BAM, BAM, and BAM. Go me.
“The tour of the school for potential donors? All you need to do is talk about the school for half a day. Talk about the math program and how it’s improved and how it can still improve.”
“But I don’t know how the math program has improved or how it can still improve.”
“You’ll have note cards provided. It’s not a hassle, really.”
Great. Note cards.
“So…I’m not failing math?”
“I think I would know. Just remember to write big, clear numbers. I can’t see the small handwritten numbers you write.”
“Um…OK then.” I pursed my lips and left.


“A tour guide?” Amelia laughed. She shook her head. “You’ve never led anything in your whole life.”
“That’s quite reassuring.” I poured myself some orange juice.
“I’m sorry…it’s just…will you have to wear that kind of outfit like the tour guides at the zoo?” Her head tipped back as she slapped her knee, still laughing.
I didn’t see what was so funny.
“I’m just going to have a nametag and explain why we need new textbooks.” I shrugged. “It’s more boring than funny.”
“I know…I’m sorry…” Her face was still cherry-red.
“So tell me how things are going.” I sat down at the dining room table with her.
“Well I talked to Joel.”
“Joel? Jay Saunders’s brother?”
“Yeah, and he was all…”
I blanked out for a moment, but when I realized what happened last time, I started listening again.
“…just not caring about him and it was just so embarrassing, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“If you ask me how my day was, you should at least listen to me!” And she stormed off.
“I was listening!” And I slumped down with my orange juice and the little dignity I had left. It was just then when my dad came home.
“Hey, Dad,” I was still slumped over in my chair.
“Hey sweetheart, how was your day?”
“I’m a tour guide!” I moaned.
“Good me too,” and he walked away.
At least I know where I get it from.


It was Saturday and I was standing idly in the math room with Mr. Granes eating an apple and that little bubble of spit returning to the corner of his lip. I wondered if he was married. He never talked about his personal life. He seemed to pretty much just keep to himself. I felt sort of sorry for him. Just standing there, eating his apple with no one to go home to and be happy with someone.
But, then again, he was just my math teacher.
I didn’t really know him. He might have ten kids and a wife comparable to Lauren Graham.
There was no way to tell…unless I asked him.
No way! I was not about to cross that line. It would show a sense of caring that I never want anyone to see. I’m no suck-up.
I just waited for the donors to arrive and read the note cards I was given. It said I needed to tour the people to the next room.
What?
“Um, Mr. Granes, do I really have to tour the group?”
“They don’t call it a tour guide for nothing.” He saw the disappointed look on face and added, “It’s just to Ms. Lynley’s room and you walk back. It’s just not that far.”
I hated putting in effort (I know I sound like the laziest person ever) and there they came. I smiled as hard as I could and greeted the white-haired, plump woman in an all-white suit, the tall man in a green suit, the long-haired, sunglass-wearing guy in a leather jacket and jeans, and an insanely thin older woman decked in jewelry talking on her cell phone and also in sunglasses. But I’m sure hers were the ones personally picked out by her personal assistant and not purchased at the boardwalk for $2.99.
C’mon, now, Lindsay, let’s not make assumptions…
But it’s so hard not to look at these people and not think, hello! Your ring costs more than what my parents make in a year.
And the car. Put together.
I read straight from the note card, nervous as ever and wondering why there was a man in cheap sunglasses at a tour for donors.
Donors have money. That’s how they can donate.
I figured he had to be the son of someone important or something. He just annoyed me. I had seen this man before. This leather jacket and jeans and plaid shirt underneath. Who mixes a plaid shirt and leather jacket? That was what I wanted to know.
I finished my presentation with Mr. Granes looking pleased. I must’ve done well.
Don’t ask what was on those cards. I have no clue.
I only like to remember pleasant and/or useful memories, thank you very much.
I guided the group to Ms. Lynley’s room, but I kept thinking about that guy. He looked about twenty or thirty, maybe uncle, or maybe my…
I had to have been just thinking about my cousin Art when I crashed into the wall and hit my head against another “GO THORNS!” poster. That’s when Art asked if I was OK and told me to go lie down. He guided everyone to Ms. Lynley’s room. He had to suffer through her class as well.


“I can’t believe you crashed into the wall.” He said.
“I can’t believe you came to the donors’ tour.” I shook my lighter-than-air head.
