In which Katherine graduates.

Saturday, May 28th, 2011

Home, 12 am.
I wake up at midnight. Then two, four, five, six. I stare at the clock and fitfully doze until my mother comes in to get me up.

Graduation practice, 9 am.
As I enter the football stadium it is quickly apparent that I am the only one in at all formal attire. Most are in shorts or pajamas, while I show up in my favorite skirt--a good choice, in the end, as the heat will be a major talking point throughout the day. A friend, Courtney, is standing at the back entrance of the stadium. "Oh hello, Katherine!" she says, pointing a camera my way. "Smile!"

I stick my tongue out.

My name is called ominously out over the loud, loud, loud speaker along with several others. When I make my way up to the stage, however, the fuss is merely that there is a copy of my last paycheck from the school district for me.

I find John/cohorts and stand with them. We wait. When the production finally gets started, we sit in the assembled chairs before the stage as the principal gives instruction. Soon we're in small groups sorted by alphabet and congregating in the street outside the stadium in two separate aisles. The boys directly in front and back of me appear to be good friends and jabber incessantly through the charade. The girl who leads our group is nice; we lament the logic of the proceedings as the day grows warmer, the practice begins and we are forced to start from scratch as three graduates arrive late.

When our procession around the track is finally deemed up to snuff we sit alphabetically by last name in the perfectly placed plastic chairs as the principal lectures us on our behavior for the night. The people directly surrounding me decide that breaking the rules will be okay so long as we all do it; they can't arrest us all.

"Do you think I could come to graduation high?" someone asks seriously.

"If they can't tell."

"It's okay, man, I have eyedrops."

Graduation Lunch, 1 pm.
My father, paternal aunt and uncle, and paternal grandparents meet us in the lobby of an attraction that sits 750 feet in the air in a nearby city and hosts (among other things) a revolving restaurant. They have all traveled hours to get here. For me. The elevator doesn't arrive for something like fifteen minutes; as we finally take our seats and peruse the menu, my father jokes that he'll just have me choose a meal for him. "I mean, you're so good at deciding."

"I've already chosen what I'm getting."

"You're joking."

"No."

"I bet you've been agonizing over the menu online for days, right?"

"No, I haven't."

I don't know what he thinks he knows about me, but I have long been known for making very slow and careful decisions. This may be a joke on the outside, but it goes much deeper than that. I have not seen this man in five months, since Christmas, but he makes comments like this without fail every time we meet. My rebuttal may be simple, but it represents an astounding amount of progress on my part. I am not paralyzed.

This is his first and last snide comment. He tells me he's proud of me. I chose a lunch and he's unbearably, gushingly proud. I feel sick.

I am not accustomed to (or comfortable with) being the center of attention. Luckily, however, the lunch is not a disaster by any means. Not much is required of me, honestly. Towards the end of the meal I move to the other side of the table, where my aunt and uncle sit. They are hilarious and charming; my spirits are quickly lifted and I ride back to tinytowntexas in their vehicle to "help" navigate.

I get us almost-lost. My uncle corrects this. He's only been to tinytowntexas once.

Transition, 5:45 pm.
My aunt and uncle, mother, sister and I stand over the kitchen counter in order to consume cake and ice-cream. I have to report at the school for graduation prep soon. My grandparents and father arrive at my house just as I'm leaving, hideous cap and gown in hand.

I enter the high school through the back door.

"Do you have any contraband?"

"No."

"A phone?"

"No."

"Okay, you can go."

I do have my phone hidden on my person, but then so does everyone else.

Again we are separated by alphabet, one group of about twenty to each empty classroom where we don our glorious robes and bemoan the heat as we wait to take our senior panoramic cap and gown photo. When we do, the photographer has to rearrange us twice to fit everyone in the rickety, too-narrow frame. A boy behind me complains loudly and freely, catcalling the aged photographer as he gives instruction. I wish dearly to slap him, but we are positioned perilously like dominoes and I can't picture it going well under the circumstances. Breathing is risky as it is.

Again we wait in our assigned classrooms. I know none of the girls I chat with, but there is a sense of solidarity in the fact that we are all certain that we will faint, vomit and trip across the stage in the course of the evening. My chest seizes as we line up and wait to be called to the stadium.

Graduation, 7:30 pm.
Green polyester catches the light as we parade out into the parking lot and wait to be called again, this time all two hundred of us in our respective lines. One line will walk in on the visitors' side of the track, while the other (and my) line will walk in on the home side.

Despite the many warnings we have been given, our spacing is still slightly off as we walk onto the track and make our way to our seats. The bleachers on either side are packed. I scan the home side for my mother and in my frenzy state forget what color she was wearing earlier. The first face I find, almost immediately, is that of my ex-boyfriend.

He is either completely and utterly conspicuous (possible) or I have magic powers (possible). We find our seats; I find myself incredibly pissed off.

Heat and anxiety mix freely. We are all miserable until the sun finally sets completely and a breeze catches us. While it is still warm, the waiting is less agony. From our spot in the middle of the football stadium, a stage erected directly in front of us, we cannot really hear what the speakers are saying. If we're lucky we can catch every other word or so, and none of us are particularly interested. Instead we make snide comments and complain about our uncomfortable headwear.

Between speeches and scholarship listings it is a good two hours before they begin divvying diplomas, at which point absolutely everyone is completely over this idiocy and ready to graduate already.

I am oddly calm when it is, after all this time, my "moment." A science teacher rehearses the handshake with me one last time; the school counselor smiles and congratulates me; I step up onto the stage. I take my diploma holder, shake a hand, smile as a camera flashes, shake more hands, smile as I come off the stage and another camera flashes. I am handed a bouquet of flowers my mother ordered for me and make my way back through the middle aisle to my seat. I spend the rest of the ceremony numb.

When it's over the field quickly floods with people, immediate bedlam. Dobbin passes by several times and stares at me awkwardly. I cannot find anyone I know. Eventually I manage to extricate my phone from my person as it buzzes and locate my mother, who arrives with my father and sister close behind. Pictures are taken with each parent. I am too out of it to feel much of anything.

Home, 10 pm.
I don't like this part.

Project Graduation, 11 pm.
It's casino night (shock!) at the school sponsored grad party. The cafeteria is decorated with fairy lights; country music blares. I find Courtney, who welcomes me to follow her around and generally makes life better. I am consistently socially awkward, yet she has always seemed to get it.

Someone informs me that Dobbin was "looking for" me after graduation earlier. I almost die laughing, choking on curse words. Just get out of my head, man. Just get out.

I play blackjack with John and a group of others I don't know for while, which is as close to comfort as I'm likely to get in this moneymaking scenario. John tells me he loves me and makes a grotesque face. "What is that even, man," I say. "You love me, but I'm gross?"

Don't Stop Believing comes on over the speakers and the room proceeds to explode with voices, oddly connecting me to a group of people I will likely never see again and did not like for the majority of my time here. Auction items fill the cafeteria's stage as the night goes on; I win a door prize, fancy shampoo I stare at cluelessly.

"Want to go outside?" John asks. There is a bouncy castle slide erected in the parking lot, along with a climbing wall, jousting area and a few other entertainments. I agree to the bouncy castle and refuse the rest despite his pleas for me to pursue acts of daring.

As we return indoors it is something like three in the morning; people wait in line to receive a full cash value for their play money. John and I sit on the sidelines as a teacher and his partner dance wildly and with mad skill across a makeshift dance floor denoted by columns wrapped in fairy lights and faux ivy.

"Come on," John says, "you can't have an ass like that and not expect little gay boys not to fantasize about you."

I can't help but agree with him.

Soon John joins in on one last contest: karaoke. My phone battery is finally dwindling as I watch the contestants converse near the stage; the line for cash redemption thins out and it becomes apparent that we are vastly short on seating.

John isn't well received. We slip out the back door again to sit against a wall and watch as the bouncy castle and entertainments are disassembled. Only the dim light from the cafeteria remains. He looks as if he might cry, though he doesn't, and rejects my offer of a hug.

"I think I'll tweet about it," he says, retrieving his phone from a pocket. He types something and puts it back. I pull out my own phone to read what he's said.

I can't say I honestly understand what John goes through. I may accept him, but I cannot fully imagine what it's like to live in this tiny, conservative town where his very makeup is oft correlated with the pronouncement that he is destined to go to hell.

