Friday September 24th

What sort of loser cuts Calc to sit in the library? I’m sitting in the part where ivied-campus posters loom over you like those annoying suspicious teachers who prowl the aisles of the classroom during tests until you can’t keep your eyes on your own paper, only on the annoying suspicious teachers telling you to keep your eyes on your own paper. The posters remind me why I’m here: I’m here at Roewer to get As, so I can go to college and read books in artfully lit libraries and peer into test tubes in well-equipped labs and read a little Thoreau on beautiful lawns and play Frisbee with people of different races. I need to forget about squinting at expensive black leather journals in awfully lit libraries and peering into test tubes of fruit flies (luckily, I can forget about that; the next shipment won’t arrive for a few weeks) and reading a little Dickinson in potato chip-littered courtyards and playing mind games with people who are for the most part of my race. I must concentrate on the future, on where I will be. I need to try to forget about Carr. I can’t touch him. He’s indestructible. I just need to hang on, and take plenty of notes and make it through this. I want to go to college; I don’t want to end up some loser, living alone under a bridge or something.

Or a criminal. I don’t want to end up a criminal.

My only lucky break in all of this is that I probably won’t get busted for Drosophila Liberation, because Carr has already blamed the wrong person. So even if everyone does know (I could have sworn that Bio Room was empty, where were those geeks, hiding under the tables like it was an earthquake drill?) that it was me freeing the fruit flies, nothing will be put on my permanent record.

Get it down in ink, Flan: today is the day I start being Super Student. I will not allow myself to sink into the mire of the present, I must reach toward the future. Even now, editing, I feel that way. I can’t sink into the mire of the present, but must reach back and back into the past, holding each day of last year up to the light, to illuminate the truth for all of you. Listen to me.

LATER

You know, despite all my world-weariness and cynicism, I think I’ve always believed that there is one person in the universe who you’re truly meant for–for whom you are truly meant–and the fact that sometimes there are two or even more people on the earth you can fall in love with really bothers me. It suggests that if you work hard you can be meant for anyone. Maybe that’s a more comforting notion. The champagne poured and poured into my mouth tonight, and I can see that it’s pouring back out. Start over, sister.

Gabriel drove me straight to the grocery store from school, and straight from the grocery store to the dinner party so he could wash and dry all the mushrooms properly in time to eat. I forget what kind of mushrooms they were, but fancy ones. We went to Kate’s house and I immediately felt underdressed, still wearing my school clothes and all. Gabriel had brought a shirt and tie in a bag, of course, but that had never occurred to me. So while Gabriel used his special mushroom brush, brought in the same bag as the shirt and tie, Kate found me a sweater big enough for me to fit into (yes, such sweaters do exist) in a lovely shade of–can we guess?–navy blue, and when I came back downstairs Douglas and Lily were already there and Natasha was just coming up the front steps. Darling Mud was on (loud music during cooking; quiet during dinner, immutable), and Gabriel had enlisted Kate as Shrimp Deveiner. I peeked in the kitchen, but Kate and Gabriel were in earnest conversation and looked up like I’d caught them with their hands in the cookie jar, so I scooted to the living room. Natasha had brought an artichoke-heart dip and some chopped red peppers and broccoli florets; I guess she was anxious to avoid the should-I-bake-the-cheese-or-not controversy of last weekend. Was it really last weekend? It feels like ages ago. Oh, it wasn’t last weekend; it was ages ago. Douglas–stunning linen suit–and Lily were diving into it like they’d been doing something strenuous all afternoon. I don’t want to think about it. Natasha looked up, suddenly, and strode to the stereo. “I’m getting very tired of Darling Mud.” She took the tape out and stared at it like it tasted bad. Badly.

“Oh sure,” Kate called from the kitchen. Ears like a bat, that girl has, the better to be Queen Bee. “You’re sick of them and you haven’t even taped them for me yet.”

“I’ll get to it,” Natasha said, emptying her bag on the carpet. “Somewhere in this mess is the new Q.E.D. album.”

“Prattle and Hum? You bought it?” Douglas asked.

“Since when has a classical snob like you heard of Prattle and Hum?” either Natasha or I said, I can’t remember.

“Prattle and what?” V__ asked as she came up the stairs. “The door was open, Kate. I brought flowers because Douglas said he didn’t have time.” She had a bunch of lilies, one of which she had turned into a corsage.

“What have you been doing all afternoon, Douglas?” Natasha asked pointedly. She was on her knees, rifling through lipsticks, eyeliners, loose change and individually wrapped chocolates and condoms. Douglas turned red and coughed, but was saved from a reply when Natasha found the tape. “Here it is! And it’s not Prattle and Hum; it’s Gurgle and Buzz.”

“What are we talking about?” V__ said. “And Kate, where is the silver polish?”

“You’d better hurry and polish everything,” Lily said, handing Natasha a stray condom with a dry look. “Gabriel said that dinner must be at seven-thirty sharp or the rice won’t be right.”

“It’s only five after,” V__ said, consulting a gold watch. “And Jenn isn’t even here yet. Is she the only one we’re waiting for?”

“I think so.” I started to count to seven on my fingers. “Me, Douglas, Lily, Gabriel, Kate, V__ and–”

“Flora Habstat?” Lily said.

“No,” Natasha said, putting on the Q.E.D. tape, “not Flora Habstat.”

“So yes, Jennifer Rose Milton will complete the Basic Eight.”

“It’s so nice,” Kate said, emerging from the kitchen and wiping her hands on a Mona Lisa apron, “to finally have a dinner party that’s just us. Give me a broccoli.”

Frank Whitelaw appeared on the front steps just as the earnest voice of Q.E.D.’s singer appeared on the stereo. “I keep finding what I’m not looking for,” he whined (the singer, not Frank) as he (Frank, not the singer) bounded up the stairs. We all stood there looking at him like he came out of a spaceship. We all would have stood there all night, stock-still, had Jennifer Rose Milton not come up behind him, apologizing for being late. For being late. She brings someone as dumb as a bag of hammers to one of our dinner parties and apologizes for being late.

“It’s OK!” Gabriel called from the kitchen. He hadn’t seen Frank Whitelaw yet. “The rice is taking longer than I thought.” He strode into the living room. “In the meantime a little broccoli would be–Frank!” A beautiful recovery for our champ. “I didn’t know you were coming! What a surprise!”

“Surprising indeed,” Kate said. “You’d better polish another place setting, V__.”

“I brought champagne,” Frank said, like he’d been trained to say it and couldn’t say anything else. He held up four bottles of champagne, two in each enormous hand. I caught myself thinking about the hand/genitalia ratio and just when I was about to gaze mid-khaki and hazard a guess I stopped myself and looked back at the bottles. Well, that was something; no one had come up with anything to drink yet, and I hadn’t had time to stop at home and raid my New Year’s stash.

“It’s cold, even.” Jennifer Rose Milton said winningly, like she could read our minds. We all waited for Kate to make up her mind.

“Very well then,” she said, finally. “Let’s pour.”

Frank poured, and kept pouring, and Gabriel’s rice was perfect, perfect, perfect. We chatted away, and Frank detracted surprisingly little, being as he didn’t talk much; it was just like there was an enormous chunk of wood perched to Jennifer Rose Milton’s left, occasionally kissing her. After dinner Kate put on a noir videotape while the shrimp pots soaked, but in our champagne haze we dozed through it, rousing only when Natasha turned off the movie and the static blared us awake.

“I will not have Marlene slept through,” she announced. “It’s time to go home.”

“It wasn’t even Marlene; it was Veronica Lake,” Gabriel said grumpily. “You were obviously napping, too. Come on, I’ll take you home, Flan.”

I jumped up. Gabriel never has to clean, because he cooks, and I wouldn’t either if he took me home. I kissed everyone good night (well, nodded at Frank) and stood at the top of the stairs as Gabriel found his school clothes, his whisk, his special pepper grinder and the mushroom brush and kissed everyone good night (well, nodded at Frank). Kate grasped his shoulder, looked at him significantly and gave him a brief thumbs-up; she must have really liked those shrimp. Outside the air was cold and Kate’s sweater was thin, but Gabriel, chivalrous as ever, gave me his blazer and I walked to his car feeling the cool night air. From the hill where Kate’s house is you can see a bright view of the city, and I leaned against his car and stared at the constellations of streetlights, winking at me like mischievous creatures of the night, while Gabriel tried to get into his automobile. The lock on the door always jams.

“Shit!” he said, and I was yanked out of my reverie. “Sorry,” he said when I faced him.

“No problem,” I said. “I could look at this night for hours.”

“Well, hopefully it won’t take that long,” he said, pursing his lips. He looked nervous. “Do you have any plans tomorrow night?”

“Oh, you know, I’m the lead in that Broadway show, I should probably call the pope. The usual,” I said. “Why?”

“Well, do you want to see that movie where Andrew MacDowell is the professor and falls in love with his student? It opened this week.”

With a cameo by Jim Carr, probably, I thought, but out loud I said, “That sounds good. We should have planned this at the dinner table, though; they’ll probably figure out something else as they scrub pots.”

Gabriel tried the key again; no dice. He looked at me like I wasn’t making it any easier. “I wanted to ask you,” he said, and I got it.

