May I Have Your Attention Please?

Did you get the email about the Valentine’s Day roses?

No?

Did you see the flyers in the locker rooms and above every water fountain in the school about the Valentine’s Day roses?

No?

Did you hear the announcement in homeroom about the Valentine’s Day roses?

No?

Are you living in a cave?

Every year on Valentine’s Day, students in RC get a chance to send red or white roses (red for love, white for friendship) to their buds, their boyfriends, their girlfriends, with little love notes like, “Be mine,” or “True love always,” or “You’re my best friend in the world.” Just two bucks a rose. Delivered directly to your special someone on Valentine’s Day - that’s February 14th, if you’re still in a cave - to their homeroom.

Or…you can send one anonymously to your secret crush. (Same price.)

I wonder why Reggie never told me about this momentous event.

Holy crap, I don’t know how I feel about this. I mean, I can think of a handful of friends I’d send white roses to: Reggie, for sure, and my friends Dena from French and Renea from English lit.

As for red…

There might be a person (or two, depending on the day) I could think of to send a red rose to. It could be fun, you know, if I sent one anonymously. And it would HAVE to be anonymously. I don’t even want to list initials here or mention the class he’s in (yes, it’s a he, no surprise there).

But, here’s the thing…I don’t think he even knows my name. I think he thinks it’s Melanie. Don’t ask me why. So even if I sent a note with my name on it, I might as well be anonymous.

I have to think about this. We have until February 6th to decide.

But I Don't Wanna Be a Stereotype

Top 3.5 Classes I Do NOT Want to Take in High School

1. Biology
2. Calculus
3. Chemistry
3.5 Speech

I think I’m a pretty creative person. I mean, if you compare my grades in English and French to my grades in Math and Earth Science, it’s obvious where my abilities lay (lie?). So the classes that I am certainly not looking forward to for sophomore, junior and senior years are the non-creative ones, the non-language based ones.

And this sort of bothers me because it sounds like I’m a stereotypical girl. (It doesn't help my case that I'm blonde too). You know, girls aren’t supposed to like math and science because they don’t do well in them. On the contrary, I don’t do well because I don’t like them.

I kind of liked algebra, which I took in junior high, because it made sense to me and I could see how it could be used in real life. Like when you want to figure out percentages and averages and stuff. But Calculus? What practical use does Calculus have?

Same with Chemistry. Does anyone really need to memorize that periodic table? Do you have to? Can’t you just look it up if you’re a chemist? I guess if you want to be a pharmacist, you should probably know that stuff.

Now, Biology, that’s a whole other story. The reason I don’t want to take it is because it’s gross! Reggie’s taking it right now and all I hear is how rats have such small intestines and how the muscles in frogs are so skinny and I’m sorry but she just smells sometimes after that class! It’s the formaldehyde, I know, and it reeks. And that’s not being too girly because Reggie doesn’t have a problem with it and she’s a girl. That’s just being a normal person.

And Speech? Well, that’s on the list because I’m shy. No, really, I am. Standing in front of people is the last thing I would ever want to do. I’ve heard that people are more afraid of public speaking than death. Thank god it’s an elective.

Mega Girl Makes Millions

Phase 1: Collect underpants.
Phase 2: {shrug}
Phase 3: Profits!

A hundred points if you get the reference.

Okay, I don’t want to collect anybody’s underpants and I’m not really sure how underpants will make anyone any money (“underpants” is a funny word, isn’t it?) but I think I am in phase 1.

Aaron has just hired me as his transcriber! For twenty bucks, I type up whatever happens at his shows, including all the things that the people in the audience say. For some reason, Aaron doesn’t really pay attention to what’s going on at his shows. I guess he just shows up and starts singing. I haven’t seen it so I don’t know but it sounds like maybe he tells a few jokes or stories in between the songs (“patter” it’s called) and he wants to know if the audience likes them. So I have to listen to the tape and type up all the reactions.

I’m not really sure why but as the saying goes, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And does that mean the horse is the gift or that the horse has a gift? And it would seem like you shouldn’t look him in the butt, since you don’t know if he’s gonna step on you or kick you but if you were looking at him in the mouth, what’s the worst that could happen? He bites you? Maybe. Aren't horses vegetarian? Maybe he just snorts all over you. That’s not that bad.