We return to the cafeteria and find a table near some friends. Courtney arrives soon after, saying she had been for looking for me. I apologize. Though she managed to make nearly double what the rest of us have, it is quite apparent as the auction begins that none of us are destined for glory. The big items quickly go to those with much, much more "crazy cash" at hand and those surrounding me are awash in frustration.

I am long past hilarity and well into delirium as I make my way through my twenty-third hour of being awake. Noises swish and crunch as they pass through me; I blink frequently in confusion and decide to be as quiet as possible as to not make too much of a fool of myself. The end of the event is completely anticlimactic. My thoughts are a haze as Courtney hugs me goodbye, then George, my NIT (Nerdfighter-In-Training).

John and I walk outside together. He looks unbelievably down as I make my way to my mother's car and shifts things in his arms so we can hug goodbye.

"I'm holding you to that movie date," I say.

"Harry Potter 7 Part II?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

Sunday, May 29th, 2011
Home, 5:30 am.
My mom tucks me into bed. My poor phone communes with the wall charger just in time for me to say a few more sleeplessly crazed things to the internet and good morning to future roommate and partner in crazy Laurel, who is up obscenely early to drive some humans to the airport.

I hope in vain that sleep will bring consistency to these moments.

Moving forward.

FutureMe is a website that allows you to compose emails and have them sent to you at a predetermined point in the future. I can't recall how exactly I discovered it (such is the rabbit hole that is the internet), but I got on a slight kick last year in the midst of chaos and as host of worries morphed into a funhouse mirror reality.

I received this letter in my inbox today and felt compelled to share. It is, oddly, these words more than most that warm the cockles of my weatherworn heart as I stagnate in the space of time before I graduate* and separate myself from this (irony of ironies) godforsaken tiny Texas town. I may be broken. I may always be broken, but I am truly, truly at the best place emotionally and as a person that I have ever been in my life right now.

I made it.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

This evening I'm meant to go to a high school graduation, and it gets me thinking about what could happen in the next year. It gets me thinking that... so much happens, so quickly, and that in a year I will be graduating, hopefully, and things like that. It gets me thinking that so much is going to happen so fast and stress takes over so easily.

So I hope that this next year is wonderful. I hope that things get BETTER and that you have more hope and things don't fall apart so easily. Crazy may be defined in one case as "full of cracks and flaws," but being a little crazy means you're at least THINKING, right? Normalcy is stupid. You--I, whatever--aren't normal. You--I, whatever--are wonderful.

I hope to work on living that way.

Congratulations on graduating. If you could send me lovely assuring psychic waves from the future it would be helpful.

Yours,
Me, you, I, whatever.

*I will be graduating from tinytowntexas high school on the 28th of this month. Newfound wisdom and funny hat pictures will follow.

Cataloging moments.

Monday.
A senior class meeting takes place in what is deemed the Old Gym—a newer version sits across the street, but this one is still in use. The room radiates decades of sweat; we collect paper after paper from an assembly line of people and fit ourselves into one half of a bleacher. An almost-friend rushes over to sit with me; we puzzle over the forms with slight disdain.

Photo order forms, immunization record information, graduation ceremony code of conduct, senior quotes... all I can think, as our principal booms that this will be one of the "last times we will be together as a class," is that I dearly wish I could skip the rigmarole.

Too bad.

Memory.
The cowboy hat clad boy to my right counts out change for gas money on his shrunken desk. His voice is thick and defiant: "It's either gas or beer, and there's not enough for beer."

Thursday.
I present a PowerPoint on holograms. I’m too annoyed by this class to care that my demeanor is completely unenthusiastic. The end result is adequate, a state I have never really allowed myself before this moment.

I am numb.

Wednesday.
The moments turn to fuzz. I don’t want it to end. I do want it to end. I don’t want it to end…

Thursday.
I am deemed our school's "Outstanding Senior" for English. My mother kvells; John breaks away from his table in the cafeteria to escape parents and sit with me. He tells snide stories on the elite who collect award after award.

Soon after this the moments will collide until all I can think to do is sleep. The morning, when it comes, is only part-comfort.

Memory.
The thin-faced boy in cowboy boots leans back in his desk, pushing away pages of math to say: "Yeah, I'll definitely need this to become a porn star."

Thursday.
I don’t deserve this award. I don’t deserve this award. I don’t deserve this award.

Memory.
I don’t know what you see in me, John texts me, but thank you.

The feeling is mutual.

Thursday.
The school shelters in place due to severe weather. My Physics class disregards this, teacher and students alike popping out the side door to watch the sky spin as water threatens to break loose from the darkness.

“Oh my god, I’ve never seen rain in south Texas before! It’s new!”

Memory.
"Where are you going for the break?"

"Cancun. You can come with us, but we won't talk to you."

Monday.
Students funnel into the cafeteria to collect numbers. Numbers are divided off into tables where we will sit. The girl across from me is, as the alphabet and irony would have it, an enemy. I am hyperbolizing, but she and I have never quite seen eye to eye, and I steer clear of her as a matter of principle. We avert our gazes.

Fifteen minutes into the test a delinquent at the other end of our table feigns crying. The tension is cut; my table-mates and I giggle through layered anxiety. I, for one, am not at all prepared for the standardized test we are meant to complete. Curses run through my head as I think, uncharacteristically, “Well. Four is a good number. Let’s choose that one.”

Wednesday.
“Tell me—” says my boss as I give her my final evaluation sheet, “and you can be honest—have you enjoyed working here this year?”

“I’ve loved working here,” I say, and I mean it. I haven’t the words to express my gratitude.

Memory.

My father laughs. "She can't choose a sandwich, how can she choose a college?"

Friday.
For several weeks the library has attempted to get seniors to fill in cards briefly describing what they plan to do after graduation. Entries have been sparse until now, but today there is a rush.

And all I can think, pinning my peers’ hopes and dreams to a bulletin board outside the library, is that we are all falling apart.

Memory.
"Are you singing Rebecca Black? Don't ever talk again. You've lost that privilege."

Silence.

Friday.
“Thank you for thinking of me, BR,” I tell Ye Old Initials as I pass him in the hallway. “I appreciate it.”

This is not a man to give superfluous compliments.

He nods. “You’re welcome. You deserved it.”

Wednesday.
The principal walks in on my advisory class. Keys jingle too late for us to shuffle, but he simply ignores the number of us clearly finding companionship in our phones.

Rules slip as the end draws near.

Friday.
I’m sorry.

Thursday.
The moments collide, a train wreck I muffle inappropriately.

I have never met my best friend in person. Circumstances make it impossible to meet without conniving. I want, I want, I want… but I can’t.

Thursday.
“Why,” says the boy who talks too fast, “are the people on the news right now not hot? It doesn’t make sense.” He continues for several minutes as I beat questions back at him.

“Stop while you’re ahead,” says the teacher.

“Stop while you’re still alive,” I say.

Friday.
This is the last normally scheduled school day of the year. It will never be the same again.

It will never be the same again.

Friday.
I find John in a hallway to return something to him. Caught in the moving tide of people, I drift as away as words stream from my lips. He follows me. “May I escort you?” he asks.

We link arms and move forward.

A day in the life.

The substitute in my first period class reads aloud a Bible verse in an attempt to make sense of recent news. She apologizes afterward. The bell that marks the passing of class periods has been turned off for the sake of AP testing and the weather dips into the fifties, which would leave the student population off-kilter on any normal day. This isn't any normal day. Talk crawls up the walls only to drop into our laps, sink its teeth into our delicate flesh and turn us in circles until we are dizzy with constantly regurgitating what we have been told to believe.

"I don't want to glorify death..." "I'm glad he's gone..." "I hear there was..." "Yeah..."

I walk to the next class with an almost-friend. "How are you?" She isn't fine. Family issues, worries. Senior year is more slip n' slide than anything, leaving bruises that will outlast any thrill involved. I wish for words.

In advisory there is a fire drill; I stand shivering at the fringes of John's group until they pity me and I join their penguin-like huddle against the wind.

"What, a gay guy singing you straight love songs? That's normal."

"Yeah," I say, "but you aren't there when I cry afterward because no straight guy would ever do that."

"I'll be straight for two minutes, I swear." He launches into recalling a movie he swears turned him straight for two hours.

Here are some tired words: I want to believe in people. I want to believe that the jokes pertaining to recent news don't exist. Because there are good things, too: as the fire drill ends and I double back to my locker for a sweater, John touches my arm and says "I love you."