“Oh, right, better to make plans without Mr. Whitelaw around,” I said. “No reason to spend the entire weekend with him.”

“No, I mean just you,” he said, looking at the lock. He started to look at me but looked back at the lock. He looked at the lock. “I wanted to ask–just you.” He looked at me and sort of rolled his eyes. He showed me the key he had been trying, moved down a notch on his key ring and showed me another, tried that one in the lock and opened the door effortlessly. “Just a movie,” he said like he was apologizing.

“Just me,” I said slowly, “and just a movie.” The car door gaped open. It was the passenger side door. He was opening the car door for me.

“Right,” he said, and looked out toward the city. “I mean, if you want. We could all go, too. It doesn’t matter.”

I got in the car and unlocked his side for him. He got in and started the car, gripping the steering wheel like it might spin out of his hands even though we weren’t going anywhere. Like it might spin away. With champagne in my head I could say anything. With champagne in my head I could sit right next to Gabriel and think, But what if Adam calls and asks me out tomorrow night?

“Why don’t you call me tomorrow,” I said, and Gabriel looked at me like an enormous question mark. “When we have a newspaper in front of us, so we can see what time it starts. I have so much champagne in me I can’t possibly schedule anything. How about you? Should you be driving?”

“I’m fine,” he said, and in the dark his teeth smiled like what’s-his-name’s cat. He looked at me sheepishly and just about broke my heart. “I’m a little giddy,” he said, “but I’m fine.”

You know, despite all my world-weariness and cynicism, I think I’ve always believed that there is one person in the universe for whom you are truly meant–and the fact that sometimes there are two or even more people on the earth you can fall in love with really bothers me. It suggests that if you work hard you can be meant for anyone. Maybe that’s a more comforting notion, I thought as I watched Gabriel drive, but inside I wasn’t sure. I could deny Adam and make myself be meant for Gabriel, but what would that be? Would it be like studying hard and getting good grades, or would it be like sneaking into a room I had no business in and setting free little bugs that were never supposed to be free, never supposed to be flying unfettered in the air? I know, I know: in which I had no business.

Saturday September 25th

Douglas, the only man in my life who I thought wasn’t doing strange things, knocked on my door at nine-thirty in the morning. The two of us looked at each other, me in my robe and damp hair and he in a brown heathered suit and a hat.

“Hi,” he said. “How’ve you been?”

“You mean during the last nine hours since I’ve seen you? Oh, fine. You know. Sleeping. What are you talking about?”

“I thought that maybe it was a perfect day for walking across the Golden Gate Bridge.”

I stood there thinking that perhaps I had stepped into a time warp. Walking across GGB had been my standard date with Douglas; all that was missing was the flowers. I had a brief ray of hope that what I thought had been last summer and this first month of school had in fact been a long, fevered dream, and that I was waking up and it was my junior year. I was still going out with Douglas, I hadn’t done anything dumb like write letters all summer to some boy, I was going to sign up for Chemistry instead of Biology, I wasn’t going to commit a murder fairly soon and my grades didn’t count quite as much toward college. Douglas must have read my thoughts because he smiled and said, “Not like that, not like that, I figured you’ve had enough of that this weekend. You must not have had coffee yet.”

“Yeah, well, it is before ten o’clock. Why did you come over so early?”

“I couldn’t sleep. Plus I figured if I waited any longer some other member of the Basic Eight would scoop you up and put you through the third degree about Gabriel.”

“And you wanted to do it first.”

“No, I wanted to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. We can talk about him or not. We can talk about anything or not. Now go get dressed and I’ll make the coffee. Where do you keep the filters?” He was already in my kitchen, opening cupboards–but, typical male, the wrong ones of course. Not like he’d ever been in my house, making me coffee nineteen thousand times. I reached over his head and opened the right cupboard. For a moment my face, my mouth, was right near his neck, and I felt a flush go down my body, naked and still damp under the robe. I hadn’t had anything close to a sexual moment with Douglas for quite a while. It was odd. He was looking at me like he was afraid I was going to hit him, and when I avoided his eyes and looked back at his neck I saw why. For a minute it looked like a birthmark, but I knew Douglas’s neck. The purplish blotch on his neck wasn’t a birthmark. I looked back at him and he looked terrified.

“Um, aren’t you supposed to wear turtlenecks to cover those up?” I asked him. “Surely you own a turtleneck, Douglas.”

“I don’t, actually,” he said. “Gave them away.” His hand strayed to the mark and stayed there. I handed him the box of coffee filters and he looked at it for a second before taking his hand off his neck and taking it from me. I remembered suddenly that I had bought him a turtleneck, a nice one, black, last Christmas. I thought it was a good time for me to go upstairs and get dressed.

It was a perfect day for GGB walking. San Francisco tourists always attempt to pillage our city in short shirts and Bermuda shorts, and on foggy days like this they are soundly defeated. Today they could be found huddling in rental cars, clutching one another and grimacing for cameras, they were an innocuous presence; Flora Habstat would have written The Guinness Book to tell them no one asked us to take a family portrait with white sailboat dots and an island prison in the background. Here we are on the Golden Gate Bridge, those pictures seem to say, mom and dad smiling emptily with hands placed artificially on the shoulders of itchy, embarrassed teenagers. What Douglas had to say was less clear. He kept making small talk about nothing and nervously covered his neck when anyone else went by. Eventually we walked in silence, Douglas looking at the ground and me looking at him, running my hand along the fence they recently installed to give suicides an added challenge.

“So, how are things going with Lily?” I said.

He looked past me at the fence. “A lot of people must jump from here,” he said. “I wonder why. I mean, I know why they want to end their lives, but why here?”

“So I’m hearing that things aren’t so hot,” I said, and he looked at me and smiled.

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I am a little gloomy today.”

“The weather is a little gloomy today. You are lots gloomy. Are things with you and Lily all right?”

“They have their ups and downs,” he said, gazing at the water. “You dated a classical musician so you know how it is. With two it’s almost constant melodrama.”

“You act like that’s a bad thing,” I said. “And how does Mr. Classical Musician know about the new Q.E.D. album?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and for the first time all day I really looked at him. His eyes looked so tired they were almost closed, and his whole face was wrinkled with worry like a prisoner, or a widow. He looked as if he might cry. Above him seagulls cried too. He looked up at them, down at the water, over at the traffic, not at me. “I don’t know,” he said again.

“Hey,” I said. “Hey. This is me. You know, Flannery. You can tell me anything. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he said reflexively, the way people do when you ask how are you and they say fine and then remember they have cancer. “I don’t know.”

“Are you bothered by what Gabriel is doing, you know, with me? Because, you know, I haven’t even worked out what’s going on with that–”

“No, no,” he said impatiently. “I don’t care about that. I mean, I care about what happens with you, of course, but–”

“Then is it things with you and Lily?”

“No, no, no–”

“Because, I mean, how bad could things be if you’re bruising each other all night?”

“I didn’t get this from her,” he said, quickly, quietly, pointing at his neck. I felt a chill, and it wasn’t the fog; I was properly dressed in a sweatshirt, remember?

“What?” I hissed. I looked around us hurriedly. Some lone brave tourists, shivering in shorts, were nearby; Lily was unlikely to have any connections with them but you couldn’t be sure. “What are you saying? Are you dating somebody else?”

“Um–”

“Douglas,” I said, “are you seeing another woman?”

“No, no,” he said, quickly. “I’m not–it’s too complicated to go into right now, but–”

“Douglas,” I said, ducking my head to meet his eyes. “Lily’s a friend of mine. You’re a friend of mine. What’s going on?”

“I don’t want to–I can’t talk about it now.”

“Douglas, Lily isn’t going to talk to those tourists. I can’t promise that I won’t tell anyone, but–”

“Just please, I need you to do something for me,” he pleaded.

“What?” I asked, seeing just how frightened he looked. Whatever this was, it was bigger than Lily and me and the whole Basic Eight. “What?”

“I need to cover this up, of course, that’s what,” he said, pointing to his neck and looking around like a spy. “Do you have something, makeup or something? I can’t let Lily see this! What would she think?”

“Probably what I’m thinking,” I said. “I don’t know, Douglas. I’m not going to help you cover up for something unless I know what it is.”

“Look,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “I’m not seeing another woman, OK? Is that what you want to hear? That isn’t what’s happening. But Lily will think that’s what’s happening, and I need you to cover up for me! Please!”

“Just buy a turtleneck,” I said. “Don’t get me involved in this, Douglas! Lily’s my friend, and she’s paranoid enough about the two of us without this.”

“I can’t,” he said. “This thing will take a few days–”

“Hickey,” I said. “Love bite. Just say what it is. You have a hickey that comes from someone who isn’t–”

“It will take several days to wear off, and I can’t wear turtlenecks for several days in a row. Everyone’s used to seeing me in these suits! What will they think?” He was getting absolutely panicky.

“Well then, go buy some makeup.”

“I can’t do that,” he said. “I can’t do that, I can’t do that, I can’t do that, I can’t do that–”

“Calm down, Douglas. Jesus.”

“You’ve got to help me.”

“I don’t know.”

Douglas’s face grew angular, his eyes squinty. “Listen, Flannery,” he said in a low voice. “No one’s supposed to tell you this, but on Thursday Bodin called some of us into his office. Me, and V__, and Flora and I forget who else.”

