The Good Times Are Over

"Kevin and Sharon got a divorce," my next-door-neighbor and best friend Zach deadpans. I set down the ice cube tray.
"Jesus Christ, why?" Zach shrugs.
"Well, Sharon is...Sharon."
"True." Sharon does absolutely nothing for the redhead stereotype.
"Cam and Kelsey are taking it hard."
"Shit. Wow." Kevin, Sharon, Cam, and Kelsey live down the street. Cam and Kelsey are our age. It freaks us out a little. In our minds, our parents' marriages are hard as bedrock. We thought Kevin and Sharon's was too. What if our parents secretly can't stand each other? We erase the thought from our heads and go on with our plans to drink Pepsi, watch Fantasia, and mock it mercilessly. I turn my head away from the Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence and ask Zach, "Isn't this supposed to be about what you'd see in your head if you heard this music? Who listens to an orchestra and visualizes Mickey Mouse?"
"Walt fucking Disney," says Zach. "I saw the moving van."
"I guess that makes sense," I mutter. I think back to last week:

I'm walking home from the bus stop and am just turning onto my street. Cam is standing numbly on the corner. I wonder if maybe the dogs managed to outsmart the invisible fence again. Sharon walks up from the neighboring street and gives Cameron the stiffest hug I've ever seen take place between two human beings. I'm tempted to stand around and find out what's going on, but I don't want them to think I'm some kind of voyeur. ( I am, but that's beside the point.) I keep my head down and walk up to my house.

For the rest of the night, Zach and I keep idly drifting back to the subject. Kelsey was one of our best friends once. We made messes in the kitchen and spied on the crotchety old people in our neighborhood, until they started calling Zach and me geniuses, and we only had time to be geniuses. Kelsey went to the traditional teenage girl wonderland of new boyfriends and lipgloss, while Zach and I read the A.V. Club and laughed when people called us hipster douchebags. We don't hate each other, we just don't have much in common. I remember one of the last times I talked to Kelsey:

It's the end of 7th grade. I've been through some crazy shit and just started on Prozac. I linger by Kelsey's locker after school as I wait for her to ask me whatever she wants to ask me. She hands me a sloppily wrapped bundle. "Happy birthday," she says, "I forgot."
"Oh, Jesus," I croon, "you didn't have to do that!" I never got her a birthday present. I was in the hospital on her birthday. I unwrap my present. It's one of those squishy pillows, shaped like a can of Diet Coke. Cool beans. Kelsey asks her question:

"Do you hate cheerleaders?"
"No!" I snort. "What an outdated social stereotype! Why?"
"I'd like to be one. Next year. I'm going to try out."
"If it's what you wanna do," I say, "go for it. And fuck anyone who gets in your way."
"Do other people hate cheerleaders?"
"I don't see why they would. There's nothing wrong with cheerleaders. They're probably better than emo kids or something." (Two years from now, a cheerleader will beat me within an inch of my life, but I don't know this yet.) I feel her eyes move up and down my left arm. I've just hacked them up like an amateur dipshit because middle school is the worst thing that ever happened to anyone who's been alive for three consecutive years.
"People are talking about you," she says. "They're saying you're pretty screwed up."
"Who isn't? Let's get together sometime soon. Catch up on everything. It's been forever." We keep on saying we'll do this. We don't ever. We don't like to think to ourselves that we used to be best friends. But it probably hasn't ever been more true than it was right then.

The next morning, my mom is trying to teach me to knit. It's very much like trying to teach a pig to sing. We decide to take a break. Good idea. My stomach is killing me, so I decide to run to the corner store and get a Sprite or something. As I reach the end of the street, a smoke ring blows into my eyes. I look up. It's Kelsey and some guy who could easily pass for thirty. She smiles broadly. She looks innocent with her lingering baby fat and her glasses. She drops lowers her hand, but not before I see the cigarette. Now, I'm going to be brutally honest here. I'm just like most people. I don't care as much about the starving children in Africa as I do charity representatives interrupting my shopping. It's the same thing with cigarettes. Seeing Kelsey smoking in plain sight stirs a new emotion within me. For the first time, I actually care about the havoc that tobacco wreaks on the human body, and not just the havoc it wreaks on my dining experience. I want to save her from the nicotine, but I know it's none of my business. As the ashes she flicks into the gutter hit the pavement, I see the beginning of the end. She's already started down this road, and I'm not the one who can stop it.

