31- I'm finally gonna cry

"Bon voyage."

"That's what you have to say to me? Goshdamn, that had better be ironic or something."

"Um, it actually seemed sort of appropriate."

"How do you figure? Huh? Jesus."

"You're, well, leaving the country. It seemed so appropriate it was almost absurd."

"'Bon voyage' is what you say to someone who's going on a freaking vacation to the goddamn Galapagos Islands for a week or whatever. I'm moving to fricking China."

30- She's a Freak

They say children are cruel.
I disagree.
What's cruel about children
is the way their whispers echo down the hallways.
The school's to blame.
So when their whispers started about me
--She's a freak!--
I wished that I was either at home
or not pregnant.

29- We Should Have Brought Our Bathing Suits

I captured the moment
when I stopped looking forward
to relaxation
and realized
that I would never have time to do
anything I wanted to do--
I captured it
and named it Pessimism.

28- Repeat as Necessary

CHEM FINAL NOTES:
-Remember Lewis structures
-Remember ideal gas law/all other gas laws
P/V=nRT
maybe? yes? no?
crap.
-6.022x10^23
-Avogadro looks like a goddamned mole. That's why it's called the mol.
-Hope to GOD that there's not a stochiometry question on the exam.
-I'm screwed. So, so screwed. Screwed like a screw. Toast. Toast like the bread in a toaster. I hate chemistry. hate. hate. hate. hate. hate.
-Why the hell did I sign up for physics? physics is gonna suck more. it's like masochism 101: Do Something That Sucks Major Ice. Rinse and Repeat as Necessary. If You're Happy, Do Something That Sucks Major DIRTY Ice.
Ex. Why does water boil faster at high altitudes?
Wait... Does water boil FASTER or SLOWER at high altitudes? Aw, crap.
I'm gonna fail.

27- The Experiment

I visited my accidental girlfriend at work. She was only my girlfriend by accident because a mutual friend set us up on a date, and then it was just easier to not break up with her. I didn’t like her that much, but I didn’t hate her, but it was fun just to hang out with her, because she was pretty cool.

And she was cool about being my girlfriend all of a sudden. We hung out on weekends, but we didn’t kiss, or anything. If we double-dated with our friends, she would hold my hand, and that was kind of nice. Mostly, though, we hung out and played Scrabble (if we were at her house) or video games (if we were at mine). Mostly hanging out with Bri was cool. But it really, really pissed her off when I visited her at work.

26-Sorry About All the Hands; This is the Last One--I Promise

Making Shadow Puppets
Reading Pygmalion
Eating Green Grapes
Listening to Sexy Sultry Smooth Songs
Wearing a Dress

The Best Saturday Afternoon I've Ever Had

25- Proverbs 6:25

Regina Fredericks, with her beautiful penmanship, and her beautiful dresses, and her own beautiful, resplendent, ethereal features, was absolutely perfect in the fall of 1921.

24- I'm on Grass

a small moment:

she was practicing her flute
when the message came
she was simply so
surprised!
that she dropped
the instrument
but her fingers remained
frozen
in place

23- Reflection Reality Decipher

a small moment:

by the sea, just me, Cacophony.
cacophony,
smorgasbord.
a smorgasbord of sounds,
with the waves crashing and the gulls
cheering me on as I swim out to sea.
their voices form
a discordant song that echoes in the empty skies.

22- Something Hilarious

There was no peanut butter in the house, so I put Nutella on my sandwich. My mom didn’t like it when I did this—she thought the Nutella would make me fat. My mom cared about stuff like that. My boyfriend always shot her really dirty looks when she said this—he thought that I was fine the way I was and that, if anything, I could use to gain a few pounds, because I was so skinny from all my running.

My brother just scoffed at all of this snafu and ate all the peanut butter when I wasn’t looking, and then didn’t tell anyone that he’d finished it, so nobody bought more. He was pretty much constantly eating all the food we had around, thereby making it impossible for him to in any way a) pay attention to me or b) comment on my weight issues (or lack thereof).

Far away at college, my sister was a sad loss to the drama. She always had very firm opinions on things, and was almost always right. Besides, she was perfect and stunning and always knew what clothes to wear and what makeup was right and whether or not I was looking good or bad in any way, so her opinion would have been invaluable. But my sister got mad when anyone called and bothered her for trivial reasons.