I blinked, trying to keep up with the changing subject. “What did our good principal want?”

“Well, he’d heard the rumor about you setting the fruit flies free, and he called in some friends of yours to sort of grill them.”

“Flora’s not a friend of mine.”

“Yes, she is, Flan. But you’re missing the point.”

“Who else did he call in? Gabriel?”

“No.”

“Natasha?”

“No, she wasn’t there that day, remember? In fact, you weren’t, either, which is what saved you. But you’re missing the point.”

“What do you mean, I wasn’t?”

“Well, everybody knows you were there that day, but for some reason you were officially marked absent. Dodd must have spaced out–”

“Or got me and Natasha confused–”

“Whatever. But what that meant was you couldn’t have done anything if you weren’t there. But you’re missing the point.”

“Did you guys back up my story?”

“Yes. We told Bodin we’d heard the rumor, too, but that we didn’t think there was any truth to it. Of course, we didn’t say that you weren’t there that day, because we didn’t know, but Bodin seemed too dim to really catch that, plus Carr was chomping at the bit to fire that assistant–”

“Carr was there?”

“Yes. But you’re missing the point.”

“OK, OK,” I said. “What is the point?”

“The point was, we backed you up even though we didn’t know the story. All we heard was that you had done something kooky in a classroom, and knowing your love of panache we guessed it was probably true. But even though we were suspicious we backed you up, because we’re your friends. We trusted you; we knew that even if you had done something wrong you had a good reason. And once Kate had the opportunity to fill us in it turns out you did have a good reason.”

“So what does this have to do with you?”

“I’m telling you. Sometime you’ll be filled in, and you’ll know I have a good reason. But right now I need your help and you have to trust me.” He actually started to cry, right there. Just a few tears, but that’s a lot for a boy, even one who can tell Shostakovich from Tchaikovsky and wears linen suits to school. “Please.”

So I helped him. But I didn’t feel good about it. Something in the way he told me about the scene in Bodin’s office made me feel obliged to help him. Like my friends, unbeknownst to me, had made a move, and I had to follow. They had upped the loyalty ante of the Basic Eight, and now I followed. OK, I didn’t feel that way until later, but it could fit in this situation. It took forever–Douglas was really paranoid, so we had to drive to some desolate neighborhood, and I went in by myself and bought a bunch of different shades of base, and then back at my place, with the shades down, I tested them until I found the right one (surprisingly, a fairly dark one, considering how pale I consider Douglas to be) and blended his neck until the bruise faded. He made me promise to meet him early, before school every day, until it faded. We compromised, and he said he’d drive to my house to do it, and that he’d fill me in as soon as he possibly could. I can’t even imagine.

Once he’d left, I cleaned up the coffee mugs, and noticed that Douglas had left his hat at my house. I took it upstairs and put it on a chair in my room, on top of Kate’s blue sweater. I checked the answering machine, thinking there’d be a message from Gabriel, hoping there’d be one from Adam, but I had forgotten to leave it on.

It was getting on toward six o’clock. I considered calling other people, asking them what the plan was for tonight, but then I realized they’d probably planned something to leave Gabriel and me alone, so I just sat in the living room, listening to the Bach that Douglas put on and writing this all down. It’s now ten o’clock–the latest showing of the movie was nine-thirty. So I think it’s safe to say that I don’t have a date with Gabriel this evening. Or Adam, for that matter, or even some coffee date with Natasha or someone. I’m alone. There’s a poem in that, but I don’t want to write it. I don’t want to be someone who spends Saturday night alone at home, writing poems about being alone.

Vocabulary:

LIMP-WRISTED

GALLIVANTING

ELOCUTION

DROSOPHILA^*

^*May be difficult to find in some dictionaries.

Study Questions:

1. In this chapter, Flannery writes: “I lead a ridiculous life.” Do you agree with her assessment? Why or why not? Do you lead a ridiculous life? Why or why not?

 

2. Is it rude to bring an uninvited guest to a dinner party? Should you be excused if it’s your boyfriend? What if he’s dumb?

 

3. Do you think Flannery did the right thing with Douglas at the Golden Gate Bridge? Do you think Douglas did the right thing with Flannery at the Golden Gate Bridge? Do you think Bodin did the right thing with Douglas and the others in his office? Did Douglas and the others do the right thing with Bodin, and Flannery, in Bodin’s office? Do you generally do the right thing? Questions like these will be repeated several times throughout this journal, but write down an answer each time, so it’s fresh.

Monday September 27th

Super Student was almost late to homeroom today, because it took longer than I thought to blend Douglas’s neck at my house. If you can believe it, I had to duck when we entered the student parking lot because Lily was right there and Douglas didn’t want for her to see us together. I had to run down the hall to Dodd’s room, wondering why. I mean, if he marked me absent again I could cause a little more havoc and not get caught. But not me, oh no. I’m Super Student, remember? Don’t you remember on Friday, how I sat in the library and wrote out a pledge to be Super Student, all the while missing my fucking Calc test?

Well, don’t feel bad, I didn’t realize it either until I showed up late for Calculus and everybody was getting their tests back. Baker didn’t even look at me until the bell rang and everybody left us alone.

“Are you going to try the I Have A Really Good Reason For This approach, or just skip directly to Have Mercy On Me Mr. Baker?” he asked, erasing the board.

I swallowed. “That would be the latter,” I said.

He turned around. “You know, based on the score for your last test, you could form a cohesive argument that statistically you had a chance of a better score if you didn’t show up, but even so I take it as a personal insult.”

If there’s one thing that drives me nuts it’s when teachers take it as a personal insult when you screw up. I mean, I was already taking it as a personal insult to myself, getting an F on a Calc test and thus keeping my F average at an even keel and ending up living under a bridge, and now, Mr. Baker was insulted, too. Bring on the Fs, leave out the bonus guilt, thanks very much. “I didn’t mean it as a personal insult,” I said, standing up and getting my books together. “I was stressed out, I cut class, I forgot there was a test. I’m sorry. I’ll send you a balloon-o-gram or something so you’ll feel better about giving me an F.”

“You know,” he said, “your attitude isn’t going to help you get anywhere, either.”

How wrong he turned out to be. I looked at him, and realizing that Super Student or no, it wasn’t a very good plan to alienate all of my teachers during the first semester of my senior year, I put my books back down. “I guess now wouldn’t be the right time to ask you for a letter of recommendation.” He and I looked sternly at each other, and then both shrugged, both smiled.

“Can I give you a makeup test?” he asked. I wanted to tell him I’d already had one this morning, with Douglas, but instead I just nodded. “Will you get an F on it anyway?” I nodded again.

“You know,” he said, “one of my students in fourth-period class has been doing some tutoring. The two of you could meet, after school or something. I don’t need to tell you that it’s an important semester, Flannery.”

“I know, I know. Who is this wunderkind?”

“Her name’s Flora Habstat. Do you know her?”

I’m sorry, I’m too miserable to write down the rest of the conversation. I’m missing what Hattie Lewis is saying, anyway. We’re starting Poe today. You know, ever since I heard Poe was manic-depressive, I’m thinking maybe I am too. Who knows? I mean, plenty of people purport to know, from Dr. Tert’s (in)expert testimony to talk-show queen Winnie Moprah: “I’m guessing that Flannery Culp had lots of pain in her life.” That’s really what she said, “lots of pain,” like I owned some undeveloped land somewhere, filled with prickly plants and broken glass. I’m guessing, Winnie, that you have lots of money in your life, but little else. Ah well, life goes on, I guess, as Hattie Lewis writes page numbers on the blackboard, and I look at Flora Habstat’s phone number which Baker scribbled on paper for me. All these numbers, assigned to me: numbers on dockets, prison record numbers, legal fees, where I fit into national statistics on teenagers, murder, witchcraft.

LATER

Gabriel was waiting for me outside of choir. You’d think that sweet would be a land far, far away from irritating, but as it turns out they’re right next door, and always having border disputes. Gabriel would do anything for me. Why don’t I want him to?

“Hi,” I said.

Gabriel looked at me for a moment before saying, “Hi. Can we talk?”

“Of course,” I said, leading him out the side entrance where Adam had led me. The comparisons were driving me nuts. I opened the door and we walked out and sat on a bench just as someone was getting up from it. A woman in her twenties, grinding out her cigarette with her bright red shoe, too old to be a student and too young to be a teacher; what was she doing here? What was I?

“I just wanted to say,” he said quickly, and my heart sank. He just wanted to say that he’d had too much to drink the other night, or that he’s had second thoughts and realized I’m a fat lesbian, or something. “I just wanted to say that it’s OK with me, I’m happy for you, and that I’m not angry at you, though I am a little angry at him, though just for Lily’s sake, not for mine. I just think it was bad timing for me, that’s all. That’s all I wanted to say. That’s all,” he said, and actually stood up like there was nothing else to say.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“I know about you and Douglas,” he said. He smiled, weakly. “I think it’s great that you guys are back together. You always made a great couple.”

“We made a lousy couple,” I said, “but that’s not the point. We aren’t back together. What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t you guys have a date on Saturday?”

“Well, we walked across the bridge and talked. It wasn’t a date.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Gabriel!”

He shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry. I guess it was nothing.”

“How did you even hear about it?”