"Hi," I say hesitantly. I drop my voice a little. "I heard. I'm...sorry."
She takes another drag off her cigarette. "Yeah. You like your new school?"
"It's nice. Sometime we should...I don't know." This time, I don't even want to finish it. I want to say, "Please, quit, while you can," or "Put that fucking thing out right now!" I see little eight-year-old Kelsey in a tutu that matches mine saying, "It's a free country." I extend my hand and leave it hanging there. She raises her left eyebrow. I clench my open palm into a fist and draw it back.
I mumble, "Merry Christmas," and turn around back up the street.

Simple Pleasures

Today, for the purposes of this post, is yesterday. I'm at school, sitting in the Great Hall, along with everyone else, pre-schoolers and all. (Yes, my school has a Great Hall. However, my school is not Hogwarts. Our Great Hall smells like Cheez-Its and feet) We're gathered here for the annual Thankful Thoughts ceremony, which we can get away with, because we're a private school. We're all in a circle around yet another circle of garlands, ribbon, and pinecones. In the very center, there's a lit candle in a glass orb. The sky is the same shade of grey that my long-dead cat used to be. The air is throbbing with the threat of snow, but it's a friendly, good-natured threat. All the teachers stand up and make a circle around our little mass of students. The headmistress makes the obligatory incoherent speech given by every principal in every school at every event in the world. Then, each teacher states what they're thankful for this season. Apparently, they were briefed beforehand on the fact that it had to be something school-related. They all give some variation of, "I'm so thankful to be part of this thriving, dynamic community of unique, wonderful students, and I'm thankful for my family at home and my family here. An education here is so full of compassion....and I hope you're all thankful for it too." Then, they randomly select two kids from every grade level to say what they're thankful for. A few preschoolers and kindergarteners score some cuteness points by saying Mommy. As the appreciation wave comes rumbling over the other kids, we hear more and more of love, being loved, the best friends in the world...now these things are all fine and dandy. But frankly, there have been times where I've felt like I didn't have any of those things. There have been times where I've had those things in abundance and not been a good enough person to realize that. And there are times when I just don't want to be weighed down with all those abstractions. Suddenly, the headmistress's hand is on my shoulder. "This is a girl of few words," she's saying, "but only because she's very discerning about them. What she does have to say holds so much meaning for all of us." I raise my eyebrows. She turns to me.
"What are you thankful for, dear?"
Oh shit. I smile a little. "The sky," I say. Everyone who wasn't staring at me before is staring at me now. People's faces are contorting. Not a good sign. A little second-grader cranes her neck to look at me. She claps her hands, hesitantly. The pre-schoolers, already swayed by peer pressure at this age, join in. A junior who seems to have a thing for me smacks his hands together emphatically. A few teachers shrug, and suddenly the whole room is filled with thunderous applause. Hey. Once in a while, we need to celebrate something anyone, no matter how hungry or attention-starved, can take for granted. Something the whole world can enjoy together.

Happy Thanksgiving, if that's what you're into.

