Begin Reading

One of the reasons the teenage years are so agonizing is that in most societies, particularly ours, the adolescent is emotionally neither fish nor fowl.

-Dr. Herbert Strean and Lucy Freeman,
Our Wish to Kill: The Murder in All Our Hearts

One may as well begin with my letters to one Adam State.

August 25, Verona

Dear Adam,

Well, you were right–the only way to really look at Italy is to stop gaping at all the Catholicism and just sit down and have some coffee. For the past couple of hours I’ve just been sitting and sipping. It’s our last day in Verona, and my parents of course want to visit one hundred thousand more art galleries so they can come home with a painting to point at, but I’m content to just sit in a square and watch people in gorgeous shoes walk by. It’s an outdoor cafe, of course.

The sun is just radiant. If it weren’t for my sunglasses I’d be squinting. I tried to write a poem the other day called “Italian Light” but it wasn’t turning out so well and I wrote it on the hotel stationery so the maid threw it out by mistake. I wonder if Dante was ever suppressed by his cleaning lady. So in any case after much argument with my parents over whether I appreciated them and Italy and all my opportunities or not, I was granted permission–thank you, O Mighty Exalted Ones–to sit in a cafe while they chased down various objets d’art. I was just reading and people-watching for a while, but eventually I figured I’d better catch up on my correspondence. With all the caffeine in me it was either that or jump in the fountain like a Fellini movie I saw with Natasha once. You know Natasha, right, Natasha Hyatt? Long hair, dyed jet-black, sort of vampy-looking?

I stumbled upon an appropriate metaphor as I looked for reading material in the hotel bookstore. Scarcely more than a magazine stand, actually–as always, I brought a generous handful of books with me to Italy thinking it would be more than enough to read, and as always, I finished two of them on the plane and the rest of them within the first week. So there I was looking through the bare assortment of English-language paperback pulp for anything of value. I was just about to add, if you can believe it, a Stephen Queen horror novel to my meager stack of mysteries, when it hit me: Is this what next year will be like? Do I have enough around me of interest, or will I find myself with nothing to do in a country that doesn’t speak my language? I don’t mean to sound like Salinger’s phony-hating phony or anything, but at times at Roewer it seems that everybody’s phony and brain-dead and that if it weren’t for my friends and the few other interesting people I’d go crazy for nothing to do. To me, you’re one of the “few other interesting people.” I know we don’t know each other very well and that you probably find it strange that I’m writing to you, if you’re even reading this, but I really enjoyed the conversations we had toward the end of the year–you know, about how stupid school was, and about some books, and about your own trip to Italy. You were one of the non-brain-dead non-phonies around that place. I felt–I don’t know–a connection or something. Well, luckily I’m running out of room on this aerogram, which is probably a good thing, but I’ll seal this before I change my mind.

Yours,
Flannery Culp

P.S. Sorry about the espresso stain. All the waiters here are gorgeous, but clumsy and probably gay.

September 1, Florence

Dear Adam,

If writing one letter to you was presumptuous, what is two letters? It’s just that I feel you’d be the only one who’d understand what I’m thinking right now, and besides I’ve already written everybody else too many letters and I have all this caffeinated energy on my hands, as I said last time.

But in any case, the only person who’d really get what I want to say is you, because this relates to the hotel bookstore metaphor I told you about before. Yesterday, when viewing Michelangelo’s David I had the exact opposite metaphorical experience. I mean, I had of course seen the image of David 18 million times, so I wasn’t expecting much–sort of like when I saw the Mona Lisa last summer. I stood in line, took a look, and thought, Yep, that’s the Mona Lisa all right.

It was huge. From head to toe he was simply enormous, and I don’t just mean statuesque (rim shot!) but enormous like a sunset, or like an idea you can at best only half comprehend. It simply took my breath away. I walked around and around it, not because I felt I had to, but because I felt like it deserved that much attention from me. I found myself looking at each individual part closely, rather than the entire thing, because if I looked at the entire thing it would be like staring at the sun. It was such an unblinking portrayal of a person that it rose above any hackneyed hype about it. It flicked away all my cynicism about Seeing Art without flinching and just made me look. I walked out of there thinking, Now I am older.

But it wasn’t until I finished one of my hotel-lobby mysteries that night that I thought of my experience metaphorically. Unlike bringing books to Italy, I went to see David anticipating an empty, manufactured experience; instead I found a real experience, and a new one. I didn’t think I’d have any new experiences left, once sobriety and virginity took flight. Perhaps that is what next year will hold for me. Not sobriety and virginity, but real new experiences. Maybe in writing to you, a new person in my life, I will embark on something new, as well. David has filled me with hope. And another biblical name fills me with hope as well: yours. Out of room again.

Bye,
Flan

And a postcard, written September 3rd, postmarked September 4th.

 

On the back:

Listen what my letters have been trying to tell you is that I love you and I mean real love that can surpass all the dreariness of high school we both hate, I get back from Italy late on the night of Saturday the 4th call me Sunday. This isn’t just the wine talking.

F.

On the front:

A picture of the statue of David. Cancellation ink from a winking postmarker across the groin.

Vocabulary:

VAMPY

SOBRIETY

PRESUMPTUOUS

VIRGINITY

FAUX

POSTMARKED

HACKNEYED

Study Questions:

1. A Chinese proverb reads: “Never write a letter when you are angry.” Are there other states of mind in which one should not write letters?

 

2. Most postal laws state that after one has given one’s letters to the post office to mail one cannot retrieve them. Do you think this is a fair law? Think before answering.

 

3. Taking jet lag into account, how long would you wait to call someone who had just gotten back from another continent? If you had just gotten back from another continent yourself and were expecting a phone call, what would be the appropriate amount of time to wait before you could assume the phone call wasn’t coming? Assume that you kept the line available as much as possible by keeping all other phone calls short.

Monday September 6th

Jet lag finally wore off today, so it seemed time to start my brand-new-expensive-black-Italian-leather-bound journal. Historians will note that my bargaining skills were not yet sharpened when I made this purchase, which is why I’m trying to write costly sentences to justify my expenditure (i.e., “Historians will note…”). For the past couple of days since I got back I haven’t been doing anything much, anyway; only sitting around my room trying to call my friends. My bedroom became a perfect decompression chamber between the European and American civilizations: I spent all my time talking to machines and was thus soon acclimated back to my motherland.

No one was home. I was sorry to miss them but glad to keep my phone time brief. I’m keeping the line open for Adam. He hasn’t called. I’d like to think that he’s on vacation, but school starts tomorrow so his parents must have brought him home by now to give him time to shop for new khakis.

Just when I was going over each of my letters in my head, Natasha called. “You know Natasha, right, Natasha Hyatt? Long hair, dyed jet-black, sort of vampy-looking?” What stupid things to write! I picked up on the third ring, but before I could speak I heard her breathy voice.

“Flan, are you waiting for some guy to call?” Reader, note here that she pronounces my nickname not as the first syllable in my name is regularly pronounced, but as “a pastry or tart made with a filling of sweet rennet cheese, or, usually, custard.”

I put down The Salem Slot, the last of my hotel bookstore acquisitions. Once I’ve started something, I have to finish it, no matter how bad it is. “Hi, Natasha. How did you know?”

Natasha sighed, reluctant to explain the obvious. “You just got back from your European jaunt. You’ve left ‘Hi-I’m-home’ messages on everybody’s machines, so you haven’t gone out. You are therefore sitting on your bed reading or writing something. You can reach the phone without moving, but you waited until the third ring. Now, Watson, we need school supplies, ja? Let’s meet for coffee and go buy cute notebooks.”

“Cute notebooks?” I said. “I don’t know. I sort of have to–”

“Yes, cute notebooks. We’re going to be seniors, Flan. We have to play it to the hilt. If we can find pencils with our school colors on them, we’re buying them. But of course we’ll need coffee first. I’ll meet you at Well-Kept Grounds, OK?”

She started to hang up. “Wait! When?”

“Whenever we get there, dearest. While on the Continent, did you forget how we operate? Did you forget us entirely? Nobody got even a postcard.”

“Sorry.”

“Yes, yes, yes. Leave the machine on in case he calls. And I’ll want to hear all about it. The more you talk with machines and the more they talk with you, the more acclimated you’ll get to American civilization. Ciao.” The phone clattered as she hung up.

Only Natasha can make me move as fast as I did. I left the machine on, ran out the door, turned back, got my coat, ran out the door, turned back, got change for the bus and ran out the door. I forgot that San Francisco September can be chilly and that my July bus pass wasn’t going to work two months later. Once on the bus I adopted the Blank Face Public Transportation Dress Code but by the time I got off I couldn’t help beaming. I was happy to see Natasha again. It’s often difficult to keep up with her Bette Davis-meets-Dorothy Parker act but underneath that she’d do anything for me.

Well-Kept Grounds is tucked into a neighborhood full of hippie preteens and bookstores dedicated to the legalization of marijuana, but the surroundings are a small price to pay for the cafe’s collection of fabulous fifties furniture and for not charging extra if you want almond extract in your latte, which I always do. Natasha was there already. I saw her lipstick first, though her forest green rayon dress was a strong second. “Flan!” she called, sounding like she was ordering dessert. Men in their midtwenties looked up from their used paperbacks and alternative newspapers and followed her with their eyes as she cantered across the Grounds. She gave me a hug and for a second I was embraced by a body that makes me want to go home and never eat again. Natasha is one of those high school students who looks less like a high school student and more like an actress playing a high school student on TV.

“Hi,” I said sheepishly, wishing I had worn something more glamorous. Suddenly a summer of not seeing each other seemed like a long time. She stood in front of me and looked me over. She swallowed. We both waited.

“I’ll go get a drink,” I said.

Natasha looked relieved. “Do that.”

The men in their midtwenties slowly returned to their used paperbacks and alternative newspapers. What I would give to have someone in college look me over. I got my drink and went and sat down across from Natasha, who put down her book and looked at me. I looked at the spine of the book.

“Erotica by Anaïs Nin? Does your mother know?”

“Mother lent it to me,” Natasha said, rolling her eyes. She always calls her mom “Mother” as if she’s some society matron when in fact she teaches anthropology at City College. I thumbed through the book as Natasha took a sip of some bright green fizzy drink. I can see you biting and scratching. She learned to tease him, too. The moans were rhythmic, then at times like the cooing of doves. When people thumb through this book, those italics will catch their eyes and they’ll spot a pornographic sentence before the page flaps by. A writer’s got to sell herself.

“Why no latte?” I asked, gesturing to the green potion. “I thought it was mother’s milk to you.”

“After this summer it’s begun to taste like some other bodily fluid,” Natasha said, looking at me significantly. Her eyes were very carefully done; they always are.

“Do tell,” I said, happy to have arrived at a topic that didn’t involve my confession of love, written in a hurried, Chianti-laced scrawl, on a postcard. Just thinking about it made me want to hide under the table, which was painted an unfortunate fiesta-ware pink.

“All right, I’ll talk about my love life, but then we’ll talk about yours. But first, this Italian soda needs a little zip.” Natasha found a flask in some secret pocket and added a clear liquid to the soda, watching me out of the corner of her eye. She’s always taking out that flask and adding it to things. I often suspect that it’s just water but I’m afraid to call her bluff. She went on to describe some guy she met at the Harvard Summer Program in Comparative Religion. Natasha’s always had a fascination with what people worship. Kate says Natasha’s actually fascinated that people aren’t worshiping her instead. In any case, each summer Anthropologist Mom plunks down her hard-earned money for Natasha to fly across the country and make out with gorgeous men, all for the cause of higher learning. According to Natasha, this one was five years older than us and attended a prestigious liberal arts school, the name of which I’m not sure I can mention here lest its reputation become tainted due to its association, however brief, with the notorious Basic Eight.

“He was said to be brilliant,” Natasha said, “but to be honest we didn’t have too many conversations. It was mostly sex. It will be a while before I order any drink with steamed milk again.” She drained the rest of her soda in an extravagant gesture and I watched her throat as she swallowed, taking mental notes.

I sighed. (How perfect my recall of these small details. I sighed, reader; I remember it as if it were yesterday.) “You go to the puritanical city of Boston and hook up with a genius who also happens to be an excellent lover–”

Natasha used a blood-red nail to poke a hole in my sentence. “More accurately, he was an excellent lover who also happened to be a genius.”

“–and I go to Italy, the most romantic country in the world, and the only man who makes my heart beat faster is carved out of marble.” I briefly described my experience with Michelangelo’s David. She broke character for a full minute as she listened to me, shaking her head slightly. Her silver earrings waved and blinked. I was a little proud to have hushed her; even my best poems haven’t done that. When I was done she remembered who she was.

“So this is the guy you’re waiting to hear from?” she asked. “Can I give you a piece of advice? Statues never call. You have to make the effort.”

“You have experience in this realm?” I said. “And here I thought you only slept with anything that moved.” Natasha threw back her head and cackled. U.p. and a.n. went down again; the men all sat and wished they were the ones making her laugh like that. I jumped in while she was laughing.

“It’s Adam State. I’m waiting for Adam State to call.” Once I finally told someone it seemed much smaller, a problem made not of earth-shattering natural forces but of proper nouns: first name Adam, last name State.

Her cackling stopped like somebody pulled the plug. “Adam State?” she screeched. “How can you have a crush on anyone who has a name like a famous economist?”

“It’s not because of his name. It’s because of–”

“That sine qua non,” Natasha finished, batting her eyelashes. She stopped when she saw my face. “Don’t get angry. You know how I am. Underneath all my Bette Davis-meets-Dorothy Parker act I try to be good, really. There’s no accounting for taste. Do you think it will work out?”

I bit my lip. “Honestly?”

Natasha looked at me as if I suggested she keep her hair natural. “Of course not. Honestly. The very idea.”

“In that case, yes. It will definitely work out. I’m just worried about how ‘Flannery State’ will look on my stationery.”

“You could do that hyphenated thing. Culp-State, say.”

“Sounds like a university. Where criminals go after high school.”

I finished my latte and paid careful attention to the taste of the milk. I didn’t notice any real similarity, but my palate isn’t as experienced. “This is a secret, Natasha.”

“Mum’s the word,” she said. Her hair looked gorgeous.

“Don’t say the word to me. My parents have vanished as far as I’m concerned.”

“You have to stop traveling with them,” she said, smiling slightly as her eyes met one of her admirers. “Get them to send you to summer school. You’d learn things.”

“Thanks, but there’s enough steamed milk in my life.”

“Come on, you need to buy notebooks so you can write his name on them in flowery letters.”

I rolled my eyes and followed her across the street to a stationery store. We opened our purses and bought things: notebooks, pencils, paper with narrow, straight lines. Our school colors weren’t available, which is a good thing: Roewer’s colors are red and purple.

She drove me home, which made me worry a little bit about the flask. I leaned back in the passenger seat and everything felt like a transatlantic flight again. I hoped I had enough interesting books, but for now I felt at ease, pampered even. It was almost dusk. I rolled down the window and felt air rush into my mouth. I stole a look at Natasha as she stole a look at me. Friends, we smiled and I closed my eyes again and let the sublime noise surround me.

“The music is great. Who is this?”

Natasha turned it up. “Darling Mud. They’re all the rage in England.”

It sounded great. It was all thundering percussion and snarling guitars, and the chorus told us over and over that one thing led to another. “On and on and on and on,” the singer wailed, on and on and on and on.

As I opened the door to get out, Natasha touched my hand. “Listen, if you want Adam, you’re going to have to move. I talked to Kate just the other day, and she had talked to Adam just the other day. He’s apparently been getting crazy love letters from someone all summer. He wouldn’t tell her who.” Natasha’s voice sounded too careless for these remarks to be well placed. I could have told her then that it was me, but I didn’t. I could have told her I was in love, and didn’t just have a crush, but I didn’t. Maybe I would have saved us all the trouble in the next few months, but I didn’t tell her. School starts tomorrow and with it the chattering network of friends telling friends telling friends secrets. On a postcard; I’m so stupid. I got out of the car and Natasha drove off. All I heard as she left was one thing leading to another.

Tuesday September 7th

So let it be noted that the school year began with the difference between authority and authoritarianism, and I have a feeling that the rest of it will be just as clear. My homeroom teacher is Mr. Dodd. It has always been Mr. Dodd. I cannot remember a time when my homeroom teacher wasn’t Mr. Dodd, and my homeroom teacher will always be Mr. Dodd, forever and ever, world without end. While the rest of us took unknowing summer sips of coffee (and “steamed milk,” in Natasha’s case), Mr. Dodd was apparently at some Assertiveness Training program. He droned on and on about it after stalking into the room and writing “MR. DODD” in all caps on the blackboard, even though homeroom has been the same kids, with the same teacher, year in and year out, world without end. The gist of his speech was that thanks to Assertiveness Training we couldn’t chew gum anymore. He told us of his vision of a new homeroom, “one with authority but not authoritarianism.” I would have let it go, but he insisted we all look it up. He waited while we fumbled with our Websters. We knew he was waiting because he kept calling out, “I’m waiting!” Finally Natasha stood up, brushed her hair from her eyes and read out loud: “‘Authoritarianism: a doctrine favoring or marked by absolute and unquestioning obedience to authority. Authority: the power to command, determine, or judge.”’ Then she looked at Mr. Dodd and sat down. No one ever stands up in class and recites like that, of course, but I suppose if I looked like Natasha I’d stand up too. All the boys, Mr. Dodd included, gaped at Natasha for a minute before the latest graduate of Assertiveness Training for Homeroom and Geography Teachers said, “Does everyone understand what I mean?” Everybody thought, No (except for a sizable handful of homeroom kids who will never think anything, world without end), but only Natasha said it. I looked back and saw her take out an emery board that had a carved claw at either end. She didn’t look at Mr. Dodd as she began to do her nails. Ever since Natasha and I read Cyrano de Bergerac in Hattie Lewis’s freshman English class she’s done everything with panache. Later this emery board will be very important in our story, so I introduce it now.

Mr. Dodd cleared his throat. Nobody at Assertiveness Training had prepared him for Natasha Hyatt. Nobody ever would be prepared for her. He opened his mouth to say something and the bell rang and we all left. I caught up with Natasha and hugged her.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without me, either,” she said, batting her eyelashes. “That’ll teach him to fool around with the dictionary. Tune in tomorrow for the difference between disciple and disciplinarian. Come on, it’s time for Chemistry.”

“I’m not doing Chem,” I said. “I’ve got Biology.”

“With who?”

“Carr.”

