I�m up in my room, fingering the phone and thinking about calling Alison. I don�t really want to, not in the technical sense, but I can�t help but feel that I have to. There�s this ache, this feeling that I have to resolve something that maybe, in the larger sense, doesn�t have to be resolved. And it sounds soo stupid. Sort of: �Oh, hey Alison. Um, I was wondering, even though I technically forgave you for destroying Halloween, are you mad at me for not making a scene? Also, are you going out with your boy toy friend who is not a boyfriend, who I totally stole from you for two months? How is he in bed?�
It sounds like drama. Drama permeates the lives of people like me. How am I for dropping things? I examine my track record:
There was the time that this girl went on a two-year bitching spree on me. She sat near me in my sophomore English class and in front of me in junior year math, and she just hated me. I don�t know why. She�d step on hems, and maim test papers when I passed them up. She stole my wallet once; luckily it only had five dollars and a used bookstore gift card inside.
Xerxes set fire to her birdhouse. I think he killed a bird or two. You wanna know a secret? I did it and Xerxes told everyone he did it.
I did it late at night, with a can of lighter fluid, a hose attached to a pump, and three boxes of matches. The hay inside the birdhouse was the first to catch, and then the rest followed. It looked beautiful as I ran from it, washed the lighter fluid form my hands with the hose outside my house. I dropped the empty can in a neighbor�s garbage, and I wore gloves. I am a tricky arsonist, and damn good at it.
Another time a boy harassed me every day in gym. He liked my tits, and liked talking about them. Eventually, he realized that his friends were leaving him, one by one. Alison helped me with this one. In all fairness, I should say that she did it all, but I helped for lots of the things that she couldn�t risk doing.
We spun a rumor, and it was beautiful. The rumor spread out from person to person, elaborating and transforming it with each telling. He slept with his best friend�s girlfriend, and then told her she was too ugly to have sex with anymore. The girlfriend heard that he had just gone around telling people that he had, and she got dumped. So she starts a counter rumor that this guy has a pretty gnarly case of genital lice. She was so angry at him that she was willing to admit to sleeping with him, just to spread this rumor.
So it reaches the best friend that his buddy has a bit of an infection going on, and the buddy happens to be borrowing his gym shorts that day. So the best friend takes the shorts back at the end of the gym class and just dumps them into the garbage, all disgusted. The borrower is ashamed and pretty pissed off, and asks the friend what he�s doing. The friend says that he doesn�t lend shorts to guys with bugs, and the borrower turns purple. You see, it was true.
This is the beauty of certain rumors. They strike so close to home that it seems they actually become true.
Anyway, the guy never bothered me again. I heard that he left town, got sent to some military academy. Good for him.
The phone is starting to stick to my hands. I decide to leave it alone, just go to sleep and forget about this whole insanity with Alison. I�m sure she doesn�t want to get too concerned.
And then I sit upright, because that�s exactly what she wants. She wants me to let it go, so I will be too scared to actually do anything when she actually does something. I dial her number with fingers that do not shake.
One ring.
Two.
And then she picks up, all Polly Pocket Paris Hilton voice. �Hey.�
I hang up, firmly. I do not know why I just did that.