Jackass

Today, my art teacher decided to hold me hostage. She's been quite obssesively working to convince me that I can, in fact, do something artistic, depsite my multitude of brain disorders. (I can't. Someone hasn't been doing their homework.) Somehow, (I suspect money changed hands), she has me slated to miss the entire afternoon so that I can make an awkward trek with her to the art musuem. She wants me to be inspired, she tells me in the car. She ruffles my hair. "You're just so...astronomically brilliant," she says. Uh-huh. We pull up to the main entrance. So this is Paris. For the past year, everyone has been raving about just what an amazing hunk of architecture this place is. I bet the heating and air conditioning were a bitch to install. She makes an insane number of sweepy gestures, then closes her hand around my wrist and leads me to the modern art floor. She babbles about mixed media, showing me sculptures which are admittedly cool, but not terribly "inspiring." She leads me to a wall of hubcaps and asks what I see. "A wall of hubcaps," I deadpan. I know that's not the correct answer. I don't feel like projecting my bullshit theories onto someone else's work. If art were a human being it would be raped everyday; anyone can make it do what they want it to do, say what they want it to say. Whatever happened to, "Hey, this looks cool. I'd like to share it with you." My fifth grade teacher once had a poster that said, "Keep the ability to see beauty and you will never grow old." Beauty, not "anguish" or "torment" or "the universe". The lines of hubcaps have a cloying, austere beauty. That's all that matters. We come to a mounting of a red neon sign that simply reads, "Pleasures." My art teacher purses her lips. There is a blatantly visible DO NOT TOUCH sign placed too close to the display.
"These museum curators...always liability over aesthetics." The irony of the placement does not escape me. I turn to her.
"I think this is the most considerate musuem curator around," I pipe up.
She waggles her eyebrows at me. "Now we're getting somewhere!"
We pass a tiny display of Day of the Dead paraphernalia. Mostly skeleton figurines. They are festooned with bright colors and wear kindly, amused expressions. All the skeletons are dressed up importantly or ridiculously, a happy, bustling little town of purposeful deaths following purposeful lives. I am an atheist, but at that moment, I hope I become one of those skeletons when I die. We come to a wall that asks, "What is art?" Nearby are endless supplies of sticky notes and a bare brick wall to provide your answer. Someone who undoubtedly thinks he's brilliant wrote, ART IS LIFE. Next to it, in a childish scrawl, is a sheet that reads, "Art is panting and things like that." This girl will get straight As all of her life, and she'll have lots of boring friends. Perhaps someday she will be required to do something besides regurgitate the bullshit society has fed her, and she will be well and truly fucked. Or maybe, she'll spend her whole life in the American dream she has been force-fed, and someday, in her old age, she will visit this art museum again. Or maybe she'll go on some giddy school trip to the Louvre during her junior year. And then she will realize that, for her whole life, she has been a robot. She never acted on any urges, denied herself neccesary pleasures. And she'll die a broken woman. My teacher hands me a sticky note shaped like a speech balloon, and a purple pen.
"What have you learned, dear?"
I click the pencil back and forth a few times, as though it were a lighter and I was one of those faux anarchists who undermine authority by not bathing. I write in methodical little rows:

Art is beauty
Beauty is symmetry
Not quite sure what symmetry is yet

She claps her hands like a walrus. "Good girl! How do you feel?" I make up something that sounds uplifting. The truth is, dizzy. This "amazing" piece of architecture is laid out to make you feel like you're the only inhabitant of a deserted city. You can also feel its crookedness on the upper floors. It seems to list to one side as you look over your shoulder. When we're back at school, the feeling is still there. When I've completed my usual RTD ride to the park near my house, I still feel the building leaning. As I walk through the park, I get an idiotic urge. I sit down on the swings and kick idly at the gravel. Only teenagers do this. It is referred to in some circles as "chilling." It disgusts me, but I can't help myself. As I continue to rock back and forth on my assbone, the "Pleasures" sign appears in the back of my mind. It flickers and dies. That's the wake-up call I need. I remember being able to outswing everyone in my elementary school days. Long legs are the closest things to wings you can have, and I decide to use them, for old time's sake. I hear the voice of my grandmother, over now, over now, up you go, up you go. No granddaughter of hers is going to ask someone else to push her. No, this family pushes itself. I find myself wishing she were alive to say that to me in person. Together, she and I could be funny, eccentric little skeletons. Is there a better way to die than jumping from a high place, I ask myself. No, there isn't, because the last thing you do before your bones shatter into oblivion, is only thing humans really want to do. For a few seconds, you can fly. I let go of the swing...and I've learned nothing from Saturday. I land perfectly on my feet, like an Olympic gymnast. Half a second later, I wobble. My knees, then my whole body, drag and scrape across the gravel. I laugh at myself once again. One of these days, I'll need to reread Don Quixote and A Confederacy of Dunces. I could have my own Jackass show. I lay on my back and howl with laughter for a few minutes. I stand up and dust myself off, slightly ashamed that I relish the sting of my new, tiny scrapes. I thrust both arms up high, throw back my head, and bellow to everyone and no one,

"I AM THE SWINGING JACKASS!"

Suddenly, I'm no longer dizzy and the "Pleasures" sign flickers back on.

