Vacation, etc. - 4/14/2007 in 2005 - 2007: High School

I never got a response to that email. I guess that this is reasonable. I mean, what did I expect them to say? "Okay, we won't"?

For a while I was afraid that Molly and Dave were not talking to me, as a result of the email. I didn't see them Wednesday, and Thursday I only saw them briefly after concert band, after which I went home. They didn't really talk to me then. But they talked to me yesterday, so I guess we are cool. Also, I guess we are not talking about the email.

Yesterday was a pretty glorious sort-of-first day of vacation. In music theory, we learned stuff, which is unusual. In humanities, we ate donuts and I talked to Kevin and watched people play super Mario smash brothers, which is certainly unusual. In electrical engineering, Bonnie and I tried to figure out how the fuck an oscilloscope works, which is what we do every day, but I really didn't expect anything unusual from Rogers. And in calculus, since about eight people showed up, he let us go down unacompanied to a seminar being given by some famous writers in the Williams Center. I think that the seminar was for English kids, but um... AP calculus is almost the same thing as English?

This is where Molly and Dave talked to me. They had come from humanities. They complained about their humanities teacher, which they do a lot. Tom sat with us too. Throughout the entire thing, he complained under his breath about what a pompous ass one of the writers was, which was funny because Tom is himself a huge pompous ass. He addressed the writer as "Andre" when he made these comments.

"We do like the sound of those words as they come out of our mouth, don't we Andre?" And so on.

After I left school, I decided I wanted an icecream. So I walked downtown to the ice cream store. I ran into that perky acquaintance who is going to Graham, because she works there. It was kind of a weird conversation, because she talked a lot, very quickly, and I didn't really have the chance to respond, or even process most of what she said, I don't think. She said hi, and then she said something about my haircut, and then she said something about Odyssey, and then she said something about that intense engineer girl who is the third person who got in early decision. "Oh, and did you hear that Julian Miller might go too?"

"Oh... Yeah." I had heard this. My mother told me that his mother had told her about it on jazz night. (My mother takes concerts as an opportunity to catch up with the other band parents.) She said it in a way which suggested that she doesn't quite understand what Julian and my relationship is, and what Julian and my relationship will never be. You know, like, "Well, Julian got into Graham..." eyebrows

I'm really not sure how I feel about this. A while ago I certainly would have been happy about it. I might not have to say goodbye. That beauty might stay with me for another four years. But now I kind of think that it might be time for us to be in different states for a while. I'm kind of done being exhausted. I'm ready to worship someone who it is easier to worship. It might be time to say goodbye.

But it might not. There is a part of me that hopes that he will go and we will be in the B band together. I dunno.

I ate my icecream. Cookie dough with big ol' chocolate chips in it. Then I walked home and took a two and a half hour nap. Then Bonnie called.

"Hello?"

"Hey. Do you want to come over later, like at seven thirty?"

"Sure."

"You sound depressed as usual."

"Oh - I just woke up. Like literally."

"Oh, okay. So see you."

"Bye."

I was greeted by Bonnie and her small spastic dog. The first thing I saw when I came in was a giant stuffed shark spralled on her living room floor. Like, it was maybe six feet long. It had big plasic angry eyes and pointy plush teeth. It was bright purple and striped.

I looked at it for a while, while she laughed. "I like your shark," I said.

"Thank you."

"Is it... Where... Is it yours personally?"

"Yes. I found it on the side of the road on the way to a flute lesson."

"You found it on the side of the road."

"Oh the way to a flute lesson. Yes."

There was a pause.

"So... You saw this, and so you stopped and pulled over..."

"Yes." She was still laughing.

"And you got out and put it in the back seat of your car..."

"Yes."

"And then you put it on the floor in your living room, and it has been there ever since."

"Yes."

"Oh."

Molly showed up a little later. Dave could not come. He had already left to visit a college. Molly left for it this morning. We hung out and it was a pretty good time. We played the a-MAZE-ing labyrinth. I won. Then we decided that we needed to go somewhere. We went to Denny's, because it was too late to go anywhere else.

In Bonnie's car, it somehow came up that when Dave has internal disagreements, he names the two viewpoints Joe and Steve. We laughed. "Maybe I shouldn't have told you that," said Molly.

"I won't tell him you did," I said.

"Okay. Yeah, I usually don't name mine. Well... Or, okay, we were talking about the college thing, and trying to decide what we're going to do about that, and I was saying that I have two inner voices, cynical Molly, which says that we're going to break up anyway, and chick flick Molly, which says that we're going to be together forever. And he was like, 'yeah, I kind of have inner voices like that too, except... They're named Joe and Steve." Molly kind of laughed, but we didn't.

"And what did you... Decide?" I said.

"We didn't."

"Ah."

Everything was fine until I went home, at which point I had an emotional breakdown. At one o'clock in the morning, I went downstairs to where my mother was sleeping with the TV on and said "I think they're going to get married. I'm freaking out."

"What?" she said.

"Molly and Dave might get married. They're thinking about going to the same college so that they can get married. I don't want them to. That's not okay. That's not what I meant when I told them I didn't mind if they had a relationship. I don't know what to do. It's not okay."

She told me that that didn't make any sense. She told me that a lot of people who date in highschool and go to college together break up within the first couple of years. Then she tried to figure out why I even cared so much. I had to leave out all the explanations about maybe being something like in love with Dave and about being repulsed by almost everything having to do with sex because having sex is selling out and lying. I couldn't say that what I'm really afraid of is that they'll have sex - that that must be avoided at all costs, that nothing makes me panic quite as seriously as that thought. So what I said didn't make that much sense. It was just a bunch of clichÈs about them abandoning me and stuff. She said, "I don't understand. If you're really their friend... If in four or five years they do decide to get married, why wouldn't you be happy for them?" And I said, "I don't know, but I wouldn't." She seemed kind of disgusted with me and told me to take a sleeping pill so that I would stop freaking out. I did, even though I've taken them several times this week already. It took longer to kick in than normal.

I still don't feel so great. I realized this morning that I don't look so great. I look too thin and too pale. And certain parts of my skin are visibly torn up by tweezers and fingernails. They are getting infected. I felt a little tired and shaky at work today. I also apparantly had an entire conversation with my father that I have no memory of.

I have watched my mother's video of jazz night... God, millions of times. I've memorized it. It doesn't even mean anything to me anymore. I can't even tell if stuff was good or bad anymore. Because my brain realizes that no matter how things are supposed to be, that one hit in 'Round Midnight will always be a little early, and Andy will always conspicuously miss that note in Muzikawi Silt, and Mike will always be a little bit ahead of the beat in Spain, and Julian will always pull the head off of his stand. So it just expects things to be like that, and everything seems right.

My mom cut out the trainwreck. That never happened.