So this is my gift from Aaron. Thanks, dude! I can totally use the cash. I gotta make a list of all the things I’m gonna buy!

And I guess I should thank Lucie, too, since Aaron wouldn’t have known me without her and he might have given this easy cool job to someone else. So thanks, Luce. I owe ya.

Still don't get the joke? Hint: "Screw you guys. I'm goin' home."

If I Could Have A Superpower…

…it would be Teleportation. (I already have the power of Invisibility, apparently.)

I would love to have the ability to blink my eyes and find myself in a completely different location. I wouldn’t have to drive there or fly there or walk or bike or ride a skateboard. I would just imagine where I want to be and then, zap! I’d be there. I could watch the sun rise over the Grand Canyon, have breakfast on a Miami Beach veranda, and ride the London underground before lunch at a café on the Left Bank. Then I’d see a matinee in Manhattan, stroll a Brazilian beach with a coconutty drink as the sun sets, and dine on awesome pizza in Naples.

And if I could bring someone with me, how cool would that be? I wonder if I would have to hold that person’s hand or what.

Anyway, what made me think of this are all the books and TV shows and movies around that have people with special powers. Heroes, X-Men Un, Deux et Trois, the Spidermans, the Fantastic Fours, Sky High, Zoom and on and on. But what’s weird is that, whether they’re born with the talents or they develop them all of a sudden, no one is very happy when they get them. It seems to take them a while to accept them. Like they end up using the powers they didn’t think they wanted to save someone else or the planet.

If it were me, I would totally be psyched to have a power! Why would being able to fly or grow steel claws or move things with your mind suck in any way?

Reading people’s minds? Cool.

Super strength? Very cool.

Healing all parts of your body? Frickin’ amazing!

If anyone reads this (Reggie, this includes you, although I think I know what power you’d pick), I’d like to know what superpower you’d want to have and what you’d do with it.

And Now, the Starting Lineup...

Top 3.5 Sports I Watch on TV

1. WWE Smackdown
2. NASCAR
3. Curling
3.5 Baseball

Smackdown is the awesome wrestling show on Friday nights. Two hours of adrenaline-pumping, chair-throwing, hair-pulling fun. Women fight too so there’s loads of feminine equality. And a guy wears a dress and a thong which doesn’t mean he’s gay or a transvestite but does mean he knows a thing or two about commercialization.

NASCAR is everywhere. There were 2 movies this past year, I mean, big blockbuster movies, that were about car racing so what does that tell you? This is adrenaline-pumping, fender-smashing, explosive sports at its best.

Curling is a unique sport, involving brushes and a big heavy stone, kind of like shuffleboard on ice. Good, clean, adrenaline-pumping fun.

And then there’s baseball…

And HA! HA! I don’t watch any of these! Okay, I sort of watch baseball when we go to the Epicenter Stadium here in town and watch the Quakes play and that’s kind of fun but only because they have mascots in funny suits and dancers dancing on the dugouts and they give away prizes every inning. Otherwise, it’s adrenaline-pumping…no, it’s actually like watching grass grow, only far less amusing.

I can’t think of a less interesting thing to do than watch sports, except maybe play them. I have not one sporty gene in my body. Lucie doesn’t either. She’s never told me if our parents were sporty people but I doubt it. I never knew them so I don’t know but I would imagine not, if we two daughters are any indication. We can barely throw a Frisbee. Seriously. We had a Frisbee when I was a kid and Lucie and I would try to toss it around the park or in the yard or whatever and it would always land in the street and get run over by a car or else it would fly onto a roof or in someone else’s pool. It was always a disaster.

So why do I even mention sports? Because everywhere I turn there's a countdown to the Superbowl. On television, in stores, at the market...everything is geared toward that magical Sunday when two teams of overpumped, steroided men in shiny Spandex tights run at each other and try to pummel each other into the cold hard ground. I just can't wrap my mind around the game. There's offense and defense and a guy hikes the ball to another guy who throws it to a third guy and he tries to run down the field past the goal line but there's tons of flab and muscle in his way trying to stop him from getting very far. If he gets ten yards, then his team gets a another chance to run for the goal. His team has three attempts at getting ten yards down the field. If they don't do it, then they give the ball to the other team.