“Carr? That dreamboat? ‘Not doing Chem,’ she says.” Natasha looked around the crowded hallway, narrating. Few kids looked up; everyone was used to Natasha going on about something, and we were all zombies this early in the morning, anyway. “‘Not doing Chem,’ when all the time she gets Biology with Carr. That’s more Chem than I’ll ever have. I’ve got that four-eyed man with the toupee. So when will I see you?”

I started to pull out my schedule to compare, but Natasha was suddenly swept away by a thick-necked rush of football players who apparently let nothing stand in their path on their quest for punctuality. For a minute it felt like a Hollywood prison camp movie where the husband and wife are dragged off to different trains, though I must admit Natasha didn’t look too dismayed at being caught in the stampede. “Easy, boys!” I heard her call, and I looked down at my computerized card to see where to go next:

 

HOMEROOM: DUD

FIRST PERIOD: CALCULATED BAKING

SECOND PERIOD: POETIC HATS

THIRD PERIOD: ADAM ADAM ADAM ADAM

FOURTH PERIOD: FREE LUNCH

FIFTH PERIOD: APPLIED CERVIX

SIXTH PERIOD: ADVANCE TO RIO BY CAR

SEVENTH PERIOD: THE FRENCH SEVERED MILTON

 

Funny how one’s eyes are bleary in the mornings:

 

HOMEROOM: LAWRENCE DODD

FIRST PERIOD: CALCULUS: MICHAEL BAKER

SECOND PERIOD: AMERICAN POETRY: HATTIE LEWIS

THIRD PERIOD: CHOIR: JOHN HAND

FOURTH PERIOD: LUNCH

FIFTH PERIOD: APPLIED CIVICS: GLADYS TALL

SIXTH PERIOD: ADVANCED BIO: JAMES CARR

SEVENTH PERIOD: FRENCH SEVEN: JOANNE MILTON

 

Doesn’t look much more believable, does it? Perhaps it has been edited for your amusement and to protect the innocent, if any. This is the first year they’ve included first names on our schedules, and we will never let Lawrence forget it.

It looks like I’m alone in Math. None of my friends. Mr. Baker seems fine. We have to cover our books. Even Hattie Lewis had very little to say about American Poetry except that we have to cover our books which contain it. Hattie Lewis, who opened my eyes to books and the world, to whom I owe the very act of writing in a journal, had little to say except that we have to cover our books. It says something about school that the first thing our mentors tell us is to cover up tomes of knowledge with recycled paper bags. Or maybe it doesn’t. I only had time for half a cup of coffee this morning, and the coffee available here where I am editing this is extremely bitter, like the author/editor herself.

At least in English I have friends–Kate Gordon, the Queen Bee, was in there, and so is Jennifer Rose Milton whose name is so beautiful I must always write it out, completely: Jennifer Rose Milton. Her mother is Joanne Milton, the beautiful French teacher who has written a cookbook of all the recipes contained in Proust. To give you an idea of how beautiful Jennifer Rose Milton is, she can call her mother Maman and no one minds. Gabriel was there, too, although he might have to transfer out to make his schedule work. Gabriel Gallon is the kindest boy in the world, and somehow the San Francisco Unified School District Computer System has figured that out and likes to torture him. Today he will attend three English classes and four gym classes, even though he’s a senior and isn’t supposed to have gym at all. Jennifer Rose Milton came in late and sat far away from me, but Kate sat right next to me and we exchanged heaven-help-us glances about book covering for a full forty minutes. As the bell rang we compared schedules and learned that we have only English together. Jennifer Rose Milton glided toward us and hugged us all, Gabriel first, then Kate, then me. “I wish I could talk,” she said, “but I must run. Maman says the first meeting of the Grand Opera Breakfast Club is tomorrow, so see you then if not before.” She flew out, followed by Gabriel, who was hoping to catch our guidance counselor, an enormous Cuban woman who lives in an office with three electric fans and no overhead lighting. There are always suspicious-looking students glowering around her like bodyguards; going in to have forms signed is a little like discussing détente with a banana republic’s dictator. “Viva la Revolution!” I shouted to him as he left, and half a dozen students looked at me quizzically. Kate threw her head back and laughed, though there’s no way she could have gotten the joke; she has the other senior guidance counselor, a warm, friendly woman sans fans. Kate, though, will never admit to not getting the joke. It’s as if we would depose her. We clasped hands–“Be strong!” she mock-whispered–and she had to go off. I wanted to hear firsthand about her conversation with Adam re those letters he had received from some breathless woman, but there wasn’t time. Perhaps at Grand Opera Breakfast tomorrow.

What you’d like to hear about, of course, is the first face-to-face meeting with Adam. But as with the difference between authority and authoritarianism, it’s hard to talk about something that barely exists. As my bleary-eyed first take at my schedule indicated, I knew I’d see him in choir–he’s the student conductor, which isn’t just something to write down on his college applications. It’s that Johnny Hand is a dim lush who wanders in and out of choir rehearsals and occasionally performs meandering show tunes from his either long-dead or entirely fictitious nightclub act. Adam handles all the music and teaches it to us. So the first meeting of choir consisted of the one hundred or so members (ninety of whom are female) milling around the rehearsal hall while Adam sat in a folding chair, in conference with the other choir officers, trying to figure out what the hell to do. Johnny Hand was nowhere to be seen–he probably needed jump-starting somewhere. Adam saw me as I came in and gave me a half wave and rolled his eyes. I sat down and wondered whether the eye rolling meant he wished he could talk to me instead of talking to the chirpy president, vice president, secretary and treasurer, or that he can’t believe I had the courage to catch his eye.

On the way out of choir, I passed the room where the band and orchestra rehearse. Rolling their eyes, Douglas Wilde, my ex, and his girlfriend Lily Chandly, strolled out carrying their instrument cases. He is a violinist, she a cellist so there’s no bitterness here because she’s much better for Douglas; I’m practically tone-deaf and anyway, I broke up with him. Douglas, as usual, was dressed to the hilt in an off-white linen suit, complete with pressed handkerchief and pocket watch. Dating him was a bit like being in an old movie. I hugged them both, each in turn. Douglas, the dear, didn’t mind–it was, as they say in tabloids, an amicable parting–but Lily emitted such a glare that I was thankful that those were true instrument cases and not Mafioso euphemisms. Had I written to these people during the summer I wouldn’t have to re-establish anything. Douglas had to rush off (after disentangling himself from Lily’s smugly possessive good-bye kiss), but I stayed with her as she went to her locker. She handed over her computerized schedule card and I discovered that we were about to have lunch together.

“I think it’s great that you two are still together,” I said as we sat down at one of the appropriate benches in the courtyard. Like homing pigeons, all the right people were in all the right places after summer break.

“Yes, me too,” Lily said, relaxing a little bit. I could see her remembering that she was my friend and not my rival. I spied Natasha and waved for her to come over; she saw me and walked across the courtyard, accompanied by–I swear I could hear it–the clatter of male jaws dropping to asphalt. She had taken off her black leather jacket as the day got hotter and was wearing a translucent tank top that made the following fashion statement: Here are my nipples. That may sound bitterly envious, but that’s only because I am.

“Same shit, different year,” she said by way of greeting. She grasped Lily’s well-combed head and kissed both cheeks. “Tonight I get to make flash cards of the periodic chart. How’s the scrumptious Jim Carr?”

“I haven’t had him yet.”

“Well, give yourself time,” she said, taking out a blood-red metallic lunch box decorated with lacquered photographs of her idol, Marlene Dietrich. Where does she find these things? “It’s only the first day. Oh, how was choir?”

Lily looked up from her apple. “What’s in choir?”

“Flan’s current flame,” Natasha whispered.

Lily looked relieved and I was thankful that Natasha let her know that I wasn’t after Douglas. “Who? Have you been dating someone this summer?”

“She spent all summer in Europe,” Natasha said, opening her lunch box. Inside it were twelve large shrimp in a bag filled with ice, and a small container of cocktail sauce. “Not that anybody received as much as a postcard.” Natasha and Lily turned to me and tuttutted in unison. Why hadn’t I sent postcards to them instead?

Lily took another bite of apple. “So if Flannery isn’t seeing someone, how can she have a current flame?” Only Lily would want to get the terminology straight before finding out who the mystery man was. Is.

“The candle,” Natasha said, shrimp between teeth, “is not yet burning at both ends. He doesn’t know yet.”

Lily nodded sagely. She was ready. “Who is he?”

I sighed. This part was always a little embarrassing. “Adam State.”

“Adam State?” she screeched, and the apple dropped out of her hands and rolled into the middle of the courtyard. Everybody was quiet and stared at it. Natasha, of course, broke the silence.

“To the fairest!” she cried, and people laughed and went back to their lunches. Though I’m sure nobody but us understood the Homeric reference, everyone understood Natasha doing something crazy.

“Having a crush on Adam State is like having a crush on Moses,” Lily said matter-of-factly. “He’s too busy doing his own thing to notice you.”

“In The Ten Commandments Moses had a lover,” Natasha said, absently.

“The Ten Commandments is not a documentary, Natasha,” Lily said, and looked me over like a talent scout examining a piece of meat. “Flannery, I wouldn’t bet on his candle getting lit.” She took her napkin from her lunch bag and began to clean her tortoiseshell glasses.

“I heard he just broke up with somebody,” Natasha said, fluttering her hands in a gesture that indicated that she may have heard this from the wind.

I tried to sound worldly and confident. “He is the only appropriate person for me to like,” I said, and Natasha and Lily exchanged a look. Natasha said nothing and finished her shrimp, and Lily put her glasses back on. I watched her hands as they absent-mindedly practiced cello fingerings at her side. Lily will probably attend a conservatory next year. I think she lost some weight over the summer. What was that look about? Did someone have a crush on me? The sun glinted on the apple, but the gods didn’t seem interested today. Maybe they had to cover their books. I’d better stop all this description now, because I’m in Civics and my teacher, Gladys Tall, who lives up to her name, is getting suspicious. I couldn’t possibly be taking this many notes on her lecture, because the notes would have to look like this: cover your book cover your book cover your book

Wednesday, September 8th

Would that everything in life began with the Grand Opera Breakfast Club. For those who have opened the time capsule and found this journal as the sole chosen memento for this wondrous century, let me elucidate: The Grand Opera Breakfast Club is a precious stone that killed two birds that flew around the head of Joanne Milton, Roewer’s best French teacher and mother of Jennifer Rose Milton. One bird was the fact that Jennifer Rose Milton’s friends (that is Kate, Gabriel, Natasha, myself, etc.) always weaseled our way into French with Mrs. Milton (it’s so strange to write that–to us she will always be Millie) and not entirely inadvertently turned it into what we called a salon but what the head of the department told Millie was socializing, even if it was in French. The other bird was in the form of our principal, an ex-football coach named Jean Bodin who is as large as a truck and half as smart. He was giving Millie a bad time for not sponsoring a club. Every faculty member was supposed to sponsor a club.

It was Jennifer Rose Milton, beautiful Jennifer Rose Milton, who had the idea. It was when she was going out with Douglas, and he was trying to woo her away from the wispy-voiced feminist songwriters she liked to put in her tape deck by steering her toward the classics. So, over dinner with Maman, Jennifer Rose Milton conceived of the Grand Opera Breakfast Club, an organization so pretentious that no one but our friends would join it, which would enable us to have a salon after all, except not in French, and would give Millie a club to sponsor. Once a week or so we’d meet before school in a classroom, listen to opera and eat breakfast. In her gratitude, Millie volunteered to buy the pastries.

This morning was La Boheme, and so was the opera, if you catch my meaning. Millie, Jennifer Rose Milton, Douglas, Kate, Gabriel, Natasha, and V__: I felt for the first time that I was amongst comrades and that we were all facing the new year together. Of course we couldn’t meet two whole hours before classes began, so we only listened to the first act, with the artist/lovers meeting in their garret. We munched and listened. We got powdered sugar all over the libretto. Douglas, in a dark blue three-piece suit, tried to lecture us; we shushed him. Gradually the burnt play, the shirked rent, the pawned key all became background for our own small dramas.

“I can’t believe all my babies are seniors,” Millie said, adding accent marks to someone’s homework with a leaky red pen. A single red drop stained her cheek like a bloody tear; I note this image now for a future poem.

“I can certainly believe it,” Natasha said. She was looking in a small hand mirror and examining her lipstick for flaws–she might as well have been examining it for the crown jewels which were just as likely to be there. “Douglas, what were you saying Marcello had to do?”

“Not Marcello, Schaunard. He’s telling the story right now,” Douglas said, and his eyes lit up. I think one of the reasons it ended was that his eyes never lit up for me the way they did for classical music. I realize that in the long run I may not be as wonderful as a Brahms symphony but I think I’m good for a Haydn quintet. “He was hired to play for a duke, and–”

“Lord,” Kate corrected, looking up from the libretto.

“Well, a royal, anyway. The lord told him he had to play the violin until his parrot died.”

“I’m sorry,” V__said, fingering her pearls. The pearls were real; she wore real pearls to high school. “How and why did a starving musician have a pet parrot?”

“The lord’s parrot,” Douglas said. “Honestly, V__.”

“The Lord’s Parrot,” I said, “will be the name of my first play.”

“Your first play for whom?” Natasha asked, raising an eyebrow delicately highlighted with glitter. Maybe the crown jewels were to be found on her face, after all.

“Hush, you savages,” Douglas said. “Anyway, Marcello has to play until the parrot dies.”

“Well, my point, lost somewhere in all this, is that that’s how I’ve been feeling. We’ve been at Roewer all this time, waiting for some goddamn parrot to die.” Natasha took another doughnut. What I would do to be able to take another doughnut and still look as good as she does.

Douglas thought for a second. “Well, Marcello manages to bribe the maid into poisoning the parrot. Who could we bribe?”

“To kill whom?” Lily said, always demanding accuracy. It was still early, so none of her hip-length hair had strayed from her sculptured bun. “Who is the parrot in this situation?”

“Bodin,” Millie said, muttering the name of our beloved principal under her breath, and then, suffering from a rare bout of professionalism, looked up from another scarred homework assignment, saying, “Who said that? I didn’t say that.”

“Killing Bodin would be extremely difficult,” Natasha said. “Digging a grave that large would be six weeks’ work.”

“Is there some creative murder method in La Boheme?” Kate asked in a tone of voice meant to imply that she once knew the answer, but it had slipped her mind.

“Nobody gets killed, they just get sick,” Douglas said, and drew out his pocket watch. “It’s almost homeroom,” he said.

“Then we’d much rather discuss something of infinitely more importance,” Kate said, “like the first dinner party of the season.”

“That’s more like it,” Gabriel said.

Kate pulled out a spiral notebook. “I was thinking this Saturday, if everyone’s free.” We all nodded; we’d postpone surgery for one of our dinner parties.

“Let’s make a list,” Lily said, licking jelly off her fingers.

“You and your lists,” V__ said fondly, swatting at her. Lily kissed her on the cheek. “I can’t have it at my house, even though I’d love to. My parents are entertaining.”

“Your parents? Entertaining?” Kate asked in mock surprise. Her parents are always entertaining, though in person they are never entertaining, if you follow me. We’ve never had a dinner party at V__’s house, even though each time she says she’d love to.

“We’ll have it at my house,” Kate pronounced. “Now, a guest list.”

“Well, everyone here,” Lily said, counting us off on her fingers. “There’s Flannery, Gabriel–”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Kate said. “We don’t have to list all of us. We’re you know, the basics.” She scribbled down our names on a piece of paper. “The Basic Eight.”

“Are there only eight of us?” Jennifer Rose Milton asked. “We’re such a menagerie it seems like more.”

“Yep, just eight. The Basic Eight are as follows: Kate Gordon, Natasha Hyatt, Jennifer Rose Milton, Flannery Culp, Lily Chandly, V__, Douglas Wilde and Gabriel Gallon.”

“Why are the men last?” V__ asked.

“If you have to ask…” Natasha said, rolling her eyes.

“…you can’t afford it,” I finished, and Natasha smiled at me.

“Who else shall we invite besides, um, the Basic Eight?” Lily asked.

“How about Lara Trent?” Gabriel asked. “I’ve always thought she was nice.”

“Absolutely not,” Natasha Hyatt said. “Such a drip.”

Jennifer Rose Milton put her hands on her hips. “She can’t be that bad. Let’s invite her. We’ll give her a chance.”

“Absolutely not,” Natasha said. “She once told me I wasn’t a good Christian.”

We all threw up our hands and said “No!” in unison. One thing we don’t tolerate is organized religion. Right-wing parent activists are going to love that sentence, but loath as I am to give any ammunition to those who are frothing at the mouth about our godless schools, it’s true.

“How about Adam State?” Kate asked. She met my eyes quietly, and I appreciated her tact, which was a little out of character. Not that Kate is the sort to tease about our romantic inclinations, but she might at least raise her eyebrows. Just about everyone must have known about me and Adam, so just about everyone waited for me to answer.

“He seems a little conceited to me,” Gabriel said. Don’t smirk at me, reader; I said just about everyone, not everyone.

“And we certainly don’t want any egotism,” Natasha said. “Heaven forfend. We don’t want to be friends with anyone who’s at all self-important.” Millie snorted in the corner at that.

“I think he’s nice,” I said, casually. I’m sorry, I didn’t write that in a way that properly conveyed the mood. “I think he’s nice,” I said, CASUALLY.

“I do too,” Lily said, loyally, and Kate wrote him down.

“How about Flora Habstat? She’s my only friend in homeroom.”

Kate narrowed her eyes and sighed. “It’s always difficult to tell if someone’s interesting in homeroom. The setting is so dull, how can anyone really shine?”

“Well, let’s try her,” Jennifer Rose Milton said, and Kate wrote her down.

Natasha pulled out her hand mirror again. “Can I just warn you guys about something? I’ve heard that Flora constantly quotes the Guinness Book of World Records.”

“What?” V__ said. “I know her, and I’ve never heard her do that.”

“That’s just what I’ve heard,” Natasha said, airily. Kate and I exchanged a look. We were both wondering if we were missing some obscure joke.

“Who else?” Kate said. The bell rang.

Idea for a story: A man falls in love with a woman and writes her letter after letter. We never read the letters she writes to him. His love grows and grows through the letters. He can’t stand it anymore. Then something drastic happens…but what?

 

O my boggled head, around which numbers spun all period. The second day of school and I’m already lost in Calc. I covered my book last night, just like everybody else, but after that I got lost. I looked around me–no friends in that class, none at all–and everyone was taking notes, nodding along with Baker and his spirals of chalk. My mind sputtered and began to sink. I clung to the life jacket of sketching out story outlines. I think when I reread my journal this year I’ll always be able to tell when I was in Calc by the paragraphs of story entries.

