banana.

-

            As the wind fell through the birch tree, Basil bathed in it’s shade, laying first on his stomach, then rolling onto his side, his back, and his other side, ultimately returning to his stomach.  He repeated this circle over and over again, moving only when a new section of his body needed the refreshing breeze.  Sprawled across the grass next to the Dalmatian was Bunny, my younger sister, and she copied each of Basil’s movements, from the rolling to the contented sigh he would breathe after completing each section of his roll.  Bunny had stayed there a surprisingly long amount of time; most seventh-graders had better things to do than lay on the grass playing an incredibly juvenile game.  Eventually, she stood and walked over to the patio table where her brand new, touch-screen cell phone was lying, and brought it back to the circle of shade Basil had claimed.  She settled once again with her back on the grass and pressed the intangible buttons for entertainment.

            “Tell your sister not to roll around in the grass,” my mother said with little intonation.  She had pulled a chair away from our dining room table, pretending to clean it, but I’d caught her sitting in several times already, staring out the window, just waiting.

            I left her to her desperation and obeyed her, stepping out into the backyard where Bunny and Basil were relaxing.  As the door tinged shut, Basil’s head shot up, and one of his ears was flopped over.  Bunny copied him for the thousandth time that afternoon, and her own wavy hair—mud-colored, just like the rest of our female family members—was blown over to one side of her head.  “Mom doesn’t want you rolling around in the grass,” I told her, sitting down with my back against the tree’s trunk.  Basil flopped like a dead fish in his attempt to stand up; his long, gangly legs made it hard.  He trotted over to me, and circled, settling back on his stomach with his head on my thigh.  I rubbed his bony skull and he let out another sigh.

            Bunny ignored my message and said, “He never sits with me.”

            “Maybe because you never leave him alone,” I suggested, returning Basil’s ear to its proper place.  A bit of silence passed between my sister and me, and I closed my eyes for a moment, and just listened.  The days of late spring had been unbearably hot, but that morning came in cool breezes and the sounds of a dry, California summer, and I had no intention of letting it pass by as I waited lamely by the window for Stacia to arrive.

-

it kinda feels like freshman year all over again…

-

The first time I met Joshua Schwartzman I was in middle school (he was a jock then, too) and he always called me Morgan, but he said it like a nickname, like football guys call him Schwartz, which is a nickname for his last name.  And all this time, I’d assumed he thought my last name was Morgan, that is, until this morning.  I’m telling this all to Andrew.  My math homework is out in front of me, three problems done.  “And apparently he thinks of me as a friend.  Weird, huh?”

            Andrew is making spaghetti.  We eat a lot of spaghetti, and he constantly apologizes for weight I might gain.  I just tell him that it’s a good thing I have such high metabolism, but I want a few pounds.  I’m a pale, skinny stick.  My brother dumps noodles into a pot.  “No, not really.  What’s so bad about a friend, Mo?”

            “Nothing, I suppose.”

            “Exactly.  He’s a nice kid.  His mom’s one of my teachers you know.”

            “I know.”

            “Try and finish your homework by the time dinner’s ready, okay?”

            “I’m done.”

            When Andrew finished his undergraduate schooling two years ago, we painted my room.  When we moved into the family quarters six years ago, the room was a puke color of taupe, but now it’s gray-blue and very relaxing.  I snuggle up under the covers as my metabolism devours the carbohydrates I’m trying to hold onto, and attempt to fall asleep.  But the thought of my unfinished math homework is pulling at my brain and I can’t start to dream.  I’d like to say I got up and worked into the night, finishing my homework, turning a new leaf and reinventing myself all at the same time, but I didn’t.  I told myself I would do it in first period and fell asleep.

            In the morning, Andrew has a bowl, a spoon, a box of cereal, milk, and a napkin laid out on the counter for me.  He’s been gone for almost an hour now for his first and only class of the day.  Today, I don’t have a new skirt to insist on wearing, and I retrogress back to my normal ensemble of pants (either jeans or khakis), canvas tennis shoes and some top, which today takes the form of a striped sweater, thin and scraggly, but comfortable all the same. 