That's the basic idea of the game. I don't get why it's so great. And I don't get why everyone watches it. Some people watch for the commercials and some watch for the halftime show and nearly everyone has a party for it although Lucie and I have never been to one. Maybe if Reggie's brothers have one (hint hint, Reg), I'll finally learn why the Superbowl is such adrenaline-pumping fun.

So You Want To Be a Star

American Idol is a cultural phenomenon (news flash from Professor Obvious). I defy anyone on this planet to tell me they don’t know what Idol is and haven’t secretly wanted to audition. Even I, who have the musical talent of a tree sloth, have had the tiniest thought that, if I was a couple of years older, I might try out.

But then I think, I’m gonna totally suck and Simon will tear me apart and Randy will cringe and talk about how much better Mariah would have sung that and maybe, just maybe if I'm lucky, Paula will tell me I have nice hair. But in the end, I’ll walk away feeling really bad about myself and thinking how stupid I am for even stepping foot in the same room as those people…so why do it?

Evelyn - and lots of critics - think people just want their fifteen minutes of fame. And for those of you who don’t know what that means, it comes from Andy Warhol, the artist who has been famous for like a hundred years, who said, “In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” I don’t think people really understand it the way he meant it. I think he actually meant that our society is becoming so splintered, so schizophrenic that nothing will last beyond a figurative fifteen minutes. He had a commercial art background, after all, where “art” lasts a very short time in people’s memories. It’s disposable art, designed to elicit a particular reaction from the audience: buy this now. Once it’s completed its task, it can be thrown away and forgotten and that’s what he was saying about people and fame.

That’s my interpretation, I guess.

Back to Idol…is the theory that everyone just wants to be famous accurate?

No, I don’t think so. I think Andy Warhol was partially right: our society is so splintered but not in a schizophrenic way. We are so separate from each other, we all live in our own little worlds, that we are desperate for a connection - any connection. If that means we will debase ourselves to make contact, then we will do that. We jump on the bandwagon - we get in line with thousands of others across the country - we become part of the cultural phenomenon and thus help create the phenomenon.

I see this a lot where I live. Everyone in RC drives their own cars. No one carpools or uses public transportation. We are in our little bubbles of security. We don’t talk to people at the grocery store or in lines at Starbucks. We isolate ourselves with cell phones and iPods and the internet. We have NO contact with anyone else. But we humans are really social creatures and we long for the personal connection, the casual conversation about the weather and “that’s a nice purse where did you get it” sort of remarks.

So I think that auditioning for Idol, or those dance shows or any of the reality shows, even when we know we have no earthly chance of making it or doing well in front of millions of others, is simply a reflection of our inner drive to be with other humans, to share in their lives and to have them share in ours.

Why else would MySpace be so popular?

It Never Rains in Southern California...

...it snows!

There was snow in Malibu last night! And in the Santa Monica mountains and in Santa Clarita and even in Westwood, which is where UCLA is. Alas, none in the deserts, although it does get really frickin’ cold out here in the winter. We just don’t have any moisture in the air so we don’t get any white stuff falling from the sky.

The citrus industry is really taking it hard, though, and that means no famous California fruit, like oranges and avocadoes and strawberries and lemons. The ones that are left are gonna cost a lot of money.

“I just bought some oranges yesterday,” Lucie says to me after I tell her this. “Do you think I should buy some more?”

“Sure,” I say. “Just don’t eat them. They’ll probably be collectors’ items soon.”

“Really?” She sort of looks at me funny, like she’s possibly taking me serious so I continue.

“Maybe you should buy a whole bunch and hoard them. So when people start getting scurvy from not having enough vitamin C, you can sell your oranges to them for fifty bucks apiece and make a boatload of cash.”

Lucie grabs the oranges from the counter and holds them tightly to her chest. “Fifty each?” I can see the little pinwheels of her brain trying to spin as she attempts to calculate this vast sum.

I shrug. “Easily. I’ll bet it won’t take longer than, oh, I don’t know, four months before people get desperate.”

“Four months…sure.” My sister cradles the fruit, admiring their orange-y goodness. Suddenly, she scowls. “Hey, wait a minute,” she says. “In four months, they’ll be all rotted.”

I laugh and shake my head. “Duh, Lucie.”

For a second I think she’s going to get really mad at me for making fun of her but she smiles and laughs at herself.

