—Hi Helen. I am sure you can probably tell from my voice who I am. But just in case, this is Anya. I’m here with Siri.
—Hi, Helen.
—And Magda.
—Hey, Helen.
—And Louisa. They won’t let us visit you yet, so we thought we’d make you these tapes so you would be able to keep up with what’s going on. Not that there’s anything exciting happening beyond you. I mean, I don’t mean it’s exciting what happened to you, I just mean, it’s out of the ordinary.
—You wouldn’t believe all the attention you’ve gotten. The first day it happened, like, ten television vans came to school. Mrs. Denberg made an announcement over the loudspeaker that we weren’t supposed to talk to any of the reporters but some of the kids were, like, “That’s a violation of my right to free speech” so they were, like, claiming to be your best friend.
—Jeff Cummings was on Entertainment Tonight.
—Isn’t that pathetic? He barely knows you.
—And Hope was on the local news. What a phony.
—Meanwhile, we, your best friends, didn’t say anything because we thought it was really gross the way those people were, like, cashing in on their fifteen minutes of fame.
—But don’t worry, every body said nice things about you.
—Even Jeff was, like, “Helen is the nicest person in the school. Blah, blah, blah.”
—Like he knows.
—Tell her about the mural.
—No. Gross.
—She’d want to know.
—You tell her.
—Somebody had the idea that the whole school should sign one big get-well card that you could read when you woke up, so Miss Brainard from the art department, you know that teacher with red hair who never wears a bra? Well, she took this long roll of white paper and put it up on the first floor, outside the gym. And then she hung, like, Magic Markers from strings. The first day every body was, like, “Get well soon.” “We love you.” Like when you were a kid and broke your arm and people signed your cast. But then some total loser decided it would be funny to write some gross stuff.
—It wasn’t that bad, it was just, like, “Helen McMartin is hot.”
—But not nearly so civilized.
—Yeah, I mean, it was really stupid. Because then somebody else drew pictures of, like, these big, like, well, you know, dicks. They looked like banana splits or something.
—The one I saw looked like a rocket. Only instead of sparks coming out of the end…
—I think that’s more than she needs to know.
—It was so retarded.
—Miss Brainard was really upset. I think she tried to cut the bad parts out but then it had, like, all these big holes and it looked kind of suspicious. Like, what were they trying to censor? So the next day they took the banner down.
—And then some students were, like, you can’t censor people. Art for art’s sake and all sorts of stupid stuff.
—I think Miss Brainard is keeping it, so if you ever do want to see it, you can.
—Did you know somebody wrote, “Miss B’s tits hang low”?
—Are you serious?
—Totally.
—What else can we tell you?
—I lost five pounds by cutting out all bread, rice, and pasta.
—Fascinating.
—Right. And every thing you say is so riveting.
—The point is, every body misses you, and we think about you every day and we can’t wait for you to get better so we can crash the totally queer senior prom and get meaningless, low-paying jobs at the mall and flirt with surfer losers at the beach.
—Bye, Helen. We love you.
—Big smooch.
—I’m sorry this tape has been so trite. Next time, it will be much deeper. I promise.
—Does that mean you won’t be coming?
—Very fucking funny.
—Why are you so defensive? It was just a joke.
—Can we erase that last part and start over?
—I don’t…
Click.