“Hey, Uncle Alec told me that you were in this tour and I just had to come.”
“Why? I haven’t seen you in, what, five years.” I looked at him suspiciously.
“I just wanted to support you. See my cousins, aunt and uncle. What’s not to visit?” He smiled.
“I can’t believe you. Didn’t you have to make a donation at the door?”
“I gave five hundred dollars.” He said solemnly.
“Are you serious? Most people just gave, like, ten bucks.”
“Oops, I only gave five dollars.” Art’s smile got sheepish instead of giving.
“Fine, joke, but I’m serious about this. What are you doing here?”
“I’m moving here.” He was still smiling, which was starting to irritate me.
“You’re moving here? Why on earth would you move back to this crapper?”
“Family,” he replied. “I’m moving because of family.” He ran his finger down my nose and poked it. “Because of you, little Lindsay.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe whatever you want to believe. I’m moving here and that’s a fact.”
I knew Art from his “promises” to come visit and Dad filling in the blanks. He had something in mind and there was something that I couldn’t understand. Whenever he had backed out of plans, it was always because something had come up, but I had learned not to believe him.
“Where are you moving? I mean, with who?”
“A friend of mine named Tracy.”
“Ah, Tracy, looking forward to meeting her,” I had a smile on my face now.
“We’re really friends.” He narrowed his eyes at me.
“Of course,”
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“Do I have a reason not to believe you?” I asked.
“Hey, you’re the one accusing. Not me.”
“I just want to know the truth Art.”
“The truth is I’m moving here. You can talk to me if you want to. You can visit me if you want to. You can do whatever you want to, but I’m staying here and I’m not leaving for a long time.”
That was a lie too.
Art came to dinner that night and it felt like a real family dinner. We talked and laughed, argued a little but someone always asked to be passed the salad or butter.
“Salt please?” I asked.
“Wow, amazing dinner Aunt Lisa, as always.”
“Thank you Art,” Mom smiled. She always liked Art for some reason and always believed he was going to get better. Whatever was happening to him was just a phase and he was going to get better.
I wish I could have said the same for her.
“I just need to rest for awhile. Don’t let it stop the party though.” And she walked upstairs, a little groggy and zombie-like.
“She’s great, isn’t she?” Art smiled.
“That’s why I married her.” Dad didn’t like Art. They were blood relatives, spent every family reunion just being indifferent to each other and fighting in private. They didn’t look too much alike. Dad has ink-black hair that is always slicked back with little grays sticking out every which way. He also had a beak nose and thin lips that could make him seem serious or the life of the party. Art had raggedy brown hair, big lips, a perfect nose and eyes full of wonder and curiosity that usually led him to do stupid things.
Dad just stared at Art, who was mooching and kept smiling.
“Don’t you just love steak?” He asked and helped himself another slice.
“Delicious,” Amelia took a bite herself.
“Well, I should get going.” It was just that simple. He just left and never came back. He was hit by a drunk driver twenty minutes later. He was twenty-seven years old.


I can’t say it didn’t affect me. I felt this overwhelming feeling that I might I cry at any moment and even just sitting here writing about it in this stupid journal makes me want to cry about how easy you can lose someone. How fast it can happen.
I didn’t go to the funeral. Amelia went. Dad went. Mom went. My aunt Gina came, Art’s mother, and gorged herself on the little comfort food we received. She would cry, “My baby’s gone! My baby’s gone!” and just let the tears pour out. I couldn’t say I blamed her. My uncle had died of lung cancer three years before Art’s death. She didn’t have anybody anymore.
My other aunt, Fawn, came in with her hippie hair, chain-smoking and was about three days sober (coke-wise). She always promised she’d quit, but they were empty promises and all the more I’d think of Art. She would scowl and spit at Gina. She would say that she knew Art was nothing but trouble the day he was born. Always hitting and screaming when he was a kid and finally challenging his anger into that way of his, always crossing fences, doing what he wasn’t supposed to do and kicking a girl. A girl, for heaven’s sake!
Aunt Gina got red in the face and came lunging at her only sister.
“What’s the matter? Huh? That no good kid nothing was but trouble. Talkin’ wiseass and bein’ all better than me. He ain’t better than me. That’s for sure. He punched a girl for heaven’s sakes! Who do you think covered for him, losin’ your job in the process!” She blew a puff of smoke in Gina’s face. “Its good riddance if you askin’ me!”