“Maybe I’ll just make juice out of them,” she says.

It’s different when you have fun with people all alone. They don’t get nearly as mad as when you do it in front of others.

Meg Actually Watches the News

Why would a guy take two kids home with him? And why would they stay?

I saw this on TV this weekend. Some kid was missing for a few days and they found him at this guy’s house, along with another kid who had been kidnapped four years earlier. The older kid, for some reason, never escaped. Apparently he had plenty of opportunities to run away or call for help but he never did.

I don’t want to speculate on the motives of the guy who took the boys because that would keep me up all night with horrible images in my head but I really do wonder about the kid who stayed. He got his lip pierced. He rode his bike around the streets. He had friends visit him. He even had a girlfriend. He didn’t go to school which might have raised some eyebrows but no one ever questioned it at all. Most people just assumed he was the guy’s son so they didn’t bother them.

I’m trying to put myself in that position. What would I have done if someone had kidnapped me? Would I try to escape every chance I got? Would I try to be friends with the person so they would let me go? I guess it would depend on if I was being hurt, if I feared for my life if I tried to do anything.

Maybe this kid never wanted to go to school and the guy who kidnapped him promised him he could stay home all day and play Xbox and eat pizza.

Maybe his parents at home weren’t very nice to him. Maybe they ignored him or treated him badly.

There are all sorts of psychological reasons why victims don’t try to escape their captors. Sometimes they end up feeling sorry for them and don’t want them to get in trouble. That happens in hostage situations, they say. Last semester, Evelyn told us about this Al Pacino movie, “Dog Day Afternoon,” that she wanted to show us in class but the principal wouldn’t let her. He said it was too violent for us and they used the F word too many times. Oh please. Anyway, the story is about these two bank robbers who are trying to steal money so one of their boyfriends can have a sex change operation. The hostages in the bank took a liking to the guys and one of them didn’t want to leave even when he had the chance. This was based on a true story.

I’d like to believe the guy took the boys because he was lonely and maybe he was ugly and not very funny or smart and he figured, hey, I’d like to have children someday but I’m never going to get a girl and have some of my own so I’ll just take two boys and make them my kids. I know this sounds totally messed up and the guy would have to be utterly insane to do something like that but it’s much less disgusting than some other reasons.

Jake Gyllenhaal is My Favorite Actor in the WWW

Top 3.5 Jake Gyllenhaal movies

1. Donnie Darko
2. The Good Girl
3. Jarhead
3.5 Brokeback Mountain

Jake Gyllenhaal is my new favorite actor of all time. And this is how it happened:

On Friday night, Blockbuster night, Lucie stayed home with me and rented “Donnie Darko,” thinking it was “Donnie Brasco,” a movie with Johnny Depp and Al Pacino. Apparently Aaron thinks that was a great movie so Lucie had to see it, forgetting 1), that she saw it years ago when it came out and she hated it and 2), the correct title. So she ended up with this JG masterpiece instead of a sad gangster film.

Oh my god, he is awesome. I have to admit, I didn’t get the whole movie. There was something about time-travel in it which I didn’t quite understand. I think the idea was that he was supposed to die when that plane engine fell out of the sky and because he didn’t, the universe changed. So he had to die in order to restore the universe to its original path. But it was very strange and I don’t think I got all the nuances in it, like the old lady and the time-travel book she wrote. Like, she was all messed up. Was she messed up because she studied time-travel too much? And why didn’t she ever answer his letter? That was sort of left unraveled.

Regardless, this was sooo interesting. Lucie hated this one, too, just like she would have hated “Donnie Brasco” if she had rented it so I guess that worked out either way.

But then I had to go back to Blockbuster and get some more of JG’s movies and it turns out he did another of my favorite movies, “The Good Girl,” with Jennifer Aniston who is my all time favorite actress. He was the guy she had an affair with - I totally didn’t even recognize him. I think I was concentrating so hard on how awesome Jen Aniston was in that movie that I didn’t really pay attention to anyone else.

So on Saturday (the exact same night he hosted SNL, btw, what are the odds of that - and he was so funny and so amazing), I rented “Jarhead” which was pretty good for a war movie. Normally, I don’t like those kinds of movies. But here’s an interesting tidbit: in that movie, JG acted with a guy named Peter Sarsgaard who’s engaged to and ended up having a baby with JG’s sister, Maggie, who’s also an actor. (She played his sister in “Donnie Darko.”) Which came first, I wonder? And wow, those are two very complicated names to spell.