"I love you, too."

In Physics we are assigned a research project. I couldn't tell you one thing I've learned in the class this year. With fourteen school days until we are out of this place (I know, I put together the library display), it is difficult for me to muster any enthusiasm for this brand of learning.

"Sir," asks one of my classmates, "when your kids go to college, will you cry?"

"Yes, tears of joy." His voice tells me the departure will be the happy part.

catlovingmathteacher's cat has cancer, which shakes me more than I would wish to admit in mixed company. I give him my condolences as class ends and he tells me more; the cat is fifteen years old and he bought her for seventy-five dollars, which works out to something like one cent per day for as long as he's had her.

"So, worth it?"

"Oh, I don't know." He grins and we part ways.

When I finish my lunch (peanut butter and jelly, an orange) in the covered area attached to the cafeteria I usually occupy, I move away from the unusual (though not shocking) chill to find a space in the uncrowded cafeteria. My sister comes with me in an unnecessary act of chivalry and we sit at an empty table in the back corner of the room, which in years past was the auditorium and lays claim to almost slanted linoleum as a happy result of the change.

My sister laughs as she sketches something. "I'm drawing something really funny, and I find it amusing," she offers as explanation.

"Okay."

The substitute in Sociology laments our education system before playing the documentary on the subject. I bite my lip because, I apologize, but this isn't really my fault. I try, I try, I try and it all seems for nothing. I say something. My palms sweat; he half-agrees with me, but it isn't much consolation.

"The solution to the education problem: guess on whose shoulders it will fall?" cheers the substitute.

"Us?"

"Ya'll!"

I do what is asked of me, and in tinytowntexas this is more than enough, but I am not engaged. There is such a pull for excellence in education, yet I'm clueless. To try my best is to hit a brick wall over and over again as my peers stand back to watch with bemused expressions. And I keep doing it because you're supposed to, but my enthusiasm wanes until -

My skin crawls as the documentary plays, because what can I do besides sit here and press these uncertainties against paper?

As the class ends and I slip out the door, the substitute tells me to have a good day. I fork over my "you too, sir" with as little tension as I can muster.

"Katherine's a sophomore, she's just really smart. We all cheat off of her."

I flash my senior-level ID at eye level for the English substitute to see. "They try."

"You know," says the substitute to the ruffians, "when you come back here, the only ones who will remember you are the ones you tormented."

Ye Old Initials returns from proctoring an AP test and tells us of days of old, of when the school's (then) three wings were separated, there was no air conditioning and racial tension ran rampant. He's been in this classroom for decades.

"Did you ever date one of your students?"

"No comment." Years and years ago he was married to one of them.

"Are we going to talk about Osama?" asks someone in my Government class as attendance is taken.

"Yeah, for a little bit."

"He can kiss my ass, 'cause I aint doing shit," mumbles the girl who sits behind me.

The inevitable interjection: "THEY KILLED OBAMA?"

I didn't sleep well last night; the day hangs on me. I'm tired of hearing what my generation is expected to accomplish. I pick at my hangnails. I have never set my head down in a class, yet now it is more tempting than ever.

"There's a difference between crazy and stupid, never forget that."

All I know is to keep going.

Thoughts from Advisory

I'm sitting in advisory class with nine minutes to the bell. Having been successfully plied into consuming waffles the consistency of cardboard, we wait impatiently for the announcements to play.

That's a lie.

Someone at the table to my right was discussing the nature of bongs earlier (...okay), and the persons sitting to my left are playing with batteries and saying words that wash over me instead of sticking.

The announcements play. Next period we will take our senior panoramic photo, which has left many in a tizzy of excitement. The last time I took a panoramic photo was in second grade, and in that case it was because the school was closing. All but I, who would soon move overseas, would attend a shiny new school nearby the following year.

I think that maybe, for many of my peers, this is the high point. We're seniors, the "top" of the school, soon to graduate and have accomplished something tangible. I don't really see it that way. I haven't been born and bred here in tiny town Texas.

For me this is merely the beginning, and I guess for that I am ready to celebrate.

"You'll only really need this if you become an electrician."

There are twenty minutes until the bell ending second period rings; The Bell Jar sits finished in my bag and yesterday's assignment, correct or no (I question whether it truly matters), was turned in in the first five minutes.

The teacher's aid questions how one gets from point A to point B and my Physics teacher shrugs at her and the student she's working with--"you'll only really need this if you become an electrician."

A boy somewhere behind me asserts that it is the teacher's aid's fault that he hasn't finished his worksheet.

"I question the logic in this statement," I say.

"As do I. I suppose in this case we'll just have to deem it illogical and go on with our lives."

"Hey," the boy interjects, "I know big words, too."

"Do you?"

"Only they're all in Spanish."

He means swear words. The teacher's aid gives him a stern look as a beat is skipped.

"What's he doing?" asks the teacher. His face flushes when he's amused, which is often. Divorced with two young children, I question how engaged (or, even, interested) in teaching us he is. Rumors are rumors, but he has grown on me--maybe because of that amused look. Maybe because he's a redhead with a Harry Potter-esque haircut. Maybe many things.

Says the teacher's aid: "He's got some Spanish swear words up his sleeve, only he doesn't have the wherewithal to say them."

The teacher cups a hand over one side of his mouth, whispering: "That's cojones in Spanish."

Dobbin sits behind me as we watch a movie in Sociology, which I realize only as I leave. A notebook is open on his desk, on which his arms are folded and he rests his head. I think, I truly think for a second, without malice: "I hope you're happy." And I walk away. I catapult myself towards my next class, averting my gaze from those who could potentially catch mine, and arrive at my locker even before my classmate and her maybe-maybe-not boyfriend (or else ex-boyfriend) are full into their goodbyes.

It's easier to walk quickly. I wind my way between people and through hallways and feel somehow alive because I am unattached and moving, moving towards something, even if it's only English class and Ye Old Initials.

For those who may be new (are you new? Regardless, I love you deeply.), Dobbin is my jerk of an ex-boyfriend. We dated for two months, at which point he broke up with me via text message and proved himself to be a big fat liar, and while I am generally healed following the debacle, he is still a source of slight annoyance in my life. Sometimes I write about it. Okay, I write about it often, but this is the way it is.

Writing about things allows me to find what might be hurtful amusing rather than tragic.

(Also, for reference purposes, I always change names here. Except for here, as it amused me, and of those who actively read my blog. I hope you know who you are, as you are truly truly amazing. Maggie, Lydia, Manar, Rachel, Dave, mom, and others... I am blessed.)

In my last three classes I find myself half asleep. In Sociology we watch Remember the Titans, in English we watch Hamlet, and in Government we are given a review I finish in the first five minutes of the period. I only have one book with me, and I finished it hours ago. I doodle giraffes and checkerboards on a sheet of paper until the words I am trying to find spill into another page.

Revelation regarding today's youth: a large number can't read cursive. I might as well be writing in code.

The weather this week has been cold enough to warrant a letter regarding possible "severe weather" given to all students. We're not talking about snow, of which we hear rumors of about once a year: if it freezes and there is any ice, all the schools in our (albeit small and independent) school district will close.

Welcome to tiny town Texas.

In other riveting news, this week is our annual (?) stock show. Many kids are out showing stock (?) in the newfound cold (!), for which I have heard there are possible Magic Awards and glitter parties.

(I really wish there were glitter parties.)

As such, we don't have school on Friday (or Monday, coincidentally, thanks to Marin Luther King Jr.). I'm not complaining.

Even if I don't understand it.

A mix of emotions.

"Are you a cannibal?" I overhear from somewhere behind me.

The girls from my first period class (there are a shocking total of three of us) are talking about something--an ex-boyfriend? his financial status? yard gnomes?--as we walk toward our next classes. We pass two girls in identical magenta jackets walking together and I wonder whether this was intended (it probably was, not that it matters, but these are the kinds of things I occupy myself with). The first of the girls I walk with is deposited at the entrance to another hallway where her maybe-maybe-not boyfriend (or else ex-boyfriend) waits for her. There is a harrowing tale I could tell here, but my main concern of late has been the fact that they spend a lot of time canoodling in front of my locker.

My locker is, in my unqualified opinion, a haven for shameless public displays of affection far across the land.