Of Predictable Reactions and Product Placement

I was alone in the house all day yesterday, giving me plenty of time to go ripshit. I angst crazily over the mouse and the corsage for several hours, until I start thinking of-no, no, shut the fuck up, it's got to get better than this. I give myself a stern lecture about the children of Africa and decide on the perfect punishment. I will force myself to listen to a song that a friend planted on my MP3 player shortly after the break-up. My friend is secretly a cold hearted bitch. Said song is Keep Holding On by Avril Lavigne. I force my fingers to hit play. I regret it instantly. This is a song with obvious, predictable lyrics, a song so painfully earnest that Avril Lavigne should wear a bag over her head whenever she sings it. (Sick bags should be provided for any audience as well.) One minute in, I throw the MP3 player to the ground. Someone needs to clip Avril around the head and tell her to stop singing in that ridiculous Australian accent. Instead, I decide to go down to the lake. That seems inherently more likely to cheer me up. I throw on my equivalent of sweatpants; an old purple velour dress I've had since second grade with fading butterflies and a ratty hem. The geese are unusually tranquil, probably resting up for the big trip south. In the early twilight, the lake looks like a watercolor painting, and the birds that a visiting science nerd once identified as the red-wing blackbird chirp softly. This is much better. As I make my way to the woods, I spot a motorboat bobbing at the shoreline, right next to a sign stating that boats are not to be left there. The time-space continuum opens its jaws and sucks me in:


The long-haired Irish boy and I are still together, and we're walking to go get dinner. We're heading for a square little hole in the wall next to a gas station, with the unimaginative name of City Pizza and Pasta. We, being teenagers, refer to it as Shitty Pizza and Pasta. The name fits, but we're too damn lazy to go anyplace else. As if to make up for the fact that we'll soon have booth seat springs lodged in our anuses, we decide to go around the lake, taking the dirt path through the woods because it's all romantical and stuff. As we head into the woods, I see a canoe tied to a young sapling. The baby tree is straining under the weight of the boat. Tut tut, I say, pointing at the "don't leave your boats here" sign. His eyes begin to glint. He rushes down the shore and unties the knot. The sapling springs back in relief. He jumps in the canoe, making it rock crazily from side to side. I stand on the shore rooted to the spot. "Get in," he chides me. I break into a little smile and step in gingerly. The long-haired Irish boy hefts the oar up from the bottom of the boat and dips it in. He rows slowly enough for me to take in the sunset. Little chunks of ice fracture as the oar hits them. In the center of the lake, the big red ball of sun quivers and the water is black. We hit an underwater rock and the canoe tips a bit. I let myself fall with it, my head "accidentally" flopping into the long-haired Irish boy's lap. With his free hand, he strokes the top of my head absently. A kindly breeze makes gentle waves across the lake. Our whole bodies move with the water, a song for which we've forgotten the lyrics, his hips are poetry in motion and all the universe is just me and him, rocking gently back and forth...until we reach the other side abruptly enough that my forehead bangs into his pelvis. No matter. He helps me out, ever the gallant. He pulls the rope out of the water and ties it to a stronger tree. "What a generous bloke," the long-haired Irish boy remarks, "more than deserving of a little lesson. Free of charge." We walk the rest of the way. The "canolies" on the menu taste unusually good tonight.



I shake my head at myself. That's over now, I think, and what a dillwad he turned out to be. The stupid teenager part of me wants to recapture the magic. I indulge her, and climb into the motorboat. I sit cross-legged on the floor as the little waves rock the boat gently. There's room for one more person. The empty space feels horribly empty, fleetingly warm, like the other side of a war widow's double bed. No one is there to ride the waves of my life with me, and I've resorted to using the shittiest metaphor out there. This is all too much. I stick one leg over, then the other, and fling myself over the side of the boat...and the water barely covers my toes. I've forgotten that I'm tied up at the shore. I laugh hysterically. Now, if you've read any other post besides this one, you know two thing about me: One, I react to vaguely upsetting situations in a random and batshit crazy manner. Two, my impulse control sucks the big one. I wade out a little farther until the water is waist deep. I reach around under my dress, pull off my underwear, unhook my bra, (been meaning to get rid of the damn thing anyway) and fling them as far away as I can. I let out a war whoop and half -dog paddle, half-breaststroke (despite the fact that right under the no boat sign is a no swimming sign) out to the middle of the lake, until the water is so cold my lungs shrink inside my chest. Laughing and gasping, I haul myself ashore. My dress clings to me like a second skin and there's some mysterious pond weed tangled in my hair. I feel free from some kind of trap. I fantasize briefly as I hold my sandals by their straps and run barefoot along the sidewalks. Don't just quit, I think, quit big. I could go and live in the woods, hide in a tree stump, spend my days running around urinating through my knee-length beard. I'll invent my own language that doesn't include names. I'll find the dictionary in my bones. Now go kill some animals. I screech to a halt, back to reality. I wonder just how many laws/local ordinances I've broken in the past half hour. I turn into the 7-11. Clearly, my head isn't screwed on right. It's time for a visit to the family physician. Dr. Pepper. I'm one quarter short. I make a move to return the bottle to the refrigerator, but the guy behind the counter tells me to just take it and go. I have a theory as to why. The explanations I consider giving to people in the food service industry are getting more bizarre by the day. Walking in my front door, I realize something else. I've just been swimming in fifty degree water. I've already had pneumonia four times this year. There will be hell to pay later. I decide not to think about this. I hold the ice cold bottle to my forehead. This is all that is important in life. Freedom...going commando...and Dr. Pepper. I twist off the green cap. "Cheers," I say to no one in particular. Dr. Pepper breaks its Hippocratic oath as it coats my aching throat.