Suddenly, Gina got very still.
“I loved my son. He was a good boy and he didn’t do anything wrong. He was hit by a drunk driver. He was going to community college. He was going to make something of himself. That driver might as well have been you, you drunk.”
It finally became clear to me that Fawn was drunk. Not completely disheveled, she just seemed…disoriented. That’s when I realized the funeral was going to be a disaster when Fawn had to sit down and woke up with a hangover the size of fucking Texas, she complained to anyone who could hear her.
I stayed home from the funeral and cried in privacy while watching Full House reruns. I collapsed on the couch, fell down and started hitting the floor until I wept as loud as I could. I thought it would help.
It didn’t.
I kept seeing him, his face until it eventually became almost invisible. For a face that had been stuck in my head for so long, it seemed impossible that I couldn’t see him anymore but just hear him. Art telling me, “family…because of you little Lindsay” and the feel of his rough finger on my nose; I longed for the feeling back.
But that’s the worse part, you know?
Maybe he really did move back because of family and I would never find out. I argued with him and I could never take it back. Never.
I remembered the last time he had visited, when I was just beginning third grade and he had come to celebrate his two-year anniversary with a girl only known to me as Understudy Girl or UG as I liked to refer to her as. UG and Art took me to KFC and drank some grape soda and made out a little while we were in the kitchen. He told me to go upstairs to finish my chicken and I did. I went upstairs and spied on them a little.
Amelia called me a dweeb-face and told me that they were just going to eat chicken. Oh, and that I was stupid and she stole my chicken leg.
I saw the way they looked at each other and I couldn’t exactly understand it. She finally placed her hands on the table all serious-like and he just started leaning back in his chair like he had heard all of this before. Obviously his answer was no and that was not going to change anytime soon. She whispered something harshly and he told her more loudly that that didn’t matter and it was her problem. She called him a jackass and cried a little. She stormed off and held the doorknob.
“This is your responsibility too! I’ll make you pay Arthur!” She was the only one allowed to call him Arthur. “You’ll see!”
And that’s when I realized a very important detail I had previously forgotten:
“It’s your baby too!”
It was family. But not my family.
That jackass. That…dead jackass.
I started to cry, but I was still confused.
Was Tracy Understudy Girl? I needed to know, but I felt like I couldn’t ask. I would let that mystery go and let time tell me the rest. If I was meant to know, I would know.
That’s when Amelia came in and started crying with me. We just sat on the couch and cried. That’s when I felt the closest with her than I had ever been in my whole life.
But you have to keep moving on. You just have to keep moving on.


“Hey, Lindsay, can you help Ty with something?”
“The cookie thing?” I wanted to groan, but Angie seemed so excited and whatnot.
“Yeah, he needs to bake some cookies for the dance on Friday. He’s totally swamped and can’t do it by himself. Do ya mind?”
I nodded and told her sure, I wouldn’t mind.
Ty and I had become friends, so it didn’t bother me so much. What did both me and Maya was that Angie had become so wrapped up in Ty and being “oh-so-perfect” that she had completely deserted all her other responsibilities.
She would prance around, all I-have-a-boyfriend-and-you-don’t-so-in-your-face-ha-ha-ha on me. And she’d study like hell but never seem to get anywhere. She always fell short and she’d always go to Ty to make herself feel better.
Talking to Maya was out of the question; she was being secretive and didn’t like anyone telling her what do to about Nadia.
So that left me. Lucky, lucky me.
Sure, Ty and I were friends but…we weren’t that close.
Certainly not cookie-friend close.
He had complimented my brand-new highlights like three times over a course of two days, which was nice, but it was like enough already! Why the interest in my hair?
I was illegally dropped off at his house by Amelia, who had gotten her permit and wasn’t actually allowed to drive people without an adult.
But did she tell me this? N-o-o-o-o-o.
“Can you even drive?” I asked in panic. She didn’t seem to know what she was doing as she swerved between lanes. Not exactly the best qualities in a driver.
She liked to honk her horn a lot and give the finger to every other jerk that cut us off. It was a whole new level of humiliation I had reached with her.
“Of course, I passed the test, didn’t I?”
“At this point, I’m not exactly sure.”
She roared full-speed towards a speed bump.
“You’re not supposed to that!”