For some reason we got out of Baker’s class early. The bell system here is computerized, which means of course that it doesn’t work; the bells ring, ignored, at random, as if a loud, unruly ice-cream man is wandering around Roewer High School. Baker let us out of class and the hallways were nearly deserted. I arrived early for Poetry, which was a gift. Hattie Lewis was there.

Hattie Lewis likes to tell her students stories from when she was young, but I can’t quite believe those stories because it seems that she must have been born a wise old woman. Her classroom is her lair. It’s industrial and ugly like everyone else’s classrooms, but it has an aura of classiness and culture. For one thing, there aren’t any faded travel posters or soft-focus photographs of sunsets with “Reach For Your Dreams” superimposed over them up on the walls, but the aura transcends the cheap Impressionist reproductions that have replaced them. It comes from her. She doesn’t have to tell anybody not to chew gum; they just know it. She dresses more ridiculously than any other Roewer teacher (and the competition is stiff)–all crazy-quilted skirts and vests with embroidered flora–but no one laughs, even when she’s not around. Her first name is Hattie, but no one has a mean nickname for her. Showing up early for her class and thus being alone with her felt like showing up early for Judgment Day and getting to hang out with the angels before the crowds arrive. (It sounds like I mean it felt like death. Calculus must still be crowding my brain.)

Our conversation was about the literary magazine, of which I am editor. She’s the faculty sponsor. Our first meeting is tomorrow after school. I can’t forget about it.

LIT MEETING TOMORROW!!!

I asked her what poets we’d be studying this year, and was embarrassed when she listed all these names I had never heard of. I mean, I recognize Robert Frost, and of course e. e. cummings, but I consider myself a poet and had never heard of these people. She must have seen my face as I struggled to hide my ignorance.

“Relax,” she said. “You will be wise. You’re young. You can’t have everything right away.” When something simple and true takes you by surprise, it hits you in the stomach. Before I could say anything people starting piling in. Hattie Lewis didn’t skip a beat. She had us all sit down and she spent the rest of the period talking about Anne Bradstreet. I took notes; I had never heard of Anne Bradstreet.

Now I’m in choir, and even with Adam still gathered in a corner with the other officers, the calm of Hattie Lewis’s words comforts me. I can’t have everything right away. Plus, sometimes it’s enough to watch him. Still no sign of Mr. Hand, the real choir teacher.

From a spiral-bound notebook passed between two desks in Gladys Tall’s fifth-period Applied Civics class, taped into these typed pages:

 

Kate, what is Mrs. T talking about? I’ve been staring out the window.

 

Tell me about it. You were far, far away. I’ve had to roll my eyes at myself all period.

 

Sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night.

 

Flan, what did I tell you about whoring on school nights? You’re always tired and grumpy the next day. I’m going to call your pimp and give him a piece of my mind. If he doesn’t reschedule your hours you’ll never get into a good college.

 

You must stop writing things like that to me. I don’t think Mrs. Tall bought the fact that I found the concept of supply and demand humorous.

 

On a much more important note, I saw Adam today but I didn’t invite him to the dinner party. I thought you might want to.

 

You know him better.

 

You want to know him better.

 

Still, I’m waiting for him to call me.

 

You need an excuse before you can call somebody. He doesn’t have an excuse to call you. Anyway, somebody else is after him, so you better get moving. He said that somebody had written him love letters all summer.

 

The notebook wasn’t passed anymore, despite there being a full fifteen minutes left of class.

 

Jim Carr has eyes like a hawk, so I can’t write much in here, but I would like to note that for the seventh semester in a row–every semester I’ve been here–Mr. Carr has managed to find a curvaceous female education grad student to serve as his teaching assistant. Most teachers here don’t have any teaching assistants at all, except for the occasional French friend of Millie’s who needs work, but Carr manages to find a bevy of them. There are a lot of stupid biology jokes to be made here, but my beautiful expensive Italian leather-bound black journal is too nice for such cracks.

 

Home again, home again. I’m bored of my routine already, and it’s the second day of school. Natasha picked me up from Bio–“Is that this year’s model?” she asked, glaring at the assistant–and walked me to French, trying all the way to convince me that I should invite Adam to the party. Finally she said I could think it over tonight and that otherwise Kate’d do it tomorrow. My plan is that he’ll call me tonight, and I, quasi-spontaneously, will invite him to the party. After I hang up the phone, I will go out to the garden and frolic with my pet unicorn, which just as surely exists as the rest of my scenario. Sigh. Gotta go read some Bradstreet. She’s an early American poet; what do you mean you’ve never heard of her?

Thursday, September 9th

This morning when I went outside I found that the newsprint from the Chronic Ill (as it is called by a rather fuddy-duddy columnist) had spread from my fingertips to the whole wide sky. I got off the bus and stared at the traffic, trying to think of a very good reason to cross it and walk up the three-block San Francisco hill to school, when V__ pulled up in her car and opened her door in one swift swoop. She said nothing, just beckoned, and I got in. Inside it was warm and V__ was playing the Brandenberg Concertos.

“Bless you!” I shouted. “Bless you!”

V__ merged. “I didn’t sneeze,” she said. “Although you are going to get a cold if you continue to insist on taking the bus each morning.” Like many people of noble descent, V__ often assumed that everyone’s habits were born of personal choice and not necessity; why people chose to live in war-ravaged countries was always beyond her.

“Hey, this is the faculty parking lot.”

“I always park here. The student lot is simply too shabby.”

“What about the parking guards?”

“Flannery, look at me. They’re never sure if I’m a teacher or not.” She was right. The tailored suit, along with the stockings and omnipresent pearls, brought her to that nebulous area between eighteen and twenty-eight. It was very handy when we went to nightclubs. We walked right past the parking guards, who were two huge black men. She even nodded to them, professionally.

When we reached the front doors we had to go our separate ways. “Lily and I are having coffee after school,” V__ said, “and I’d be delighted if you would join us.”

“Sorry,” I said. “The Myriad meets today. Got to do the literary editor thing. Thanks for the ride.”

“Anything,” she said, reaching up and fixing my collar, “for one of the Basic Eight.”

“Don’t tell me that term has been canonized,” I said. “I’m not sure I like it. It sounds too much like some mystical society, or like something concerned with a master race.”

V__ thought for a second. “I–,” she said, and the bell rang. She dashed off, and that was the last of any discussion about the propriety of the term. But I’ve typed it into the record: it was never a concept with which I was comfortable. So all this talk that the Basic Eight was some unholy alliance, some secret society, should stop with this conversation. Whatever we were, we were bound together unofficially, casually; and I objected to it loudly from the start. Or would have, anyway; the truth of the matter is that I walked all the way to school, but that conversation happened sometime, surely; plus, I needed to fully introduce V__ and voice my objections to my reading public, to all wary parents and curious teenagers.

 

Idea for a story: A woman loves a man, but through some slip of the tongue everyone thinks it is the wrong man, including the wrong man himself, who begins to pursue her. When she finally makes the truth clear, all of society shuns her as a woman who leads men on. She dies alone. The story could be called “A Slip of the Tongue.”

 

I didn’t go to choir today. I just couldn’t take it. Luckily, some people have lunch third period (yes, lunch, third period, at a time that’s even a little early for brunch. It’s sickening that all over America the promising young generation is made to eat at ten-thirty in the morning), so it didn’t look like I was cutting class. Of course, I ran into Gabriel, who has the worst schedule on earth, world without end. He was sitting in the courtyard, staring at a sandwich so intently it looked like he was making some sort of political statement: black man, white bread.

“Hi,” I said. “You’re not seriously thinking of eating lunch at ten-thirty in the morning, are you?”

“Seriously is the only way I can think at ten-thirty in the morning,” he said glumly. “The worst thing is that they still haven’t worked out my schedule. I still have to go to gym four times a day. There I sit, a senior surrounded by trotting sophomores, baffling gym teachers.”

“Quit bragging,” I said. “It’s not difficult to baffle gym teachers. Listen, will you take a walk with me? I can’t face going to choir.”

“Why?” he said. “Calculus I could understand, but choir? I thought nothing ever happened in choir.”

“It doesn’t,” I said. “I’ll tell you about it as we walk.”

“To the lake?” he asked, rewrapping his sandwich.

“To the lake,” I agreed. By the time this diary is found, the plates of the earth will probably have moved and covered up Lake Merced, a small body of bile across the street from Roewer surrounded by fairly pretty groves of trees amidst which you can find the occasionally intertwined pair.

I didn’t even wait until we got there, though, to tell Gabriel everything. I told him I had an unrequited crush as soon as we reached the tennis courts at the edge of campus, which lay damp and empty and clogged with dull brown leaves. I told him that it wasn’t just a crush but love as we jaywalked across the cracked asphalt that separated Roewer from Lake Merced. I told him it was Adam State when we reached the jogging path, littered with dogshit and somebody’s dingy discarded sweatband.

“Adam State?” he said, doubtfully, as if I had misspoken.

“Why does everybody say it like that?” I said, stepping off the path, toward the trees.

“Because they’re surprised,” he said. “Douglas we expected. He’s as pretentious as the rest of us. But Adam State? How did you even end up talking to him?”

“He was in Arsenic and Old Lace last year, remember? Adam and I both had small parts, so we ended up talking a lot. That’s when I knew.”

“I can’t believe you’re calling it love when you don’t even have a relationship with him.”

I can remember my speech word for word, even though I’m writing it after school as I wait for lit magazine people to show up, and yes, even one year later as I’m rewriting it. “Gabriel, there are two kinds of love. One kind is gradual, like what I had with Douglas. We were acquaintances, we were friends, we were more than friends, we were in love. It was steady, like warming soup. It’s part of a process that people go through with everybody–like with me and you, for instance. We warmed through acquaintance to friend, and we won’t warm any further. But the other kind is more like Cajun cooking. Like pan-blackening something.” I knew this metaphor would connect with Gabriel because he cooks for all our dinner parties. “It just strikes you. It’s just as delicious. It’s just as real. In fact it’s probably more real; it’s an entrée rather than a soup. That’s how I feel about Adam. It’s a connection, a connection bigger and stronger, in many ways, than I ever had with Douglas. It’s not all about the façades of shared interests or attitudes. It’s something deeper.”

“Then there’s no need to despair,” Gabriel said, looking elsewhere. It was almost as if he were talking to himself. “If it’s something that goes beyond all façades, then it’s out of your control. If it’s meant to be, he’ll respond. If not, then it wasn’t meant to be. I know when I’m feeling something that strong, I just get paralyzed and don’t know what to do. Maybe he’s feeling the same way and doesn’t know how to respond.”

“Do you really think so?” I said, hugging him. I watched his hands flutter around for a minute before hugging me back.

“We’re going to be late,” Gabriel said, but when I told him it was my lunch period he agreed to stay by the lake. “I suppose I can cut my third English class of the day.” We rounded a corner and there was Jennifer Rose Milton, sitting on the grass in the middle of a clearing. She jumped up.

“Hi guys,” she said, looking behind us. “What are you doing here?”

“Having a conversation, Jenn,” I said. I don’t call her “Jennifer Rose Milton” out loud, of course. “What are you doing here? Alone?”

“Oh, you know,” she said vaguely, gesturing toward the lake. “I’m just–”

Gabriel turned and gave me a look. “We’d better go,” he said. “We’ll be late.”

“Right, OK,” I said, and Jennifer Rose Milton smiled. We walked away and back toward school. “She must be meeting somebody,” I said. “And it must be somebody special. She doesn’t have lunch with me. She’s cutting a class. Jenn never cuts class. Her grades are perfect. Let’s go get coffee.”

“You’ll have to miss more than lunch,” he warned.

I shrugged. “Civics, Bio. I’ll be back in time for Millie. We can walk to the Mocha Monkey.”

We walked to the Mocha Monkey. The Mocha Monkey is an embarrassing cafe, but it’s the only one within walking distance of Roewer. We usually end up there after school dances; it’s also one of the few cafes open late. It’s embarrassing not only for its name but also for the monkey faces embroidered on each of the chairs. You can try to have a meaningful conversation, but all the while in the back of your head you know you’re sitting on a monkey’s face. I ordered a latte and Gabriel had tea, which was served in its own individual pot with a monkey’s face painted on it. The two of us sat there for most of the afternoon, talking and laughing there in the monkey house.

 

Lit meeting went fine. Jennifer Rose Milton came, of course, and so did Natasha. And so did…drumroll please…none other than Rachel State, freshman sister of Adam, a waif of a girl swathed in black clothes and white makeup. Natasha nicknamed her The Frosh Goth on the way home, as we sat in her car listening to Darling Mud and trying to think of ways I can abuse my power as editor in chief to get to Adam through his gloomy sister. She invited me to spend the night (there was a Dietrich movie on TV she wanted me to watch with her), but I declined, not that I attended enough classes today to have much homework. But I wanted to read Bradstreet, and write some poetry of my own, and think about wise Gabriel’s words about what was meant to be.

Friday September 10

While I sat around last night waiting for Adam to call, somebody must have sacrificed a lamb or something, because all of yesterday’s gray was all burned off, and by the time I was riding the bus to school the sun was searing through the tinted windows like something that killed all the dinosaurs. I reached into my bag and immediately found my sunglasses in a rare case of morning luck. I put them on and didn’t talk to anyone. I looked for V__ when I got off the bus, hoping that V__’s gorgeous car could become a permanent morning motif, but as yesterday’s ride was added, as you remember, one year later in rewrites, V__of course was nowhere to be seen.

Halfway up the hill, however, Kate tapped me on the shoulder. “I’ve been calling out your name for an hour and a half,” she said. “You walk extremely fast. Quickly, rather. Didn’t you hear me?”

“Well, for most of an hour and a half ago I was home, across town, so no,” I said.

Kate rolled her eyes. “Hey,” she said, “did you invite Adam to our dinner party last night?”

“No,” I said, “and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“OK,” she said, lining up a new subject like the next bullet in the chamber. “I wish to attend an extremely modern event tonight, with you if you’re free: the cinema.”

“What’s playing?”

“It’s Benjamin Granaugh’s new movie. Henry IV.” Kate was the only one of us who could successfully pronounce Granaugh every time.

“Of course I’ll go. Want to do dinner beforehand?”

“Sure. And speaking of dinner, do you want me to invite Adam for you? Not to discuss the undiscussable.” But discussing it anyway.

“I guess you’d better. We shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for me to make a move.”

“Well, suit yourself.” By now we were at the side entrance, which is closest to Kate’s homeroom. The PTA had placed a welcoming sign there which said: “WELCOME! HOPE YOUR SUMMER PREPARED YOU FOR A YEAR WHERE YOU WILL BE PUSHED TO THE LIMIT ACADEMICALLY, ATHLETICALLY AND SOCIALLY!” framed by smiling faces drawn in Magic Marker. I’m pretty sure it should be “a year in which you will be pushed.” Kate leaned against the doorway and absentmindedly poked one of the faces in its eye. “It will be a shame, though, if Adam gets stolen by somebody who writes love letters to him over the summer. To introduce yourself like that over the summer, when nobody can do anything about it, is so tacky, don’t you think?”

“Speaking of love lives,” I said, plowing on, “do you know if Jenn is seeing anyone?”

“That’s one of my missions for today,” Kate announced. “Do you know that she cut class yesterday and went to the lake? Gabriel told me. If she was meeting somebody, it must be somebody very interesting if she doesn’t want us to know.”

“I was with Gabriel,” I said, eager to be considered a primary player in all this intrigue. “She acted really flustered when Gabriel and I ran into her. She was definitely meeting somebody. I can’t believe you don’t know who it is yet. Are you losing your touch, Mata Hari?”

“Certainly not,” Kate said, archly. “I just found out about this lake incident late last night. Give me time.”

The bell rang. “Time is something I don’t have,” I said. “I’ve got to run to my date with Lawrence.”

“Who?” she shrieked after me, but I didn’t look back. You’re always guaranteed more attention from Kate if you keep her on the edge of her seat.

Saturday September 11th

Waking up this morning felt like a logistical problem, but though I haven’t solved it I have identified what the problem is. I am large. No, Flannery, say it outright: I am fat. I forgot to pull my shades down last night so morning came on like gangbusters. The sun reminded me of that woman riding six white horses in “Comin’ round the Mountain.” Then I began to feel like the mountain. I moved one leg, then the other, to the floor. Gradually I became aware of how much room even half my body took up in this bed. It was startling: I remove half my body from the bed, and my bed stays full. Now either Archimedes was wrong and none of us really take up any space at all or I just hadn’t noticed my full load lately. If only half of me fills the bed, I wondered to myself sleepily, is that because I have small legs, or is it for some other reason?

Small legs–fat chance. I walked into the bathroom and the scales simultaneously rose beneath my feet and fell from my eyes. I’m not going to write down the number here in this expensive Italian leather-bound journal, but rest assured, for those who crave statistics, that the sum of my parts is truly elephantine. All that bullshit I was crowing to Gabriel down by the lake–how there’s no attraction between us–all that isn’t rooted in some achieved platonic ideal, it’s rooted in my own generous thighs. Nobody wants me because I’m large and ugly. I looked at myself in the mirror, naked, and assessed myself like the headmistress of a girls’ finishing school. I’m large and ugly.

It’s funny, you’d think that ugliness is pretty much innate and that there isn’t anything you can do about it, but if you think about it logically that’s not true. After all, I’m not just ugly; I’m also large. If I were smaller, there wouldn’t just be less of the largeness, there’d be less of the ugliness, too. And if someone has less ugliness than they did before, one could just as well say they have more beauty. Kate called me to ask which Bradstreets we were supposed to read, and I ran my theory by her.

“Kate,” I said, after reading her some titles and page numbers I had somehow managed to write down, “if one person were less ugly than another, we could also say they were more beautiful, right?”

“What are you talking about?” Kate said. “Does this have to do with Adam? He’s coming tonight, you know.”

“I know,” I said glumly. There was no way I was going to be small and beautiful by tonight. “No, this doesn’t have to do with Adam. I’m just asking, theoretically, if a person got less ugly could it be said that they got more beautiful?”

“Well,” Kate said dryly. Kate was saying things dryly, I was saying them glumly. I think these adverbial embellishments make the conversation sound less stark. “This is just theoretical?”

“Right,” I said. “Theoretical. You know, like any intellectual conversation.”

“Well,” Kate said, and this time she said it carefully. “Well,” Kate said carefully, “I would have to disagree with your statement. Martin Luther King said that peace was not merely the absence of violence but the presence of a positive force, or something like that, and I think it’s the same thing with beauty. I mean, you don’t look at some vast and beautiful landscape and think, There’s nothing ugly here.”