My dad agreed with my mother when she was in the room, with my boyfriend when pressed, and when it was only my brother around, remained stoically uncaring. His most common response to any of these was a garbled, noncommittal mumble.

When I was done making my sandwich, I ate the Nutella out of the jar just because it tasted good.

21- Plants Do Photosynthesis

This, to me, was heaven. Alone at four in the morning but not because I'd yet to go to bed--this was my morning. The rain had woken me up, tapping gently on the panes of my window. I'd always been a light sleeper.

Nobody was in the house today-- my roommates had all gone home for the long weekend, homesick after the first two months. I wasn't longing for home--on the contrary; this independence thrilled me. Where they complained and wore twice-dirty clothes, I delighted in cooking and cleaning and knowing that I was completely in charge. Any failure was all mine.

In the quiet and the dark, I switched on my computer and placed it on the desk. Even though it was four in the morning on Saturday there was no reason for me not to start a paper due Wednesday. This solitary morning inspired ambition.

Cereal, scavenged from the kitchen, served an early breakfast as I sat down to type. This was peaceful, sorting through research on causes of the Revolution with nothing to worry me and nobody to bother me.

I sighed. Who said there was anything lonely about being alone?

20-Tens of Thousands of Keys

I wore my sunhat indoors because the ribbon matched my glasses, which matched my skirt, which was more matching in one day than I usually did in a week. I was actually pretty proud of myself for that. My mom said she was proud of me, too. She was lying. She was relieved.

She’d have been more relieved if I had gotten rid of the keys, which I would never, ever do. It was a feat—if I did say so myself—to accumulate tens of thousands of keys in a mere nineteen years. Less, if you considered that I hadn’t started collecting until I was five. The first one was the key to my bedroom door, or at least it had been, before my dad took the lock away. Then I got a key to the front door. Then I found one on the street. Then a friend gave me one that she found. Then I found another.

19- Mesange

“Happy Saturday, chickadee.”

“It’s Saturday already?”

“Four minutes after midnight.”

“That went fast.”

“I know.”

“Does it always go this fast?”

“What do you mean?”

18- Corde Brisée

If Matthew’s brother had been just a little bit older, I would have dated him, just based on how much I liked Matthew. Admittedly, Matthew was eleven, but he was perfect and as soon as he lost that goofy adolescent thing, he would make somebody an awesome girlfriend.

Matthew’s brother was fourteen and I was sixteen and that was just too young.

Perhaps it was ridiculous that I had a crush on someone I’d hardly ever met—rather, whose name I didn’t even know—but there it was. I had a GIGANTIC crush on Matthew’s brother.

17- Follow Me

Her name was Simone and she was rather beautiful. She spoke in a thousand tongues, some of which were real. Her light and fluffy hair, blond and brown by turns, shaped her face around a pointy nose that gave her an almost elfin look. She had barely visible freckles on her nose. She sat cross-legged in the dirt even when she wore short skirts, and there were flowers on her underwear. She didn’t care that anyone saw. And then she smiled.

16- But If I Separate Them, They'll Miss Each Other

David was a good boy. He was nice to his mommy. He was nice to his daddy. He was even nice to his little sister, Baby Jane. He made his bed every day. He brushed his teeth in the morning and at night. He always kept his room clean. But there was one thing David DID NOT do well.

David was a very, very silly eater.

This made David’s mommy very mad when she tried to give David his dinner. He picked picked picked at his pile of peas until they were all apart from each other, and then he would eat them one by one. He slurped one slippery string of spaghetti at a time. He chomped his crackers at their corners, going in circles until the whole thing was gone.

15- Cheap Thrills

I toyed with the bracelet around her wrist, crafted from a curious combination of paper and plastic. It was among good company with the thread bracelets that she crafted idly during classes—she was good enough that she didn’t have to look at the knots she tied, and so teachers didn’t mind. Around us the squawks and screeches of the carnival assaulted me. She relished them.

“I just love a cheap thrill,” she confessed to me, trying to justify buying the twenty-five dollar bracelet that gave her unlimited access to the smattering rides. Her smile was sheepish.
Apparently she wasn’t aware of the sexual implications of that sentence. I arched an eyebrow.