“They don’t call it a speed bump for nothing!” She yelled.
“We’re going to fucking die if you hit that thing, idiot!”
“Who’s the licensed driver here?”
“Not you!” I shouted. “You have a permit.”
“It’s closer than you.” She sneered and slowed down.
“At least I know that a stop light is not a suggestion and you shouldn’t actually hit the cars when you parallel park.”
“The injuries to the cars were parallel.” She mumbled.
“Just drop me off here.” I pointed to the street corner two blocks from Ty’s house.
“There might be muggers or something around here.”
“I think my chances of survival are much better outside the car.”
“Don’t make me say ‘I told you so’.” And she let me off.


I arrived at Ty’s house, thankfully with all of my appendages intact. He greeted me with a smile at the door and said all of the ingredients were in the kitchen.
“Welcome to mi casa.” H showed me inside.
“It’s nice.” I walked into his very small, but very cozy kitchen with pictures of various fruits on the walls, wooden cabinets, and dark green wallpaper.
It was very homey.
“So…what exactly are we making?”
“Snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies,”
“Ah,” I nodded, “snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies.”
“Is there a problem with snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies?” He asked.
“No,” I laughed, “why would you think I have a problem with snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies?”
“No reason.” He smiled. “Let’s just stop saying snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies.”
And there it was.
The long awkward pause.
“Well…we should get started.” And I poured whatever I had handy into a big bowl.
“Um…you’re supposed to…” He smirked. “Here, I’ll do it. You can crack the eggs. We also need tartar for the snickerdoodles. Can you get some? There might be some in the cabinet.”
I had no idea what tartar was, or what it was used for, but all I could come up with was he meant tartar sauce. Unfortunately for me, there actually was tartar sauce in the house and Ty wasn’t suspicious when I said I had tartar and didn’t look when I put it in and made little balls of dough.
Let me clue you in: if you don’t know the difference between cream of tartar and tartar sauce, you probably shouldn’t be allowed to…well, to do anything really. I would just go ahead and hide for a couple hundred years or so.
You would have to be a real idiot to put disgusting mayonnaise sauce with all sorts of non-cinnamon compatible vegetables in snickerdoodle mix to have people later eat.
Unless, of course, you’re trying to kill someone.
And, let me tell you, I almost did when we took a taste of the dough.
“Oh my God.” I wanted to puke. “This is disgusting.”
“What the fuck is in this?” Ty reached the sink for some water. “What did you put in this, Lindsay?”
“Maybe you made a mistake.” I said defensively.
“Is that an onion?” He pulled out something from his mouth.
“Ew, I’m gonna puke.” I held my mouth even though nothing was coming out.
That’s when he spotted the bottle.
“Did you put tartar sauce in the snickerdoodle mix?”
It’s also when I learned the error of my ways.
And you know what he did?
He started laughing. Really hard.
“Wow, Lindsay, wow. I…did you think that it was the secret ingredient or something?”
“I thought it was some kind of ancient voodoo thing that your grandmother concocted! I don’t know…” I was overwhelmed with humiliation, almost like I was going to cry and I sank to the floor.
“I’m sorry.” He came down to the floor with me. “I can tell you’re really hurting. I didn’t mean for it to seem, you know, hurtful.”
I could understand why Angie liked him.
Even if he was a little repetitive.
“Come on, let’s finish with the chocolate chip cookies.” He got up and held out his hand to give me a lift.
“But I’m gonna supervise your cookie-making from now on, young lady.” It wasn’t like the phrase was funny (I’m reading it now and it really doesn’t look that good on paper) but it was just the way he said it, it was just hard to stay mad at him.
“Let me just get rid of this voodoo snickerdoodle stuff on my hands.” I poured water on my hands and, for revenge, wiped them off on Ty’s shirt.
“You did not just do that!” Ty laughed again.
Somehow, the phrase seems oddly girly.
Continuing on…
“Yeah, whatcha gonna do about it?” I challenged.
He grabbed my waist and used my weakness: he started tickling me until I was choking on my own laughter, shrieking like an insane monkey.
He had found this piece of information when I was at Toby’s with Angie and Ty when Angie had revealed I was very sensitive to tickling if Ty wanted to get information out of me.
It was oh-so considerate of him to remember this detail about me.