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Six Billion Blind Mice

Today is the day I go completely ballistic. It starts out an ordinary morning, the only non-routine thing is scrubbing the yellow bile stain out of the sink, courtesy of last night's outburst. Out, out, damn spot etc. This is book-ended by a usual afternoon; I'm taking my usual route to the usual bus stop for my usual trip home. I cut through the Holiday Inn parking lot, even though they now have a big imposing sign stating that they are part of the Wheat Ridge anti-motel crime program. You know it's White Ridge when the worst thing you have to worry about is high-schoolers walking by the service elevator on their way to Taco Bell. A maid on break blows a smoke ring in my face. A cinder flies into my eye, which defensively cries it back out. The side of my face stings like hell for a few seconds. I give her what I call the Fuck You World Tour. To perform this elaborate routine, you start with the opposite of the alien peace sign. From there, you go into Dane Cook's superfinger, then drop your ring finger until you have a plain old middle finger. Then, you bring up your index finger to make a backwards-facing peace sign. (How you flip people off in the UK and Australia) Now, use your thumb and fingers to make an O shape. (Considered obscene in some Mediterranean countries) End with the fist-in-the-crook- of -your arm thing. The maid, being at least smart enough to be a maid, takes the hint. She ducks back inside, but not before throwing her cigarette, still smoking, into the lot. I do the considerate thing and try to stamp it out. I fail the first four times and the cancer stick rolls wildly around the lot. Finally, I catch up with it and grind it into ash. Then, I stop dead. Lying pathetically in a grease spot on the tar is a roadkill mouse. The mice that like to sneak into my house are fat, scary things with pure-black dead doll eyes. When I see them, I shriek the way they expect a girl like me to shriek. This dead mouse in front of me is not one of those mice. It's tiny, light brown with a white underbelly. Cute, actually. It looks like the friendly little mice in Disney movies. Death by SUV agrees with this mouse. You would think it was sleeping if the lower half of its tail wasn't a grey puddle on the asphalt. I swallow hard and try to erase the tail from my mind. The poor creature is just taking a break from singing adorable songs and outwitting the world's dumbest cats. I kneel down by the mouse. "Wake up," I whisper. I repeat myself a little louder. I keep on going like I can bring it back to life through sheer force of will, a little more urgency in my voice each time. I begin to cry for non-cinder-related reasons. Its little paw is still outstretched. It must have been trying to reach the flattened French fry next to its body when it was plowed over by one of the six billion blind mice with which it shares the world. I rise to my feet. "Take the fucking French fry," I shriek, "eat it! Wake the fuck up, you fucking mouse!" I lift my boot and grind the heel into the mouse's back. I stomp furiously, screaming, "Get out of the fucking road!" Yellow foam oozes gently out of its mouth. I can see its symmetrical little mouse spine trailing from its head. On its back, a faint imprint of my boots' brand name. I shove my hands in my pockets and cross the street to my stop, weeping. I sink onto the bench and convulse with sobs. Something screeches to a stop beside the bench. I look up through my tears, thinking it's the bus. Instead, I see a lime green '91 Acura Legend. Just what I need. The driver of the embarrassing vehicle is the long-haired Irish boy. My ex-boyfriend who used to call my umbilical cordless every day to say he loved me now calls to say he cares about me, just in a platonic way. This is just the latest in his string of misguided attempts to be platonic and caring. He pats the passenger seat. I shrug and get in. If I don't, he might do something stupid like chase the bus. I hiccough and sniffle until he pulls in front of the entrance to the park I walk through to get home. Before I get a chance to bolt from the car, the long-haired Irish boy grabs me in a Texas chokehold and hugs me for three minutes. I'm grateful to run into someones arms but furious that he won't even let me hate his guts. I shove him away so hard he hits his forehead on his windshield. "What the hell was that?" I demand.
"A hug," he says flatly. "It's the best gift you can give to someone who's been having a difficult time of it." I slam the door and run into the park. I vow to repeat that phrase to him if I ever vomit down the front of my favorite shirt. I walk home in a daze. The brand label ground into the mouse's back haunts me. I whistle a macabre tune as I go. Six billion blind mice, six billion blind mice, see how they drive in their gas-guzzling SUVs with crosses dangling from the front mirror, see how they won't give their ex-girlfriends a fucking break, see how they grind the other mice's internal organs into- that last invented verse shuts me up. I talk like I'm better than them. I act like there are only five billion, nine hundred nintey-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine blind mice in the world. I go to a fast-casual place for dinner. One of my guy-friend's sister is working behind the counter. She opens her mouth to say something to me, but stops, perhaps because of the expression on my face. As I order, I'm out of it and bitchy, and I cut her off before she can ask me, "For here or to go?" When she asks for my name, I'm staring at the wall. I mutter that I don't have one. She repeats the question. I make one up. She looks at me quizzically. I feel a twinge of guilt and consider apologizing. I decide against it. It's probably best to let her make her own judgement. Whatever she comes up with probably won't be as crazy as, "Sorry, Veronica. I stomped the living shit out of an already dead mouse this afternoon and I'm still feeling kind of bad about it."