Kate’s well-meaning smoke screen hasn’t foiled my unshakable logic, and I will extend it further. A less fat body makes a more beautiful person, so we need something that makes a less fat body, and of course we all know what makes a body less fat: less food. When I think of all the food I consumed just last night I am sick at my extravagance, and judging from my fat legs, my fat stomach, even my fat arms, this sort of extravagance goes on all the time. All that Thai food I ate last night for instance, that chicken dish and those greasy, greasy fried egg rolls, the grease of which luckily seems to have found its way to my hair instead of my body. The chocolate-covered mints at the movie. I will hereby dismiss, again, my justification that dieting is some tacky Middle American bourgeois pastime. It is very sensible, dieting. Simply eating less food and thus becoming more beautiful. To no other problem in life is there such an elegant solution. To start my diet I will not eat anything until the dinner party tonight, and then I will only eat sensibly, just salad perhaps. No longer will I allow myself to become as large as any of the obstacles that separate Adam and me from each other. To keep my mind off food I will do some schoolwork, thus also taking care of my other Cardinal Sin besides Gluttony: (Academic) Sloth. I will read Anne Bradstreet, another disciplined woman.

LATER

If there were any seeds of doubt in my mind as to whether I really loved Adam or just some image of Adam, they were all killed by the frost that was tonight’s dinner party. No, wait, that sounds like it was some cold, deadly evening. I mean the opposite. I guess I mean that if the flower of my love for Adam was being stunted by any feelings of doubt, then tonight fully fertilized my seed and allowed it to grow. That works if you don’t think about the fact that fertilizer is made of shit. I guess it’s obvious I’ve had wine, but the evening was magical, magical, magical and I want to write it down before it evaporates into the night air like streams of sensual smoke.

Gabriel gave me a ride to Kate’s, which meant we had to arrive early so Gabriel could start cooking. Gabriel is terribly, terribly fussy about his culinarities, and never lets us do anything, not even chop, so Kate and I sat at the kitchen table and speculated on possibilities concerning Jennifer Rose Milton’s love life while Gabriel marinated some snapper and chopped red peppers with such ferocity that the off-white tiles of Kate’s kitchen looked positively gory. Gabriel had a pure white apron over a very handsome coat and tie and kept smiling at me.

Natasha arrived, bearing cleavage and brie, and immediately fell into a squabble with Gabriel over how to bake it properly. Kate and I sat basking in the pretentiousness of it all.

“I have a full pound of celery to chop and it’s already a quarter to seven,” Gabriel said, wiping his hands on his apron. They left faint red handprints like the frantic last flailings of a victim. Who could have known?

“I’m telling you, Gabe,” she said, incurring his least favorite of her nicknames for him; he preferred ‘Riel pronounced “real” or Gall pronounced “gall.” “A tablespoon of olive oil. It gives the whole thing some lubrication.”

“To most areas where knowledge of lubrication is key, I yield to your expertise. But olive oil on brie? This isn’t fucking mozzarella, Natasha!”

“Hey now!” I said. Gabriel seemed unusually tense, even for a new recipe. “Do I have to separate you two?” They continued to glare at each other and it struck me that maybe there was something going on that I didn’t know about.

“For God’s sake,” Kate said, and flounced across the kitchen. She picked up the Palatial Palate Cookbook and thumbed through the index. The two litigants stood stock-still–Gabriel arms akimbo, Natasha clutching the brie like Hamlet holding the skull, waiting for Kate to render her decision. She played it to the hilt, flipped pages, flipped pages, flipped pages. Finally she spoke. “Ahem. I quote directly from Ms. Julia Mann in her section on brie baking: ‘The addition of any oil to brie, or any other soft-ripening cheese, prior to baking, is redundant at best, disastrous at worst.’”

Gabriel tried not very hard to conceal a smug grin. Natasha glowered first at Gabriel, then Kate, then for no good reason, me. You could hear a pin drop.

And then a brie. It was wrapped in plastic, so there wasn’t a mess, but the fall to the floor left the cheese looking wounded and misshapen. It was such a pathetic sight that I couldn’t help but giggle, and in one of those magical tension-loosening moments that I believe float aimlessly around the planet, easing awkward situations worldwide, everyone broke out laughing. Gabriel put his arm around Natasha, and Natasha put her arm around Gabriel, and there we were, all laughing in a circle around a fallen brie, when Adam walked in.

The first thing I saw were his shoes, which were black and thick–the direct opposite of Adam, come to think of it. My eyes just went up his jeans, up the row of buttons on his Oxford, uneven like a lazy fence out in the country somewhere, up his freshly shaven chin to his smile to his bright green eyes, and I felt myself fall right into his pupils.

“The door was open,” he said apologetically, peering over Natasha’s shoulder at the fallen cheese.

“That’s because we wanted you to come in,” Kate said charmingly, standing up on tiptoe and kissing him on each cheek. Gabriel snorted and went back to the cutting board.

Natasha picked up the cheese with one hand and extended her other one to Adam. “Hello, Adam,” she said demurely.

Kate returned the cookbook to the cupboard, clearing a path between Adam and Flannery. Their eyes met across the nearly empty room.

“Flannery,” he said, and smiled.

“Flannery,” he said, and smiled.

“FLANNERY,” HE SAID, AND SMILED.

SMILED SMILED SMILED.

Ahem. Not only did he smile at me, he said my name, and there wasn’t a question mark after it, as in “Your name is Flannery, am I right?” nor was it a simple, cold acknowledgment, as in, “I recognize you but I’d much rather talk to Natasha, who has cleavage.” He smiled; I think, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we can surmise he was glad to see me.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m glad you could make it.”

“Me too,” he said. Our eyes met, and locked, and I know it’s corny to say that but what the hell it’s late at night, I’m a little tipsy and besides it’s my own journal so who cares.

Kate coughed slightly and we came to. Adam blushed slightly, even; but his shirt was pure white, so it just made him glow even more. Don’t think I don’t realize the drippiness of this prose.

“Folks,” he said–what a charming thing to say! “Folks!” “I know you asked me to bring wine, but I forgot to ask what we’re having, so I didn’t know whether to bring white or red.”

Natasha looked stricken at the thought of no wine. “So you didn’t bring any?”

Adam walked over and put a mock-comforting hand on her shoulder, then, electrically, on mine. “Don’t worry, my angels,” he said in a Prince Charming Voice, “I have a fake ID. I will run to a nearby liquor store and purchase wine for everyone. Just tell me of the entrée.”

Gabriel turned from a skillet. “Snapper!” he said shortly, and turned back.

“You certainly are,” Natasha said.

Kate stepped forward with a plate of chopped carrots, appeasing all with appetizers. “So, Adam, a couple bottles of white?”

“Sounds good. Can I kidnap one of you who knows about wine? If I go alone I’m bound to come back with lighter fluid.”

“Well,” Kate said, extending an arm out. I noticed she had done her nails for tonight. “Natasha needs to bake the brie, and Gabriel needs to cook, and the hostess certainly can’t leave, so would you, Flannery?”

“Would I? Would I?” I said, and everybody laughed except Adam; it was a favorite joke of the Basic Eight God forgive me, but it’s easier to write that nickname than list us all individually. It goes like this: A man loses his job, goes to a bar and gets drunk, and gets into a car accident while driving home. When he gets to the hospital he is told that his eye needs to be replaced with a prosthetic. His recent unemployed status fixed firmly in his mind, he prices several models: an amazingly lifelike and amazingly costly porcelain model, a reasonably lifelike and reasonably costly glass orb and finally the bottom of the line, which he chooses. It’s made of wood.

He wakes up from surgery, looks in the mirror, and embarks on the life of a hermit for the next fifteen years. Heedless of the pleas of his friends, he refuses to socialize or even leave the house. Finally, a friend comes to see him, gets him tipsy and drags him to a discotheque. Our hero sits in a corner, hoping the dim ambience is hiding what looks like an ugly mahogany periscope dangling from his face. Then, across a crowded room–the camera swooping between extras–he spots a beautiful woman, sitting quietly alone, who stuns him from her feet to her–the camera sliding up her body–glabrous head! A bald woman! Someone who will understand his pain! Someone undoubtedly alone, because she, too, feels incapacitated by a medically induced deficiency on the head! Breathlessly, he rushes to her and shyly asks, “Would you care to dance?”

Her eyes light up. “Would I?” she repeats. “Would I?”

He turns and stalks away, but not before shouting, “Baldy! Baldy!”

Nothing made me happier than hearing Adam’s laughter bounce off Kate’s hill and up into the crisp night sky. “That’s wonderful,” he said. “Wonderful. So deliciously evil.”

It was like I was already drunk by the time we arrived at the liquor store. Rows and rows of perfect green bottles shimmered around me like some perfect Egyptian reeds. From the corner of my eye the word “GIN” looked like the word “BEGIN.” Even the poses of cigarette poster models didn’t seem frozen but poised. Everyone was holding their breath (breaths? Who cares.), and for the first time I felt like they wouldn’t be disappointed. It was like watching a movie and the two famous people first meet and you sit in the dark grinning because you know how it ends: They’re going to fall in love.

We walked back, each with a bottle, and in the light of the street lamps our shadows looked almost identical. In the movies we would have kissed, but this being paper and not celluloid, we just talked. We discussed being back at school, how neither of us has done any work on college applications and whether Flora Habstat would really quote The Guinness Book of World Records.

When we got back the season had truly begun: Darling Mud on the stereo (loud music during cooking, quiet during dinner. Immutable.) and all the guests. V__ and Jennifer Rose Milton, with a slightly geeky-looking Flora Habstat in tow, were tied for most gorgeous, both in black silk pants to their embarrassment. Douglas, of course, was in linen, and, wincing at “on and on and on,” was already flipping through records looking for dinner music. It’s always his job, that and bringing flowers. Douglas is crazy about flowers. Natasha, who has gone out with him too, said that it felt like he was constantly giving her vaginas, but I felt nothing indecent; I just felt a little overwhelmed by all the xylem and phloem. But Douglas must have been pulling out all financial stops for Lily or something, because there was just a simple vase of daisies on the table. V__ begged Kate to let her polish something. V__ has some strange urges from being raised so rich and one of them is that she needs to have things polished before she can eat off of them. Kate scraped up some silver polish for her, and V__ spent the next fifteen minutes polishing some serving forks which were probably made of stainless steel but it made her happy. By the time we all sat down at the table the serving forks could have lit the room without the candles. Next to all the other tableware they looked like great shining daggers, fresh and ready to claim the life of someone close to us and throw the rest of us into turmoil and heartbreak. Not that Adam was killed with daggers, but it seemed like a good time to foreshadow.

Before we ate came the toasts. Kate, at the head of the table where she belonged and where she will always belong, clinked her glass. “Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen, to the first dinner party of the season.”

“The season?” Flora Habstat said. “You guys really have a season? Like football?”

V__ looked at Flora in what is described in books as “archly.” “Not at all,” she said huffily, “like football.”

“It’s just an expression. Kate means the first of the school year,” Jennifer Rose Milton explained hurriedly.

Kate sailed on like a queen. “I think we should all go around the table, each of us presenting a toast. I will go first.” She cleared her throat and looked down as if collecting her thoughts, though I suspected she wrote the speech this afternoon. She raised her glass by the stem, as V__ had instructed us to do two years ago at our first dinner party. I cringe when I think it was just spaghetti with marinara and garlic bread. We all followed suit, and as my glass cooled my fingertips I felt connected to a long line of literary circles: Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker, and what’s-her-name, Virginia Woolf, Byron and his friends, even Shakespeare and Company. I was acting in a tradition.

“To all of my guests, both frequent and infrequent,” Kate said, bowing regally to Flora Habstat and Adam. “May we generally be happy, generally be witty, generally be honest, but above all always be interesting.” We clinked and drank.

Gabriel, the next in clockwise order, was looking at Kate oddly. “And may we always be friends,” he said. “That’s my toast. Better friends than interesting.”

“Please,” Natasha said at my right, “better chicken than egg. Who cares?”

“Obviously you don’t,” Gabriel said. It grew deathly cold.

“I do believe I still smell that brie,” Kate said, and we all laughed. Kate glowed at her bon mot briefly before nodding for Douglas to go next.

Douglas cleared his throat. “This may sound dire, but I would like to toast to the hope of making it through this year. When my sister was a senior she never really told me what was going on, but she was really stressed and worried and cried a lot. I think that sort of stuff can really test friendships, and so I want to toast to being careful and trying to make it through.” He raised his glass and we all slowly followed. Douglas always was a worrywart, but this seemed darker. Even the clinking of our glasses seemed to be at a lower pitch. For a second I almost ran to him and held him but then I didn’t.

Lily looked like the burden was on her to lighten the tone, but snappy jokes aren’t her style. She plans things out. She looked at her plate and then out at us. “Here’s to rising above petty obstacles.”

“Must we?” Kate asked. “What should we fight about, if not silly things like how to bake the brie? Must we reserve fighting for deep emotional conflicts?”

“I’m sorry. My toast was inaccurate.” Lily narrowed her eyes. “Here’s to letting our favorite superficial things, like baking brie, replace whatever other superficial things, like, say, college applications, may get in our way.” With that, everyone drank; thinking about college applications tends to make us thirsty. “Amen!” cried Gabriel and Natasha in unison, and they looked at each other across the table, tried to scowl and finally grinned.

Flora Habstat was next and looked uncertain. She had been looking uncertain since we all sat down. Finally her eyes lit up hopefully and she raised her glass. “Here’s to being pushed to the limit academically, athletically and socially!” The PTA slogan. At one of our dinner parties. The trouble with everyone trying not to laugh at once is that you can’t look anywhere for fear of meeting someone’s eyes. We all stared at different points in space in tableau, like a table full of mannequins.

Jennifer Rose Milton, at the opposite head of the table, tried to save the day. “I make the same toast as Flora, only more generalized.” Whether she is more kind or more beautiful is completely up for grabs in my book. “May all the clichés people try to sell us about this time in our lives come true. I mean, it would be nice to be pushed to the limit academically, athletically and socially, wouldn’t it? It would be nice to have the greatest time of our lives and to have our eyes shining with promise and all that, wouldn’t it?”

We all nodded dumbly; if we had opened our mouths we still might have laughed at poor Flora.

Natasha was the only one who had the guts to push us to the limit socially by trying to break our pent-up laughter. “In that case,” she said, her voice mock-softening, “I toast to world peace.”

“You know,” Flora Habstat said brightly, “I read in The Guinness Book of World Records that world peace is the most frequent toast at official functions.”

We couldn’t hold it. We all laughed loud and long, and luckily Flora Habstat looked confused rather than hurt so I think she didn’t know what we were laughing at. “If it would be all right with our hostess,” I said while everyone was still laughing, “I vote to dispense with the rest of the toasts. After world peace there’s little else to toast.”

Kate looked a little disappointed but didn’t push it. “I suppose. Well, let’s eat.”

Gabriel went to get the plates that he had been keeping warm in the oven. V__ got up to help. Adam, at my left due to Kate’s tactful place cards, turned to me gratefully. I could smell aftershave, just faintly. “How can I ever thank you for bailing me out of thinking of a clever toast?”

Sipping without nibbling made me bold. “Another bottle of wine via your fake ID?” I said. “Wine’s scarce round these underage parts.”

“Done,” he said. “Though you’ll have to come with me and give out advice. I’ll call you.”

“I’ll call you.” Just like that. One dinner party and I’m already miles ahead of all those soul-searching aerograms.

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 12TH

Pardon the stains; I forgot to get a spoon so I had to stir the coffee with my finger. I’m on the living room couch, watching a televangelist with the sound turned down, one hand on the phone. It’s almost eleven and I’m waiting for the check-in calls to begin. In order to draw up a comprehensive summary of the dinner party I will draw some topic headings and then write down quotes as each member calls.

THE PARTY IN GENERAL

Kate: I think it went very, very well, don’t you, Flan? I suppose we were all a bit rusty, but that’s to be expected after a summer of entertaining ourselves.

 

Jennifer Rose Milton: Lovely.

 

Natasha: It killed me. It really killed me.

 

Gabriel: It was OK. I don’t think I was in the mood for it.

 

Douglas: (N.B. All quotes from Douglas are via Lily. Douglas had to leave early the next morning to visit his father and stepmother, who are in themselves the source behind the Grimm Brothers’ step parent angst.) He had a very nice time, particularly after an apparently horrific lesson at the Conservatory.

 

Lily: I had a very nice time, too. Why are you asking me these questions like you’re writing down the answers?

 

V__: I wish I had arrived earlier so everything would have been polished. We could have had it at my house except my parents were entertaining.

 

Adam:

THE VERDICT ON ADAM

Kate: I’m all for it. I’ll do anything I think of to help you. I remember how hard it was when Garth and I first started our relationship, so let me know what I can do. (It was hard not to giggle. Kate loves to discuss relationships using everything she learned from her relationship with Garth, which was her only relationship and was one and a half weeks in duration.)

 

Jennifer Rose Milton: He seems nice, but not really my type. (She wouldn’t elaborate on what was her type, or if she were in fact typing. A coy mistress, Ms. Milton.)

 

Natasha: Certainly delicious-looking. That shirt begged for unbuttoning, but I don’t think I could steal him away from you, dear. Whatever did you tell him on your wine walk that kept him so entranced all evening?

 

Gabriel: He seemed, well, acceptable, Flannery. I don’t know. Don’t ask me these things. I’m too, um, protective of you, I think.

 

Douglas: Douglas suspected that he studied under the Suzuki method, which he disapproves of, but that can’t be helped.

 

Lily: Very charming, Flan, but I don’t know what lurks underneath that charm.

 

V__: Snap him up, Flannery Culp! So polite! So well groomed! I didn’t know they made them like that in public school anymore.

 

Adam:

THE VERDICT ON FLORA HABSTAT

Kate: Who? Oh, yes. Do you have to ask? She hasn’t even called to thank me and it’s nearly noon.

 

Jennifer Rose Milton: I think she was trying a little too hard, but she really is very nice, don’t you think?

 

Natasha: Did I call it on The Guinness Book or what, Flan?

 

Gabriel: Well, I suppose she’s very nice, but I think a little, how should I put it, non-exciting. A dud, frankly. I don’t really mean that. I’m sure her friends like her very much.

 

Douglas: He didn’t say anything about her.

 

Lily: I myself thought that she either had an incredibly subtle deadpan sense of humor and was laughing at us all night, or was very slow. It’s sometimes so hard to tell.