“From Kate.”

“And Douglas told Kate?” Douglas was getting odder by the moment.

“No. This will really sound like she’s a spy, but it’s true. Kate had some cousins in town, and they took some pictures Saturday afternoon at the bridge. They went to one of those one-hour development places and were showing them to Kate when she saw you and Douglas in the background.”

“No way.”

“It’s true.”

“Come on.”

“Really.”

“And so Kate called you right away, and you just decided to accept it as gospel, not even calling me?” I asked.

“Give me a break, Flan,” he said gently. “I was feeling delicate enough, and everybody knows the bridge was you guys’ big date thing.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. He smiled like I knew he would, instantly and from the eyes. “And you were going to give me up without a fight,” I said. “Shame on you.”

He turned toward me. We looked at each other, mouth to mouth. “So what are you saying?” he said. I hesitated, and that’s when the side door banged open and out came Adam, laughing with a couple of people I didn’t know. I suddenly felt like I needed a little room, like Adam had said to me.

“I gotta go,” I said. “I have Biology. I’ll talk to you soon.” I got up and brushed past Adam, who pretended like he was just noticing me. “Hey Flan,” he said. I looked at him and wished I had been marked absent so I could throw him down a well. But anyone could have thought that, Dr. Tert; it’s just in the context of my later actions that my wish becomes sinister.

I muttered all the way to Biology like a bag lady, and when I got there I had a small humiliating experience. I tried the door, found it locked and realized I was early. Sheepishly I realized why they were locking the doors, and as I backed up I ran into the science geeks who were sitting in the hallway, locked out of their study hall.

“Something you need to do in there?” one of them asked, and I did my best to maintain a dignified expression. Life goes on, I guess; when Biology finally began Carr introduced his new assistant. The woman grinding out her cigarette. Remember? With her bright red shoe.

Tuesday September 28th

Not one to wear much makeup, except during a brief period of unfortunate experiments with glitter eye shadow in seventh grade, I never got to experience the girls-in-front-of-the-bathroom-mirror-giggling-and-gossiping bonding that has been promised me on TV since I was very little, so having Douglas meet me every morning for Cover The Hickey is the closest thing. It gives me a sort of closure with him, too–first we were friends, then lovers (well, sort of–we never did much of that, Pusher), and now we meet every morning so I can help him hide his love bite from his love interest. Ah, the way of the world. Or this world, anyway; I don’t suppose peasants in Zaire are discussing Oscar Wilde and applying the right shade of base. Or are there even peasants in Zaire? Zaire’s in Africa, right? Just kidding, Peter Pusher, I just wanted to hear you gnash your teeth. I can hear it clearly, over the gurgling, even.

“Do you know what I’ve been thinking about?” Douglas asked me, craning his neck while I moved in for the kill. We were in my bathroom. If he had his eyes open, Douglas could have seen my bedroom in the reflection in the bathroom mirror, seen his hat perched on Kate’s navy blue sweater. For some reason I haven’t gotten around to returning either of those things yet. I don’t know why. Douglas always keeps his eyes closed during this process, though.

“Telling me where you got this?” I asked, halfheartedly. There was no progress on that.

“No,” he said. “Absinthe. Oscar Wilde had it sometimes.”

“Oh yeah? Mrs. Lewis was telling us that Poe took it too. What about it?”

“Well, it might be fun to try some.”

I looked at him. Drugs weren’t usually something the Basic Eight did. Not out of any Puritan goody-goodiness, but because it just seems so uncouth. Marijuana conjures up unwashed longhaired men, LSD brings to mind a spirituality that we would consider immature even if it were genuine, and all those powdered things can’t help but make me think of men with slicked-back hair, wearing silk suits of ghastly colors, with tall thin blondes on their arm, high and dumb. But absinthe? Writers, artists and thinkers, lounging around salons, their thinking growing ever lucid thanks to some magical potion–that was pure us. “You know,” I said, “it might be. Where would we get some?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea.”

“Good,” Lily said at lunchtime when I told her about it. Natasha and Lily and Douglas and I were in the courtyard, discussing the possibility. Natasha, of course, was up for it right away, but Lily looked at us over her tortoiseshell glasses like we had gone mad. Do you think that transition from home to courtyard was a smooth one? “That stuff is supposed to fry your brain.”

“So’s coffee,” Natasha said carelessly. Today she was wearing, and getting away with, a cape. A cape. No one else could wear a cape to school; people would think they were pretending to be a wizard or something. But Natasha looked like a visiting countess, sexy and regal.

“It is not,” Lily said. “Absinthe messes with the chemicals in your head. Chemicals I would presume to say most of us want to keep intact.”

“Poe took it,” I offered.

“And he was certainly a picture of perfect mental health,” Lily said. How was I to know that Dr. Tert’s book Crying Too Hard to Be Scared would contain chapters on both Poe and me, though never making the absinthe connection? Which is odd, considering that Winnie Moprah not only focused on it in the episode about the Basic Eight but then had a separate show about absinthe abuse in teenagers, also starring Flora Habstat, once again talking about something she knew nothing about. What a bitch.

“You’re no fun,” Douglas said.

“Thanks a lot.” Lily looked at him sharply.

“Come on,” he said. “Flan’s up for it. Don’t you think it would be fun?”

“I feel like I’m in a bad TV movie about peer pressure,” she said. “I have to go somewhere and practice.”

“You have to practice going somewhere?” Douglas said, modifying V__’s mockery. Natasha and I couldn’t help it; we laughed. She stood up and stalked off, or as close to stalking off as you can do while dragging a cello case along with you.

“It seems you guys are always bickering lately,” Natasha said, stretching her legs out on the bench where Lily and her cello had sat.

Douglas sighed. “It’s not her fault. It’s mine. Hey, speaking of mine, do you have my hat, Flan? I think I left it at your house.”

“No,” I said, for no reason. “I mean, I’ll look, but I don’t think so.” I don’t know why I said that. Like a slowly dying engine, stuck underwater, my head gurgles along, waiting for all my sentences to end: the one that keeps me in high school, the one that keeps me in prison, and this one, which is a run-on. Actually, they’re all run-ons. I’m babbling, aren’t I?

LATER

Today is the day that my Advanced Bio report was due, and I think the fact that I’ve never mentioned it in this journal reflects my interest. Mine’s on sunburn. Just before class began, I went up to Carr’s desk to add my report to the little pile of reports. Carr was standing at the sink, behind the new teaching assistant who was washing out test tubes with a miniature toilet scrubber. His hand was on her ass, but when he heard someone at his desk he took it away. Then he saw it was me, looked right at me and put his hand back on her ass. I didn’t blink. I just stood there for a second and felt a chill like when you bite directly down on ice cream. Walking up to the bus stop, I saw the assistant sitting disconsolately at the bus stop again, alone. I just walked across the street and took the right bus. I’m on it now. Where is my life? Where is it interesting?

Wednesday September 29th

Natasha and I cut school all day today. Between Adam, Gabriel, Douglas and Carr there was scarcely an island in the Roewer Sea where this little castaway felt safe. And Natasha–well, Natasha wouldn’t worry about such trivial, earthly matters as attendance. We drove out of there, stopping briefly at Well-Kept Grounds for a latte to go, and went to the beach. We bundled together on a big rock, me sipping latte and Natasha sipping from her flask, and talked of more important things than the school we were missing. Talked about, I don’t know, books and love and what we were going to do after we left our hallowed halls. We made a date for Saturday night, just the two of us, seeing a revival of one of Natasha’s favorite non-Marlene movies, Way Down East. We made a standing date for any Saturday night when we didn’t have something absolutely fabulous to do–then the two of us would do something, just us. All we needed was each other, we decided. Flan and Natasha were all Flan and Natasha needed. Sure, the other Eight were wonderful people, but we, we were the stuff of kings. We hugged each other tight, and I suddenly pulled away and leaned out from her so I could see her face as she leaned her head back and took another sip, brushing her hair away from her face and wiping the dark lipstick off the neck of the flask when she was done. She caught me looking at her and rolled her eyes before putting the flask down on the rock and fluffing her hair with her hands, posing for my gaze in a mock pout. I love her. I miss her so much. I’m going to stop writing now.