14- Deuteronomy 28:57

The only thing I didn’t like about the rain on the first day of the rest of my life (as clichéd as that sounds) was the way it beat down on the sunflowers. It made them look sad—they were, after all, only young flowers, and were getting kind of bent in the torrential rain. I watched them for a while that morning, lying on my back with my hand on my stomach.

Then I got up and went to school. I usually enjoyed being inside a school building on a rainy morning, because it felt more secure than on sunny days. Rainy school mornings were what education was supposed to be, austere and wonderful, but only sometimes. I felt badly about my sunflowers, though, so it was hard to concentrate on how nice things were.

When I got home, I stood outside in the rain and tied the drooping sunflower to a ruler. I got very wet, and I would have tied the rest of them up, but I had to go inside and make dinner. Soothing as the tap-tap-tap of the rain on the roof was, I couldn’t get those sunflowers out of my head, not the whole day long. I thought an awful lot about those sunflowers, but then my baby came.

13- Jimmy Dzugan; or: The Rooster Moon

My parents were cruel: they named me Guy Fawkes. It always surprised me how people wondered why I moved out when I was seventeen. After all, I had a sneaking suspicion that my mother planned so I would be born around the right time; as it was, she had me induced on November fifth. The whole thing took a degree of obsession that was rather horrifying.

I avoided anything even remotely associated with England like the plague.

When I went for my first job interview, though, I heard the British accent of my interviewer and knew that I was screwed. I fidgeted as I sat on the other end of a bare table that was a bit too long to be practical—she looked tough, clearly knew she was hot, and was completely prepared to use that against me. Besides, she had that no-nonsense bun-and-glasses combo that, on TV, at least, always spelled “hardass.”

12-Big Trash Friday

Lourdes smelled of vanilla and Febreeze, which meant she’d had some sort of wardrobe crisis this morning. Even on Big Trash Friday—which, for us, meant moving day—Lourdes looked perfectly put-together and pristine. She’d been like that for as long as I’d known her. Raised by a strict, old-fashioned grandmother, she operated on the idea that it was proper to look nice for every occasion, not just special ones. And, through some magic I could never quite master, she always managed to make everyone else look underdressed.

Because I could smell her—the vanilla-cookies smell only became really noticeable when her skin began to heat up—I knew Lourdes was beginning to tire. She was always embarrassed at being the smaller and weaker of the two of us, so I sat down first on the couch we were lugging around. Lourdes collapsed onto the seat next to me, face flushed prettily.

11-Bein Creepie

If I hadn’t killed Linus, I might have married him. As it was, I kept his blood in a tiny jar on my mantel, like an urn of ashes. It was sort of funny, since it wasn’t even me that he loved best.

If I’d married Linus, I might have been happy. As it was, I kept my smile in a tiny pocket in my jacket, like in that childish song. It was sort of sad, since it was I that made certain that he was gone.

If I’d been happy, I might not have killed Martin. As it was, I kept noticing that he looked too much like Linus, just like Linus. It was sort of irrational, since I might have married him if I hadn’t killed him.

10-I Like Submarines

If Oscar ever found the person that had given Eleanor grapes with seeds in the middle, he was going to make them clean up this mess and then kill them viciously. It had gone this way with peaches, when someone had given her one with a pit still inside. A nasty patient had whispered to Eleanor where eggs came from, and now eggs couldn’t be served when Eleanor was in the dining room. This was Oscar’s third year volunteering here, and he had seen Eleanor’s dietary restrictions slowly constrict until she barely ate anything.

Before now, grapes had always been safe. Oscar didn’t even know where to find grapes with seeds still inside—every grocery store he’d ever known had sold them seedless. So when he’d received a phone call this morning, with a high-school-aged volunteer on the other end frantically whispering that Eleanor was in a panic and Oscar was needed here, stat, he’d expected a repeat of the peach incident. Instead he’d found the girl of twenty-two with a pile of grapes in front of her, keening.

9-It's Not Polite To Be Rude

I wrote a nihilistic essay even though I sort of believed in God. Even though I was the pastor’s daughter, I wrote that there was no solid evidence that any sort of higher being existed. It was fun, because my teacher was the chief lector at our church, and when she read it, she looked stunned. My father looked crushed. My best friend looked perplexed and my mother seemed disappointed. I’d never enjoyed myself more.

I prayed to God beforehand that he’d forgive me for burning my Bible.

8-Clowns May Be Present

I loved to swing.