In advisory a girl sits between two boys as they peruse a prom magazine and discuss prom dates. I am almost certain two of the three are single until The Boy Who Asked Me To Sit There places a hand on the girl's waist and leaves it there.

They still might be single.

Sometimes I forget that I'm quiet. My thoughts are loud and occupy me well enough, so it isn't so lonely.

I watch people, their stories playing out before me, as I sit.

I want to be one of them in the sense that I want to be a part of something, but I find peace in the fact that--it just isn't my time yet. My adventure is only on the cusp of beginning, and I think for now it is okay not to be. I don't want what they have. I don't want drunken nights and a baby at sixteen and a life stuck in this tiny town. The voice telling me that I want any semblance of these things is simply a liar.

A pair of black Nikes sit on the desk of the boy next to me. Earbuds blast music I can hear from four feet away; his phone is well loved, scratches abounding, and sits next to his shiny black iPod. As I write he folds his arms on the desk and rests his head on them, temporarily muffling the music. He wears a maroon hoodie and has artfully styled his hair into what might be a faux-hawk if his hair were longer. He has a long, placid face and a mouthful of braces. For a second he mumble-sings a lyric off-key. The phone buzzes. My Physics class is a helter-skelter of conversation, and the teacher sips a large drink from a nearby fastfood place.

"I love you, sir," one of my peers informs the teacher, "no homo."

Two boys return from a search of the bathrooms; a classmate has been missing for fifteen minutes, ostensibly gone to relieve himself across the hall. "He wasn't in that bathroom," one of the boys says. "I think maybe he went to Ms. Reynaldo's." A pause. "Frank wanted to lie and say there was blood on the floor."

If this isn't a metaphor for the state of my education, I'm not certain what is.

No fewer than two girls are doing their makeup as catlovingmathteacher explains the problems we have been reviewing. The Boy With The Underpants hijacks a small tub of foundation and mimes applying it.

I wonder what kind of world this would be if we didn't feel pressured to fix ourselves.

I want to be me--not my eyelashes, complexion or, god forbid, waist size. And I don't want to lie, either, because the fact that boys have never paid me much heed does occasionally cause me to wonder whether I am really that outwardly unappealing.

But I am learning that there is merit in letting feelings be what they are with the knowledge that they are apt to be deceiving. My surroundings are not who I am.

At lunch my sister and I render crude drawings of our enemies and attack them with the remains of our hard plastic fruit containers. I enjoy it immensely as Dobbin looms behind us in the otherwise empty array of tables. I still find his voice in hallways. He still bothers me.

I don't know why it is that the news that Dobbin has managed to romantically entangled himself once more doesn't surprise me. Part of me wants to gag. Part of me is merely numb.

I deserve much more than this boy. Still he flits, vaguely peripheral, around me like some demented test.

I find myself too caught in the idea of how I'm supposed to be feeling to let myself truly feel things.

This too, I suppose, shall pass. So many other things have. They will.

"Because we hate each other so much?"

It is on my usual bench at lunch that I find myself wanting for words.

I face away from the crowds, groups magnetized and reminding me of television specials focused on penguins in winter.

But it isn't winter, even. We're working on autumn still, only just cold enough for a sweater in early morning.

Clear blue sky finds its way around parked cars and through trees, and fallen leaves (there are very few, as trees don't shed for the winter here) are tossed by the breeze.

I have to turn to see what's going on, but it isn't anything I can relate to. People are situated in their groups and I merely sit here, my sweater folded beside me. Every minute or so someone turns the corner outside the cafeteria and passes me on a patch of sidewalk.

I don't have the courage or desire to join the group I try to associate with across the quadrangle; Dobbin is close at hand, and this is my only alone time all day. When it gets colder I may have to relegate myself to the library at lunch like last year, but I'd like to avoid it. I'd like this weather to stay, because it helps me feel alive.

I can use all the help I can get.

In Psychology the desks have been realigned into rows and I have to navigate where I will sit.

"Am I chairless?" I ask the members of my group, thinking I may have to sit on the other side of the room.

"No," one of them says, "Gerry isn't here today, you can sit behind Ruth."

"Best day ever!" I say as I sit, making little of the fact that Dobbin is directly behind me.

Meanwhile, Bowl Cut Boy waves in my direction.

"I know, Peter," I say mournfully, "you're so far away from me."

"I was just saying hello," he says, a little defensively. He sits in the next row, a few seats ahead.

"Hey Peter," says Dobbin, "you want to trade seats?'

"Why?" asks Bowl Cut Boy (aka Peter, though his name is not Peter either).

"Because we hate each other so much?" I say as I swivel around to face Dobbin. I smile tightly and turn back around in my seat, busying myself by putting my sweater back on.

A minute later he gets up and moves across the room, closer to the television that will soon play a fascinating video on blood circulation (demonstrated by tango dancers!).

"I was too alluring," I joke to the Ruth, who sits in front of me. "He hated himself too much so he had to move."

"No, don't make him feel bad. You're just too awesome." She goes along with it, but she's friends with him too. They all are, and though my words make me feel better, it unnerves me that he will say nothing to me directly.

I realize that I am more than this.

I would like to understand this boy. I would like to let go.

I would like a lot of things.

Lost and Found

I haven't fallen out of step with blog writing so much as fallen out of step with blog posting; ideas sprawl across pages every which way in unfinished pieces, and I feel more comfortable commenting on my observances of human behavior than my own feelings.

Only fragments surface and the smallest of things serve to make my heart hurt.

A table to my left is discussing a possible case of incest and my advisory teacher asks them to change the subject; they continue on in quieter voices.

The boy sitting next to me is a transfer student from somewhere I've never heard of (as amusing as it is, my tiny town is a bit of a metropolis when compared to neighboring cities. I mean, we have a mini-Walmart and everything) rumored to have moved here to be near his girlfriend. The truth of this is suspect, but I won't deny my having seen a lot of canoodling going on between classes.

It is easier to make observations than ink of my emotions.

Cute Guy, who I unfriended on Facebook long ago, sat behind me during a (reward!) viewing of Toy Story 3 on Friday, leaning on the back of my chair the whole time in order to chat with the boy to my right. Every once in a while he would say sorry for bothering me while continuing to take up my personal space, and at the end of the movie both of them burst into fake hysterics.

catlovingmathteacher moves a cocky, sweet faced boy to a different desk. On his journey he brings with him a plastic ziploc of cheetos. As he sits down he plucks one from the bag, sets it between his lips and sucks. For a moment I think he wiggles his eyebrows at me.

I am a lost and found of moments.

Group Dynamics

"This," Dobbin says, handing a piece of paper to the girl who sits across from me, "is not a love poem."

She reads it and her eyes widen, a hint of amusement in her voice as she says "wow, man, that's... not creepy, but dark. Dark."

He takes it back from her, chuckles "yeah" and it makes its way around the table.

The boy who sits to my left, the only thing keeping me from having to ignore Dobbin with a passion every day, has a bowl cut that falls almost to his eyelashes. He reminds me of a little boy, his face cherubic and voice quiet but eager. He gets the page next and I read over his shoulder.

"I mean," says Dobbin, and I can hear the laughter in his voice, "gosh, it is dark. I don't really feel that way..."

There is enough blood gushing from veins and lines like "I cannot keep hold of love" and, oh, "she thinks she has felt my pain" for me to find it all vastly amusing.

I doodle on scratch paper as worlds spin around me; the boy sitting next to me asks me what I'm drawing 1, 2, 3 times.

"Is that a cage? Are you going to put a cat in the cage?"

"I'm just doodling," I insist. "I'm not drawing anything in particular."

The boy sitting next to me worries me. Beyond being a useful candidate for blocking my view of Dobbin, I have become fond of him in a way that one might be fond of a small child or little brother. Last week he nearly fell over himself trying to help me research my Psychology paper--

"You need a laptop."

"No, I don't."

"You need a laptop."

"Why would I need a laptop?"

"For research!"

"I don't need one."

He left our patchwork grouping of desks after this, returning with a laptop from the cart. He slouched close to the screen, fingers poised to type words into the mighty tyrant that is Bing (which he insists is better than Google--pah!).

"What do you want to type in?"

"I don't need help. Shouldn't you be writing your own paper?"

"Well..."

I am, tentatively, concerned.

One could say I have prioritized. Dobbin is in this group, as well, but rarely bothers me these days. He's annoying, absolutely, and I often think he's trying to dig at me.

But whatever.