“Brokeback Mountain” gets an honorable mention because I didn’t see it. It was out when I went back to the video store. I heard it was an amazing movie and JG got an Oscar nomination for it (but lost to George Clooney who is pretty amazing himself so that's not so bad!), which is a good sign. But I don’t know if I can go for a two-guys-in-love movie. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any prejudices that way for real life. I totally believe you should be with whoever you love, no matter what sex they are. But in a movie? I don’t know. I’ll try it.

So there you have it, my review of the Jake Gyllenhaal oeuvre, as they call it in the business. I don’t know why he’s not a big-time superstar. He’s handsome and sexy and sweet and intelligent. What does Leonard DiCaprio have that he doesn’t? I know he’s not popular at my school because I never heard Katie Gunther in gym class talk about him and she is totally into movies and movie stars. She has Netflix and Tivo and she sees about a million movies a year, she says. She knows everything about movies.

Or so she thinks. She obviously doesn’t know about Jake Gyllenhaal. So she certainly doesn’t know everything.

And omg, I am so exhausted this morning…thank god we have the day off. I didn’t do any homework at all this weekend and I have two tests to study for!

In Which Meg Has a Change of Heart

So it turns out I may have been wrong about a certain member of the opposite sex.

I can change my mind, can’t I? I am Mega Girl, after all.

It seems that Aaron read my blog entry about how I blamed him for Lucie being forgetful. And he was hurt by it.

“You really shouldn’t be mean to Aaron in your blog,” Lucie tells me. “The whole world will read that and think he’s a jerk.”

“No,” I say. “The whole world will read it and think you’re a jerk.”

Okay, first of all, I doubt the whole world is reading any one thing and certainly not my one thing. Second of all, sorry about that, Aaron, I didn’t think you’d read it. And third of all, what are you doing reading my blog? You don’t even own a computer! Heck, I don’t even own a computer.

Lucie told me Aaron wanted to get to know me better and since he never comes to RC and I never go to Hollyweird, he figured he would just read my blog.

See, Evelyn? This is why you don’t put personal info on your blog. You get stalkers. (Kidding, Aaron!)

Aaron wanted me to know that it wasn’t his fault Lucie didn’t buy my items of personal hygiene, that he doesn’t even care if she wears new makeup or any makeup at all (I think Lucie added that in herself, I doubt a man would say that). And if it meant that I was being neglected at home, he wouldn’t even ask to see Lucie during the week, only on the weekends.

Nice guy. You’re a nice guy, Aaron, even if you are stalking me through my blog. (Again, kidding!)

So Mega Girl has changed her mind. Just about this one boy, though. The rest of them are probably no good but Aaron is all right.

Addendum: Monday is MLK Day, a day off from school! Whoohoo! I love having Mondays off. Cuz they're, well, Mondays. I'd much rather have a Monday off than a Friday because a Friday is the last day of the week and you can enjoy it being the last day of the week. When you have Monday off, you start your week on a Tuesday and then the next thing you know, it's Thursday and almost the end of the week again. I love it!

(sigh.)

I wish every Monday could be a holiday.

If I Knew Aunt Flo Was Coming, I'd a Baked a Cake

I am going to kill my sister.

We both get our periods at the same time, right? And for those of you without sisters, that’s what happens when women live together: their cycles get synchronized.

I’m not being gross, am I? I’ll try to be more genteel.

Okay, well, sometime in December I used my last…item of personal hygiene and since Lucie’s…items are a different brand, I knew I would need more this month. Well, it’s the sort of thing you don’t think about all the time. I mean, that would be kind of gross. So anyway, we both forgot, I guess, and here it comes and who is missing her items? Not Lucie. I kept thinking I would get to the drug store but I never did and then I had a meeting with Mrs. Kalandyk after school yesterday and I asked Lucie if she would please get a box of my items for me.

“Of course,” she says. “I have to go anyway.”

“Thanks, Luce,” I say. “You’re awesome.”

A nice sisterly exchange, huh? Um, sure, and who had her items last night? Not me. Lucie must have spent two hours at that drug store - she got home way later than I did - and came in with nothing except new makeup. New makeup! Like she doesn’t have enough makeup as it is! And hello? What about my items of personal hygiene??