My hair, which I’d straightened so impeccably this afternoon, was getting blowsy from the air rushing back and forth and beginning to curl in the humidity. Zach, the boy I’d straightened it for, was leaning up against one of the supports of the swings and smiling as I kicked up higher.

The date had been dismal.

When the circus was in our tiny town, I stayed busy. The entire damn town went out to see the trapeze artists and the freak show and the balloon man, and to laugh at the antics of the clown.

7-The Gallows-Tree Had Taken Root

Delicately ironic,
She hung her head in shame.
In front of the hangman's noose,
And the murdered innocent man.

6-The Joy Division

Anaconda Marie Stewart (commonly Ana) listened to Joy Division as she swung on her tire swing over the irritatingly picturesque lake in her backyard. Normally Ana, being the sort of person who loved the Glen Miller Orchestra and The Ink Spots and Bette Midler, would have rather projectile vomited into her own hair than put anything that sounded this much like The Smiths on her iPod. But Craig had practically insisted that she listen.

Craig was Ana’s new co-worker, and their schedules coincided almost precisely. Ana liked him almost purely on the fact that he didn’t laugh at her nametag—Hello, my name is Anaconda!—the way her old co-worker, Liz, had. She liked him enough that she was willing to listen to his crap music, even though it was practically making her ears bleed.

5-Lobster Streudel

"Oh my goodness! I'm so sorry!" apologized the mother of the infant who had just, gleefully and with surprising accuracy, thrown a mushed handful of her dinner into my face. Luckily, I had the presence of mind not to open my mouth. A glob of peas-and-spaghetti-sauce-and-probably-some-baby-spit dripped onto my shirt.

I loved my job, I reminded myself staunchly. I loved my job. I loved my job. I lo--

Stupid babies.

I smiled tersely at the mother as she rattled off apology after apology and kept my hands locked tightly on my pad an pen, poised as I had been to take their dessert orders.

"Quite alright," I muttered politely, mostly to shut up the mother. "May I offer you anything for dessert?"

4-Crackdown on Drunken Voters

I woke on the morning of what I thought to be the fifth to the lovely sight of a tulip.

This surprised me; I did not usually wake to the lovely sight of a tulip and, in the absence of my sloping white walls, I did not know where I was. Thinking back, the last thing I remembered was going to cast my ballot--perhaps not the wisest choice, in a drunken stupor. I couldn't have even said which party I'd voted for. Classless.

Sitting up groggily, I did a mental check. I still had all my clothes and my cell phone was in my pocket. A quick rifle through my purse--I still had my car keys, wallet, and an appropriate amount of money. Of course I had no idea where my car was, or even where I was for that matter. But this seemed like a good start.

3-When in Doubt--Pants

"Helpful hint from a benevolent friend," I advised Eve when she came out that morning with two cups of coffee: "wear pants."

Eve looked down at herself and realized what she'd forgotten. "Fuck," she said. She went back inside with both cups of coffee still in her hands.

"Thanks for leaving me some of that!" I called after her. Eve was not at her best in the mornings, and menial things like pants didn't usually get through her coffee-coffee-coffee mantra until the caffeine hit her system. If I didn't suck at making coffee, our living situation would have been perfect.

2-Symphony No. 1

Wearing my headphones, I could almost pretend I didn't hear the small girl's shrieks at the loss of her balloon. If I closed my eyes and turned up the music all the way, I could pretend I alone sat in the park. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) for my mood in general, Sean's Symphony No. 1 was playing, and unless I felt like rifling through my bag to find the skip button, it was staying. I didn't.

The thing about the symphony was that Sean had written it for me. In the days before things got complicated, Sean (the musician and my best friend--this was high school, mind you) and I (the artist) had a running joke that you heard numbered symphonies--eight-six, thirty-two--but never the first.

1- The Radicalism of the American Revolution

"The trick," Nan told me, "is assuming you're going to fall. Then, you always remember to bring extra clothes and towels and things." She rubbed me briskly with the shabby bathroom towel she'd brought and gave me an extra shirt.

Not everything Nan said to me made sense, but she took me to the duckpond and played Chutes and Ladders with me and so I still loved her.

I didn't love her the way Danny loved her, which was good, because Danny was the only one who got to marry her. But it made me happy that Danny was marrying her, because that meant she was moving in with us (but only until they could afford their own house, Nan warned me) and got to be my sister.