Thursday September 30th

The transcripts I ordered from the Winnie Moprah Show finally arrived–both the one about the Basic Eight and the one on absinthe abuse. I snitched a crayon and am circling my favorite parts in a color V__ would have no trouble calling “flesh,” a pallid, pinkish shade that reminds me of really old gum, stuck on the street and pounded flat and dull. Speaking of which, here’s Winnie opening the show:

I’m glad you could join us today. The number eight has had a variety of historical meanings, but never one as sinister as what it now means to all Americans: the Basic Eight, the notorious gang of teenagers [as those horrible school pictures of us are flashed on the screen.] To look at them now, they look like any American teenagers, maybe ones in your hometown at home. But these teenagers–[shaking her head like she can’t believe it] children, actually–were on a rampage, a rampage of drugs, alcohol, substance abuse, Satanism and other alternative lifestyles, a rampage that went unnoticed by their parents and other school authorities until it ended in the tragic murder of Adam State. [As a photo of Adam is shown, the camera slowly zooming into his smile until all that is on the screen are his large, cute teeth] Adam was one of the most popular boys at Roewer High School in San Francisco, and at the time of his murder he was on the cusp of a dazzling future: college, and then undoubtedly a brilliant and lucrative career, perhaps raising children of his own. But Adam State’s dream is over, now. His life has been drastically cut short by the Basic Eight. Of course, the trial of Flannery Culp, ringleader of the Basic Eight, is still going on, so we cannot comment on her innocence or guilt, but here with us to discuss these murderous events are [as the camera panel-pans] Mrs. Stacy State, grieving mother of Adam and now president of the Adam State Memorial Anti-Satanic Teenage Murder Education and Prevention Council, the first national organization to have the courage to take on this tragic and complex issue; Peter Pusher, a nationally renowned expert on The Family, author of the book What’s the Matter with Kids Today?: Getting Back to Family Basics in a World Gone Wrong and president of the Peter Pusher Think Tank on National Reform; Dr. Eleanor Tert, nationally renowned teenage therapist and author of How Kids Tick (You Off) and the forthcoming Crying Too Hard to Be Scared, a profile history of the psychological torment behind famous Americans from Edgar Allan Poe to Marilyn Monroe to Flannery Culp; Flora Habstat, the member of the Basic Eight who pulled the whistle, currently in recovery under the auspices of a twelve-step program; and Rinona Wide, the twice-award-nominated actress who will be playing Flannery Culp in the upcoming television movie Basic Eight, Basic Hate: The Flannery Culp Story. Thank you for joining us, everyone.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: inaccuracy. I have so much commentary I’d better properly notate them. The offensive phrases will be in quotations, followed by the line number on which they appear for handy reference, followed by the corrections from the person who gave Winnie Moprah a much-needed boost in ratings.

 

1. “The number eight has had a variety of historical meanings…” (lines 1-5) What is the dear (honorary) Dr. Moprah talking about? Perhaps she’s thinking of the number of days in the week?

 

2. “…your hometown at home.” (lines 6-7) What boggles the mind is that she doesn’t say these things off the top of her head; her eyes clearly glide along cue cards just off-camera. So somebody drafted and wrote the phrase “your hometown at home” in big felt-tip letters, and nobody thought to think it was redundant.

 

3. “…other alternative lifestyles.” (line 10) Notice how she just slipped in Douglas’s homosexuality, as if that’s an abomination, too, on the par with me beating Adam to death. (Gosh, the gurgling is loud all of a sudden.) The nerve she has, to make such judgments.

 

4. “…cusp of a dazzling future.” (line 17) Grades weren’t even turned in when he died.

 

5. “…president of the Adam State Memorial Anti-Satanic Teenage Murder Education and Prevention Council.” (lines 25-26) Mrs. State is in fact Chairperson; the council has no presidency. I know this because the ASMASTMEAPC regularly and pointedly sends me their monthly newsletter. (“Authorities estimate there are more than five hundred Flannery Culps in America, running around completely unchecked.” How difficult it must be for you citizens, not able to tell the Flannery Culp you know from the other unchecked 499.)

 

6. “…nationally renowned expert on The Family.” (line 28-29) Mr. Pusher’s renown, and indeed his expertise, is entirely the result of his almost-constant appearances on Winnie Moprah’s show. That isn’t fair.

 

7. “…nationally renowned teenage therapist.” (lines 32-33) See note 6.

 

8. “Flora Habstat…member of the Basic Eight.” (line 37) Lies, lies, lies. What a bitch.

LATER

I’m so burnt up by this that I can’t even remember what happened at school today. It’s not that I feel it personally, I’m just intellectually upset by the inaccuracy. Lily’s note to me is not just insulting but poorly devised. I mean, just read it:

Flannery,

I have to get some things off my chest that have really been bothering me. Maybe you’ll think it’s cowardly of me to write them down instead of talking to you in person, but I kept losing my nerve. You have to admit, Flannery, sometimes you can really be a really intimidating person. I know that’s not your fault, really, but I just wanted to tell you that, so you’d know why I’m writing this down instead of just talking to you.

You’ve probably guessed that I want to talk about Douglas. And before you jump to conclusions and think that I’m thinking that you and Douglas are back together, I’m not. Gabriel told me about you telling him about what Kate told him (Gabriel) about what her cousins told her about you and Douglas on the bridge, and I believe you. But it doesn’t really matter that nothing went on, because it’s irrelevant. What I’m trying to tell you is that when you spend time with Douglas alone it takes away from my relationship with him, even when nothing goes on. [This last sentence was crossed out, but only with a single line, so clearly I was supposed to read it without really being able to blame Lily for it.]

I’m not really trying to tell you that I don’t want you to be friends with Douglas, but I think you haven’t really been sensitive to how it makes me feel when the two of you spend so much time together. I think that my relationship with him is suffering because of whatever-it-is that he’s sharing with you, even if it’s just time.

We don’t have to mention this again. I’d just prefer it if the two of you [this, too, was crossed out, but repeatedly; I had to hold it up to the light and make out the letters carefully, one by one.]

Lily

OK, now before I do the notation thing again, I’d like to advertise a little contest. Guess how many times the word really is used in the note. Go on; guess. Eight, that’s how many, including the one that I wrote in brackets. Lily used the word really eight times in a one-page note. Eight times. Well, on to the notation:

 

1. “Flannery.” (line 1) Not even a Dear. Suddenly I’m not dear to her. The whole thing makes me angry.

 

2. “I have to get some things off my chest…” (line 2)

 

Oh, what’s the use. The whole letter just burns me up. But just one lucky event, and a small one. But crucial. Lily stared at me throughout Lit Mag meeting today, just looking at me and not talking, not even offering an opinion on the poem somebody wrote about a cat, for God’s sake. Then she left, early and significantly, looking at me directly before she shut the door behind her. My small bit of luck was sitting at the end of the table, where Lily had been. I lifted it up, and below it was the note, written on a piece of binder paper in bright black ink and folded in half, lengthwise, with FLANNERY on it in big letters. I read the note straightaway, ignoring what was on top of it, and rushed right home on the bus. But I hadn’t forgotten to slip them into my pocket.

Her tortoiseshell glasses, expensive and important, so much a part of Lily that it was unimaginable that she had actually forgotten to take them with her. They are emblematic of Lily–a sort of Lily Chandly talisman. Like Douglas’s hat, or Kate’s sweater in her trademark navy blue. I’ve moved these objects to a bare shelf in my closet, rather than on the chair in my room–can’t have anybody spotting them. Later, of course, they were bagged and numbered and shown to a jury of my peers, visiting the museum of my life, peering through it, ignoring the PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH signs as easily as Mark Wallace did, just reaching out and groping me. They couldn’t see Kate’s brief, lazy imitation of the Headless Horseman as she eased into her sweater before heading outdoors, or the way Douglas’s hat perched on his head, looking both dorky and sexy, or the way Lily would put her glasses on whenever she needed to think hard about something, as if the lenses clarified things both inside and out. They just saw these things on display, as evidence. They couldn’t see the forest for the trees, or however that saying goes.

Friday October 1

Douglas came over in the morning today and rang the doorbell as I was drying my hair and humming “With You With You,” by Q.E.D. I heard it on the radio this morning. We had a full minute of sonic miscommunication like a suspense movie. I thought I heard the doorbell, over the hair dryer, but when I turned it off I didn’t hear anything. I turned it on again and swore I heard the doorbell. I turned it off again, etc., finally stomping downstairs and opening the door, knowing it would be Douglas.

“Go away,” I said. “I’ll take the bus to school.”

“What?” he said nervously, clearly saying it for no reason. He was looking around him like an escaped convict. Not that I would know. “Can’t we talk?”

“No,” I said. “Talk to Lily.”

“I can explain everything,” he said.

“You couldn’t possibly.” I started to shut the door. The Q.E.D. song had put me in such a peaceful mood, and now this.

“I’m gay!” he cried. I took my hand off the door but didn’t open it. Douglas’s face was in the half-opened door like something in a vise. His cheeks were splotched with red, suddenly, and beneath the brim of his hat I could see he was crying.

“What?” I said nervously, clearly saying it for no reason.

“I’m a homosexual,” he said medically.

We looked at each other for a second, and something about the silence cracked us both up a little. The door swung slowly open on its own accord and as it did I saw more and more of Douglas. Then it was open all the way and Douglas stepped in, rumpled and out of breath like he’d been somewhere cramped. Like, um, a closet.

“Homosexual?” I said. “Isn’t that what they do to milk?”

“I hope not,” he said, and started to sob. He just put his head down on my shoulder, plop, while still standing a few steps from me. His shoulders shook. It felt so literal: “crying on my shoulder.” I moved closer to him until we were actually embracing. I’d never heard anybody crying like that who wasn’t a little kid, lost or bleeding.

“You know, you’re right,” I said. I was amazed to find myself crying too, but just a little bit. “They steam milk. Look, I’ll show you.” I strode to the kitchen and got out the coffee filters. In a flash I remembered the first time I saw the love bite, my mouth so near his neck as I reached over him for the same box of filters. It had felt, then, for a second, like we were about to kiss, and in another flash it hit me: Douglas and I used to kiss, all the time, and now he was gay. And, a third flash–the first two still lingering in my eyes like flashbulbs–I realized what the hickey meant. He had reassured me that he wasn’t seeing another woman. I realized I was crumpling the box of filters into a ravaged building. I looked at it and felt like the storm had passed and I had come up from the storm cellar to see what had happened to the place where I lived.

