Choose your poison. Main the title page. Me all you'd ever wanna know. Writing poems, essays, stories. Art things I've drawn. Music shows, bands, good lines. You interactive inanity. Links good stuff I wish I'd made.
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stories1/28/02
At six thirty I scramble back to my room in the cold. I spend a few minutes finding some clothes that feel right before I go downstairs. By 7:06 I am outside waiting for the bus, which comes at 7:07. The morning bus ride is much more subdued than the afternoon ride, though the bubbly blonde in the back has already started her day-long giggle. I realize I have made a mistake when the obese boy who always wears the same flannel shirt sits down in the seat behind me. A foul-smelling cloud chases him; he reeks of cologne, cigarettes, and bathroom air freshener. The stench is tangible. By 7:28 we are at school. I meet two of my friends at the door, and the three of us go over to the place where our larger group of friends are standing. Ten minutes later the bell rings; we make our way upstairs, pausing to be part of a crowd that is watching two girls shriek and snatch at each other's hair. Just as one manages to punch the other in the face, two teachers break through the spectators. People leaning out from the staircase cheer after the punch, but as the teachers separate the girls the frenzy dissipates and we continue to our classes. Third period is French. I half-listen to the teacher speaking her version of the language - half of it is English with a French inflection, and the rest is French with an English inflection. By the end I have given up on learning anything for the day and am drawing people in my notebook. On the way to fourth period we find another scuffle, but people aren't actually fighting, just shouting. We stay and watch until it ends, and then follow the herd to our next class. Lunch is slightly better. For half an hour we sit and talk about nothing much, wasting our 'free' time, and then it's off to three more restless classes. The bus ride home is as eventful as anything else. I stare straight ahead, something loud playing in my head, ever-heightening volume compensating for the ever-heightening volume of the three blondes frantically giggling and screeching amidst their male followers in the back of the bus. The fat boy's odor has eased off a little, though I can smell it from two seats away. He must have left pieces of it behind during the day. As we near my house I am ready to get off, but the bus driver, as usual, forgets to stop. I have to shout at the driver and brace myself for her rapid deceleration when she realizes that, in fact, I am on the bus. I get off at the side of the road and trudge back to my house through the roadside weeds, breathing deep of the heady perfume of youth.
 "the Fight"The next moment, one of these outer circles breaks apart, three girls separating themselves from the rest. At first all three are silent, two of them struggling, the third standing next to them, watching. It is not the noise of the fight, but the lack of it, that draws everyone's attention. The two girls have the same color of blonde hair, long; their faces are turned down to the ground, not visible; but their hair is thrashing, waving, floating in the air. One of them is backed up against the wall now, and the third girl who is a step away from the fight has come to herself. "Stop!" she yells in a voice surprisingly deep and hoarse. She reaches out with one arm, but is knocked away by the swatting paws of the combatants. Everyone in the cluster is watching. Everyone sees the teacher come out of a room, looking around; he is wondering why it is so quiet. It is never quiet. He sees the two girls and rushes over, pulls one off the other. He has the bigger of the two by the neck; her red face, crazy hair, and wild eyes make her look like a bear. The teacher drags her away, silent again, but shouts when the other girl doesn't follow. "You come too!" As the three make their exit, one long moment of silent is left, and then everyone collectively laughs; it is a short bark of a laugh, chorused in perfect unison inside each throat, a release of tension. Now everyone is released. The cluster is instantly loud, everyone turning to everyone else with an uneasy laugh or a comment. Then, as quickly, five seconds later, the experience is forgotten, minds turned back to their own concerns.
"Patrick," or "Sad but True: the Tale of the Hot Construction Guy"Sunday morning my mother picks me up from a friend's house and tells me the worker guy has come to fix up our basement. She says his name is Patrick, he is 24, but looks younger, he's just so cute, blah blah blah. So what, think I, all construction workers are icky, right? Monday night, that's tonight, Mom reminds me that Patrick will be coming at six to work on the basement. Six rolls around and he's not here. Tardy Patrick Basement Man, I'm thinking as I plant flowers in the front of our house. Around a quarter after, a car pulls up... holding the hot guy from the market! Ooh, I think. It's the hot guy. And now I know his name. Patrick. He speaks to me! "I saw you at the farmers' market." HE SAW ME! He remembers me! Damn. He remembers me, sitting next to my mom's big sign looking like a dork. So he goes into the house, and I finish up with my flower-planting. I'm walking to the shed with a big bag of dirt, I'm walking by his car, and I'm thinking it wouldn't hurt just to see what he's got in there... I'm stopping, I'm leaning forward, looking in. Massachusetts plates, a discman and some safety goggles on the passengers' seat, a baby toy in the backseat. Rustly leafy noises come from behind me, behind the house. Let me just pause here to say that I am DUMB. Right, so rustly someone-coming-towards-me-through-the-leaves noises are going on in the direction of the basement door. After a minute I come to my senses, and there he is coming towards me! Dirt in hand, I'm panicking. I'm turning, runrunrunning around the house, to the porch, and inside. Up the stairs, into my room, door shut, stereo LOUD, and I'm safe. I hide there for a few hours, until the doorbell rings. It's Patrick! He has to go. I say, "Okay." I am blushing before I even answer the door, but he never mentions my little sneaky peek. He is very sweaty and says the fumes from his chemicals are nasty. I say, "Okay." He says he will be back. I say, "Okay." He says goodbye. I say, "Okay." I think if he said he was going to steal my car and eat my pet bunny I would just say "Okay." And then I'm shutting the door, and I'm thinking, ahhh...