“L’Oreal was having a huge sale!” she whines.

“But I have my period!”

“Look at everything I got,” she says. She pours out a plastic bag full of makeup onto the kitchen table: mascara, eye liner, lipstick, lip liner, concealer, base, powder, blush, and nail polish. “Half price!”

I admire the makeup. She notices me admiring the makeup.

"You can borrow the lipstick if you want. It would look good on you."

It is a pretty sweet color, I must admit. Still…

“I can’t use any of this for my period, Luce.”

She tells me I can use her items. I grumble. Hers have some sort of deodorant on them and they’re cardboard and they hurt.

This is Aaron’s fault. That’s Lucie’s boyfriend. She's been visiting him in Hollywood a lot lately (so far, no spending the night, thank god) and I noticed her wardrobe has been improving - slightly. New makeup, new underwear, new perfume, and instead of ripped jeans, she now wears stained ones.

Kidding. She still wears ripped jeans.

Boys are just no good, kiddies. That’s the conclusion I have come to. If my sister is any indication, that is.

Puppies in a Basket!

Each year around this time, Lucie and I have a ritual of buying our new calendars. All we have to do is wait a week into the new year and they are all on sale for half price! Sure, the selection isn’t as great as if we had bought them before Christmas but that’s not really the point. We can buy two calendars for the price of one and then with the money we save, we can get a copy of People and coffees at the Buck.

This year we went to the Barnes & Noble near the Circuit City on Foothill Boulevard. There’s a Starbucks there with tables you can sit at. Plus it’s huge! And it’s got free wi-fi, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Last year, Lucie fell in love with this calendar about Coney Island. You know the amusement park? I didn’t even think it was still around. It seems like it shouldn’t be real, you know? Like it should only be in movies. Anyway the calendar was pretty nice, I guess. The people in the pictures were all really old - I mean, the pictures were really old. Women and girls in those long wool skirts they used to wear to swim in (how useless was that? It was probably cooler to just wear regular clothes) and all the men wearing hats (again, useless: beach…wind…think about it). Still, Lucie loved this calendar so she slipped a copy of it into the world atlas reference section, figuring no one’s going to find it there. Well, they must have sold a lot of maps that Christmas, because the Coney Island calendar was gone when we came back in January.

Lucie was pretty bummed. She ended up with The OC which had like a million pictures of Mischa Barton which is kind of ironic because that was the season Marissa died. I don’t think Lucie even knew who she was.

Ooh my favorite song is on the radio right now. “The love is gone away…”

Okay, so this year we didn’t even try to hide anything. We just got what we got. Lucie picked a calendar of lighthouses (let’s not be crude about anything symbolic there, please, it’s too early in the morning for that). Some environmental organization put it together and will donate profits toward its programs in the US which is pretty cool, but then I wonder if they get less money because we waited until the calendar was half price. I guess in that sort of a case, you should pay full price.

My calendar? Dachsund puppies. Every month a new puppy in a new basket. It’s pretty cute. My choices were all animal related: puppies of all makes and models, kittens in baskets (what’s with the baskets? Is that how they transport small animals these days?), paintings of cows and/or sheep, and weird frogs. Now, I think you can figure out why these are the only calendars left.

Maybe next year we will splurge and buy what we actually like before the new year begins.

I (heart) Kafka

Mrs. Kalandyk just emailed us our reading list for this semester’s English lit class. I wish she wouldn’t do that - assume that we all have email - but whatever. I’m kind of scared but excited. It’s a really challenging list. Mrs. Kalandyk is my favorite teacher at RCHS (no offense, Evelyn) because she doesn’t treat us like kids. Freshmen in high school are not kids but some of our teachers act like we’re still in middle school. In a few short years, I’m going to be out in the general adult population and I need to know how to do things. I don’t think sitting in the same seat for an entire year and raising your name and saying, “Here!” is such a great skill to have. When in my life will I ever have a job that requires me to do that? I can’t remember Lucie ever telling me that she has to raise her hand when her name is called at work. So what does it matter if I miss homeroom once in a while? I go to classes, I do the work. Geez. Some teachers act like it’s the end of the world.

“Margaret Anne Shanley!”