Old Wounds

I'm one of those unfortunate people who get dumped the night before Valentine's Day. I have yet to find a new relationship that's worked out, and it's something I'm sensitive about. Last night, I was randomly browsing blogs. I select one with a silly Japanese name I've already forgotten. I chuckle at the petty drama and bad poems with strained-out couplets. This chick sure loves to post pictures of herself. In the next picture, suddenly her hair is up so ornately, she must have spent five hours getting it done. She wears an elegant dress in deep red. Prom pictures. Shit. The next one is a close-up of her corsage. What a sweet boyfriend she has; it matches her dress. I put my head down and remember the last time I wore a corsage:

Freshman year, I go to homecoming ( I was in public school last year. More on this later) with a guy who thinks I am his, forever and ever amen. I'll call him Wren. I met him during a play or something. I used to feel sorry for him, everybody always ridiculed him. For a while, I considered him my friend. Then I noticed he had passive-aggresive tendencies, would have psychotic breaks if he wasn't constantly sedated, got everything stuck in his braces, and on top of that, was a mouth breather. He doesn't get the hint. In fact, I've been told he's madly in love with me. It would be kind of cute, but one problem. He has severe Asperger's Syndrome. I have nothing against the disease or the people who have it. But he's borderline autistic. I don't need Prince Charming, but I don't know if I can do Ray Babbit. Already, as his friend, teachers ask me to calm him down. I'm not a therapy tool. I don't want to be his nurse. And I can't imagine kissing him. He looks like someone pulled the head of a cerebral palsy sufferer and screwed it onto his neck. He walks up to me and my best friend at the beginning of seventh period.
"Has anyone asked you to homecoming yet?" I know the look crossing my friend's face. It says, "A beer to anyone who can see where this is going."
"Uh...no..." I cling to the hope that it's just a casual question.
"Would you like to go with me?" My friend thinks to herself, "Bartender, beers all around!" My lips automatically form the phrase, "Oh shit," but I catch myself, and turn the word shit into a "sure". I add the best feminine little giggle I can muster. There's some taboo against saying no to a "special ed" kid. He asks on Thursday, so when he asks me the color of my dress, I tell him I don't know. The night before the dance, I pick out a midnight blue floor-length gown with silky scarf-type things hanging down the back. I'm horribly inept at telling the stylist how I want my hair to look, so I end up looking like Belle from Beauty and The Beast. I'm a few acne scars away from living under a bridge and scaring children, so I guess it would be Ugly and the Beast. He knocks on my door and tells me I look ravishing. I wish I could say the same. He's wearing a tweed suit, and a mothball falls out of it as he crosses the threshold. I pretend not to see it. We take a few pictures, then get into his mom's Taurus. We have to go back to his place. He forgot the corsage. The first thing that hits me is the stench. Imagine if Glade developed an air freshener in a fragrance called Ass. A cat scampers down the stairs. I say it's cute to be polite. He says, "One of five." Somehow I guessed. He pulls the corsage out of the refrigerator like it's a dead body in the morgue. It's one of those boring cream-colored ones, because they go with everything. It's wilting, and the edges of the petals are brown. I try to sound excited. "Ooh," I squeal, "I love baby's breath!" I berate myself in my head. How the hell can anyone feel any way at all about baby's breath? It's floral white noise. We eat dinner at this Japanese fast-casual place called Kokoro. We both like it and it embarrases me when men spend money on me. He grins at me with seaweed and wasabi all over his teeth. I