I turned and looked at him. “Really?” I asked, and he nodded, wiping his eyes. He didn’t sound like he was crying now, and his shoulders were still, but the tears still ran freely down his face. He sat down on the couch, and I stood up straight and made the coffee. I stared into space as I steamed the milk and it scalded and the smoke alarm went off, which was a relief, because Douglas had to run over and wave the smoke away from the screeching device with his hat, so we were in the same room again.

“I’ll take mine black,” he said. He opened the wrong cupboard, looking for mugs. My smile felt forced as I watched the smoky hiss of cold water hitting the scalded pot. I found the mugs; he poured the coffee. We sipped and said nothing.

“So is that where you got–” I said finally, touching my neck, and he nodded.

“Is it anyone I know?” I said, trying to keep from sounding gossipy.

Douglas snorted. He looked very tired. “It’s no one I know,” he said.

“Are you being careful?” I asked. “I don’t mean to sound like your mother, but you know–”

“My chosen lifestyle is a risky one?” he asked lightly.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “I’m sorry, Douglas, it’s just taking me a while to adjust. I just heard about this.”

“You didn’t guess? You couldn’t tell?”

“I don’t know,” I said, looking at my friend Douglas, classical musician and actor, who dressed in linen suits, always brought flowers to dinner parties and cried during the sad parts of operas. When he and I had been going out, I’d had to spend a considerable amount of my time defending his sexuality to people at Roewer. Of course, when he and I had been going out would be the key part of that phrase. I don’t go out with gay men, as a general policy.

“It’s OK.”

“Did you know then, and not tell me? Come to think of it, does Lily know now?”

“No one knows now,” Douglas said. “I didn’t even mean to tell you. It just slipped out. And I don’t know how long I’ve known. I guess I don’t have to tell you that I don’t want anyone else to know.”

“Not even Lily?” I said. “Let me tell you one thing about women, Douglas, not that you’ll need to know, now. They generally assume that their boyfriends are heterosexual.”

“Don’t tell Lily!” he said. Cried, rather.

“I hadn’t thought of telling her myself. But you should tell her.”

“I can’t,” he said. “Not yet. And don’t tell anyone else.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” I said, already imagining what Natasha would think of this. “I promise. But you’ve got to set things straight with Lily.”

“So to speak,” he said with the ghost of a smile.

“What? Oh. Oh. Right. Douglas, Lily’s mad at me because she thinks, well I don’t know what she thinks. Let me show you this note she wrote me.” I bounded upstairs and got it from my room. As I picked it up I noticed my hands were shaking. It’s no big deal, I found myself telling myself. Lots of people are gay.

I went downstairs and showed it to him. “Why did she number all the lines?” he asked as he read it.

“No, I did that.”

He looked up. “Why did you number all the lines?”

“Never mind that. Read the note. You see how she purposely crossed out that part on lines 17 through 19, but left it for me to see?”

“Flan, give me a break. I’ll tell her soon, I promise. Come on, I’ll drive you to school.”

“Douglas!”

“We’re late already.”

“I’m not going to school. Neither of us are. We’re going to talk about this. Oh, wait, I have to go to school. I have to turn in my essay to Lewis or she’ll kill me. Come on.”

Douglas didn’t speak to me the whole way there. Or wouldn’t, rather. Douglas wouldn’t speak to me the whole way there. I sat in the passenger seat, Lily’s note still crumpled in my hands, and wished that I smoked so I could have a bitter cigarette at my fingertips, fuming along with me.

Douglas parked, and I swung my door open, almost knocking Gabriel down. I looked at him, one leg out of the car already, and felt the world grow pale like everybody got the flu at once.

“Hi,” I said hoarsely, trying–unsuccessfully, I knew–to make my face look like he hadn’t caught us at something. I heard Douglas get out of the car, behind me, and I waited for him to say anything. But he just walked away, and I was left shivering in the chilly morning.

“It’s already homeroom,” Gabriel said.

“I just know,” I said, “that someday I will actually be present and accounted for.”

“I was looking for Douglas,” he said, gesturing helplessly. “I wanted to talk to Douglas.”

I pointed to Douglas’s departing figure. “Well, he’s over there,” I said.

“Are you two going out?” he asked me.

“Haven’t we settled this?” I asked him.

“You know,” Gabriel said, looking up at the cold air, “I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t see you this morning. If I were you I wouldn’t come to school, either.” Even from someone as sweet as Gabriel that sounded like a threat.

“Gabriel,” I said, “please.”

“What’s going on?” Gabriel asked. “Flan, you’re driving me crazy.”

I looked at him, Gabriel, this person who for some reason was now dangling on a thread I was holding, and I could only think of one thing to do. Maybe somebody else would have done something else, but I was just me, a senior in high school trying to get into college, flunking Calc, trapped in a biology class with Jim Carr, suddenly the center of controversy among my friends who saw me as a confidante, an adulterer, a liar, a slut, a collaborator, an overweight slob and who knows what else, all except Gabriel, who stood there in the student parking lot seeing me as the person he loved, and it suddenly became so easy to see myself as someone who was in love with Gabriel, as he was in love with me, and I held my breath like you do when you’re opening a suspiciously dated carton of milk and kissed him. It was a long kiss, the proper length of kiss, I told myself, for the beginning of a relationship. I felt Gabriel stiffen, react despite himself and finally surrender and kiss me back. I stepped backward and into the car door; it slammed shut and we both jumped and stopped kissing. We grinned at each other, his as wide as the Pacific and mine, I fear, as shallow as Lake Merced. Some Gurgle and Buzz song popped into my head, but just out of reach, scarcely audible.

“Are you sure this is OK?” he asked me, and my mind scurried out of the swampy lake back to Gabriel. He was cute. He cooked and would never treat me wrong. No one would be mad at me any more.

“Yes,” I said, and he took my hand instantly and led me into the school building. The bell rang just as we walked in the door, and the hallway began to fill up. “I’ll see you soon,” I called to him over the roar of people my age who had a purpose, who knew where they were going and only had three minutes to get there. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

I opened the side entrance, and there was Adam.

“Flannery!” he said, smiling. “I’ve been looking for you!”

I tried to make my voice sound like his voice didn’t make me weak in the knees. You have a boyfriend, I found myself telling myself, trying to picture Gabriel clearly in my mind. “What do you want?”

“What’s wrong? You look a wreck.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“Hey, I thought we were friends.”

“And I thought you needed a little room,” I said, feeling a little bored by all this until he suddenly took my hand. Suddenly I was warm, for the first time all morning since I got out of the shower. As warm as “With You With You.” “What?” I squeaked. The way my life was going, some great-uncle of Kate’s was bird-watching, accidentally photographing me with Adam to show Gabriel, but fuck it. Let him. I’m over here next to the orioles, Uncle Bob!

“I wanted to ask you to dinner Saturday night,” he said plainly. He was wearing a button-down shirt of pure white; did I mention that? He makes me into a walking cliché; did I mention that? Melting at his voice, swooning inside, the whole bit, a pure shot of desire.

“Really?” I started to say, but changed it, just in time. “Saturday?” I said. I started to shake my head, but from nowhere a sentence dropped into my head like a note in a bottle. Gabriel wouldn’t have to know. “Yes.”

“Really?” he said, and then frowned like he hadn’t changed that in time. Adam was excited to ask me out. Excited. Maybe a little nervous. All he had needed was a little room; who didn’t need that, once in a while? “Um, I’m busy all day Saturday, so I won’t get ahold of you. Will you meet me in a cafe somewhere, let’s say six-thirty?”

“Death Before Decaf?” I said. “That’s close to where I live. We could just go back to my place and have sex.” That last sentence I purposely crossed out before I said it, but left it for him to hear.

“Sounds great,” he said, blinking. “Death Before Decaf, Saturday, six-thirty. See you then.” He looked at me, and smiled widely like everything was easier than he thought. With a pang I remembered Gabriel, after the dinner party, showing me he had found the right key to his car door.

“I Keep Finding What I’m Not Looking For,” that’s the Q.E.D. song that had popped into my head after kissing Gabriel in the parking lot. But this time, it was a different one, the album’s closer. “You’re young and you’re experienced,” the opening vocals whisper while a guitar purrs gently. The first kiss was gentle, and I thought that was going to be all. “And I can taste it,” the singer snarls, and the drums kick in, the full band in full force, the bass crackling like the feel of cold cement on your back as you lean against a building you hate, a building you’ve always hated, to kiss a man you love and have always loved. I don’t know how the rest of the lyrics go–I haven’t heard the song enough yet–except for the chorus: “Swept away by your ready desire/I surrender to your kiss of fire.” That’s the title of the song. When the kiss was over we looked at each other, out of breath, the silence around us expectant, just like it is when a great album is over. “Kiss Of Fire.”

Saturday October 2

Well, life could be worse, I’m not trapped on ice floes or anything, not like the gin was even cold, I have to go throw up. Fuck him.

 

Ahem. It’s later now, and although “sober” ain’t the word for what I am it’ll have to do; I’m not sitting on the cold tile of my bathroom floor with my cartoon-face night-light laughing at me anymore. He didn’t show, that’s why.