 

V__: Well, she helped clear the table.

 

Adam:

 

Adam:

 

Adam:

 

ADAM:

Vocabulary:

CONFIDANTE

EPIPHANY

UNREQUITED

ELEPHANTINE

EUPHEMISMS

Study Questions:

1. Did you understand the difference between authority and authoritarianism? Answer honestly.

 

2. V—, in reality, has more than one letter in her name. Why do you think Flannery calls her V—in her journal? (Hint: V—’s family is extremely wealthy and could influence publishers to keep any of their relatives out of a book that could damage the family’s reputation.)

 

3. The stories of great operas contain thwarted love, jealous anger and violent murder and are called great art. Yet others who demonstrate these things have been punished. Isn’t this hypocritical? Discuss.

 

4. You have undoubtedly seen photographs of Flannery Culp in newspapers and magazines. Is she fat? Be honest.

Monday September 13

Sophomore year, Miss Mills, an English teacher rumored to be an ex-nun, taught us all about pathetic fallacy: If a character in literature is feeling a particular emotion acutely, the inanimate surroundings–you know, weather, landscape, stuff like that–tend to accentuate that mood. Thus armed to work as a literary editor, I checked the weather when I stepped outside for the bus, knowing it would tell me how Friday’s Calc test would turn out. The skies were gray, but it wasn’t raining–I figured maybe C or C+. I began to trudge up the hill, only to speed my pace up to a bleary shuffle; Adam’s tall thin shape was half a block ahead of me. I tried not to run so I wouldn’t be too obvious: “Adam? (pant, pant) I didn’t see you…”

“Adam?” I called out, ten paces behind him. Adam turned around and looked at me quizzically. It wasn’t Adam; it was Frank Whitelaw. At that very moment the clouds broke.

Frank Whitelaw took a full three seconds to look up at the sky and then back at me. If it were anyone else it would be a masterpiece of deadpan timing; with Frank Whitelaw you knew that three seconds was top neural synapse speed. (I’m not sure if that biological term is correct because, as you know, I cut Biology all the time because I’m an academic flaky failure.) Frank Whitelaw was on the stage crew and I always suspected that some heavy prop had fallen on his head. Natasha’s theory was heavy drug use, and Kate’s had to do with his last name. She said anything that sounded so much like neo-Nazism was probably the result of in-breeding.

He opened his backpack and took out an umbrella. Held it up over the both of us. It was like being protected by a big, friendly ape. Outside the monsoon raged and dribbled. We struggled up the hill.

I was still dripping from the downpour of pathetic fallacy when I got my 13. At first I didn’t know what it meant: a circled number 13 at the top of my paper. 13th place? There were about forty-five students in the class. Then slowly, the carbonation of truth burped up into the front of my brain: 13 out of 100. 13%. If there were a train wreck and only 13% of the passengers lived, it would be called a catastrophe. I glanced down the paper and saw the red checks that pointed out tiny bits of correctly attempted equations like survivors in the mud, thrashing around amidst the inked X’s of the bridge that, ill-conceived and badly constructed, had fallen at the first testing. Baker’s explanations of “the more difficult problems”–meaning there were some that were actually supposed to be easy–blurred by me like ambulance chasers as I sat gaping at the wreckage. Did they have good English Literature programs at Community Junior College? There I would be, living at home while my friends wrote cheery letters from ivy-covered libraries filled with creaky first editions. Dear Flannery, Having a wonderful time. You would really love it here. Too bad about that Calc test.

Given that he didn’t call yesterday and that he isn’t even in my Calc class, there’s no reason why I should have felt Adam’s hand on my shoulder, strong and comforting, but I did. It was only when I turned around that I discovered it was Mr. Baker.

“Hey,” he said gruffly. “Don’t worry, it’s only the first test.” I looked around; sometime in my daze class had been let go. “You know, I don’t think that it’s that you didn’t know the material. You just panicked. You know what you did wrong?” I let him answer his own question because the only answer I could think of was, “Think up short story ideas every day during class?”

“You didn’t follow Baker’s Rule,” he said. What was he talking about? I looked down at my book; it was covered.

“You want to hear Baker’s Rule?” he asked with what he must have thought was a winning smile. I’m sure I had on a losing frown, myself. I was too numb with failure to think of all these wordplays but I could have thought of them so I’ve written them in now.

“Baker’s Rule is: do something. Never just stare at a problem that you think you can’t solve. Do something. And this doesn’t just apply to Calculus, believe me.” He patted my head a little too hard. “OK, Flannery?”

“OK,” I said. Thanks so much, Mr. Baker. I feel so much better now. Do something. Why waste his talents on Calculus when he could be such an effective presidential aide? Next period I have to go to choir to see a man who doesn’t love me and if they get to the Cs, sing for him all by myself, and during lunch I have to track down Jim Carr and apologize for cutting Bio on Thursday otherwise he too will mortify me in front of the entire class. Hattie Lewis is now telling us that tomorrow we’ll study “The Day of Doom.” I want to tell her she’s a day late.

Adam opened the door and called my name and I walked in and realized that it wasn’t Adam who had opened the door, it was Johnny Hand, the drunken nightclub singer and alleged choir teacher. What a powerful word, alleged. What an important word it has become to me. He smiled at me a little unsteadily and walked out of the little room, leaving me alone with someone else. I was pretty sure it was Adam but I’d made that mistake too many times already.

As you’ve been noticing, I hope, today’s journal entry keeps telling you that I think other people are Adam. I’ve put this in there not only to make you realize the full universality and ferocity of my love but to demonstrate the chaotic randomness of the entire crime, indeed the entire situation. In other words: Adam could have been anyone. Our bodies, our material “selves” are, ironically, immaterial.

But it was Adam. I was alone with Adam, in this stuffy little audition room. The situation felt clinical so I reacted accordingly. “Well, Dr. State,” I said, “I’ve been having this pain in my neck for going on four years now, and I think it may be high school. Will you check it out?” I sat in a folding chair.

Adam looked up from his Musical Director Notes. “Are you trying to tell me you want to play doctor, Ms. Culp?”

“Please,” I said, batting my eyelashes. “It’s Miss Culp.” We both laughed. I could scarcely believe how charming and flirtatious I was managing to be. Maybe I was channeling Natasha through some incident of black magic or something.

Yes, I really did say that. But I was kidding. I have never been involved in black magic in any way, shape or form. Please write your senator. More on this later.

“I was happy to see your name next on the list,” Adam said. “If I heard one more tone-deaf alto I was going to lose my mind.”

The spirit of Natasha was exorcised in one swift blow. “Um,” I said. “Um.” Not quite as witty and alluring. “Um, I’m a tone-deaf alto, myself.”

Adam winced. “Oh,” he said. “Well, I didn’t mean–some of my best friends are tone-deaf altos. Alti, rather.” He grinned sheepishly at me.

“Do I need to sing in front of you?”

“Are you really a tone-deaf alto?”

“I’m afraid so. Roewer doesn’t think that running the literary magazine or being in plays fulfills the creative arts requirement, so I have to do something.”

“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll put you down as an alto. You don’t need to sing.”

“Thanks.” I got up to go. If he called me back, I decided, then he liked me.

“Don’t go yet,” he said, reviving my faith in a Divine Being. And no, Mrs. State, not Beelzebub. “Let’s pretend I’m auditioning you. I need some kind of break from the parade of alleged singers. Just talk to me for a minute.”

“OK.” I sat back down in the folding chair. “What should we talk about?”

“Let’s talk about that kooky dinner party. I had a great time. Do you guys do that often?”

Kooky? I could hear Kate screech in my head. “Well, that was the first one of the year, but yes, we do it a lot. Beats renting movies or something, don’t you think so?”

“Definitely. I just hope I get invited back.”

“Well, if you play your cards right…”

“Um, listen, I feel like I haven’t been.” He cleared his throat. “Playing my cards right. I’m sorry I haven’t said anything about your letters.”

I held my breath. Sometimes it’s best to keep quiet–not very often, I don’t think, but sometimes–and this was one of them. I cleared my throat and began. “Don’t worry about it. They were probably impossible to answer–particularly the last postcard. I was, I don’t know, caught up in Italy or something. There was no way you could have answered–particularly the last postcard. I’m sorry. Summer can be so strange. It removes all context or something. It’s like being in a vacuum. I just wrote you, that’s all, I’ve been trying to apologize for it for a while but I didn’t. But I will now. Apologize, that is–particularly for the last postcard. I know that you haven’t known what to make of the letters, and I’m grateful that you haven’t told my friends that it’s been me writing them, but you needn’t worry about them–particularly the last postcard. I’ll just pretend that I never wrote to you, and you can just pretend that you never received them–particularly the last postcard. I mean, we can still be friends, or acquaintances, or whatever we are–dinner partners–but we can just pretend all that Chianti-laced wide-eyed correspondence never happened–particularly the last postcard.” When I go to see a play and somebody makes a speech that lengthy, I’m embarrassed, and it’s a play. People are supposed to be making speeches that lengthy in a play. This isn’t a play.

“What postcard? I didn’t get any postcard,” he said. “I just got two letters, very nice letters, and I wanted to thank you for them.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Did you send me a postcard, too?” He stood up and walked over to me. In another world, I could have just leaned in and kissed him. Perhaps it would have made a difference. I could have moved fast. Instead I just thought fast.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought I did. But I wrote so many postcards.”

“I didn’t tell anybody you wrote them,” he said, “because I thought that people would think they were love letters.” He moved his hands slightly, palms up, in a gesture that meant I don’t know what. “I thought maybe they were love letters.”

Now it was his turn to kiss me, don’t you think? “I thought that maybe they were love letters.” Distantly, a sound of warm violins. He steps closer. Slight swelling (of the music, of course). And then a kiss. It didn’t happen. I couldn’t stand it. “I thought that maybe they were love letters,” and then nothing.

“Maybe they were,” I said, and I stood up myself and left the room. I wanted to slam the door, but it was one of those public-school doors that just wheeze closed. Swish. The rest of the choir looked up at me for a second. “Next!” I called off-handedly, and strode out the door.

 

It is the moment that followed–the end of fourth period on Monday September 13th at Roewer High School–that the loudest birds of the gaggle of attending quacks have proclaimed to be the impetus for what has been called everything from “a series of unfortunate behaviors” (Dr. Eleanor Tert) to “the most bloodthirsty of teenage acts I have ever discussed on my program” (“Dr.” Winnie Moprah, the degree is honorary from a school of dubious academic reputation). Tert’s book Crying Too Hard to Be Scared says:

It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of this psychosexual voyeuristic moment in Culp’s adolescence. [What rubbish! Of course she could overemphasize the importance of it. What if she said: “This psychosexual voyeuristic moment in Culp’s adolescence was responsible for world hunger”? That would be overemphasis, wouldn’t it? That’s what’s wrong with the coverage of my story: not so much bias as inaccuracy.] Imagine Culp, in the aftermath of one of the first moments of sexual awakening in her argument with her eventual victim [again: inaccuracy. He was not my victim.], wandering in a sexualized daze to the office of a teacher whom she trusted, seeking advice and counseling [inaccuracy, inaccuracy, inaccuracy]. Yet when she walks in she finds her teacher betraying her trust, indeed the very trust of the teaching profession, locked in an embrace with a student [inaccuracy]. It was the ultimate betrayal for young Culp, and triggered a horrific, though slightly delayed, response–much like Poe and his mother’s death as discussed in my first chapter [horrific and not at all delayed amounts of inaccuracy].

And even putting aside facts for a minute, Dr. Tert’s description has serious semantic problems. Embrace is too elegant a term for what Carr was doing. Just about the only accurate thing Eleanor said was that I walked down the hallway and into a classroom. Unlit Bunsen burners and half-dead tadpoles and faded color posters of the digestive system all greeted me, but Carr was nowhere to be seen. Off the main classroom was Carr’s office, which we weren’t supposed to go in because it contained dangerous chemicals. I heard a scuffling from it, like a rustling of paper. “Mr. Carr?” I called out, cautiously, and put my hand on the half-open door.

“I don’t know,” I heard someone say, softly.

“Mr. Carr?” I asked again, and pushed the door open all the way.

Mr. Carr was in one of those phony white lab coats that biology teachers wear in an apparent effort to look like they’re in an aspirin commercial. At first it just looked like he was standing there, grinning at his desk, but when I followed his gaze I saw the teaching assistant half sprawled on the blotter, watching him warily. He leaned in and kissed her again. His hand was on her skirt, high up. She said, softly, “I don’t know.” It was not a coy “I don’t know.” It was a wary “I don’t know.” It was not “I don’t know, why don’t you choose the position?” It was “I don’t know if I should be in this position.” He leaned in and kissed her again. I didn’t move. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t supposed to be seeing this and I was pretty sure that it wasn’t supposed to be happening at all. Talk about dangerous chemicals. “Come on,” he said, somewhere between seduction and irritation.

The teaching assistant’s eyes were half closed, but she saw me anyway. “Ohmygod!” She sat up suddenly and bumped her head on a low-hanging shelf of petri dishes.

Mr. Carr whirled around and looked at me. His eyes were bright and scary. “What do you want?” he yelled. “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry I cut class Thursday,” I said, backing out of the room.

“I’m in a meeting!” he yelled. “This is my office! You have no right to come in here!” He pounded the door as I scurried past the tadpoles, the posters. A chair clattered to the floor. “Get out!” I got out. In the hallway, some people had heard all the bellowing and were staring at me: a couple of guys were sitting on the floor, their backs against their lockers, open textbooks in their laps, a girl with dyed-black hair, a dallying janitor. I ran to the stairway and heard somebody running behind me, running after me. Carr kissing her wasn’t scary. Carr yelling was scary, and now he was coming after me.

The girl with the dyed-black hair grabbed my arm as I hit the ground floor. “Leave me alone,” I said, and then realized it was Natasha. I hugged her, hard. I could hear my own breathing, hard. The sound of that breathing is something I’ll never forget.

“What the fuck?” she said, all snarling lipstick and fingernails. “What the fuck was he shouting at?”

“I went in to apologize for cutting class on Thursday,” I said. I was still breathing. I sounded like an iron lung.

“Take your time,” she said. “Here, sit down. You sound like an iron lung.” We sat down on the second-to-last step. I rubbed at my face. Some people look good when they’re crying, but I’m not one of them so I tried my hardest to stop. The sound of Carr shouting began to dim in my mind’s ear, and instead I began to hear, over and over, the plunk of the teaching assistant’s head against the petri shelf. I started to laugh.

Mind’s ear? I don’t know.

Natasha looked at me warily, the way you look at someone when they shake, then cry, then laugh. A shadow fell over us and we looked up and saw our vice principal, a fat black man who always wore plaid vests and expressions of self-righteousness. His name is Mr. Mokie–pronounced so as to rhyme with “okey dokey.” He likes to tell people to think of him as a friend and not just a vice principal. Natasha eats those sort of people alive.

“No sitting in the stairways, girls,” he said. “Fire marshal’s rules.”

“I am the fire marshal,” Natasha snarled. “We’re having a drill.”

“Look,” Mr. Mokie said. “I don’t make the rules, girls. Think of me as a friend, not just a vice principal. After all, the final word in principal is pal. Now move along.”

“Pals don’t tell me to move along,” Natasha said. “We’re just going to sit here for a minute, OK? Let us break your stupid rules just once. We won’t report you to der Führer.”

Mr. Mokie wrinkled his brow. “I don’t speak French,” he said. “Anyway, they’re not my rules. I don’t want to give you detention, but I have to. My hands are tied.”

“Nobody’s making you,” Natasha said.

“If you don’t follow the rules, I have to do it. My hands are tied.”

“Don’t give me any ideas!” I screamed. I could hear the echo, bouncing way up the stairwell to the top floor and beyond, where God and the fire marshal live. It was a raw sound. Mr. Mokie scampered away, presumably to fetch some paperwork.

Natasha turned to me, clearly impressed. “Nice work. Pretty soon you’re not going to need me around.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.

We smiled at each other, friends. “So what happened?” she asked. “We fought for the conversation spot, we’d better have the conversation.”

“I can’t talk about it,” I said. “Why don’t you just read about it?” I reached in the bag and took out my journal. Her eyebrows shot up; I never let anybody even touch the journal. “Go ahead,” I said. I flipped it open to the right page and handed it to her. She looked at me again and then just sat there. Read it, right up to the part where I handed her the journal. Oh, wait. That won’t work. I can’t have written it down yet. All this goddamn clanging.

The bell clanged–rang, rather. “I have to go to Civics,” I said.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Natasha said, handing the journal back to me.

“Don’t tell anybody about this!” I shouted, and she ran back up the stairs, a girl with dyed-black hair. I walked dumbly into Civics, slunk into a chair, and wrote everything down.

Jennifer Rose Milton whispered to me that Maman had had too much red wine with some dinner guests last night, so today in French Millie corrected papers behind sunglassed eyes while we split into groups and read dialogues out loud to one another. What did you put in the soup that night? Shallots and a little red wine. Red wine! Goodness! Wasn’t that expensive to purchase? No, no, not if you go to that store on the corner of Lake and Forest. Lake and Forest? Sounds too pastoral for a modern girl like me! Ha ha ha ha ha! Did you get the shallots at the market? Yes, and I had to go to four stores before I found fresh vegetables. They are so rare in these (can’t translate) French times. Did you see your teacher hitting on the teaching assistant? Yes, I did. Was she enjoying herself? No, she wasn’t. I think my teacher was too slimy for a modern girl like her! Ha ha ha ha ha! What (can’t translate) times we have here at Roewer!

Tuesday September 14th

LA BOHEME

Act Two: A square in the Latin Quarter. On one side is the Café Momus. Mimi and Rodolfo move about within the crowd. Colline is nearby at a ragwoman’s stand. Schaunard is buying a pipe and a trumpet. Marcello is pushed here and there by the throng. It is evening. Christmas Eve.

Act Two: A square of desks in the Roewer Quarter. On one side is the Café Millie, where Jennifer Rose Milton and her mother are in quiet exclusionary conversation. Douglas and Lily are nearby, staring into each other’s eyes. So far away as to be scarcely visible, somebody feels like a ragwoman: Flannery. It is morning. Nowhere near Christmas break.

