Bad Week - 12/10/2006 in 2005 - 2007: High School

The Monday morning after it was established that the band died again, I came into school and said to Dave, "What about Speedy?"

He looked interested. "Speedy," he said, interestedly.

"Speedy."

"Speedy."

We asked him if he'd do the Tri-M thing at lunch. He said yes, sounding pretty disinterested. Wednesday, he didn't show up for my band. "Anybody seen Speedy?" I said.

"He does ski team," said Molly. "He's not coming anymore."

"What?"

"Yeah, he told me, and I asked him if he'd told you, and he said he had."

"He didn't."

Fuck. Not him. He had been so enthusiastic, at the beginning. And he was good. I gave him two solos. And he didn't even tell me.

It was not a good practice. That threw me off too much. Once I get thrown off, I continue to fall off. It just gets worse and worse, until I lose my power - whatever it is that allows me to run a big band. I lose it, and then I don't run a big band. The flutes are still playing that goddamn rhythm wrong. The concert is one rehearsal away.

I came home and Dave came with me. I felt dead. I didn't know what I was going to do, besides maybe suck, and it was killing me. But he told me things about Latin that are interesting, and I told him things about Chinese that are interesting, and it calmed me down. I was expecting for us to keep hanging out and then go to A band together, but my phone rang, and it was his mother, and she yelled at him profusely because he had been supposed to pick up his little brother at school and he forgot. So he left my house early, very quickly.

I had practiced the flute feature. It's what I did every time I felt like I should practice the trombone peice that's way out of my range. Practicing the flute feature was a lot more fun, so I would do that instead. I was able to play it almost perfectly. When Mr. Casto gave out solos, he didn't ask who wanted one. He just said, "Solos will be Mike and Aidan." I'm going to have to work on that. I'm not sure what the scales are.

After practice, I attacked Speedy. "Speedy! What are you doing to me?" He didn't say much. He frowned and was very slightly defensive, and then I felt bad and I made an effort to stop confronting him and I asked him to please see if he could get out of practice just for this one last rehearsal, so that he can do the concert. He said he's try.

Chinese is getting difficult, and I am starting to make mistakes. This is causing the Chinese teacher to be disappointed in me. This sucks. In addition to not living up to my own expectations, I am not living up to an awesome old lady's expectations, and it is making her sad. And there is really nothing I can do about it. There are a lot of characters and we are learning them very quickly and I study but there is a limit to my intelligence. Friday, we had to get into groups and read sentences to the rest of the class, who would write them down. We have to write Chinese a lot more often than we have to speak it. I can't do the latter. I was reading the sentences, and the rest of the class couldn't understand them. Then she would say what sounded to me like the exact same thing, and everyone would go, "Ohhh." There are sounds in Chinese that I can't differentiate between. Important ones. I hate it when people can't differentiate between sounds.

Also, I want to punch the people in the class who already speak Chinese in the face. All of them. It is fine by me if you want to get an easy A, but you could at least get your easy A quietly and unobnoxiously while letting the rest of us learn Chinese. From the teacher.

Friday was a sucky day in general. French made me angry and Chinese made me angry, and when Molly came into the band room at lunch, she made me angry too, and the fact that she made me angry made me angry at myself because there was really no reason for it. I just hated her mannerisms. I found her annoying. I wanted to punch her in the face, not because of anything she was doing, but because of who she fundamentally was. I don't know what's wrong with me. And I don't know what I'd do if we ever stopped being friends. I really don't know what I'd do.

We eventually established during lunch, after Speedy asked us what we were doing for Tri-M, that we couldn't do anything. Not without a drummer. Not without ever having worked with each other before. It's dead. It's really dead.

Obnoxious drummers split someone's health baby in half so that the flour spilled all over the table and floor. They laughed hysterically and refused to clean it up. That made me angry. The Williams Center janitor hates us. He said the other day that if we made a mess again he would kick us all out. Molly and I yelled at them to clean up. When she did it, it came across as bitchy. And I was doing the exact same thing. But I didn't want to get kicked out, and I didn't know what else to do. I wasn't going to clean it up. It was their fault. And I was angry. So I yelled. I'm still just like her. I'm just as bad as she is. I hated myself.

"This has been a terrible day," I said to Bonnie walking out. "Badmitten better be fucking awesome." She laughed. (All you can hear is the intake of air, and even that's quiet.)

But we weren't playing badmitten, like the gym teacher told us we would. We were playing kickball. After the gym teacher told me this excitedly and walked away, I said aloud, "fuck this," got my coat and left. I went to the woods and walked around for a bit. A few days before, it had been seventy and raining, but Friday it was freezing cold with that weird dry snow that blows around in little snow dunes. So even walking around in the woods didn't really work. It wasn't an effective escape. After I walked around a little bit and fell down a hill and got all dirty and snowy, I had to go back inside. I blatently sat in the corner of the gym not doing anything. I didn't care if I got in trouble. I didn't get in trouble. No one even yelled at me. I don't think anyone noticed I was gone, or that I had snow and dirt all over my pants and jacket when I came back in.

At the end of the day, I saw Julian head in the direction of the band room with his saxophone. So he has a lot of stuff going on. Like another band. He really did flat-out ditch us. I guess this would a perfectly understandable, reasonable thing to do, normally. But it seems very uncharactaristic of the unreasonably decent Julian I'm used to. Julian isn't in the least bit slimy. He doesn't lie. He doesn't have social conflicts and he's never disrespectful. But when he walked by me with his saxophone, avoiding eye contact, he was guilty of several of those things.

I got Dave to give me a ride home and I thought he was going to hang out, but I called my mom and she said he couldn't. So I told him to go home. I didn't know what to do with myself after that. I wanted to leave and never come back. But instead I just walked downtown and got some random crap at the library and didn't care that I didn't run into Julian and then sat in Breugers for several hours reading God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, hating the obnoxious middle schoolers who would come in periodically. Then I walked home, and Bonnie called me because we had said that we should watch Fiddler on the Roof, and I invited Molly and Dave because I had to, and I enjoyed the movie a lot and pretended to enjoy their company, and when the movie was over I said, "Bonnie, go the the bathroom," and she did, quitely, and I told Molly and Dave as respectfully as I could that it bothers me that they touch each other constantly and obviously. I said that it would be nice if I could see them sometimes in the same room and not touching each other. This is not sarcasm. It is not exageration. When they are in a room together, they engage in PDA. They said they were sorry.

This weekend I have been capable of funtioning only on a very basic level. I entertain the thought of suicide more seriously than I ever have, which is still not very seriously. I am still pretty sure that things will eventually get better. But I hate my best and only friends. I don't like being around them anymore, and I think that my relationship with both of them is about to fall apart. I am not intelligent enough to live up to my expectations, I don't like my personality, and my life does not make me happy. I don't want to go back to Ann Whatsherface, but maybe I should.