pull my lower lip all the way back to my tonsils. This year, whoever's in charge of dances has perfected the ultimate cheesy theme. They have stretched beyond Tropical Paradise. They've even surpassed my Hollywood-themed 6th grade continuation. It's Medieval Castle. Then, I see someone familiar. It makes me sick with longing. I'll call him Chance, and he's with a girl I'll call Piper. Chance and I are kind of in the same boat. Piper is his version of Wren. There is nothing wrong with Piper except for the fact that she's morbidly obese and socially inept. Chance and I tried to date in middle school, but when Piper found out, she pushed me down the stairs. We stare at each other. We've had so many intellectual debates that seem like they should end with a makeout session. We're here with people we hate. I sit up and tell Wren I'm going to call my mom to tell her we got there in one piece. I whip out my umbilical cordless in a shadowy corner and hope to hell that Chance has his turned on. My phone doesn't technically have text messaging, so it costs me ten cents per letter to send a text message. Ignoring that fact, I frantically press in, "Take me." It will be the best sixy cents I ever spent. I watch him look quizically at his vibrating pocket. He throws his arms around Piper and winks at me over her unaware shoulder. I hear him ask her if she'd like a Coke. Of course she would. He creeps over to me, and we head for the men's room. We lock the door to the disabled stall. If anybody in a wheelchair has to take a shit, it will have to wait. Tears pool in my eyes and I jump up and thrust my tongue so far down his throat I almost lick his heart. I never thought my first kiss would be so close to a urinal, but life is full of surprises. We tongue-bang for a few minutes and he unzips my dress and strokes my bare back. I have to come up for air eventually. We pull away from each other. I shake a little. He says, "That was....so....I can't describe...just...wow." I blush. "But you know how Piper is," he says. "We'll never speak of this again." As I try to sneak out of the bathroom without being seen, my corsage falls off the wristband into my hand. I walk back into the crowd, saying, "Oh, drat! My corsage seems to have broken." I do my best to sound upset, but I must have never had to be upset in a play before. A sophomore and her senior boyfriend take a long enough break from deep throating each other to shoot me looks that say, "You're not fooling anyone, toots." Wren has fallen asleep on a couch, with his mouth hanging open. I look out the upstairs window and wonder how far it is to the street below.

I bounced back from Chance pretty quickly. My friend introduced me to an Irish boy with long hair. I am a sucker for long hair on boys. I kept him a secret from my parents. He left me the night before Valentine's Day, muttering something about self-respect. The next day, he gave me a basket of stupid Valentine's Day stuff like teddy bears and chocolate. So I won't feel left out, says the accompanying card. But Valentine's Day isn't about the stupid shit you buy from Hallmark. It's about knowing someone loves you. Unnamed Lucky Prom Girl's blog stretches back to Valentine's Day. Her boyfriend was impossibly cute that day, according to her. He took her to this Italian place with candles on the tables made of candy hearts, and baked her a heart shaped cake. There's a picture of them cupping their hands around the candle's flame. They look nervous, in a good way. I try to remember what it like to hold hands, and can't. I see my old, dead body on the floor of a one-story house, with a garage with those creepy windows on the doors. A cat with a matted coat rips a sheet of skin off my face, exposing my skull. My bland corsage is a shrivelled brown mess presesed into a photo album with Precious Moments characters on the cover. I snap back to the present. Her corsage has black roses in it. I cry until I throw up in the sink.