 

It was a low turnout for Grand Opera Breakfast. Douglas, dressed rather informally in a coat and tie rather than a matching suit, talked to me once, to point out some irregularity in the time signature of the opening horn part, or some regularity, I don’t remember. Lily smiled at me, then turned her head until she was smiling at Douglas. Jennifer Rose Milton looked up from tete-a-tete avec Maman as I walked in and gave a half wave before turning back. Everybody was paired up. Even the lovers in La Boheme hadn’t run into any trouble yet, singing in the café like fools. I sat down at the table myself and munched too many doughnuts. Good plan, Flan; scarf down pastries and then surely you’ll be noticed more. Though I guess I could attain some sideshow freak value…

The pastry calories must have worked–Jim Carr, for one, managed to spot me from a mile away. “In my office,” he said briskly, propelling me by the elbow into that same room, the tadpoles, the Bunsen burners, everything. A few kids were in there for homeroom already, reading comic books–the kind of kids who show up early for homeroom and sit around and read comic books, waiting for their lives to start. I flexed my cell walls and stood firm. Those sort of kids make good witnesses. Whatever he had to say to me he could say here in the classroom and not alone in his sleazy office.

Little did I know. “She was always strange,” kids like that would say, only a few months later. “I suspected from the outset.” Hardly the stuff of good witnesses.

“In my office,” he repeated as I stopped at the poster of the digestive system.

“Alone in your office?” I said loudly, and a couple of the kids looked up from the latest issue of The Tarantula Team Adventure Series. Jim Carr flushed slightly. Behind him, the small and large intestines seemed to curl forward as if to wrap themselves around his neck. His voice lowered accordingly to a strangled half whisper, when somebody wants to be quiet and yell at you at the same time. His eyes were scary again. Nobody was going to step into this conversation. Nobody was going to rescue me. The intestines were only a poster.

“I wanted to apologize for yelling at you yesterday,” he said in what is called in books, low tones. “I shouldn’t have talked to you that way.” He folded his arms and waited for me to say something. “Well?”

I looked around nervously. The homeroomers were lost in their bustling metropolises again. They knew what to expect; the mutants would be routed. But what did Carr expect? “Your apology is accepted,” I mumbled, and started toward the door.

He touched me again. He had me by the elbow again. “Well?” he said again.

I couldn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know,” I said.

“I expected an apology from you, for barging into my office like that,” he said, and happily, that did it. He sounded so bureaucratic that he no longer sounded like a madman; he sounded like Mr. Mokie. Confrontations with bureaucratic idiots I could handle.

“In that case, I’m sorry I barged into your office like that. See you sixth period,” I said, and then turned toward the door. Kids began to stream in and sit down.

“Wait!” he called, sensing his power over me was somehow ebbing despite his continued grasp on my elbow. “You are not to mention our encounter in my office to anyone. You haven’t told anyone, have you?” Now he couldn’t meet my eyes, but I looked straight at him. “Don’t tell anyone, OK?” His desperation overrode his ability to produce a winning smile; he moved the corners of his mouth upward but all I saw were teeth.

“See you sixth period, Mr. Carr,” I said, and left. The hallways were quiet; I was late for homeroom.

“You’re late for homeroom!” Mr. Dodd called out as I entered.

Suddenly I was too weary to answer. “Sorry,” I said, and sat down.

Natasha shook her head and walked out of her seat to come talk to me. “Sorry,” she said, in, a “we are not amused” voice, “was a sorry response to Dodd’s dud.”

I looked back at her. “I refuse to answer sentences containing an overabundance of alliteration,” I said. “I just came from Carr’s room.”

“I meant to ask you about that,” she said, and took out her all-important nail file again. “What happened?”

As I told her, she filed her nails harder and harder until I thought I’d see sparks. “That shit,” she said, “Trying to make you feel bad for catching him with someone. We ought to do something.”

She sounded like she was reciting Baker’s Rule. “Do something,” I said. “What can we do? She’s not actually a student, so it’s not like it’s illegal or something, so we can’t tell anybody.”

“I already told Kate,” she said. “Soon everyone will know.”

“Jesus, Natasha,” I said. “I’ll get in trouble.”

“For entering a teacher’s office during lunch? I don’t think so.” She shook her head. Her hair moved like a shampoo commercial, if people in shampoo commercials dyed their hair black. “But maybe he will. It’s certainly unethical if not illegal.” She smirked at me. “Don’t worry, we’ll do something. Trust me.”

The bell rang.

Wednesday September 15th

After school, Drama Club finally started: after drama, the drama. Ron Piper is an angel in a black turtleneck, though everybody looks like angels in black turtlenecks so maybe it’s hard to tell. Ron Piper, our beloved drama teacher, even thinner and, incredibly enough, even more effeminate than I remember, bounced all around the stage, welcoming us to what he hoped would be a “brilliant theatrical year,” coyly refusing to tell us what play we’d be putting on, and apologizing for not showing up last week. The most exciting announcement he had was–is this an act of cosmic synchronicity or what?–that eight free tickets to the San Francisco Theater production of Hamlet were in his possession, to be given to the eight people who could name the most plays by the Bard himself. Well, all eight of us weren’t there–Lily is too immersed in classical music to venture out onto the stage, and V__’s bitchy mother says that the Roewer stage is too common for a oops I can’t say her last name, but you get the idea. But the six of us who were there began screaming out the names of them, mercilessly drowning out the voices of the ten thousand shy freshman girls who show up for Drama Club every year, audition inaudibly and end up selling refreshments to parents at intermission. Why do shy people invariably show up for Drama, anyway? Do their shyness coaches make them go? One of them actually guessed Cyrano de Bergerac, if you can believe it. Yeah, honey, Shakespeare also wrote in French; he was Canadian, you know.

Am I a snob?

In either case I don’t know why I’m blabbing on and on about petty details when you’re waiting for the point of the story. I got one, Jennifer Rose Milton got one, Gabriel got one, Douglas, Natasha of course and Kate who named a bunch of historical plays I hadn’t even heard of, and Flora Habstat got one (W. S. must be Most Famous Playwright in The Guinness Book) but I could tolerate her next to me in a dark theater and just when Ron was about to hand over the last ticket to one of the shy twerps and I was thinking that with my luck I’d end up sitting next to her answering her stupid whispered questions all night (“Why is Ophelia acting so weird?”) from the back of our cavernous auditorium came the booming shout, “Cymbeline!”

I don’t have to tell you who it was, do I? You know that when a booming shout comes from nowhere, it’s the romantic hero. He walked grandly down the center aisle as Ron, grinning (and I think I could detect a look in Monsieur Piper’s eye that would confirm conservative school board members’ suspicions about hiring people of Ron’s, shall we say, persuasion; I wanted to hiss at him, Bette Davis-like, He’s mine, Ronny), handed Adam the ticket. Adam had the ticket to ride, and if you think this baby don’t care you probably don’t know that it was Moliere who wrote Cyrano.

Adam took the ticket and told Ron he couldn’t stay; he just wanted to make sure his name was on the Drama Club list. “Dentist,” he said, pointing to his straight clean teeth, and when he saw me looking at him he winked at me.

I mean, OK, winking is a little, I don’t know, horny-old-uncle, but Adam did it with just the right amount of self-consciousness, with a hint of rogue. Panache–it was very Cyrano. So much can be said, erased with a gesture like that. Well, not erased. The love wasn’t erased, or even the ache, but its context changed. I didn’t feel the despair, like my shoes were filled with rain and I just figured out that I had been waiting at the wrong bus stop for an hour and a half and that Adam didn’t give a shit about me. Now the tension I felt about Adam was laced with expectation, rather than pain. Like Adam was biding his time, waiting to make his perfect entrance into my life, the way he strode into the auditorium at precisely the right moment and turned my dread of an evening with a Shyness Patient into something that could be called, with only minimal overinterpretation, a date with Adam. A date with the man I love. Cymbeline. None of us had mentioned Cymbeline. Had it been the proper century I would have swooned. Did I say that already?

LATER

One last note: Because everyone else went on ahead, by the time I reached the bus stop, my head still in the clouds, the bus had come and taken all my friends away. Bored, hungry, I sat on the bench, and who should sit next to me but Carr’s assistant. Talk about awkward. “Hi, what’s up since my high school teacher made a pass at you?”

“Not much,” she sighed. OK, really I just said “What’s up?”; to say the rest would have pretty much been redundant. She looked tired and had folders and folders of papers with her. The Bio test, I realized. My test.

“I could save you some time,” I said. “I’ll just correct my own exam. Scout’s honor.”

She smiled, faintly. “Actually, yours is the only test that he’s correcting. He wouldn’t let me; he said it was a conflict of interest.”

Talk about awkward–oh, we already were talking about awkward. I sat there opening and closing my mouth like a baby bird. I kept starting to say something. On my third try she interrupted me, although I don’t know if you can call it interrupting if the other person hasn’t said anything.

“He’s a shit,” she said. I don’t think I’d ever heard anyone in the education profession say “shit” except Millie. The bus was nowhere in sight. I became a baby bird again.

“He’s a shit,” she said again. “A perverted shit. Everybody told me I shouldn’t take the job. Everybody told me,” she said, slapping her hand against the bus map printed on the side of the stop, color-coded routes scrawling across the city like something in a biology book. “But I took it anyway. When I get home I feel so gross I don’t even want to touch my own kid.”

Her own kid. Jesus. The baby bird wants more food, more food. She looked at me and realized who I was. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. I’m just screwed,” she said. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. I’m sorry. But at the end of the semester he writes me an evaluation, and if I get a bad one then it won’t do me any good if I have a credential or not. No one will hire me. That’s what he did to the TA he had last semester, though nobody told me that”–she poked my neighborhood–“until I’d already taken the job. I shouldn’t be telling you this. But just remember”–she stood up; the bus was stopped, gurgling in front of us like a phlegmy infant–“he’s a shit. Remember that. Aren’t you getting on the bus?”

She looked at me over the pile of tests. Behind her, the bus driver, fat as hell, shot me an impatient look. “No,” I said. I stood up and took a step into a large puddle of someone’s discarded cola. Evil corporate chemical sweeteners seeped in and began to soak my sock. The bus doors closed and the infant pulled away, whining and coughing. I had just realized I needed to be waiting at the other bus stop.

Thursday September 16th

Carr didn’t read it. He didn’t fucking read it! I’m in Biology right now, and we all got our tests back, mine corrected by the teacher himself (how he must of strained himself, he who is used to his love slaves/assistants performing that task) because of, as I learned yesterday, a conflict of interest, aka Flan, caught him with his pants almost literally down, and he didn’t even read it. I just about fainted when I saw the A on top–no way did I get a smidgen of credit on that essay question, and that was one-fifth the grade–but he didn’t read it. I mean he literally didn’t read it. I turned to the page with the essay question on it and saw that I had actually written: “Biologically, these functions are important for the sustenance of a living system” and no one called me on it. What is it–an apology? A bribe? I’m flunking Math and applying to college and my love life is a roller coaster and that isn’t enough–I need this bonus Moral Dilemma.

 

“Take the A,” Natasha told me, taking a swig of her is-it-really-alcohol-or-just-water flask as she spun the steering wheel. Outside, pedestrians watched the car warily, like it might kill them. Sometimes accepting a ride home from Natasha is more stress than it’s worth, although so is Advanced Biology and I show up every day. Darling Mud blared; I ought to contact them about being compensated for endorsement when this is published.

“You know, there is a strong possibility that you actually earned it,” she said. “I’m going to run over this woman in the ugly hat.”

“That hat is not worth prison,” I said. (These parenthetical asides distract from the dialogue, I know, but can I just say: denim, plaid brim, bright yellow feathers.) “There’s no way I earned it, Natasha. I calculated it right afterward. It was a B and then only if neatness didn’t count for the sketches.”

“I’ve seen your sketches,” Natasha said. “With you it’s not an issue of neatness but semblance. You can’t seriously tell me that anyone would have pressed charges if I had destroyed that denim canary.”

“It looked like it was in a kilt, no less. Probably a canary of Scottish royalty.”

“And, as I recall,” Natasha said airily, stopping in front of my house, “we learned last year in Shakespeare that when you kill Scottish royalty the whole thing becomes a mess.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said. I got out of the car, sourly. Natasha hadn’t made me feel much better. “When shall we two meet again?”

“Tomorrow, of course,” she said, spitting gum out the open window. “Are you going to the dance tomorrow night?”

I hadn’t thought much about it. “I hadn’t thought much about it,” I said, cleverly.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Oh, well,” she said, “I know that you want to give the matter your full attention before you decide. It’s a high school dance, Flan. You know, most people aren’t so spacey when they get an unexpected A during their most important semester for college.”

“Natasha, he’s a shit!” I said. “He makes me feel yucky. I feel like I can’t touch anything because Carr slime is all over it.” I thought about the teaching assistant not wanting to touch her kid.

“Look at me,” Natasha said. I looked her right in the eyeliner. “Forget about Carr. You can’t do a thing about it, and in the meantime he’s giving you better grades than you deserve. If you had half a brain you’d play it up and you’d never have to study in that class again. Look at me, Flan. Now go inside and write in your journal and thicken up your skin a little bit. And don’t forget, ‘your life, your woe, your death: all embraced in dreams.’”

That did it. We cracked up, loud and loose. “That really was a dreadful poem,” I admitted. “Of course, as editor I’m supposed to remain objective–”

“And confidential,” Natasha said. “So you don’t have to confirm what I already know: it was a Frosh Goth creation, was it not?”

“How did you know?”

“The little State girl blushed and blushed as we all ripped into it. Very satisfying, I must say. Usually you start off the first meeting with one of your own poems so it’s actually pretty good.”

“All right, enough flattery, I’m cheered up already,” I said, and I was. I looked around, and in the foggy afternoon light my dull neighborhood looked cheerful–the lawns, the throwaway coupon books on everyone’s porch, Natasha’s gum on the street, moist as a kiss. It must have been pathetic fallacy again.

“That wasn’t flattery,” she said imperatively. “Flan, you’re extremely talented.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, poking at the gum with my shoe. I realized it was probably water in the flask–nobody drank liquor while chewing peppermint gum at the same time.

“You are,” she said, putting the car back in drive. In the back of my mind I said a silent prayer for those pedestrians who would be in Natasha’s way. Especially the ones in ugly hats. “I just know that you’re going to do something that will make the whole world sit up and take notice.”

Friday September 17

Is this funny or am I just suffused with end-of-the-week giddiness? V__’s mother won’t let her go to the dance because of some stupid (rich old family name) family commitment. Lily, Douglas, Natasha and I were sitting around at lunchtime making up catty nicknames for her. I can’t repeat any of the suggestions of nicknames, because they all play off the Queen Mother’s first and last names, both of which are of course secrets. But it makes no difference; suffice to say that the one that stuck we found hilariously funny. Satan. We laughed and laughed, there in the courtyard, Natasha with her bright red lipstick, Douglas in another one of his linen suits, this one a sort of off-white, Lily with her tortoiseshell glasses and me looking surprisingly slim, I think, in these gray pants I used to have back then. We elaborated and laughed some more, imagining cute polished mother-of-pearl horns sticking out of her carefully shellacked bun, a pitchfork kept in the elephant-foot umbrella stand in V__’s hall. Satan. Of course later this nickname would get us into heaps of trouble, but that morning it was hilarious.

OH MY IT’S LATER

Tonight tonight tonight. Those were the words to that song and how true they are. Tonight tonight tonight. I had honestly forgotten over the summer the surreal, stupid but irresistible deadly charming intensity that is a Roewer dance. Was that a sentence? I’m checking…yes it was. Subject and verb both, and that’s how I feel, too. Tonight, tonight, tonight I am both subject and verb. I can’t seem to stop moving, and you’d think a bottle of cheap champagne is a depressant, right? But as you know, you gorgeous black leather notebook, I know shit about biology. Flan, begin at the beginning, it’s a very good place to start, all those lessons about narrative structure are melting away under all this fizzy wine.

 

Two New Year’s Eves ago (how’s that for beginning at the beginning at the beginning) my parents had a party and it was no problem at all sneaking one of the five boxes of champagne up to my room during the hubbub, they were having me act as waitress all night anyway so I felt it was my due. It lives under the bed, where my parents never check (plus, the fact that my parents have disappeared this year means they never check anything). On special occasions I take out a bottle. I took one when I got home from boring boring school and called folks to see who wanted to meet early at the lake for cocktails before actually proceeding to the dance. I couldn’t get ahold of Natasha, Jennifer Rose Milton said coyly that she already had plans but would see me at the dance (of course, I would find out exactly what sort of “plans”–narrative structure, Flan, narrative structure), and Gabriel was weird about it. He said he didn’t want to get drunk with me. He said it just like that–at least I think he did. “I’ll just see you there,” he said glumly. What is up with that? Anyway, Kate was game, but by then there were too few people for me to call Lily and Douglas because I didn’t want it to be one kissy couple and the two single girls, drinking out at the lake. I’ve seen that movie; they all end up revealing deadly secrets and killing one another. Anyway Lily and Douglas didn’t even show up.

Well I showered and changed my clothes and took the bus down to the lake, clutching the champagne neck inside my backpack, feeling the delicious paranoia that only a minor clutching alcohol on public transportation can feel. Spun off the bus and sat on a log, watching the sun setting and a bunch of grimy freshman girls drinking something they’d snuck out of the house in a food storage container. They shrieked with laughter as they spilled whatever-it-was on their shirts; I remember thinking that Carr would smell the liquor on them and lead them, shaken but still tipsy-giggly, to the office to wait for their parents to pick them up. All right, I couldn’t have been thinking about Carr before I found out he was chaperoning, but you probably didn’t catch that, anyway.

“Happy New Year!” Kate cried out as I popped the cork. Kate was wearing an outfit consisting entirely of the color dark blue. She always wears outfits consisting entirely of the color dark blue, and always will wear outfits consisting entirely of the color dark blue, world without end. We gulped and giggled and talked about nothing, enjoying the Indian summer night but not the mosquitoes that flew in it. Just when the bottle was drained, what I thought was a large black backpack of one of the freshgirls looked up and it was no backpack but Rachel State, the Frosh Goth, Sister Of The Groom. She stared at me from eyes circled in what looked like coal. In fact, between her black lipstick and her black clothes and dyed black hair I would have to say her overall impression was distinctly mesquitelike. If you were bad all year and of the Christian faith, you could expect Rachel State in your stocking.

“Rachel!” I cried out, hoping I was impressing the hell out of her, “Come meet my friend Kate!”

She scowl-staggered over while her friends gaped. The bubbly must have mellowed Queen Bee Kate Gordon (did I just use the phrase the bubbly?!?), because she didn’t cringe or mock or anything; she just said hello. How ’bout that.

“Rachel is Adam State’s sister,” I told Kate brightly.

“And you–,” Rachel slurred, pointing a black nailpolished hand vaguely in my direction. “You’re the one who wrote Adam love letters all summer.”