No answer.

“Margaret Shanley!”

Nothing.

“Last call. Shanley, Margaret!”

A hand goes up at the back of the room. “Present.”

Ah yes, all the difference in the world.

Mrs. Kalandyk gave us Kafka to read last semester. Kafka! In freshman English! How awesome is that? I loved it. We read “Metamorphosis” about a guy who woke up and he was a giant cockroach and no one could understand him and they were all afraid of him because he was a giant cockroach.

This semester, I see “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole on the list. Yes! I have heard a lot of cool things about this book so I am totally psyched to read it. I just hope we don’t have to write some major essay about it. I love the reading part. It’s the writing part I’m not crazy about.

D & D = Deadly Dull

I didn’t think people still played this game. I didn’t think people I knew played this game. I didn’t think I would be bored out of my frickin’ mind while people I knew played this game.

Let me set the stage: New Year’s Eve. Reggie’s house. The “kids” living room (just a room off the garage that Reggie and her brothers hang out in with a big screen television, Xbox and Playstation, and tons of crap on the floor that no one picks up because it’s, well, Reggie and her brothers.) Reggie invites me over for a celebration. Awesome, I think, having never been anywhere on New Year’s Eve, let alone an actual party. I show up in my black skirt with the lace pockets on the back and my good black sweater and I actually blew dry my hair instead of letting it air dry. I have on a pair of Lucie’s dangly chandelier earrings with the fake beads that look like emeralds which look really good on her because she has red hair, and I even shaved my legs, not that you can tell because I am wearing black tights.

“Good evening, Sylvie,” I say to Reggie’s mom when she opens the door, because that’s what she wants us to call her.

“Good evening, Miss Shanley,” she responds very nicely. “The guests are all in the kids’ room. Go right on in.”

I don’t know what I was expecting: Champagne and caviar and a live band? No, no, and where the hell would you put them? I guess I thought it would be sort of classy with streamers and some balloons or I don’t know, some music maybe and not Halo in the background.

“Meg’s playing!” Reggie yells as soon as I walk in. She pats the seat next to her. She is wearing a blue LA Dodgers sweatshirt and a pair of white cords and her hair is in 2 braids, like she’s Pippi Longstocking or something. The entire room is filled with boys, which sounds like it should be kind of fun since Reggie and I are the only girls but these are nerd boys, boys who play D&D on New Year’s Eve. Not very socially “ept” if you know what I mean.

Billy moves his chair closer to me as I start to sit down so I am practically sitting in his lap. “Hey Meg,” he says. “You look nice. Is that like cashmere?”

Reggie pushes him away from me. “It’s wool, dumb ass. Roll 2 d6.”

“I don’t know how to play,” I say. I’m staring at a big blank map that is covered in squares. There are a bunch of little figurines on it, like an elf and a troll and a wizard and they’re all carrying weapons of some kind but not guns which probably would make this game go a lot faster.

Reggie’s oldest brother Scott is in college and he’s the dungeon master. He’s got a whole bunch of books open in front of him and he’s telling us a story.

“You strike the giant but he doesn’t fall. Oh no! He slashes at you…” Scott makes big slashing movements in the air. “And opens a big gash in your side.”

“Do we have any healing potions?” One of Scott’s friends asks the table. “Anyone?”

“I have bull strength.”

Scott lifts a finger. “You can go to a healing room.”

I am bored already. I whisper to Reg, “Are we doing anything else tonight?”

“Like what?” she whispers back.

“I don’t know. Are we watching movies or playing any music…?”

“Do you want to put on music? You know where we keep the CDs.”

I sit and watch them for a couple more minutes. Someone else rolls some weird 20 sided dice. Another person counts squares by fives. Billy pulls out his own books and challenges Scott. The little figurines don’t do much but sit there.

“Are we doing anything at midnight?” I ask, hoping we will at least watch the Times Square thingie.

Reggie shrugs. “Sylvie’s got Champagne, I think.” She pokes her brother. “Does Mom have Champagne for midnight?”

“Scott was supposed to buy it,” Billy says.

Please let Scott have bought a case of Champagne. Please, please, please.

“Scottie, did you get the booze for tonight?”

Scott looks up from his books and frowns. “I was setting this up. When would I have had time for that?”

I groan to myself. This is gonna be a long night.