And really? "She thinks she has felt my pain"? "I cannot keep hold of love"?

Lols.

To my right, at an angle, sits a guy who aspires to be a train conductor. Some symbols are tattooed on his wrist and he practices slacking as an art form. Across from me is a girl I know from last year. Her hair is cut distinctively, two long pieces at each side of her face; she invited me to join their group at the beginning of the year. She enjoys singing, Jesus (which surprised me, somehow), and is edgy in a way I can't quite distinguish. She wears clunky boots a lot (I am ace at this description thing).

The boy next to her works at a hamster farm. He's a big guy, very huggable looking; his guitar case is shaped like a coffin. I don't know much about the boy who sits next to him, at at an angle, besides the fact that he writes stories and, of course, sits next to Dobbin himself.

I don't know where I fit in this group, if I fit, but they have never questioned my right to be here and fitting isn't an issue I had considered before this moment. I just am. Maybe I'm nothing special, nothing glittering, but I am here... and I am okay.

This morning I was talking to the quick-speaking, oft unintelligible boy I know in Physics as we fiddled with library computers and a worksheet.

"You know," he said, voice high pitched and gesturing with his index finger, "I'm going to be named most important person ever to go to this high school."

I smiled. "Can I be the second most important person, then?"

"No," he said, "no you can't. Because you're not from here. You have to be here... be here your whole life. You haven't."

I smiled again, grateful for these words. "At least you're honest."

10/22

"I'm sitting in Pre-Cal class," raps The Boy With The Underpants, "over here it smells like ass. But it's gonna go by real fast. Gettin' out my iPhone, checkin' my apps..."

A preliminary glance counts six phones hidden behind bags on desks and in laps as catlovingmathteacher goes over last week's quiz.

The boy to my right asks "Who're you writing to?" and I slam my notebook shut, saying no one, they're just words. Just words.

"Thank you for the help, Winston," says catlovingmathteacher.

"You're welcome, sir."

"I was being facetious."

A cowboy sitting on the other side of the room, the one who threatened to kill himself when his girlfriend (an acquaintance of mine) tried to break up with him last year and admits to being racist and I shy away from, interjects: "Hey, no big words!"

I have been feeling wordless recently, and it scares me. Words do not bubble up inside me. I'm supposed to have my college application essays written. I'm supposed to be figuring things out. I'm supposed to attempt NaNoWriMo again and apply to colleges and take the SAT again and hope last month's scores don't prove my idiocy as a human being.

I'm supposed to prove things with my words.

But my words feel cold.

Wanting

I sit in Economics and pretend to review for a test that was supposed to be today but now isn't. Thoughts drift, thinking--the boy who sits behind me has nice lips, it embarrasses me a little that stupid memories of Dobbin make me smile sometimes, I think I might be the only white girl in this class, I wish someone here would just get me. The four white boys in this class group in one corner of the room, talking with the teen mom I know and her cohort, who wears a lot of eye makeup and seems to have a dose of sense about her. The guy who wears ironic t-shirts makes funny faces as the guy who sleeps grins drowsily and one of them takes on a silly voice--"spank me harder!"

The substitute comes around to the front of the room and a wide-eyed girl whose words string together very precisely, almost like questions, exclaims "my nipples are freezing!"

"Did you hear that, ma'am," one of her friends shouts across the room, "did you hear that? She says her nipples are freezing!!"

The substitute only scoffs.

"If you knew Sally," The Boy With The Underpants told me in math class today, as I helped Teen Mom with the worksheet we were doing under the orders of yet another substitute, "you would hate her. So nice, but dumb as a brick."

"Really," I said, noncommittally. A group of boys huddled around the desk to my right, deeming themselves The iPhone Club and discussing bandwidth or something equally Interesting.

"The other day," he began, "I said to Sally 'hey Sally, did you hear about the fire at the Eiffel Tower? It killed everybody in France!' and she was just all, 'Everybody?' And I said 'hey Sally, did you hear that everybody in France was also decapitated?' and she was all 'what's decapitated?' So I said 'it means everybody had their head cut off, Sally, everybody had their head cut off!' She believed it all."

"Yeah," agreed the girl who sits behind me, "really nice girl, so much fun to be around. If you are around her you will have fun, but she's as dumb as a brick. Dumb as a brick."

Today is nerd day at school, a theme child of The Opulent And Important Homecoming Week. In Physics I submit a personal tirade to the boy costumed in suspenders, plastic glasses and a set of (green) fake teeth. As I try to explain that I am firmly rooted in team nerd and do not find the term demeaning, my Physics teacher asks for my nerd credentials. I draw a blank.

And while this leads me to question whether I am a nerd at all, instinct tells me that I can be a nerd if I damn want to, no matter what my 'credentials' might be.

My words do not appeal to me as they hit the page lately, scattered and self-pitying and downright confused as they are. I question the very foundations on which I have always stood, write myself into loops.

I've been thinking a bit about want. Specifically in monetary terms, as I am now being paid for my time (what?!) in my school's library, but want can be such a big thing in many areas: What do I want? What don't I want? Why does all this wantwantwant have to make my heart hurt so much?

So much revolves around want, and I've never been sure. My hesitancy to choose has always brought about conflict. Oftentimes I just don't want things enough, and it worries me.

And it goes back to trying, too.

As a child (which I still am, but work with me here) I thought that if I tried hard enough, if I was Perfect, equilibrium could be reached. I thought I was the keystone in my family; only a handful of years ago I still believed this, that I was the only constant, and in some ways this still plagues my thoughts. I watched as my immediate family went through atrocities of their own and thought, ridden with panic, that I could not let myself fall apart. I could not make waves. Making waves was Bad. Making waves was Wrong and Not Allowed.

I still feel this way.

Eighth grade self wrote kept a journal in a word document. Eighth grade self, only just fourteen years old, was confused and hurting and arrogant. Eighth grade self felt like she knew everything and nothing all at once, keying words into her refurbished (see: used, 300 dollars, internetless) laptop.

I skimmed through hoping for inspiration, insight or magic sparkles and return here with only the impression that fourteen year old me was severely confused. She also feels distant. Only about four years have passed since eighth grade self wrote these words, but I no longer feel they belong to me. I am no longer that person.

I will not always be the person I am now.

I want to be more than I am, maybe. I want to stretch farther, be more than the words I will later cringe over.

I help my mom make pizza on Monday night and tell her about the journal, tell her that it scares me how far away my words seem. Encouraging words: It's a function of growing up. Will it always be this way? No. No, it gets less so as you get older.

It is all so distant and cloistering at the same time.

Sometimes I can draw no conclusions. This is scarier, I think, than it sounds. I am one to search for logic where none will ever appear, parse out reason and reach for truth. Which isn't to say that I am a lover of reason, either, merely that I look for it. It isn't even that I lack answers, though I grieve that too, but that my experiences muddle together in such a way that sometimes I just don't know that to make of them. Am I fourteen year old me, angry at the world without really knowing it? Am I the girl who tried so very hard to be perfect only to write that despite all this, her father was angry with her?

Despite the arrogance I see in that me now, I really did try. But trying doesn't necessarily equate to change, and the obstacles I was facing were insurmountable. There was nothing more I could have done--and maybe it isn't about being enough. Maybe it's about realizing that there are some things you cannot do.

Fixing the situation I've been placed in is one of them.

What do I want? I want a lot of things. I want to feel whole, feel (honestly?) perfect. I want to read more and sleep more. I want to smile, a lot, and I want to be happy. I want to breathe in clear, cold air on an autumn evening as the sky dims. I want an uncomplicated and exquisite love story, I want to hold someone's hand, and I want it soon. I want to hold a star in the palm of my hand. I want friends here in tiny town Texas, birthplace of the mother effing cowboy. I want to know exactly where I want to go to college. I want out of the box I've built around myself. I want to replicate moments as words and live within their immensity.

It is in Physics class on Tuesday that the teacher's aid says "so I can assume from the noise level in here that everyone understands the work and needs no help at all?" and I snap.

"No," I say, and it is unlikely that anyone listens, "because I haven't said a word." I want to rest my head on the desk and scream, I want to leave, slam the door to this classroom, and I want to slap words against the concrete walls they have built until they break.

Maybe I want justice. Maybe I want to feel whole and I want to be happy and I want to stop wanting for things so ill-defined and unreachable.

There is some beauty in chaos. That's all I can think.

Steam of consciousness.