“Stop! Stop!” I managed to get out, halfway between joking and serious. I wanted him to stop, but we were also bonding, which was what I wanted to do to make it less awkward when we’re left alone, so…I was pretty much undecided.
Although I had decided to grab him in revenge (he was immune to the power of tickling), it was useless with his being about three inches taller than me and who-knows-how-many pounds heavier and he grabbed back onto me until it became more of a hug instead of a grab.
“You know, Linds, you will always be my friend, no matter what.” And he brushed my cheek with the side of his face.
He broke up with Angie the next day.
Needless to say, she took it devastatingly.
And I felt guilty too. Those words: no matter what. What did he mean? Was he planning to do this all along? What was his motive?
What the hell did he mean???
Why couldn’t have he just left my highlights alone???


Nadia was still in the hospital the day before Halloween and Maya still wouldn’t talk about it, but Angie had finally come to accept this.
Mostly because she now she had time to mope instead of making out with Ty.
Maya’s outfits had gone from out-there to sort-of conservative. She seemed sad. We all seemed sad with our own personal hells, except for Toby.
He had a girlfriend.
Toby had a girlfriend named Joyce.
That just confused me.
He was so…Toby.
I mean, he wasn’t a geek or anything, I just couldn’t picture it. Him with his curls and all, kissing a girl, holding hands, whatever couples did.
I wasn’t that experienced in that area, except for apparently breaking them up.
Toby was actually happy with someone and I couldn’t be happy for him because of my overwhelming guilt.
Even though, technically I didn’t do anything.
Life sucks.
“So how’s it going with Joyce?” Angie’s tone was very dark, like she didn’t want it to be going good…or well, something like that.
“Great, actually,” Toby gave us all this I’m-so-happy look that just made us all want to puke. I had to deal with the guilt about Ty’s comment (even though I didn’t actually do anything!!!), Angie was sucked into own misery (manifestly, I know, you love my vocabulary…growth, caused by Ty and her ability to be a complete drama queen) and Maya was just mope-y about Nadia and all of her crap.
“Well isn’t that just great!” Angie groaned.
“That’s what I said.” Toby took a bite of his hamburger.
“I can’t believe you have a girlfriend.” Maya smirked.
“What’s so hard to believe?” Toby shrugged. “I can’t have a girlfriend?”
“That’s not what I meant.” Maya replied.
“So when do we get to meet this Joyce?” I asked.
“She might come and visit next week. She has a day off.”
“No, no, no, no! Do not let her visit.” Maya warned.
“She gets a day off? For what?” Angie inquired.
“Why not? She wants to see the school.”
“Why isn’t she in school?”
“It’s social suicide. My cousin Carlie brought her boyfriend to school one day and it is the most awkward situation to be in Toby, don’t do it.”
“Why don’t we get a day off?”
“Fine, Maya, if you say so. You are the smart one.” There was just a smidge of sarcasm in his voice when he said it.
“Hello? Why won’t anyone listen to me?” Angie moped.
“It’s a curriculum development day at her school.” Toby snapped.
“Oh.” She bit her lip. “Why don’t we get a curriculum development day at our school?”


Joyce came to the movies with me, Toby, Angie, and this really cute guy named L.D. who was Angie’s tutor.
Age appropriate of course. He was like Ty in that he was a year older, but L.D. was also a grade ahead and ridiculously smart.
I mean, he could do most problems that I have to do on paper in his head.
It’s pretty crazy…
But it still didn’t change the fact that I was the fifth wheel on a wagon that was going downhill.
“I can’t believe you invited someone Angie!” I whispered while we were waiting in line for tickets. “What about Ty? And me?”
“I’ve decided to stick to hooking up and playing the field. I’m not ready for any more commitment.”
“This is a date. That’s commitment.”
“Shit! Well, not really. I mean, a date isn’t exactly a commitment. We’re just hanging out, you know, having fun.”
“Right; you’re the one who’s gonna have fun. What about me? Single and loving it? Ringing any bells?”
“I am single, no boyfriend in this area.” She fanned out her fingers around her waist as we reached the counter.
Weirdo.
“Five for Elizabethtown at the nine-thirty showing.” Angie smiled warmly as she said it.
“That’ll be forty-five dollars.” The guy with bright, red hair and a pierced lip scowling obviously didn’t care.
We sure have some colorful people in Oregon.