If this were a movie–and don’t tell me it’s not melodramatic enough to be one–some great disaster would have struck right then, and we would have glossed over the mortifying moment by running to shelter, bailing out the boat, comforting the bereaved, calming the horses, anything, anything but standing there–with Kate, Queen Bee Kate Gordon no less, while the worst poet I’ve ever seen went and blabbed my only secret. But as it turned out, no tidal wave was needed; not that Lake Merced could have produced much of one.

“No, she’s not,” Kate said, without blinking. She wasn’t covering up for me; she was genuinely, drunkenly, stupid, just for a moment. Tomorrow morning, I have to drag my hungover ass out of bed and spend all my money on novena candles. If ever the proof of a Benevolent Deity, this.

“Oh,” said the Frosh Goth, closing her eyes to regain her balance. Her black lipstick was smeared like she had just eaten fudge. “Then you must be the one he really likes.” She turned to her surprisingly nonblackened friends and explained, gesturing limply. “There are two girls, one who is chasing him, one who he wants to chase.”

Fuck the novena candles, I’m sleeping late. “Come on,” I said to Kate, trying to sound bored. “Enough hanging around Merced with the Frosh Faction.”

We stumbled into the building that challenges us academically, athletically and socially, only to find that Carr was one of the evening’s chaperones. Now that’s a challenge. Carr took our tickets and glared at me. We entered our high school for the second time that day, now festooned with streamers. I could hear the bass lines of the music coming from the gym like an approaching army. Gabriel and Natasha bounded up, already dance-sweaty, and grabbed us. “It’s on!” Natasha shouted, and I looked at her in her tight black jeans and sequined bustier with a big fake rhinestone X in the center of it and just didn’t care anymore. We went into the gym and danced and shouted and danced. They were playing that song that goes “Tonight tonight tonight,” it’s still in my head. I love that song. Everything was great, all champagne blurry and the boys weren’t looking at the bustier but at me (dream on, little Culp girl) when I stepped out into the hallway to get a drink of water and all of a sudden I was in The Chamber Of Horrors. I can only describe them by exhibits:

EXHIBIT ONE: JENNIFER ROSE MILTON LEANING AGAINST THE WALL AND MAKING OUT WITH FRANK WHITELAW! I don’t know if I’ve recorded here in this journal the only conversation I’ve ever really had with Frank Whitelaw–he ran into me once maybe last week, when it was raining–but he is a slow man. I mean stupid slow, not like he moves slowly. In fact, given the location of his hands on Jennifer Rose Milton’s gorgeous thin body, I would say that slow is most certainly not how Mr. Whitelaw moves. So this is who Jenn has been seeing.

 

EXHIBIT TWO: JIM CARR, BIOLOGY TEACHER, FLIRTING WITH SOPHOMORE CHEERLEADING CHICK, STROKING HER HAIR EVEN. Enough said, I trust. Not only that, they were blocking the drinking fountain. I turned and went down the hallway you’re not supposed to go down during school dances because, I don’t know, something horrible might happen to you, and like I was a character in one of those religious pamphlets they give out, something horrible did happen, right then, because there was

 

EXHIBIT THREE: DRUNK MARK WALLACE, leaning against some lockers with his bloodshot eyes and a sweat-stained T-shirt that read: “Black By Popular Demand.” Just what I needed. Mark Wallace is perhaps the most obnoxious person at Roewer, and when drunk he’s downright belligerent. Natasha had to crack a bottle of beer over his head at a cast party once–but that’s another story. This story goes like this:

 

Once upon a time, in a hallway too far from supervision, the Big Bad Mark Wallace asked Flan what was up, and Flan said nothing much and the B. B. M. W. asked what her hurry was, and Flan stuttered something and then Mark told me I had nice tits. What do you say to that, exactly? So I said nothing, and turned around and that’s when he reached over and grabbed one of them, trying to kiss me on the neck at the same time. I think that Mark hoped that my body would respond in ways that were beyond my control, and he was right: I threw up, all over his political statement. Then, while he gasped and gaped, I turned and ran. I turned the corner and ran the rest of the way down the hallway. I had almost reached the gym when I felt a tap on the shoulder. It was Carr; behind him, a cheerleader looked at me with the same smugness as the States.

“Culp,” he said, licking his lips nervously, “you’re not supposed to go down that hallway.” He put his arm authoritatively on my shoulder; I think that’s what did it.

“Carr,” I said, “we all do things we’re not supposed to. Now get your hand the fuck off my shoulder.”

“OK, Flan, time to go home,” Gabriel said, appearing from nowhere. He put an arm around me and I instantly broke down. I kept my head down so I couldn’t see any more Horrors. People were probably laughing at me, pointing at me, but I didn’t see them. I kept my head down and kept walking, a strategy that turned out to be handy later, on courthouse steps and the like.

“So,” Gabriel said conversationally as he buckled me in and started the car. “Have a nice evening?” I laughed and he laughed and I told him about the only Exhibit I thought it was appropriate to talk about: Jennifer Rose Milton and Frank Whitelaw. He was impressed.

“Not bad work for a lush,” he said.

“Hey,” I said. “You’d be a lush too if you’d have joined me at the lake. What, did you have a better offer or something?” He looked so sad, so suddenly.

“I just–” he said, and I looked at him and saw that he was longing to say something. He had rolled down the window for me, and the night air chilled me. I waited, but he didn’t say anything.

“You just what?” I said as he pulled onto my street. The air kept chilling me, and I kept waiting.

“I just–” he said, and stopped at my house. He sighed and then smiled emptily. “I’m just tired,” he said, and let me out. I went inside and swallowed all the aspirin and water in sight. What was that all about? Well, it’s too late to think anymore about that or anything else. It’s too late to think about it. I keep dozing between sentences, but I’m going to stay awake and write a poem or die trying.

 

There’s no poem here. Draw your own conclusions.

Saturday September 18th

Back here, in editing land, as I retype this journal and try to set everything right, I have drowning dreams. The gurgles I hear all night break through my only window, and dribble onto the floor. I wake up when the water level reaches the mattress and soaks it. By that time it’s pouring down. It’s hard for me to get out of bed because the itchy wool blanket is heavy and bloated in the torrent. The gurgling is everywhere. Water fills my hands, my mouth and my own screams add to the gurgles as I wake up, this time for real. Sometimes if I’ve been shouting this fat matron of a woman asks me if I’m OK. Now there’s an essay question that nobody would give me an A on. On which they’d give me an A.

 

This morning the Satanic Minion of Hangover Hell must have had it in for me because the phone rang in the middle of a dream in which something terrible was chasing me. It was Kate, asking if I wanted to meet everyone for focaccia at The Curtain Rises, this upscale non-Italian Italian place across from the theater. Hamlet. I forgot about Hamlet just like we forgot all about Cymbeline last week. If we had remembered Cymbeline then I wouldn’t be worried about Hamlet. He’s going to be there. “Should we invite Adam for focaccia, too?” Kate asked, and I wish those science fiction phones had been invented so I could have reached into the screen and my hand could have come out in her bedroom and slapped her. She could barely keep her delight at my disastrous evening out of her voice. So many exciting things for you to spread around, Kate! How nice for you! I told Kate I’d invite him myself–let her choke on that, little gossipy twit–and took a shower. Do you think if I turned the shower on to its harshest frequency it could wear some of the flesh off me? I mean, if babbling brooks can do it to stone…

“You’re being too harsh on her,” Natasha said to me when I bitched about Kate. How’s this for a friend: She had let herself into my house using the key that everyone knows we keep under the flowerpot (Attention burglars: it is there no more) and fixed poached eggs and coffee and Bloody Marys. She was slicing celery into suggestive stalks when I came down in sweats.

“I thought you might need some recuperation assistance,” she said as I hugged her.

“Sometimes having you around is like hanging out with those gorgeous bitter single girlfriends of the heroine in romantic comedies.”

Natasha bit the tip off one of the, um, stalks. “But baby,” she said. “I’m the real thing. What happened last night? Each person I talked to only had a scrap of the story; it was like some Robert Louis Stevenson ripped-up treasure map thing.”

I told her the whole Chamber Of Horrors, but the problem was I couldn’t tell her everything because nobody but nobody knows that I’m the one who wrote Adam all those damn letters and that postcard that I would give my right arm to go back in time, beat up the Italian postal carrier and destroy. Natasha listened intently, sipping the Bloody Mary and the coffee alternately, and eventually I got around to Kate’s phone call, and that’s when she told me I was being too harsh on her. Thought I’d never return to that, did you? Remember, I was hungover then, but now, typing this, I’m stone sober. Remember what’s real.

“Flan,” Natasha said. “Kate’s not delighted you had a terrible evening. But you must admit, telling Carr to get his hand the fuck off your shoulder is a pretty irresistible tidbit.”

“How does she know about everything already?”

“How does she ever know? Don’t worry about it.”

“But she’s going to tell everybody about Mark,” I said.

“What if she does? Everybody knows Mark’s a scumbag already,” Natasha said. “You may recall a certain incident involving his skull and my beer bottle? Now calm down and eat your egg and we’ll go catch a movie. There’s a one-fifteen matinee of Stage Fright; if I drive quickly we can make it.”

If she drove quickly indeed. “I don’t think my stomach could take food right now,” I said. The poached egg gaped at me like a ripe breast. I thought of my own sagging ones–not in the least bit nice; Mark must have been even drunker than me–and didn’t dare put anything into my body that could turn into more body. What a perfect excuse a hangover is not to eat anything. I should drink more often.

“You have to give your stomach something else besides a Bloody Mary and a cup of coffee or you aren’t going to last through the fall of Denmark,” she said.

“I’ll have focaccia. Oh, speaking of which, I told Kate I’d invite Adam tonight. I can’t believe he’s going to be there. How did that happen?”

“Who would think we would have forgotten Cymbeline?” Natasha said. “Whoever–or wherever–Cymbeline is. So call him.”

“I don’t have his number,” I said.

“You most certainly do,” Natasha said. She took the rest of her celery and poked my uneaten egg right in the nipple. “Who exactly do you think you’re talking to? I’m sure that you looked it up months ago and wrote it down in that gorgeous black leather notebook thing. Where is it, anyway? It’s never far from you.”

“It’s right here,” I said. “I’m writing down this conversation.”

Sorry. I just can’t hear myself think around here with that damn radio down the hall. If you can believe it, they’re playing the same song that I have in my head today: Tonight tonight tonight. How the present resonates with the past! How the Flan of yesterday and the Flan of today intermingle, like best friends, like confidantes!

I left a message on his machine and by then it was three o’clock, with no chance of catching the movie. Natasha said she’d go home to change and pick me up. “What are you going to wear?” I said, out of the sheer desire to keep her in my house. “You looked great in that sequined thing last night.”

“X marks the spot,” she said, tracing last night’s rhinestones on her body like she hoped to die, sticking a needle in her eye. “You want to borrow it tonight?”

“There’s no way I’d fit into that,” I said.

“It’s bigger than it looks,” she said.

I crossed my arms in front of my stomach. “Thanks.”

“Oh Flan,” she said, “I didn’t mean it like that. Come on. You know that. I just mean–”

“Forget it,” I said. “I’ll see you soon. I have to iron my muu-muu now.”

“Flan,” she said, putting on some really smashing sunglasses. “I came over and fixed you breakfast, listened to your woes. What more do you want from me?”

I felt dumb. “Your forgiveness,” I said meekly, and she smiled and hugged me, patting me on the back like a weary mom. She waved and headed out the door. “And a ride!” I called out. In front of the house, the world still looked a little too bright, but I was going to survive. “I also need a ride!”

Natasha zoomed off, and I went upstairs, found my journal right next to my bed, and wrote this all down. I’ll let you know what happens with the inscrutable man and the crazy woman who loves him and all the intrigue and deception and murder. And how the play turns out, ha ha ha.

Sunday September 19th

So I haven’t been in Bean and Nothingness five minutes–I’m still savoring the first frothy sips of latte and haven’t even opened the journal yet–when Flora Habstat walks in, sits at my table and talks at me for the rest of the day. A whole day, wasted. Not a word in edgewise, either to her or my journal, lying there neglected on my table as Flora went into a free-form monologue on applying for colleges, how tired she was of school, this new band Darling Mud–had I heard of them?–and assorted World Records. She literally talked to me for about an hour and a half, and when I said I had to go to a bookstore, she went with me and dragged behind me as I pretended to scan the shelves, babbling and babbling and babbling. By the time I took the bus home it was seven o’clock and time to do my homework before turning in. And after such a miserable evening last night, too: Douglas and Lily tense as hell over some offstage fight, a whiny, inappropriately plump Ophelia, Gabriel not showing and Kate, coyly and significantly, refusing to tell me why and a blunt and obvious fake plaster skull. Plus Flora sat between Adam and me and talked Records to him from curtain to curtain. Dammit, Flora, why do you always ruin everything?

A prophetic remark. I hope you picked up on that.

Vocabulary:

ALLEGED

PHOSPHOLIPIDS

VENDETTA

PSYCHOSEXUAL

DISTRAUGHT

PROPHETIC

TÊTE-Á-TÊTE

BELLIGERENT

Study Questions:

1. What would you do in Flan’s shoes, if you received an A you didn’t really deserve even though you were a really good student, but you just didn’t care very much about biology, and if you got it as sort of an apology or a bribe from a sleazy biology teacher that you probably couldn’t do anything about? Consider the issues before deciding, and remember that you can’t really imagine what it would be like to be in the shoes of Flannery Culp because you’re not her.

 

2. What functions do you think are biologically important for the sustenance of a living system?

 

3. What is the best experience you have had at a high school dance?

Monday September 20th

After such a refreshing weekend, I am looking forward to starting another week of being pushed to the limit academically, athletically and socially at Roewer High School. Go team! The bus was forty-five minutes late this morning.

I’m sitting on the lumbering late bus, thinking about the way I’m going to start my Monday: by filling out an unexcused absence form for the cranky secretary. The last time the bus was late she actually told me, “Don’t tell me the bus was late. That excuse won’t work anymore today. About ten kids ahead of you said that their bus was late, too.” I tried to explain that we all took the same bus, but there was no pulling the wool over her eyes. She wasn’t born yesterday.

LATER

When I walked into the building I thought for a moment I had mistakenly come in on Sunday. It was time for homeroom to be over but no one was in the hallways. I ran into some grumpy gym teacher who barked “Go back to homeroom!” so I went to homeroom, opened the door and everyone was sitting silently at their desks. Dodd was standing formally at the front of the room with his hands behind his back like he was waiting for the firing squad. Written on the blackboard, underlined, was the phrase “MOMENT OF SILENCE.” No kidding, I thought, and found my seat. Even Natasha looked respectful; that’s when I knew something serious was up. It didn’t seem right to ask during the MOMENT OF SILENCE, so I waited it out. Finally Dodd cleared his throat and everyone relaxed and talked quietly. “Now you know why you shouldn’t be late,” he said to me pointedly.

“What in the world?” I asked Natasha. She sighed and took my hand, and that’s when I knew someone was dead. I feel really guilty when I write this, but it was something of an anticlimax when Natasha told me it was Mark Wallace. Of course, anticlimax is not the word for how Mark’s death was rewritten later. Dr. Eleanor Tert, of course, was the biggest culprit. I quote extensively and without permission from her Crying Too Hard to Be Scared:

The tragic death of Mark Wallace, one of the most visionary students I have ever had the privilege of analyzing, was key in Flannery’s development of her apocalyptic anti-religious fervor. Seeing her ex-boyfriend punished so immediately with a vengeful lightning bolt in the form of an automobile accident undoubtedly added to Flannery’s God-wish. Mark Wallace was killed by an act of God, she reasoned; therefore, anyone who ever did her wrong in her tumultuous love life was doomed to die, and maybe God needed a little help. Hence the ritualistic murder.

And from Peter Pusher’s What’s The Matter with Kids Today?: Getting Back to Family Basics in a World Gone Wrong:

Flannery Culp saw in her high school’s rather limp-wristed reaction to the inevitable result of juvenile delinquency, particularly among minorities, a chance to exploit the freeloading humanist environment to which her educational system had fallen. It should come as no surprise that a school whose honors poetry class studied “ignored geniuses” like Anne Bradstreet and Emily Dickinson but not Keats or Shelley would soft-pedal the moralistic side of the death of the Negro teen Mark Wallace, or that a teenager, being educated in a moral vacuum, would see these soft-pedaling surroundings as the perfect environs to hide the almost-perfect crime. [Wake up, America!]

Inaccuracy, inaccuracy, inaccuracy. Oh, and please note: That last sentence isn’t at the end of that particular paragraph, but is at the end of so many others in the book that I couldn’t resist adding it. I can’t even begin to address the inaccuracy, but suffice to say that the reason we weren’t studying Keats or Shelley in my AMERICAN Poetry class should be self-evident, even to Mr. Pusher, and that one cry of “nice tits”–are you listening, incidentally flat-chested Dr. Tert?–does not an ex-boyfriend make. Not to mention that the good Dr. Tert did not “analyze” Mark until he was already dead.

Here is what actually happened, from Flannery Culp’s Journal of a Woman Wronged:

Sometime Friday night, Mark Wallace, a boy no one liked very much, neither for his generally nasty behavior nor his self-righteous up-from-slavery politics he used to justify it, after getting smashed and making a slimy pass at me, stole a car with some buddies and smashed it into a telephone pole while Roewer High School slept. When Mark Wallace woke up, his buddies had fled into the night and he was dead. When Roewer woke up, Mark Wallace was a noble young martyr, killed for being, as Principal Bodin said over the squawking PA, “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Doesn’t everyone die by being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Bodin droned on and on, praising Mark’s mischievous sense of humor and his artistic skills. Last year he had spray-painted an unflattering portrait of Vice Principal Mokie, with a speech bubble containing his annoying motto–“the last word in principal is pal”–coming out of his crotch like some sort of auto-erotic ventriloquist’s act, for which he had been suspended despite the fact that he claimed he was protesting Mokie’s racism. Dodd walked around the room with a shellacked frown on his face, occasionally putting a gentle hand on people’s hairdos. He started to do it to Natasha but she bared her teeth at him.