 

Back from another bout. I think the easiest way for my addled brain to chronicle this ignominious defeat is through a time line:

 

6:27 Flan leaves house to walk to Death Before Decaf, planning to arrive a few minutes late.

6:33 Arrives. A. S. has outfoxed her and Flan is forced to order a latte and sit waiting. Luckily she’s brought Salinger’s Nine Stories, which she’s rereading for the umpteenth time. She figures that it’s a good conversation starter, plus she can successfully pull off reading it carelessly, so when Adam comes she will be casual. In reality, her hands are sweating, and she keeps wiping them on napkins despite the self-righteous NAPKINS = TREES TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU NEED sign.

6:48 Orders another latte. Overcaffeinated and nervous, Flan suddenly realizes she’s read the same sentence in “For Esme with Love and Squalor” sixteen times in a row.

7:00 This is the deadline. Finally, Flan overcomes her own willpower and does what she knows will do her no good: takes her black leather notebook out of her bag and checks what time Adam said he’d meet her. Yes, it is fucking six thirty, put your journal back in your bag and order another latte.

7:18 Catches herself praying.

7:22 Decides her hands are so shaky that she may drop the latte on the way back to her chair, so she doesn’t order another one.

7:33 Flan doesn’t know what to do. Saturday night stretches before her like unwanted limousine service, waiting for me to tell it where to go. I can’t go home.

7:41 I was about to order some food. “Death Before Decaf offers a wide variety of low-fat salads” peeps another helpful sign, just when I was feeling fat enough, thank you, but about to collapse as a result of three lattes’ worth of blank jittery energy poured hot into an empty stomach. I reread the mocha-stained menu, flipping it over halfheartedly to see if what I wanted was on the other side. No, he wasn’t there either. Suddenly I couldn’t see anything. Adam had put his hands over my eyes for me to guess.

“Guess who?” a decidedly female voice said, and in a flash I saw things as clearly as if I had invented them myself: Natasha, whom I had forgotten to call and cancel, had come to Death Before Decaf to grab a latte before meeting me for Way Down East as we had agreed the other day at the beach.

“Hey!” I said, twisting my voice like a wet towel, wringing it tight into surprised, enthusiastic tones. This takes practice but it works.

“What’s wrong with you?” Natasha asked.

“Nothing.”

She rolled her eyes, bored. “Well, I’m glad I found you. I got tickets already but we should zoom across the street, dahling. If we don’t hurry we’ll be sitting in the front row, and that’s too close to the organ.”

We scurried across. Just as the bored, multipierced usher was ripping my ticket in half, I looked back and saw Adam, rushing into the café, his clothes torn and bloody. He had clearly been in a car wreck. Just kidding.

The lights were dimming when we walked in, so we sat in the back row and put our feet up on the seats in front of us. I felt disoriented: Who was I with? What were we doing? My shaky stomach fluttered like that movie where she’s pregnant with an alien. I don’t know what it was–the opening shot of Lillian what’s-her-name looking wan and helpless or the shimmering reverberations of the corny but sad organ chords–but as soon as Way Down East started I began to cry. I was being quiet, I think, but my shoulders shook Natasha’s leopard skin coat from the back of her chair. She heard the fake-bone buttons clatter on the floor; she took her eyes from the screen and watched me with the same rapt, detached attention. She reached down into the pocket of her fallen coat. I thought she was going for tissues, but I should have known. Lit by the yellowish glow of the old movie, she handed me the flask, which was polished to such a shine that I saw the reflection of the movie clearly in it. Lillian, as an abandoned woman, was learning that she was pregnant.

The gin wasn’t even cold. It was just straight, warm gin, and to say that it burned my throat wouldn’t begin to describe what it felt like. I read Julius Caesar sophomore year and was remembering Mrs. Brutus’s suicide via hot coals down the throat. Now, thanks to method acting I could play Portia to the hilt. I took another swig and by that time I couldn’t tell whether I was still crying, or some gin had leaked out and was dripping off my face like tears. You don’t have to be an A student in Advanced Bio like me (ha!) to know that empty stomach + three lattes + swigs of straight warm gin=one drunk girl by the time our heroine was clinging to ice floes, rushing down a river. I kept swigging; next thing I knew Natasha was putting her arms underneath my armpits to help me out of my ratty plush seat. I tried to stand up by myself outside the theater and slid down the wall to the floor. The usher was looking at me curiously; it occurred to me that he probably worked for Kate. I opened my mouth to tell Natasha this and to my horror found myself crying again. Natasha was sitting on her knees looking at me like a gargoyle, except she was gorgeous.

“Jesus, girl,” I said. I mean she said. I’m going to go wash my face again.

“Jesus Christ, girl,” she said. “How much did you drink?”

Wiping my face with my fist and feeling grubby, I looked at her and turned the flask upside down. The last trickle fell onto the grimy floor. I leaned my head back against the theater display case, inside of which was a poster advertising what was coming up, and felt the cold wash of shame fall over me like thick netting.

“What happened to you?” Natasha asked, and I told her. I told her everything–kissing Gabriel, kissing Adam, Adam standing me up, and everything that had happened to Lillian. Halfway through that last part I realized she had been there for the movie.

“Yeah, yeah, I was there for the movie,” she said, standing up and pulling me up, too. The whole street glimmered loudly at me like a snow globe. San Francisco fog was rolling in, canned ambience for my own dense gloom.

“Now look at me, Flan,” Natasha said. She ran a hurried hand through her perfect hair, haloed in the streetlights. She took the flask firmly and screwed the cap on tight. “You were screwed over tonight. What are you going to do about it?”

“Are you mad at me?” I asked her, my lip quivering. “Why aren’t you mad at me? You were the one who got screwed over. I stood you up for our movie date, and I didn’t even call–”

“Don’t worry about that,” she said, holding up her hand. She reached down and picked up my forgotten bag, draped it over my shoulder like a bandage. “I’m always here, whenever you want me, you know that. I can take care of myself. It’s you you should worry about. What are you going to do? You have to do something.”

“You sound like Mr. Baker.”

“What?”

“That’s Baker’s Rule: do something.”

“Well, he’s right.”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t,” she said, sighing. “Well, I have to go. I have somebody to meet.” She raised her eyebrows, just slightly. Glamorous. “I’ll call you in the morning, Flan. Or maybe I’ll just come over. You might not want to hear the phone. Don’t forget aspirin, Flan.”

“You know,” I said, jumping trains as only a caffeinated drunk can do, “I always secretly thought you only had water in that flask.”

She smiled. The fog was rolling in thicker, thicker. “Sometimes it is, Flan. The secret is to keep everyone on their toes. Everybody’s got to keep guessing or you have nothing left. You shouldn’t have written him those letters, Flan.” She saluted me–her nails catching the lights of the theater–and walked off into the fog. It was rolling in thicker, and thicker; soon planes wouldn’t be able to land and I’d be stuck here for good. There was no trace of Natasha, which left me feeling empty and alone, like I’d been stood up for a date and just gotten drunk, by myself, in the back of a revival movie theater six blocks from my home. Like this was my Saturday night. Disgusted, I found my car keys and shakily drove home.

Oh, shut up, Peter. I didn’t drive home; I’d walked, remember. I even gave you a clue in the previous paragraph: “six blocks from my home.” But you didn’t listen. What’s the use of even writing this all out if you’re not going to fucking listen?

Vocabulary:

GNASH

EXORBITANT

INEXPLICABLE

INVULNERABLE

SUBJUNCTIVE

EXPECTANT

DEFIANT

IGNOMINIOUS

Study Questions:

1. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the I Have A Really Good Reason For This approach versus the Have Mercy on Me Mr. Baker approach. Which would you have used in Flannery’s situation?

 

2. Lily uses the word really eight times in a simple one-page note. Study your own writing and find a word you use too often. Look it up in a thesaurus and come up with at least eight good synonyms.

 

3. Flannery writes: “Well, life could be worse, I’m not trapped on ice floes or anything.” Which do you think is worse: being trapped on ice floes or being stood up by a man you love?

 

4. Everybody keeps getting mad at Flannery, but it’s not her fault. Discuss.

Monday October 4th

I’m glad you could join us today. Absinthe has had a variety of historical meanings, but never one as sinister as what it now means to all Americans: the Basic Eight, whose notorious deeds were spurred on by their abuse of this innocent-looking liquid. Here with us to discuss American absinthe abuse are [as the camera panel-pans] Mrs. Ann Rule, grieving mother of an absinthe abuser and the founder of the American Association Against Alarming Absinthe Abuse, the first national organization to have the courage to take on this tragic and complex issue; Peter Pusher, a nationally renowned expert on The Family, author of the book What’s the Matter with Kids Today?: Getting Back to Family Basics in a World Gone Wrong and president of the Peter Pusher Think Tank on National Reform; Dr. Eleanor Tert, nationally renowned teenage therapist and author of How Kids Tick (You Off) and the forthcoming Crying Too Hard to Be Scared, a profile history of the psychological torment behind famous Americans from Edgar Allan Poe to Marilyn Monroe to Flannery Culp; Flora Habstat, the member of the Basic Eight who pulled–blew–the whistle, currently in recovery under the auspices of a twelve-step program; and Felicia Vane, a teenager who claims she only uses absinthe socially. Thank you for joining us, everyone.