Luckily for us, L.D. paid for us all although we did have to pay for our own popcorn. For some reason, he did not approve.
I bought popcorn anyway like Joyce was doing for her and Toby which meant I had to stand next to her in line.
Oh, what to say in these situations.
I found Joyce a little strange. She wore low, chemically-produced blonde pigtails that were straight out of an issue of Seventeen magazine. But she also had these large, oval glasses that covered half her face and heavy eye make-up while the rest of her face remained bare.
I mean, come on.
If you have on these hideous glasses that look like you’re dressing up as Buddy Holly (I know you love the reference) for Halloween, you don’t cake your eyes with metallic blue eye-liquid gel stuff and coats of extra-lengthening crap mascara that’s on the TV every five seconds and not wear any kind of lipstick or gloss or Chapstick like a normal person!
Not like I do…wear lipstick. Of course, who would call me a normal person?
I mean, really.
Other than that, she wore a dark green shirt, dark wash jeans and beaded sandals. I was neither impressed nor did I disapprove.
I’m a little cynical right now, so just bear with me as I persevere on.
With Joyce, I went with the classics:
“So…Joyce, what’s up?”
“Nothing, doing good.” She smiled.
“Good. Me too. How are things with Toby?”
“Oh my God, he’s so awesome. It’s just great, really. He’s just been the best guy.”
I felt strong that night, so I went for it:
“Do you consider him your boyfriend?” She was becoming relatively easy to talk to.
“Definitely, I mean, how could I not, right? I’m just there for him, I care about him s-o-o-o-o much and he’s been there for me. We are dependent on each other.”
I thought that would just make you a little weak, but I didn’t say anything. It was about them, not me. I wanted to be stronger, not blame myself for everything that’s happened (like the Ty incident) and be an overall sturdy human being.
I can’t just break down every time something happens to me. I have to be stronger than that.
“Whatcha doing for Halloween on Monday?” Joyce asked.
“Probably just mooch off my sister’s candy.”
“Oh, how old’s your sister?”
“Fifteen and a half.” I smiled. Amelia loved to go out trick-or-treating until she discovered parties at thirteen and found that there was a lot more mooching opportunity.
So she likes to do both.
“What about you?”
“Oh, I dunno. Maybe just spend it with Toby.”
“Oh my God! I just remembered!”
I’m such an idiot.
That’s not what I remembered though, but it did cross my mind.
“I’m going to this girl Rita’s party on Halloween. It’s supposed to be a blast. I heard she’s even got this piñata that sprays that gooey stuff that comes in a can…” I was completely blanking on the name.
“Silly String?”
“Yes! Silly String!”
That’s when we got to the front of the line, where I embarrassed myself in front of the Popcorn Guy. He looked like L.D. except a lot more like Justin Timberlake, sending me back into my ‘N Sync phase.
I loved that phase.
And I loved him.
Sort-of.
The Popcorn Guy, not Justin Timberlake although…
That’s enough Lindsay!!!
He asked what we wanted, and we asked for three bags of popcorn. And while Joyce was asking, I noticed him staring at her. Was it because she was talking? Perhaps, but he may have liked her.
I was becoming that girl. That paranoid girl who must have every man she sees because all other women are against her.
Growl, ‘cause I’m on the prowl.
Amelia made that up. I’m not that…you know…prowl-ish.
Joyce took the bags of popcorn and slipped the Popcorn Guy the twenty dollar bill oh-so gracefully.
She might as well have made out with him in front of me.
Yes, I am that girl. Move along, people.
Angie and L.D. disappeared until Joyce and I saw them in the back of the theater, not watching the previews.
We both gave an “oh-my-God” laugh and sat next to them when Toby returned from the bathroom. I was right in between the couples. Why did they even invite me? How was Angie meeting all of these guys?
Why wasn’t I ethnic?
No use complaining though. I just watched the movie while Toby and Joyce cuddled and lightly kissed while Angie and L.D. just made out, L.D. and his big feet kept hitting me accidentally. He kept saying “sorry” but doesn’t sorry mean I’ll try not to do the same thing next time?
That was what I should be complaining about.
I slumped in my chair and felt like leaving, but I had nowhere to go. It was late and there’s always safety in numbers. I groaned when I heard a loud grunt or snore from Joyce and Toby’s side.
“You OK?” Joyce asked.
“Yeah, was that you?”
