Six red strips of light extinguish while four more illuminate against a black LED screen as the digital clock flashes 7:00, accompanied by a dissonance of faint music interspersed with radio static—Allegra’s wake-up summons. She pries open her eyelids, cemented together by a tranquil dream (now shattered) and glares at the menacing red strips.

“Ugh!” she exclaims. Her conscious mind chimes Monday morning, even though her internal clock still screams Sunday. Heaving the covers off, she wrenches her body semi-upright, drags her legs over the edge of the bed, and slides her feet onto the floor—only to stumble on a pile of books purchased from Barnes & Noble over two months ago. The rest of the floor consists of a perpetuation of books—textbooks, notebooks, novels, documentaries, journals. They never fail to fade into oblivion within the obscurity of drawers; here on the carpet, she can always find them.

Allegra enacts the morning routine forced upon every teenager in our modern age. She is blessed with five minutes to devour breakfast, five more to prevent a bad hair day, five to cram her books into the schoolbag, and five to slap together an outfit—add one or two minutes for the inevitable rush-back-to-house-to-get-homework-on-desk. Unfortunately, even this desperate measure fails to elude the specter of poor class preparation, as she frequently finds herself mired in a math test without a calculator, a French homework check without her homework, or a history lecture without her notebook. And no, she seldom ever learns. Already burdened with a suite of honors courses, any further learning strikes her mind as impracticable to the point of absurdity.

Not to say that Allegra doesn’t learn anything. Rest assured, dear reader, that Mr. and Mrs. Hayes’ hard-earned tax money lands in the hands of wise and fair-minded and noble and competent and loyal and ever-so-physically-attractive administrators, because she’s learning a lot! In Math Analysis, she learns the extent to which sleep deprivation impairs quiz-taking. In Behavioral Studies, she learns that the latest teenage fad generates infinitely more ripples than Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In French, she learns that boredom exhibits an inverse correlation with mental acuity. And in American Literature, she learns that people prefer to conserve brain cells by focusing on the obvious and concrete. At the end of school, she assesses the magnitude of her new-gained insights. Ah, how she may but begin to appreciate how such knowledge will facilitate her functionality within our glorious society!

After school, Allegra dedicates three hours in the library scrambling to complete as much homework as inhumanly possible, so that she may lug home twenty—instead of thirty—pounds of books. “Exercise is good for you. Why don’t you take the bus home with the extra weight?” inquires Dad, a former physicist. But no, Allegra abhors exercise. Ten grueling school years have sufficed to teach her the principle of conservation of energy better than any physics textbook.

Life back home doesn’t impress her as so drastically different—Allegra works, eats, works some more, yawns, pounds her fist in frustration, rolls her eyes, stretches, takes a shower, and curls up in bed. The only difference being that Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, anxiety-ridden over their daughter’s gastronomic intake, will deposit a bowl of lipidic refreshments every half-hour. Of course, Allegra will protest that she is not hungry and shoveled down two sirloin steaks for dinner and just gobbled up three chocolate bars two seconds ago and potato chips elevate cholesterol to unhealthy levels and don’t they know millions across America are trying to lose weight, not gain it and, and ... but, but, but ... to no avail. Aghast that their daughter refuses to aspire to obesity, they threaten to blast her Internet connection. So Allegra succumbs, her parents are satisfied, and another day ends in peace.

Copyright ©2001-2003, Allegra H., all rights reserved. Please contact me via e-mail if you wish to reproduce this material.