Law has always been my favorite class, though I�d never become a lawyer. Too much stress, you know? But I�m good at remembering dates and cases and stories�perhaps the stories most of all. It�s easy to remember what happened to people, and most of the cases we have to learn include some pretty interesting people. Like the man who rented property on another man�s land and sued when the cops took his guns away because he didn�t have a permit for them. The gun-lover claimed that the land-renter never told him of this fact, and sued him. Midway through the case (which was not going well for the gun-lover), he destroyed the rented property, burned it to the ground�and then told the cops that the renter did it in order to get back at him.
That case was in �88: Greenslaw v. Popescu. Popescu won (obviously) but it sparked some debate in Congress because he actually didn�t warn the gun-lover about permits, and some felt that Greenslaw had been kind of screwed over.
Law is a breeze: takes about five minutes and then the bell�s ringing again. I manage to get out way before Xerxes and lose myself in a crowd. I worm my way to my locker, and from there to the cafeteria, where a soda-sipping Alison regards me with an unusual expression in her Ms. Piggy eyes.
�Um.� she says, carelessly. I would have expected more class for a girl like this. �I have some stuff to do this period�community service and uh, stuff, so I�ll see you in French, maybe.�
�Maybe?�
�Well, it might carry over, you know. And I didn�t do the French homework.�
She divulges this like it�s CIA information regarding some celebrity sleeping with another: a scandalous tidbit dropped gently into conversation. Am I supposed to be surprised? Girl never does her French homework.
I shrug, get a sandwich and spend lunch talking to a few people about music. No one has good taste anymore, especially not me. They all assume I�m mad about punk now, but I just love the way this hairstyle pulls my head to the countertop, encouraging such raucous behavior as sleeping in class or shouting at teachers.
Then I go to French. Alison is not there, and I am not surprised. She seems to be avoiding me, which definitely makes my avoiding her loads easier. What it does not make easier, however, is French.
French takes more than hours�it takes years and months and eons of wasted time. I try to write my Quinnipiac essay, but even that isn�t enough to sate this awful, consuming kind of pointlessness. Ennui is what the French would say, but we�re not learning real French. Just miles and miles of bleak, dull verb tenses and memorization of fifty different irregulars and thousands of cases and exceptions. I am cheering on the Revolution, in which all language education will be downloadable; in fact I believe I am willing to be used as a test subject for such research, even if it means that they fry my brain and I�ll have to live like Xerxes for the rest of my life. As long as it means no more thinking.
And then, finally, class has ended, and I realize that I�m still alive, somehow. Somehow I�ve got all the notes down, and the homework is printed neatly in my little planner.
Eighth period I had Math, but it�s second quarter now and I�m finished. We just have to take the state exam in January and I will never have to write another axiom as long as I live. So in the meantime I signed up for a Creative Writing class, which was a mistake. It was a mistake because of this girl Yuna.
Yuna is desperate-looking, which is a useful warning because she is desperate. She has watery blue eyes and thin brownish blondish hair, and pale, thick skin that sometimes looks slightly lumpy, like curdled milk. She writes poems about killing herself and then stares wide-eyed around the room, looking hopelessly expectant. No one ever says anything, because her poems are bad.
They�re not just your garden-variety bad either: they�re horrible, excuses for literature worse than I could ever write. She describes blood eagerly, waiting for a look of horror or disgust on people�s faces. She does the same thing with jokes, to an eerie extent.
Thankfully, though, today she isn�t there. Amazing! We actually do some constructive work, and the teacher likes my descriptive piece on Fire. We had to write something based on a photograph, so I chose the one of Fire looking out onto the river and just noticing that I�m taking a picture. The expression of still, sweet sadness remains partially on his face, but he�s also making a quick, friendly smile and allowing a hint of impishness into his eyes. It�s a masterful display of emotion that I think only Fire could pull off.
The teacher asks me, dumpily, if I invented the character or if the photo is of someone I know, and to my surprise I tell her that yes, I invented the character. I do not know why I said that.
Ninth period is physics, and I scribble diagrams for forty minutes and then I go home. Home is drafty and feels too big for me, like a pair of shoes that Mom says I�ll grow into. She isn�t home yet, I forgot that she�s visiting my aunt today.
I dawdle around the house and then do my homework. I feel over positioned, like there�s some pissed off photographer who�ll charge up to me any minute now and twist my arm around in a different direction, or wrench a bobby pin from my hair. Life is dull and overplayed. Life is that one Foo Fighters song that you thought you liked and then realized after the fiftieth time you heard it that it�s actually only the same five chords over and over again. I make a bag of popcorn and moodily munch while flipping through a magazine on the sofa. I want someone to call me, but no one does.