"Bikes Are Fun"
"Fairy Tea Party"Then one day we went to my dad's office and sat down in their lunchroom. Mom pulled out some paper and pretty fairy stamps. I stood up on my chair to get a better look, and she let me stamp on the paper a little bit. We were making invitations to my fairy tea party. Finally my birthday came. I knew it was the special day even before I woke up, because I got myself up at five thirty and couldn't get back to sleep. It took me a long time to wake my parents up, though. It frustrated me that they weren't as excited as I was for my birthday. Mom spent the whole morning slicing cucumbers and making my birthday cookie. I didn't like cake, so she made me a giant M&M cookie instead that was big enough to put candles in and cut into slices. She set up a table in our living room and brought my favorite rocking chair down from my room. She put crackers and fruit and cucumber and little pitchers of apple juice on the nice tablecloth, and set out my favorite little plates and cups. I was looking forward to wearing my fairy costume so much that Mommy let me put it on early. It had two skirts and a special shirt, but my favorite part was the wand. It was as long as my arm and silver, with a big stuffed white star on the end, and lots of ribbons and little bells to make it jingly. All of my friends came and we sat down. While we ate I held slices of cucumber over my eyes and called it "cucumumber." One of my friends asked me, "What's the weather today, Jeannie?" That made me laugh. I made up a weather report, giggled, and stuffed my napkin in my mouth. IT was the funniest thing I had ever thought of. After the food was gone, my mom gave all of my friends their own fairy wands, and we all bopped each other on the heads, sharing our fairy energy. We squealed and laughed, and the mommies stood around us, lots of big legs penning us into the dining room. To add to the specialness of the day, that night I was going to be able to sleep in my parents' big water bed, which was a big treat I only got to have when Dad went on a business trip. After the party was over I couldn't contain all of that excitement and party food, so I threw up all of my wonderful birthday cookie and sliced cucumber. Mom didn't even seem disappointed. She cleaned me up, and she still let me sleep in the big water bed. She kissed me on the head and told me happy birthday. My sixteenth birthday is tomorrow. Instead of me asking my parents, they're the ones who aren't sure whether my birthday's coming up. I'm sixteen years old and my mother is tired of holidays, but it doesn't bother me because I'm remembering a fairy wand that made everything better and a cookie bigger than my head with four candles in it just for me.
"Racing the Rain"Even now, while we watch, the sky is cut right in half. The clouds are moving so fast that it only lasts a few seconds, and then the chunky, low-altitude clouds push out and the sky that had smiled over this glorious day begins to recede. The wind that is pushing those clouds is pushing other things down here, too. Leaves hiss against the asphalt in a dizzy spiral a few parking spaces away. Long hairs wiggle out from behind my ear and throw themselves across my mouth, sticking in my chapstick. One little bird scoots across the parking lot, hardly daring to open his wings in his run for a tree. We're silent; I'm gobbling up this storm. Even with three of my friends around me, I could feel like the only girl in the world during weather like this. Then the spell breaks, and somebody mentions subs, so we tumble into the car and pull the doors shut, closing out the wind. On the way to Wawa, I'm leaning forward in my seatbelt, looking up through the windshield. In these past five minutes the heavy clouds have far outrun the higher, fluffier ones, creating a weird early twilight. I roll down my window. I can almost taste the earthy, metallic pre-rain smell. Delicious. When we throw the doors open again, the wind rushes in and tugs at the ends of our sleeves. Three of us scamper in for subs; by the time we come dashing out ten minutes later, it's dark and the air has gotten tangibly cooler. We head to the church, our evening's destination, grinning and restless. As we finally pile out into yet another empty parking lot, we are shrieking and bouncing, reaching out with quick hands to snatch belongings from the trunk. We're off, spinning across the pavement with arms out, pounding up the wooden ramp, banging open the doors to the building. As we reemerge with empty arms, the first fat drops come sneaking up, tapping us on the heads and shoulders. In the light of the street lamps we can make out the big dark circles they make on the asphalt. How can you resist dancing in weather like this? Shoes come off, hands link up, and the gray noise of raindrops plays accompaniment to feet slapping the pavement, faster and faster, urging the clouds to loose a little more of their liquid freedom. Racing the rain. And it's raining harder; we break into a run, out into the shiny grass and off under the trees. When it thunders, we laugh in reply, throwing arms out and heads back, drinking the nighttime. When even the storm's energy isn't enough to fuel worn-out legs any more, we give it one last race to the building. Inside, we give squishy hugs to people in dry clothes. We're out of breath but we're still grinning; all together we flop down across benches with eyes closed, full of lightning bolts and swirling leaves. And even though we can change clothes and wring the water from our hair, we'll still contain a little bit of that storm - just enough that it'll spill out in parking lots later on, where we'll dance and lean back, turning faces to the sky in thanks for this chilly, rainy, perfect storm night.
"The Anxieties of Living Well"(an assignment for Creative Writing)I have been considering transplanting the maple to the south side of the house, you know. It's been positively wilting on the eastern end of our property, so maybe the move would do it good. My neighbor, Violet, advised me to uncover him, and when he's awake to tell him good afternoon. She said that I could throw many parties for my Prehistoric Man, once he'd properly refreshed himself and perhaps taken care of some of his facial hair. Violet thinks that having a Prehistoric Man as a house-guest could only help my reputation at the Country Club, because of course I must invite everyone to dinner to meet him, and all of my dinner guests would absolutely adore my apple tart, but I myself am not sure. I have been perfecting my apple tart recipe, which was handed down through many generations from our third housekeeper's great, great aunt, but the truth is (and I am very ashamed to admit this) that it is either the Blakes or the Worthingtons who cannot stomach nutmeg, but I cannot remember which, and of course I cannot ask and expect to be invited to play tennis with them ever again! And I cannot forego the nutmeg! All of this worry is bringing on some quite irritating headaches. I must retire to my room, before the strain results in another wrinkle. |