"My sister, when she was born, she had blonde hair," said the girl sitting next to me, twisting in her seat to talk to a friend. "Now she has brown hair. That's weird, right?"

Tuesday.
"How old are you?" asked The Boy Who Invited Me To Sit There of the Chinese exchange student.

"Uh, eh, seventeen," he said. There was some ruckus over the age of his girlfriend.

"That's okay," The Boy Who Invited Me To Sit There assured him, with a wave of his hand, "I can do twelve, I can do twelve. This is America, after all."

Friday.
On Fridays the school serves us corndogs for breakfast.

I do not eat breakfast on Fridays.

Monday.
English presentations. Four girls lean against the whiteboard as a shoebox diorama with play-doh figures in it sits on the teacher’s desk beside them.

A girl with empty eyes goes first—she looks sad and lost, and I imagine that no one notices. I follow her words as they all work to unfurl her poster.

A girl with glossy teal fingernails goes next, reciting from memory until her “um”s and “like”s become cause to ask for assistance and she begrudgingly fishes notes from her backpack. I stop listening around now, plan to find information elsewhere if I have to. I can’t see her eyes due to makeup and her nails distract me to no end, and when she smiles it doesn’t seem real to me.

I wish I didn’t think this way, like everyone I meet becomes a character I try to pick apart, not imagining people complexly because all I can see are the shadows they cast. Like what I see is black and white when surely, hopefully gray is what ultimately prevails.

I can’t follow the rest of the presentation, an overview of Upper Hell in Dante’s Inferno. I rub at the blister on my thumb and consider how wrong I might be. I bite my lip.

Ye Old Initials tells us more and I scrawl ideas next to thoughts, juggle worlds as the girl next to me asks to borrow my notes and I oblige. In the hallway after class I study the pretty tulle skirt of another girl in that group, think that I have never spoken to her and wonder what she thinks of it all. She works in the office and I have never seen her smile, can’t remember what her voice sounds like.

I rest my books against my chest as I wait for my Economics teacher to open the classroom door. The cute, nerdy boy who sat behind me in English last year passes by. He wears plaid today and I wonder, like always, if he ever finds me in hallways too.

And I wonder—how do you do it? They are locked doors and I am fumbling with—maybe the wrong—key.

Tuesday.
We are moved into the room next door and presenters rotate. The second presentation involves getting into the groups, and I am guided into a group that includes a tall guy with definite puff levels and some semblance of perceivable knowledge. I think, quietly, that I would like to be his friend.

How to go about this is beyond me.

Wednesday.
The smattering of us without waivers line the walls of what is usually the volleyball practice area directly behind the bleachers in our shiny sports complex thingamajigger. Students in groups are sneakily tricked into sharing personal facts about themselves, and for some reason it makes me smile.

The groups are in circles, small voices rising from the quiet until, every so often, there is a burble of laughter.

And here I am, detached. I am more comfortable this way, finding words and observing moments that are not strictly mine. I am more comfortable borrowing memories, filling my blank space with this--with this.

Thursday.
With minutes to spare, music is blasted from speakers in the auditorium. A math teacher demonstrates a dance, slicking his hair back dramatically and bopping up and down with mad skill, and a group of students take the stage. They dance ridiculously and it makes me smile. It feels like recently I have made myself a character in my own life and I stand still watching people and lives move around me.

Like I have no place grasping for happiness when they all have their groups, their lives. I struggle with wants and their rationalizations; wanting to say words, move forward, carve some space for myself that isn't cold. Say words to the boy I would like to know and he doesn't respond and I tell myself that I don't need drama or wondering when I am just some girl and they all have their places.

Wednesday.
Cute Guy sleeps on the floor at the end of the gym, next to a girl with pretty red hair who I believe to be in a nursing program many students are in. She bends her knees close to her chest and rests an open booklet against them, reading.

A few teachers sit on folding chairs nearby, at the entrance of the space. Most of the others not participating line the next wall, three of the six wrapped in jackets and in various stages of repose.

The person nearest to me is about ten feet to my left, his head resting on a drawstring backpack, and I remember that he is one of the pranksters in my English class, a member of The Infamous Group Of Boys.

Friday.
Pep rally. I stand on the bleachers, periphery as the group I am attempting to cling to fill the seats just below me. The crowd of seniors stand on the seats themselves, the rows, and roar as we compete for the Holy Spirit Stick.

I crane my neck to watch the student conductors through small gaps between people. Their arms move up and down and just so.

They are smiling. This is why I watch them.

Wednesday.
Everyone cheers as a boy manages to carry three girls at once across the gym.

Cute Guy is roused and moves to sit along the next wall, observing. I click my pen open and closed until I decide to write this sentence.

I lament my lack of proper peripheral vision as Cute Guy catches me glancing his way. It's no big deal or anything. It isn't as if people throw stuff at me or anything.

This happens way too often, actually.

Wednesday.
But still, I shy away from what might be advances. I interpret until my thoughts spin circles around me.

I refuse to sign waivers.

Thursday.
English presentations. The Infamous Group Of Boys present their project; The Boy With The Underpants takes this as an opportunity to dress in a red spandex body suit. It is skintight and covers him head to toe.

I dearly hope you can imagine this.

Standing beside The Infamous Group Of Boys, The Boy With The Underpants does a brief jig before undoing the zipper on the back of his head and taking great (poised) gulps of air. He makes a funny face.

Thursday.
It strikes me, standing outside the school's performing arts center as we wait for the doors to open, how alone I am. A five foot radius stands between myself and any other person. My peers group together frantically, as if being alone is a disease they might catch.

The degree at which I am alone makes me feel antisocial.

Wednesday.
It is another beautiful day, one of three I can recall in ages, all of them stacked together this week. My disbelief grows. The weather is pleasant, so much so that I wish to bask in it, and I have never been on the best of terms with the out of doors.

My peers form groups in the shade and in the grassy-ish courtyard area behind me. The dirt here has the consistency of sand. In fact, I'm pretty sure it is sand. While this has been explained to me as the result of the prehistoric existence of some body of water, I choose to find it ridiculous anyway.

A girl my sister knows passes by and asks me if I'm okay. I am. She leaves, a carton of rice in hand, off to a doctor's appointment.

Thursday.
By sheer luck I land an aisle seat next to a boy I have a passing acquaintanceship with. He's very talkative and it's difficult to process what he means by the words he strings together, but he's nice and finds me in hallways to say hello.

Some might find this annoying, and I've had a share of that sort of relationship, but somehow it doesn't bother me. Maybe it's the fact that he cuts through the layer of not knowing and goes straight to words.

Even if I don't fully understand him, his presence makes me feel less alone.

Friday.
Drumline. They pour down the hall in a steady stream--ba ba ba BAH BAH BAH ba ba ba BAH BAH BAH--arms flailing as they pass. My peers rush to line the walls outside the classroom, to watch, enraptured.

I just sit here.

Thursday.
Stretching hurts. I come up short and want to crawl into myself, more so than I ever have. I feel antisocial.

I feel like hiding.

Monday.
My thoughts slip together like staircases.

Monday.
I want to split words, fuse them together, intertwined tightly—and mine. Strung together with breath.

Thursday.
The speaker is a zany scientist, an expert of drug effects on the brain with many a story to his name. A movie has been made based on his impact on history, and at several points he ferries various brains around the auditorium for our viewing.

At least they're frozen.

Wednesday.
If all goes as it is likely to, half of my face will be sunburned following this ordeal.

I decide that I don't care.

Monday.
Clear skies so bright and chill almost enough to call for a sweater, just, and thinking that everything might be okay because it is pretty outside. Good weather makes me happy in a way I cannot replicate, like some sort of mystery I wouldn’t mind living forever if they would just let me keep sitting here as people call to one another around me, a comforting scatter of noise and sunlight gleaming against parked cars.

It also makes me wish I understood things. Ye Old Initials passes by and I wonder if all these years of teaching have made him happy, though my feeling is that he would either question the definition of happiness or say, matter-of-factly, “of course I’m happy.”

Breeze wafts against my neck and I choke against the smell of cheap perfume, a scented wish gone terribly wrong. I stop to stretch my hand. People group together in pieces of shade, spill against a handicap ramp and huddle around the statue of an eagle (gift from the class of 1956!) centered in front of the flag poles.