When my doorbell rang this morning it didn’t surprise me; I felt like the Egyptians must have when the rivers had already turned to blood and the cattle had all died: Ho hum, locusts. Guess Ahmed wins the plague pool. When I opened the door Douglas was standing there looking both sheepish and dashing in an off-white linen suit.

“Oh, Douglas, you didn’t get another one, did you?” I said. “I just can’t be late to homeroom anymore. This is an important semester, and some of us don’t have the classical-musician thing to put on our college applications.”

Douglas put a finger to his lips and smiled like an elf. With his other hand he held up a small bottle of greenish liquid, superimposing it over his face so he looked like a leprechaun.

“You found some!” I said. “Wherever did you find some?”

“Oh, let’s just say I managed to procure some in my travels in the underground,” he said.

I stood aside to let him in. “That’s right,” I said. “I forgot you live among the depraved now.”

“I have always lived among the depraved,” he said. “Are you sure you want to be seen with me?” He was twisting his voice like a wet towel, wringing it tight into casual tones. This takes practice, but it works on most people. I can spot it a mile away, though. It’s in the eyes. Douglas was scared.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Come on in before you’re spotted with a controlled substance.”

“I told Lily,” he said, suddenly and too loudly. He finally took the bottle of absinthe down from his face. Now he just looked like a person.

“Come on in,” I said again, and he came on in and I hugged him. I felt his arms, warm through the linen. Suddenly there was a reason to leave the house and see other humans, because some of them were good.

“I’m proud of you,” I said.

He stood there and gestured emptily, five times. “I’m proud of me, too,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“How did she take it?”

“Well, you know Lily. She had to think about it. She told me she wanted to think about it for a few days.” He shrugged.

“Oh, Douglas,” I said.

“Everything’s messed up,” he said. “I messed everything up.”

Dr. Tert: We’ve found that a general feeling of helplessness often leads to experimentation with substances.

“Everything might be messed up,” I said, “but you didn’t do it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, looking at the carpet.

“I have to get to homeroom,” I said. “Are you going to give me a ride?”

“Proudly,” he said, suddenly grinning. “I mean, who cares if we’re seen together in the student parking lot, once it’s known that I, um, don’t worship at your church?”

“Don’t shop at my store,” I offered. Suddenly it was easy.

“Don’t eat at your salad bar.”

“Don’t play my board game.”

“Haven’t mastered your instrument,” he said, and we drove to school shrieking with laughter like happy-go-lucky teenagers on a joyride.

Felicia Vane: It’s a joyride. I can quit whenever I want to, but I don’t want to. It makes me feel–happy-go-lucky.

Mrs. Rule: That’s sad.

Peter Pusher: That’s not sad. That’s pathetic!

Winnie: Dr. Tert?

Dr. Tert: Well, I think we should try and be fair. It’s both sad and pathetic.

“So, when do you think we should do this?” Douglas the Leprechaun said. You know, leprechauns are neither sad nor pathetic. Think about that, honored guests and experts. Airline passengers, bookstore browsers. True-crime freaks.

I took the bottle from him and regarded it. The greenish liquid inside was iridescent and a little thick. I looked through it at everything: dear, brave Douglas; the dreary student parking lot; the fogged-in Lake Merced; the lanky, awkward figure of my Applied Economics teacher Gladys Tall carrying an overhead projector to the side entrance, the cord trailing behind her like something umbilical. Everything looked magical through this green liquid. It looked like a pastoral place, a better place.

Mrs. Rule: Of course, many teens use absinthe for escape. They see a drug-induced haze as a means of getting away from the pressures of everyday life.

Peter Pusher: What pressures do kids have nowadays? Which channel to watch? They don’t have any real pressures. You’re just making excuses for them.

“Friday night?” I said. “That feels really far away, but we don’t want to do drugs on a school night. Plus, all eight of us probably won’t be free until the weekend.” How’s that for self-responsibility, Peter? Incidentally, nice toupee you’ve got there.

“Maybe you and I should do a trial run,” Douglas said. He looked shyly at me and I realized suddenly that at least for now I was his only friend. “You know, try it ourselves before springing it on everyone.”

“Good idea,” I said. For the first time the prickly sensation of possibly doing something very stupid began its caterpillar walk down my spine. It was not an unpleasant feeling. “Tomorrow, after school?” I asked. “We could go to my house.”

“Great,” he said, and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I must have jumped, because then he jumped and looked at me like I was going to swat him across the nose with a newspaper.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Everything’s going to be OK.”

The first thing I saw when I entered my beloved high school was Kate, leaning against her locker and talking with Adam. Could I have just one easy day, here? Could I just get home one day and have nothing to write in this journal? And it’s Monday. What sort of cosmic deal do I have to make?

Peter Pusher: If kids got back to the Lord, they’d find that all of these so-called pressures would go up in smoke. And I’m not talking about the smoke of absinthe!

“Hey, kids,” I said, and I heard my voice sound perfectly unconcerned. I even caught myself looking over the tops of their heads so they’d suspect there was someone more interesting in the background. “What’s up?”

They were friendly, unruffled. Both of them. Adam.

“Same shit, different day,” Kate said, rolling her eyes heavenward. Adam smiled thinly at me and shoved his hands in my pockets. I mean, his pockets. There, did you hear it? Gurgling, clear as–oh, of course you can’t hear it. Maybe when this book is put on tape for carpooling commuters who can’t read without getting carsick they can add the gurgling, thick and loud.

“How was your weekend?” Kate asked. There was no guile in her voice or in her eyes, but you can’t see it in the face of the good Dr. Moprah, either.

“Oh, you know,” I said. “The sun came up; the sun came down. I think I had too much fun Saturday night.”

“Fun is an interesting choice of word,” Kate said. “I heard you and Natasha were out of control.”

That damn usher. I tried to clear my head rather than strangle my friend. “Speaking of which,” I said, “we need to meet vis-à-vis our upcoming activity on Friday night.”

“We certainly do,” Kate said, pretending to know what the hell I was talking about.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about,” I said, “but you will soon. Lunch, maybe?”

“We don’t have lunch at the same time,” she said, smiling. Her eyes met Adam’s for a second. “What’s the big secret?”

“Sorry,” I said, stage-glancing hurriedly at Adam, “members only.”

I should have known better than to attempt this game with Kate, so early in the morning. She could match me stroke for stroke. “Oh,” she said, in a resigned, indulgent voice. “Adam, would you excuse us?”

“Actually, I need to talk to Flan, too,” Adam said. His hands were still in his pockets and he was still looking at Kate. They looked at each other like two people pausing before an open door, negotiating who was going to enter first, not caring much.

“I’ll catch you later,” Kate said. “I need to copy over this French homework anyway or Millie will eat me for lunch.” She waved at us and walked lazily off. Adam turned and considered me, like a waiter on break. Would he do me the favor of refilling my water glass?

“I have nothing to say to you,” I said. Paradoxical but true, like just about everything in this journal.

“Well, I have something to say to you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“That’d be a lot more convincing if you weren’t lounging around against lockers,” I said. “Like, for instance, if you were saying it to me on the phone. Yesterday.”

“I had to spend all day with my family yesterday,” he said.

“And the day before that?”

“What?”

“You know, Saturday? Six-thirty? Death Before Decaf before dinner?”

“You have to turn everything into a joke, don’t you?” he said.

“What happened?” I said. I felt my whole body lean forward, like those bean sprouts we all had to plant in first grade, winding their way around construction-paper barriers with your names scrawled across them in primitive printing, reaching for the sun. I was trying to be furious at him, but all my fury was shunted by the photosynthesis of love. “Photosynthesis of Love,” nice title, that. Keep it.

Adam looked down at the ground and kicked Roewer’s floor with his foot. He suddenly had the dejectedness of Douglas and I wondered briefly if everyone I kissed was turning gay.

“I just”–he made some sweep with his arm–“I just have a lot going on right now. I’m sorry. I just have all this…stuff to deal with.”

Understanding sunk in me like a stone in water, settling me, making me heavier. He had a lot going on. “Hey, that’s OK,” I said. “I just wondered where you were, that’s all. It’s a rough year.”

He looked up. “That’s it exactly,” he said like I discovered penicillin. “It’s a rough year. I guess I’m sort of a mess.”

“Well, unfortunately, my life is perfect right now, so I can’t relate at all,” I said, and he smiled and put his hand on my shoulder, warming me through. I stood on tiptoe to kiss him, but he didn’t stop smiling. It was just one flat kiss against his cute grin, but it was enough. No kiss of fire, but it was enough. “Call me soon,” I said, and he nodded. The bell rang and I scooted off to homeroom, but even over the rush of all the other latecomers I heard him sigh with what I thought, back then, a naive little high school student, was fondness and not relief.

Dr. Tert: Flannery Culp wanted her life to be a bed of roses.

Winnie: Don’t we all want our lives to be beds of roses?

Dr. Tert: Yes, but Flannery didn’t know how to stop and smell the roses that were in her bed.

Peter Pusher: What I think was wrong with Flannery Culp–what I think is wrong with all delinquent teenagers Flannery’s age–is that there is anything–or anybody–in her bed at all.

Thunderous applause.