School and Environs

I go to a private school in Wheat Ridge, known affectionately as White Ridge. They're all about experiential learning, which means project after project after project. It's just off the highway in a neighborhood that always smells like exhaust. There are about four cheap hotels around it, and rumor has it that a murderer was arrested in one of them once. The high schoolers (we're PreK-12) can leave campus for lunch, but we underclassmen have to walk everywhere. No driving, and no hitching a ride with the seniors. The motels complain about us walking through the parking lots. They want us to go through the park across the street. We're not allowed in the park either. There are only three places you can walk to lunch and still be on time for your afternoon classes. One of those combination Taco Bell/Pizza Hut places, Carl's Jr. Jr., as I like to call it, and the BK Lounge. Every time I decide to eat at the BK Lounge, it's Roberta's shift, apparently. I don't know Roberta personally, but I can read her name tag. Apparently, Roberta is the only person who works there. When you order, even if you say, for example, number 8, Roberta cuts you off mid-sentence to bellow, "You want the meal?" There's no sense making any specifications about what condiments you want, because she will always get them backwards. When she tells you what number your order is, she talks to you like you didn't come home all night. If Roberta has to give you change, she throws it at you. She takes an unneccesarily venemous tone to say, "Enjoy your meal." Someday, I'll work up the courage to say, "Enjoy your studio apartment." On slow days, Roberta makes a point of swooping in on your table the moment you get up. She makes sure you see her scowl at you as she wipes it down with a smelly rag. Today me and my "eating disorder buddy" (more on this later) decide we want some fat-filled French fries, because we have something to prove. I hope against hope that Roberta isn't working today. No such luck. Roberta wouldn't miss a day of work if she were vomiting blood. Just to piss off Roberta, my buddy and I take the booth that's clearly designed for six people. She curses at us in Spanish, and we let her keep thinking we don't understand. Life is good for a few minutes.

Me and My Big Mouth

I shot off my mouth big time in my math class today. In my defense, my partner started it. Geometry is the last period of the day, and I stumble in, exhausted. We've been working on proofs, but no one understands how to write them. If we knew how to provide detailed explanations of things that are blatantly obvious, we'd be writing definitions for the dictionaries. My partner and I squabble a little over which triangle conjecture proves that triangle KILL is congruent to triangle MENOW. Neither of us can prove we're right, which is why we're slogging through this assignment in the first place. My partner walks to the teacher's desk. She is explaining to him why the letters in the conjecture abbreviations have to be in a certain order. You can have SAS, and maybe even SSA, but ASS never works. He takes issue with this. He announces, "I like asses, and I consider them correct." The eyebrow telegraph flashes across the room. He takes his seat and whispers to me, "I like penises too." The class has heard this. I realize what I just said as I say it. I blurt out, "Together?" The class applauds. Thank god my teacher has a sense of humor.

Awkward Introductions

This is mostly for people who've been asking how I've been doing from day to day, but if you've just joined me, I'll tell you a little bit about myself.

First of all, my name. I don't have one. This isn't for any Internet security reason. Names are overrated, just semi-pretty sounds that burst out when you need to seperate yourself from everyone else. The parts of me that make me who I am have no names.

The basis for this blog: Me and my screwed up little brain. I'll take it from the top: I have Nonverbal Learning Disorder and you'll have to look that up yourself. In spite of that, I'm a certified genius somehow (probably a loop hole of some kind), but I'm also in high school, so I'm an idiot. I'm chronically depressed, a Prozac baby for two years. (Actually, I'm a Zoloft baby now, but still.) I'm bisexual, and if you have a problem with that, I'll be more than happy to tell you where to shove it. I One hate crime was enough for me. Since said hate crime, I've now added post traumatic stress disorder to my every growing list of maladies...and...rounding it off, next week, I'm making my hillionth jillionth trip to the doctor, because now I might have synesthesia. Depending on your tastes, I may be quite fun company...

The purpose of this blog: I'm a whiny teenager, and need to whine for an audience. Just watch, I'll probably abandon this thing after two weeks.

A few more basic facts:

Age: 15
Lives in: Denver, but always considers Seattle "home."
Likes: Writing, books without pictures, swearing, caffeine, long walks on the beach, candlelit dinners....couldn't keep a straight face on that one.
Dislikes: Cheerleaders, Hot Pockets, MTV, arcades, the fantasy genre, people who pronounce every syllable of the word "comfortable", poetry written by teenagers, and people.