It isn’t a memorable space of time, but for this reason I wish I could hold it forever—even Dobbin across the courtyard, today wearing a checkered red shirt. He faces away from me and wanders out of sight, and for this moment it doesn’t bother me. It is one of those moments that I like anyway.

Great Art Of Being Thrown Statistics, The

The guy who invited me to sit here is enigmatic mixture of slime and well-meaning. His skin is the color of cocoa but I feel like he must be Mexican for the simple reason that, let’s face it, statistics make it likely. His voice is laid back, promising, and I do not trust it.

"Are you just going to sit there and do work or what?" he asks, a few chairs away from me in the vast land of the school cafeteria. My notebook is open. I scribble.

"If they let me."

"If they ask you if you have your papers, just tell them you turned them in, that Mr. L has them,” he says. Then: “I got your back."

I didn't turn in the permission forms needed to see this presentation. I was handed forms and expected to sign them. These forms were not explained to me and made it clear as mud that the material could be a) scarring or b) kill me.

Well, thanks.

The presentation has started. We are being given the beauty of AWARENESS regarding teenage drunk driving. AWARENESS is important, and I tell you: we are positively riveted. The group beside me passes around a pack of gum and, if I'm honest with you, the only perk in this situation remains that a really cute guy from my advisory class is within eyeshot.

"The worst thing that can happen," says a trauma nurse on-screen, "is that he could go brain dead and die from this injury."

Blood is gushing from a hole in a boy's head as another nurse talks him through how many drinks he usually has.

He only had three drinks, he swears!

I really shouldn't be allowed to make commentary on this. I mean, I don't have forms or anything.

Every few minutes, though, I feel like crying. I am not completely immune to this HBO special on AWARENESS. I am not immune to that which is being pressed against me, not completely, though I do appreciate the fact that a neurologist has referred to a head injury causing the brain to "pooch out."

I love learning new things.

Cute guy has donned a jacket now. I do not know his name. Have you ever tried to find someone one Facebook when you don't know their name?

Ahem. Me neither. I did not spend thirty minutes of my life searching through The Boy With The Underpants' six hundred friends for his existence.

But just that idea--well, I thought it might amuse you. You're welcome.

I feel like I am over this bout of AWARENESS. There is blood and sadness and ruined lives—and oh, it's over.

Okay. Thank you, HBO special.

A few scatter as we are given a bathroom break. The Boy With The Underpants walks past on his way to be facilities, boxers (purple plaid) peeking slightly out of his Bermuda shorts.

I am not making this up.

The announcer pronounces documentary as "dock-you-meant-airy" and sprinkles us with Consequences, all the while mispronouncing our town's name. I am amused.

LOOK AT ALL THE AWESOME DEATH JUST LIKE ME!

"We don't have to show movies like this to my kids," she says, "because they have experienced it firsthand."

They probably mean well.

A retired police officer gives a presentation on nefarious groups. He's "tatted out" and seems okay enough, only now he is telling us about how gangs might kill us and I really don't want to be killed by gangs please thank you--how will I sleep at night?

He educates us on various tattoos now and I quietly fear for my life. This is why I do not watch the news. Duty shirker I may be, but I feel that if I did this I would never leave the house again. Priorities.

The other grades are taking ever-important benchmarks this week. They have to keep us seniors around or else Break The Law And Lose Money, so now we are being educated in various ways. I am disgruntled.

"The crime stats in this area are great," the officer says. "This is why it is up to you guys to be safe. It's up to you."

The presenters trying to decipher YouTube and give up, making d0.

"They're not just going to kill you, they're going to kill your family." A dead woman and baby flash onscreen.

I didn't sign my forms! Why do they have me in here?

Like, dude.

That felt appropriate.

Sexting is brought up by Announcer Lady. She waves her purple Blackberry around to prove her points. With a winning “Nothing is ever deleted!” my peers begin buzzing as if this had never before occurred to them—QUICK, WE NEED TO DELETE STUFF FROM OUR PHONES.

Maybe it’s the fact that I don't get the concept of secrets. Maybe it's that I am a horrible person who judges her peers harshly. But really?

I wouldn't be thrilled if my peers read this blog, I'll give you that much. But am I lying? My conceptions are just that, mine, and I am painfully aware how fractured some of them have been in the past. I hope to be right, but I am stumbling. I will stumble. This is all I can do.

The presentation ends without a bang and students begin to disperse. My advisory teacher stops for a moment as he passes by.

"What are you doing, writing a book?" he asks. He wears suspenders and a smile framing sincere eyes. He has an accent I can’t place.

"Sort of."

The Boy With The Underpants, a tale

We've spoken on the topic of my English teacher before now. While somewhere in the depths of middle age, he gives off the air of a crusty old man and is somewhat of a fixture at my school. He is addressed by his first and last initials, which I find endlessly entertaining, and he has a smirk.

Surely you know what I mean by this. When certain humans purposely make scenes for his amusement he smirks, sticks a hand in his pocket and makes some suitable statement that both tells them off and contributes to the general hilarity of the situation. Hawaiian shirts are his stock and trade, despite the fact that he is not really a Hawaii kind of person. Or maybe he is. I am just making grand and beautiful assumptions here.

All of these things manage to contribute to a slightly creepy feeling about him. Last week, for instance, we were taking notes on The Inferno and, as he read aloud, he stopped-- "...they descended upon the Mount of Joy. Doesn't that sound like a great name for a porno, 'The Mount of Joy'?"

He's either really cool or really creepy. I've been a student of his since last year and the only thing I'm pretty sure of is the fact that I (and, indeed, the world) will probably never know.

Last year I took "Team Sports" for a semester. The class fluctuated from three to ten people and, due to size and the beautiful soul of our instructor, our only requirement was to keep moving. I fully admit, with great spasms of pride, that I took this opportunity to navigate laps around the gym while reading a book. The instructor was a burly guy with a partial beard and I liked him because I generally like teachers and also because I was allowed to read books during gym class.

I tell you, I have had best high school gym experience ever. I took my first semester of gym freshmen year (which now feels like a billion years ago), when I briefly lived in the magical land of Florida. Here we had the opposite problem; the space was so crowded with people that they simply did not want to wrangle us all into submission. Instead they gave us the option of shooting hoops or sitting on the floor of the gym and using the period as a study hall. I spent many an hour masterfully dodging basketballs launched at my face. Worth it.

The gods of gym class have smiled upon me.

My burly bearded gym teacher went AWOL around December and we were given Ye Old Initials' son, at that point a long-term substitute, as our replacement. I'm pretty sure people have decided to call him by his initials, too, which I'm sure thrills him to bits. My sources cite him as a colorless, gangly creature who gives the impression that he might be toppled over by the slightest breeze. On the converse, however, I know of at least one girl who daily giggled over his existence ("he's so hot!!!"). In any event, he would ask after my books and I would give vague answers from my spot on the bleachers, hoping against hope that he would not make me perform physical activities.

Remember VoldeTread? I haven't visited with him since I completed the journey that is Supersize Me and fell into a slight state of panic that I might die of deathness. This was about a month ago. School is a valid excuse, OKAY?

I managed to skate by over midterm exams by throwing a frisbee to myself. I haven't really seen him since then.

In my AP English class, turf of Ye Old Initials himself, we have managed to partition ourselves into three groups. The boys find themselves on one side of the class and the girls on the other, with a few girls breaking ranks and scattering out towards the middle. The boys, of which there are approximately five, feel it necessary to pull glorious pranks on Ye Old Initials. Yesterday, for instance, one particular boy left a pair of his boxers in Ye Old Initials' desk chair before class. Ye Old Initials was unfazed upon discovering them. He picked them up and tossed them onto the corner of his desk-- "These belong to anybody?"

The boys cracked up and the owner got up to collect his underpants (sky blue with steam engines, for those wondering).

I could make jokes here, but I definitely may have had a discussion on breast reductions and a Venezuelan woman who chopped her abusive husband's genitalia off with my groupmates a few minutes later. This may have happened.

But I would like to take this opportunity to go further into my long and illustrious relationship with the boy with the underpants.

The Boy With The Underpants is a wide-eyed, excitable human with whom I occasionally exchange words. In addition to making himself present in my English class, he sits next to me in math class.

It occurs to me now, in the frantic editing stage of this post, that this sounds exactly like the beginnings of The Dobbin Situation. Not happening.

In math class, home of catlovingmathteacher, he sits next to me and alternates between words of confusion and the phrase "this is cake" accompanied by a chuffed sigh and rolling of shoulders.