“No, that was Toby.” She laughed. “He fell asleep, isn’t that cute?”
I put my best face on with all of my anger and frustration, giving a faux genuine smile and said:
“Just precious,”


“Was it really that bad?” Maya asked.
“You cannot even imagine how bad this was.” I said back at my house the night in question. I’ve always wanted to say that.
“Well, at least you got out OK.” Maya sighed.
“How’s Nadia?”
“Oh, she’ll make it I think.” She had this uncertainty in her voice that seemed so foreign to me. She had always been confident in whatever she was saying, even if she didn’t really mean it. “It’s just some…problems she has.”
“Problems?” I inquired, forgetting her whole “don’t ask” policy.
“It’s nothing. She might be here awhile. I don’t know if I can handle this kind of pressure but I can’t leave her. I’m in a bit of a pickle.”
“What’s happening Maya? I need to know.”
“She has diabetes. Juvenile. She’s had it her whole life, but her meds got switched somehow or something happened that the doctors won’t tell me about and she might lose her right foot because of it. I’m still confused about it myself.”
“Well, I’m always there for you. You know that.” I smiled to myself in spite of my feelings. I couldn’t even imagine what Maya was going through. She had even cut of the purple from her hair, which was now shoulder length and as plain as ever.
I felt we were all growing up in different ways, but then Halloween came around and we all got into the mood.
Angie dressed up as a sultry pirate, Maya had on a homemade costume to look like a disco ball, but everyone assumed she was some kind of flapper because it was really just a dress with lots of mirrors glued onto it. Toby was a doctor and Joyce was a nurse (so cheesy, must puke!!). As for me, I was going to be a witch for Rita’s party. Angie was still not invited.
“It’s not the end of the world.” I tried to comfort her. I thought about Rita’s motives for inviting me to her party. If she invited all of Angie’s friends around her, it would make her entirely miserable and she would dissolve in her own misery.
Or she just wanted more people and thought Angie was a bitch for stealing her man, so she didn’t invite her.
Both extremely possible.
“But it’s Rita’s party! Everyone’ll be talking about it the next day and I’ll be the only one left out.” She moped and sighed.
“Hey, don’t get so down. Rita’s parties aren’t that great I’m sure.”
Cue the amazing party.


To my extreme relief, everyone was wearing costumes. Rita was a witch too, which was either really good or really bad.
I’d rather be neutral.
“Hey, guys.” She waved at us and we carefully waved back, not exactly sure what her motive.
“Lean Back” was playing in the background with orange and red lights all around. There were paper cups everywhere and streamers and balloons.
There were also Miller Lite cans as far as the eye could see and, what do you know, a big ol’ party size that Rita was passing out in between grinding with every guy she could get her hands on.
It was quite the party even without the piñata. That was OK though since there was a big candy bowl and a jam-packed dance floor.
In sixth grade, I went to my cousin’s bar mitzvah and absolutely no one danced even with these identical, scary people tried to encourage kids to dance.
That is certainly not the case with George Hills Middle and High School.
We can party.
Well, everyone else can. I need to be hazed or something before I can seriously party.
I saw Lynn krump with this guy. She was really bad actually, but what can you do?
Maya was surprisingly good at krumping when she decided to try it. When Maya tries to look good, she really looks good. She said the same for me once, but we’re all our own worst critics and I disagreed.
She decided to tease some of the boys as a joke, and even with Nadia in the hospital, she was still confident enough to freak dance with a guy who she knew she’d refuse. She didn’t seem all too comfortable though and freaked with a group of girls. They were all probably just having fun, but Maya was having as much fun as if they krumped with the guy she was dancing with earlier.
She started drinking Miller Lite though while I assorted my cheese cubes and Nerds.
“What the hell are you doing?” I reached for the can.
“Why is it your business?” She snapped it back, spilling some of it.
“I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” I wave of sadness crept into me.
“I don’t care what you think!” She gulped the rest of the can and went right over to the guy she had krumped with and started kissing him. He was into it, but I translate that as if I was kissing a girl.
To me, that seemed weird. Maya kissing a guy seemed this way as she was moving in for the kill. They moved towards the couch and just…hooked-up. And she walked away when she was finished. She walked away with a smile. “I’m definitely not into guys.” She laughed as she passed me, alcohol staining her breath. “That’s for sure.”