It was in choir that things got ridiculous. They stopped auditions so we could rehearse the special number for tomorrow’s Memorial Assembly. Tipsy John Hand actually took the helm and went on and on about Mark, of course, telling some stories that must have been about somebody else, and finally passing out copies of the gospel song “Ride the Chariot,” which Mr. Hand had heard was one of Mark’s favorites. Uh-huh. I can’t believe that tomorrow (actually, today–it’s after midnight as I write this, sitting in my room with Darling Mud on low) I’m going to get up at an assembly and sing “I’m gonna ride the chariot in the morning, Lord,” in memory of someone who died in a car accident. The only good thing about choir was that Adam, deposed from conducting by the boozy eulogist, was standing in front of me in the skimpy tenor section and I didn’t have to face him.

Biology was a travesty–no surprise there, I guess, but Carr talked about being able to trace the end of a life to an ultimate cause.

“Mark died from a blow to the head, but that isn’t scientifically complete,” he said. He began to draw a car on the chalkboard, and everyone’s eyes widened. “After all, any one of us can go up to a telephone pole and bang our heads on it.” I sat and hoped for a demonstration, but no dice. “We’ll get a sore head, maybe a lump, but we don’t die.” Carr stared at the car on the board like he had no idea what to do with it. “So obviously the speed of the car had something to do with it. Now, I haven’t seen any official reports of the accident, but let’s assume that he was going at around eighty miles per hour, or ‘mph.’” He put it in quotes in that annoying gesture that makes each hand into a little bunny. Prosecutors use that gesture all the time. “So we could say that Mark died from going eighty mph, but even that is not scientifically complete. Why was he going eighty miles an hour? Everyone knows that eighty miles an hour is not a safe speed at which to travel. But his judgment was impaired–by alcohol.” Suddenly tomorrow’s assembly was looking quite tasteful. “Therefore, we can scientifically determine that the ultimate cause of Mark’s death was alcohol, and I think there is a stronger moral lesson when we have a scientifically complete explanation than if we just were to say that Mark died due to a blow to the head.”

“But that isn’t scientifically complete,” some student said. I slouched down lower in my desk. Great, after a tacky monologue now it’s time for a tacky discussion. “Why did Mark have alcohol? He was at a chaperoned school dance, with adult supervision. Perhaps those adults failed because they were too busy flirting with the goddamn cheerleaders!”

“You may recall, Flannery,” said Mr. Carr, “that as a chaperon I was busy chasing down other people who were breaking the rules, such as yourself.”

Everybody was staring at me. One girl snapped her gum. “I happen to be a cheerleader,” she said. “Do you have a problem with that?”

The teaching assistant poked her head out of the office, curious about the commotion. “There’s something you should all know about the good Mr. Carr,” I said, and the bell rang. Everyone scattered except me and Carr and the teaching assistant. We had a MOMENT OF SILENCE.

“I know you’ve been upset lately,” Carr said, “but your behavior in class today was absolutely unacceptable.”

“My behavior?” I said. I heard the fury in my voice, but I didn’t quite feel it. It was like I could hear the real Flannery, telling me to calm down because this was a very important semester and if I blew up at Carr my chances of an A would be greatly reduced, and all the while this angry, violent Flannery went on and on. “My behavior? You’re making passes at your assistant, you try to bribe me by giving me a good grade I don’t deserve, and you let a student die because you’re so busy making moves on–”

“I think you’ve said just about enough,” Carr said in a deadly voice. “You’re obviously very upset about the death of your boyfriend, so why don’t you take it easy instead of taking it out on your teachers.”

“My boyfriend?” I said. “You and Dr. Tert both!” I stalked out of the classroom and right to Bodin’s door. The situation was obviously escalating, and I needed outside help. My temper was getting out of control, and Carr had dropped in my eyes from a slightly sleazy teacher to an absolute monster. I was going to tell all and let the chips fall where they may. In short, I was going to ask to transfer to a different Advanced Biology class.

Principal Jean Bodin’s secretary is a perfectly nice woman, except for the fact that she has snakes for hair.

“What?” she snarled immediately when I entered the room.

“I need to see Mr. Bodin.”

“Principal Bodin’s schedule is full today.”

“Well, I have an appointment to meet with him right now.”

Suspiciously, she opened her appointment book. I could see that it was blank, had been blank forever, world without end. Who ever needs to see a high school principal? “And who are you?”

“Superintendent Culp,” I said, drawing myself to my full height (not much). I forgot to say that it’s always apparent that this secretary’s stone-turning gaze had apparently been directed long ago at her own brain.

“Principal Bodin,” she said into the phone, “Superintendent Culp is here to see you.”

Jean Bodin, large as life and twice as fat, opened the door. “Superintendent Culp!” he boomed, like an aging sports hero. Then he saw I was just some kid. “You’re just some kid,” he said.

“Who needs a new biology teacher,” I said.

“I’m busy,” he said, raising his hands in an A-Student!-Usher-Her-Out-Immediately! gesture.

“Maybe you can find a few minutes before the superintendent shows up,” I said, and Bodin sighed and led me in to the inner sanctum. Medusa scowled; she always hates it when Perseus shows up. Check it out, Peter Pusher! A limp-wristed humanist who knows the classics!

Principal Bodin sat in his big chair and put his hands in back of his head like he was about to do sit-ups, though given his size he’s probably never done any of those in his life. As a footnote, he must have gone on some radical diet a few months ago–in the press conferences at which he spoke extensively about new measures the San Francisco Unified School District had taken “virtually to ensure that teen-to-teen murder would be kept at an all-time minimum,” he looked positively slender. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Nothing seems to be the problem,” I said, “There is a problem. The problem is that Mr. Carr and I are mutually incompatible. I need a new biology teacher. Give me Mrs. Kayak (even though she sleeps behind dark glasses during class at least once a week). Give me Mr. Hunter (even though he displays at best a passing knowledge of biology). Give me anybody. I can’t stay in there any longer.” I bit my lip, hoping it was trembling. I figured the Teary Approach was a good opening strategy. I could always go for the Unstable Approach if things got too rough. It was too bad it wasn’t gym; all I’d have to do was look at my lap and begin a sentence and the Man In Charge would let me do anything I wanted.

“I can’t help you,” Bodin said. All three chins moved as he spoke. “As you know, all of our classes are filled to capacity. If I let you move”–he gestured in my direction, presumably to remind me who I was–“I’d have to let everybody move, and then where would we be? Everybody would be coming in every few minutes, claiming that they were mutually incompatible. Everybody would catch it. The school would be a mess.”

“This isn’t a virus,” I said, apparently deciding to go for the Angry Approach instead.

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s not a virus. And you know what? I don’t think it’s a problem, either. You know what it is?” He grinned beatifically, a Caucasian Buddha. “It’s a challenge. Your biology class is tough? Good. It should be tough. You’re here at Roewer to be pushed to the limit academically, athletically and whatever-the-other-one-is.”

“Sexually,” I offered.

“Yes. No. Socially.”

“It’s the same thing.”

Bodin looked at me like he just realized I hadn’t brought him a birthday present like I said I would. “Well,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do. It’s a challenge, for you to work out.”

“Please,” I said quietly, trying to backpedal to Teary again.

“Medusa!” Bodin called. “Show this young lady out, please.”

The titan still babbling behind him, Perseus stormed out of the cave without waiting to be shown out, casually swinging his sword and decapitating the Gorgon at the front desk, but as I walked farther and farther down the hallway I felt like less and less of a hero. After all, tomorrow I have to go in and see Carr again, and Bodin’s secretary will probably grow another head like that other creature back in Greece.

Tuesday September 21st

“MARTIN, MALCOLM AND MARK,” the banner read, stretched loosely across the top of the auditorium stage so the letters rippled and lurched, and to this annoying abundance of alliteration they forgot to add MORTIFICATION, so I kindly supplied plenty of that. Instead of blundering into Bodin’s office yesterday, I should have hung out in the Visual Arts Center, because once I realized what they were drawing I could have stomped all over it, ripped up the butcher paper. Ripped up all the butcher paper. For after I participated in an off-key, half-learned version of what most definitely was not Mark Wallace’s favorite song, conducted by Johnny Hand, the art classes presented a fidgety assembly with a triptych of hurriedly painted portraits, each about the size of–well, about the size of an enormous head painted on butcher paper.

Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Mark Wallace. Two great civil rights figures and Mark “Nice Tits” Wallace. Principal Bodin spoke, reprising word-for-word large sections of yesterday’s intercom elegy for virtually the same audience, while local TV cameras took note. Later they used a shot of Bodin’s speech during the umpteenth Basic Eight scoop–“death is no stranger to Roewer High School”–with Bodin and his chins clutching the podium against a background of the lower half of Mark’s face.

Principal Bodin was finishing up by telling us to go to our classes, but never to forget Mark Wallace, when a bunch of Mark’s friends stood up with their fists raised. One of them, speaking as “a representative of Mark Wallace, his friends and The People,” which I thought was an interesting distinction, demanded that school be canceled for the day, raising his voice even louder as the television cameras swiveled to find him. He reminded Bodin that if a white student had died the school would definitely be closed. This turned out not to be true, but Bodin didn’t argue the point. He agreed immediately, licking his lips and standing directly beneath the half-opened mouth of the middle head like Mr. X was about to eat him. Everyone cheered–which gave the whole proceedings an even more eerie feel–and we all left. I didn’t have to catch anyone’s eye to know that we’d all meet at the Mocha Monkey, and sure enough within twenty minutes Natasha, Gabriel, V___, Kate, Douglas and I were all sipping lattes and draping our coats on simian faces. V__, always having the upper hand in matters of pocket money, had bought a big plate of some luscious-looking biscotti, and I would like to proudly say that I only ate half of one. Natasha–you know, thin, beautiful Natasha–took three.

“What this gang needs,” Natasha said, eating the third, “is another dinner party. Are we charming sophisticates or aren’t we?”

“Oh,” Kate said, clasping her hands together. “We are, we are!”

“Yes,” V__ said, “with just the Basic Eight. No outsiders, particularly those who quote from any nationally syndicated collection of record setters.”

“Friday night?” Douglas said. “I know Lily can make it then.”

“Where is Lily?” Kate asked.

“She had to go home and practice,” Douglas said, miming a cellist.

“She has to practice being home?” V__ asked.

Douglas tried to look offended but gave up and laughed. It’s good to see him without Lily chaperoning.

“Friday it is.” Kate said. “Where should we have it?”

“My parents are–”

“Let me guess,” I said, and everybody chimed in. “Entertaining.” The last of my steamed milk went down wrong.

“My, we are punchy today,” Natasha said. “My house is out too.”

“And mine,” I said.

“You just said that,” Douglas said. “Kate?”

“OK,” she said. “But can we watch a movie afterward? I’ve been craving noir.”

“Well, OK,” Natasha said airily. “I guess I could sit through an old movie. Maybe–just maybe, mind you–one with Marlene Dietrich in it.”

“OK, it’s all set,” Gabriel said, rubbing his hands together. “I’ll cook. Something with peanuts, maybe.” He leaned against V__ and gave her a kiss on the head. “Let’s get away from all these monkeys. Flan, do you need a ride?”

“No, Natasha will take me,” I said.

“That’s nice of her,” Natasha said dryly. “Let’s go.”

I heard a few bars of Darling Mud when Natasha turned on the motor, but she immediately ejected the tape. “I’m so sick of them,” she said, and put in something with echoey guitars and a man singing earnestly about the pain in his heart. Very unlike her. “You know what?” she said, swigging from the flask and scowling impatiently at the car in front of us. “Gabriel, Flan. Gabriel. He is so fucking chivalrous. Go go go! The speed limit is just a rough guideline,” she snarled. “He is so fuck-ing chiv-al-rous.” Each syllable was punctuated by a blast of the horn. “Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“It just hit me,” she said, merging. “Asking you if you wanted a ride home. Listening to your love woes by the lake. Taking you home after the dance when you were such a mess, you know what I’m saying?”

“No,” I said, and she looked at me, turned up the music and clamped her mouth shut all the way home. She opened the car door and looked at me like an overbearing mother, watching me disobey her. “No,” she said, “you wouldn’t.” I got out, shut the door and looked at her.

“Come in and have some coffee,” I said, but she was already halfway down the block. What the hell was that?

Wednesday September 22

God, I’m bored. Bored of high school, bored of my friends, bored of editing this goddamn journal. Nothing happened today, how’s that for the prime period of my life? Nothing. I cut choir and hung out with Hattie Lewis, there, that’s something. She was correcting papers, though, so she barely said a word. She got some red ink on her nose, is that what you want to read? Carr passed out fruit flies, what more do you want? We’re going to breed them and see the colors of the eyes of the next generation, how’s that for riveting prose? Do you approve of that sort of education, schoolchildren watching bugs have sex, Peter Pusher? How’s that for some psychological insight into a symbol for Youth Gone Amok, Dr. Tert? After school we played a game where we improvised scenes with Ron Piper–you remember him, folks, you witch-hunted him all November–changing the tone instantly by calling out a genre. “Gothic!” he called out and we were gothic; “Western!” he called out, and we were all western. What do you want, reader? How shall the rewrites go? You’re paying taxes for my room and board, so I’ll do anything you want. Isn’t that what you wanted? Wake up, America!

Thursday September 23rd

Today’s the day. This is the day that Flannery Culp commits the crime. I can almost feel the itch on your noggin as you scratch your head, reader. You didn’t think it was this early, did you? You thought it was around Halloween. How confusing. Could it be that our narrator is unreliable? No such chance. Mind like a steel trap, I have. Lucky for me, because there’s a Calculus test tomorrow, covering “what we’ve been doing,” Baker said, glaring at me like I was an idiot when I asked. “What do you mean we?” I wanted to say, but there’s no reason to fish for an F where you’re pretty much guaranteed one by your own skills. Oh boy.

In other Glaring News, Adam has been glaring at me all period as I sit and write this. He should be glaring at the tenors, who can’t get their parts right for the life of them. But as he drills them he keeps glaring at me. It makes my stomach do that snapped-elevator-cable thing. Everybody hates me. Maybe I’ll get up the guts to talk to him next period; we haven’t had a real conversation since we went and got wine, aside from me confessing my love during my alto audition. I lead a ridiculous life.

LATER

So after choir I waited for everyone to leave, until it was just Adam, sifting through sheet music on top of the piano, and me, and two hundred thousand folding chairs. He pretended not to notice me for a full minute, I could count on the official school clock clucking above us like some Authoritarian Hen. Where’s Natasha when I need her? She’d know what to do. All I could think of was clearing my throat.

Adam looked up, sourly. “Hi,” he said like he’d rather be sorting sheet music than even looking at me. “What’s up?”

“No fair,” I sighed, not looking at him. “That was my question.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. He had a little pile of sheet music he was straightening, clunking it on the piano top like knuckles. It punctuated the buzzing in my head.

“I mean what’s up?” I said, meeting his blank eyes. “You’ve been glaring at me all rehearsal.”

“I’m just tired,” he said, lying. “I meant to be glaring at the tenors.”

“Oh,” I said. The clock clucked. “You know, if something’s bothering you, you can tell me.”

“Well,” he said. “I am sort of annoyed that you keep cutting choir.”

“What? When?”

“Yesterday, for example.”

“Well, that.”

“You’ve cut a number of times.”

“Well, it’s nothing personal,” I said. “I didn’t realize it bothered you. I mean, you know how it is. Sometimes you have stuff to do.”

“Forget it,” he said, and grabbed his backpack. “I have to go.”

“What’s wrong?” I said, and heard with horror that I sounded like a whining girlfriend. “You glare at me today, you barely spoke to me Saturday night.”

Adam put a hand on my furious shoulder. “I just need some room,” he said, taking his hand away and running it through his (gorgeous!) hair. “I just need”–gesturing nowhere–“a little room.” He left and I was alone with the folding chairs. I looked around the cavernous rehearsal hall and felt yet another stupid pun leap out of my throat like acid. “You don’t need a little room!” I shouted at the gaping door. “You already have an enormous room! Look at this place!”

I stalked out the door and almost ran into him. Somehow I assumed he’d be long gone. He was watching me with typical boy detachment, like I was some toddler tantruming and that any moment he’d pick me up by my feet and take me to bed.

No chance of that, I suppose.

“What?” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Pop! All the air left me. “Oh,” I said. He didn’t look very sorry, but what can you say when someone says they’re sorry, particularly if they don’t really have much to be sorry for. So I love him. So he doesn’t know if he loves me yet. What can anyone do?

“Come on, let’s talk,” he said, gesturing toward a side door. A talk outside the side entrance was something; people either made out or broke up out there.

Both of us were sighing in unison when Adam opened the door and we stepped out into the little dismal postdoor area. Another PTA sign, half-ripped, was taped to a wall; apparently we were supposed to be pushed to the limit academically, athletically and so. A brimming trash can, cigarette butts and a small bench with Carr’s teaching assistant sobbing on it. Oh.

Adam and I looked at each other and I felt our own small troubles wilt. Adam cleared his throat but she didn’t hear, or didn’t look up. “I’m going to–” I said to him, stepping toward her, and he nodded, turned around and went back into the building. When the door slammed shut she looked up, saw me and started crying harder. For some reason I froze for a few seconds and the world froze with me–I could even hear birds chirping like they do in suspenseful outdoor scenes in movies. Poised between comforting her and running back to find Adam, I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there, and then I heard in my head the Voice of Calculus, Mr. Michael Baker. He was reciting his rule, Baker’s Rule: do something. I guess somewhere in my head I was actually studying for the Calc test. Do something. So I did.

The door stuck for a second, so I had to pull it extra hard, and it made a wheezing noise that let me know I was supposed to be pushing. So I pushed in, and stalked down the hallway, around a corner, almost ran into Adam. Without thinking I just shot out my hand and pushed him aside; I heard him hit the lockers, hard. I kept walking. When I reached my biology classroom I peeked inside to see if Carr or some studying geeks were around; nobody was. That would probably mean the door was locked and that I’d have to pull it off its hinges.

No such luck. The door opened immediately, and the cabinet was unlocked, too. Using my whole arm I picked up all the test tubes like I was gathering daisies. Some of them dropped to the floor and shattered, but the other ones I did methodically: I put them on the desk, and one by one I uncorked each one and set all the fruit flies free. Fly out the window, I thought. Sleep with anyone you want, red eyes, blue eyes; sleep with yaks if you so desire, fucking Drosophila! I walked back out of the room and stepped into the hallway just as the bell rang. People washed over me, a tide of binders and fruit-flavored gum and snatches of gossip. I sat through Applied Civics like a zombie, and walked slowly to Advanced Biology like a conquering general on his way to see the city burning. I have to work on my grandiose walk; I was late.

“You guys have a free period,” Carr was saying as I opened the door. “We were supposed to start work with the fruit flies today, but my teaching assistant let all the fruit flies escape. She’s been fired. There’ll probably be a new assistant next week.”