I made the mistake of calling him out on a personal tirade/guilt trip last week by noting that some people (namely me) do not actually have friends. He immediately contradicted his assurances of friendlessness by informing me that I was his friend.

"You're not my friend," I said.

"Come on," he said, "we talked on the first day of school, we're friends."

"I think we have contradicting views of friendship."

He handed me his phone as catlovingmathteacher explained a graphing problem, grinning at his own brilliance. With the skill of an everlasting ninja, I hid the phone behind my binder and noted that he had brought up the dictionary's definition of "friend."

Apparently we're friends now. Like I have any choice in the matter. Now he attempts to get me to shake his hand every time we meet and dramatically shouts "friend!" in my direction at strategic intervals.

I'm going to go with the idea that my denial is a character building activity for his benefit.

The guy has over six hundred friends on Facebook. Yes, I am a stalker.

When he isn't declaring Precalculus to be cake (duh!), The Boy With The Underpants spends his time in math class calling the girl who sits in front of him "baby girl" and trying to braid her hair. I was asked to teach him the great art of hair braiding at one juncture. He's improving, I'll give him that much. His greatest accomplishment in life (or at least the summer) was reenacting a horror film at midnight with his friends for the benefit of a group of girls who, after finishing with their shock, joined forces with them and helped them repeat the ordeal for another batch of humans. Judgment. He appears completely earnest, yet acts in a way that suggests he is a slimeball. Or maybe he's a teenage boy. Who knows?

Last week he and his fellow male humans hijacked tennis shirts from Ye Old Initials' back room and decided to model them. Grand ideas were painted for us--they would join Ye Old Initials' tennis team and take over the world. Ye Old Initials wasn't convinced, noting he had two freshmen who could easily take them on. Soon they were planning a take-down.

"If I win state," said The Boy With The Underpants, miming a tennis racket in his hand and readying for victory, "you have to persuade Sarah Johnson, with your mad serenading skills, to marry me."

"I thought you were going with Brady's sister."

"Her too!" he said, eyes bright and words tripping up on the way. "I'm marrying Sarah and taking Leeann to prom."

This was all fine and well and amusing to me until a few days ago, in math class, when he beckoned to the boy who sits behind me (a slimeball, I feel, but here I am Judging The World). "Oh my God," he said, "Sarah Johnson likes my status! She touched my status. I tell you, we're getting married, dude."

The beginnings of a love story if I ever heard one.

"I feel ready to stay up for, like, two days straight, man," he says, in English class this time, rubbing his face. "Like, Jesus, man."

Now the class is discussing Halloween and attempting to coax one of my groupmates into saying vulgar things in Spanish for them.

Now he says: "Ye Old Initials you should, you know, shave the sides of your head."

"Earl is naturally white, dude, I mean." The boys lift up the sleeve of a Mexican boy's t-shirt to reveal a farmer's tan.

"It'll get better in the winter," he says.

One can only hope.

My Peers, And The Wisdom They Share With The World

I do not understand my peers.

Really. I am confused by them half of the time, and the other half is spent annoyed at them. And okay, there is another piece of this pie that involves the times I find them hilarious.

You can't make this stuff up. Well, maybe you could. You probably possess these skills, but all I seem to come up with has to do with ninjas and glitter.

Which probably explains the fact that when I added a girl from school on Facebook last night she commented on a status regarding my creepiness with words of agreement, to think of it. I am going to go ahead and believe she was going along with my hilarity rather than commenting on my character and move on with my life.

I know I've mentioned this before, but I am taken aback by the number of teenage mothers at my school. And the thing is, I fully had a conversation regarding a peer's son and lackluster father yesterday. It was par for the course, or something. I'm just confused.

The bit of the conversation revolving around me lasted about thirty seconds and went somewhat like this.

"Are you dating anyone?"

"No."

"You don't text, do you?"

"haha, no."

"Are you talking to anyone?"

"No."

Are you talking to anyone? What does this even mean, friends? I can only draw lewd conclusions from this. Following this, the two girls I was sharing a group with began bemoaning the fact that they had been single for such vast amounts of time. Girl B dithered for a moment, saying "I've been single for four months! Oh wait, no... two... no, a month! Was it three weeks? No, a month, four weeks!"

This being said, they both seemed nice enough. I don't want to come off as if I hate them, because somehow I don't. This is merely an attempt to demonstrate my confusion and slight hilarity at the situations I find myself in.

(How am I doing?)

In fact, while I did some moaning of my own at having to do group work, the fact that they asked me to join their group at all was pretty nice of them. And, unlike a billion percent of my other encounters with the Great God Of Group Work, they did contribute to the assignment. Shock, I know.

I am somewhat of an oddity at my school, and not even for the Obvious Reasons (I'm creepy, remember? Represent!). The fact of the matter is that I was a sophomore last year and now I am magically a senior and quite several a few people have expressed confusion of their own. "Wait, weren't you a sophomore last year?"

It amuses me that anyone would notice me at all, but I digress.

I just wanted to say "but I digress" because this is a cool thing to do when you're a writer. Fact.

I am mystery woman (girl, person, human, ninja and glitter appreciator--pick your poison wisely, friends). Unfortunately, this also means I am vastly alone the majority of the time. Not that I'm complaining.

I am, actually. I hope you don't mind.

My math teacher has been mentioned here before. He likes to talk about his elderly-cat-named-Stubby, which I find endlessly amazing. For instance, upon explaining to us the fact that he would be collecting papers day by day rather than all on Friday, he graced us with the following words: "It's not like I have any plans over the weekend," he said, gesturing to the world with his wet erase pen, "I mean, I might wrestle with my cat or something, get the laser pin after her. She hates that thing, I think it hurts her eyes."

I wrote it down in my journal. (I'm not creepy I'm not creepy I swear it was the nearest thing to me at the time don't judge me!!!!!)

You really can judge me, actually. I will cry, but I figure I'll probably survive your Hatred And Roguish Attractive Quotient.

I don't even know.

But I have more wisdom! Here, have at it. Upon being accused of cruelty, my Cat Loving Math Teacher defended himself thusly: "I like everybody, I like the whole world. The only thing I don't like, the only thing I can't stand, is broccoli."

Our week one test involved a problem finding the circumference of a tin of asparagus. The same sentiment was duly expressed, right there on the test. I like this guy. It almost makes math class enjoyable.

Only not really. Math and I have never been on the best of terms.

My English teacher, ye old school fixture addressed by his initials, instructed us to outline our beliefs for him this week. Last year, upon learning he was teaching the granddaughter of one of his students, he immediately pulled out his phone to call his wife for lols.

I don't know why I'm using "lols" so much. I find it amusing. Pardon me.

On that note, I am somewhat under the impression that all of my teachers are divorced. It's like a puzzle. First period, divorced. Second period, has kids but no wedding ring. Third, divorced with cat. Fourth, probably not divorced. Fifth, Ye Old Initials, divorced and remarried. Sixth, divorced and remarried. Seventh and eighth I spend in the library, which adds at least two more divorces to my list.

I told you I'm a creeper.

I digress. But really, this blog is one huge digression or something. I'm pretty sure. I just say things, and sometimes they sound cool. Other times I press "PUBLISH POST" and ask myself what have I done.

You win some, you lose some.

As we conversed on the topic of belief (which somehow relates to Catch-22), we came to an argument over whether the earth is 9,000 years old or not.

"But there are 60,000 year old fossils or something, aren't there?" a peer questioned.

"Well," said Ye Old Initials, "the idea there is that 9,000 years ago fossils were created to look millions of years old."

"Who," said the peer, his tone a verbal rolling of eyes, "was bored 9,000 years ago, creating all these fossils?"

Lols.

Several minutes following this beautiful conversation we, AP English students that we are, attempted to wheedle Ye Old Initials into more points on our Frankenstein tests. One question involved the author, Mary Shelley, and whether her maiden name was Godwin or Wollstonecraft. Ye Old Initials would have none of the idea that Godwin was her maiden name. Her maiden name was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in the book's introduction, and we were all fighting tooth and nail for the right to have answered Godwin rather than Wollstonecraft.

"The girl takes the guy's last name, Ye Old Initials!" insisted the same peer, leaping up and gesturing to his book. "It's simple math!"

He gave us the points. I give you this verbose mess of a post. Mutualistic relationship, this.