            At the bus stop, Josh compliments me on my khakis: “Are those new?”  I only wear them every other day, dipsquat.  On the bus, he leaves me alone and sits in the back.  I almost want to tell him that I almost did my homework last night and I almost do but he passes by my seat quickly and I don’t dare follow him to the back of the bus.  Someone might make fun of my sweater or my flat chest or my skinny legs or my sunless complexion or the fact that I’m the only girl in the world who hasn’t had a friend since she was eight save her older brother.  Andrew says that everyday is an opportunity to change to world.  I think everyday is an opportunity to be stomped into the ground for reasons for which you have no fault, and that is something I desperately wish to avoid.

            Not surprisingly, I don’t do my math homework in first period.  If I had homework for first period I’d probably do it, but my teacher rarely assigns any and if he does, I have time to finish it in class.  I like Chemistry, it relaxes me.  I’m obviously not a math person, so I wasn’t planning on taking the class, but Andrew convinced me and I’m glad he did.  I’ve always liked History because it didn’t necessarily have to make sense; things happened the way they happened and that’s that.  I don’t like math because you have one shot at the right answers and mine are always wrong.  I thought that’s how I would feel in Chemistry, but I actually found the need to focus on it calming.  There’s only one way to do Chemistry and if you lose your train of thought you have to start over.  That’s the part I like.  I can’t think about anything else doing those problems and that is even more relaxing than the gray-blue of my walls. 

-

exhibit a: i’m doing my makeup, getting ready to go get my haircut, and this is what runs through my head -

“i wonder if they can see up your nose when they’re shampooing you?”

school is approaching much too quickly.

why can i create interesting people, but can’t be one myself?

i’ve been listening to new perspective on repeat for about a million hours now, and i just keep falling in love with it.  i think i would just die if i met p!atd.  their songs - from fever to this new duo/bringin’ back the ! thing they have going on now - just make me so content.  it’s like from under the cork tree, but the feeling spans their entire collection of albums.  brendon urie, your voice just saves me (and the what a catch, donnie video :P).

i’m really starting to like eric hutchinson.  his songs tell stories and i like that the most, i think.  plus, they’re upbeat and happy even if they’re not necessarily about happy things.  i can really just lay on my bedroom floor and listen to his entire album without wanting to skip a song or even go back to a song, because the whole thing belongs together and mustn’t be tampered with.  it’s a truly magical experience.

-

Lily rarely blushed, but she was ninety-nine percent positive she had that day. 

Presently, her hand rose weightlessly to her right earlobe, and her fingers felt out the fine lines of the round diamond stud, knowing its twin was daintily resting in the hole in her left ear.  When she’d received the earrings, the same feeling she had now had gripped her heart, first making her think of Linus and then her boyfriend, the person who’d given them to her that Christmas, which consequently made her feel horrible.  She always suspected that, one day, Julian would see it on her face, but she could never tell him.

            She was halfway across the bridge now and stuck behind a loaded down sedan, but she followed it patiently, for she had a fear of and tried as much as possible to stay out of the left lane of traffic.  She whispered the lines to the song that floated from the speakers and allowed her hands to slip from ten and two on the steering wheel, gripping it as though she were driving a horse-drawn buggy.  She’d pressed fake, French-manicured nails onto her own chewed up ones, but one was hanging on by a single string of cheap glue, so she pressed each nail against the wheel until it popped off.  “I’ll just vacuum them up later,” she told herself under her breath, seeing that her floorboard was now littered with the plastic bits.

            Julian’s truck was outside when Lily got home, waiting for her.  He was so sweet; he never wanted to be late, so he was always really early.  But for what? Lily asked herself, beeping the car locked.  She frowned and tried to remember if she’d forgotten a date they’d made, but nothing came to mind.  Walking through the front door, she felt nervous.  Why was she so afraid of upsetting him?

            His bulky figure was sitting in the swivel chair in the computer room, and he was patiently talking Lily’s mother through something.  Lily imagined him saying, “First, you press this button—but make sure the computer’s plugged in first, or else it won’t turn on at all!”  And since Mrs. Tucker had this weird mom-crush on her daughter’s boyfriend—the kind where she was always smiling at him and bobbing her eyebrows at Lily whenever his back was toward her—she was probably listening intently and asking him how to make sure it was plugged in.  She was in fact paying acute attention to whatever he was saying, Lily confirmed, but she still saw her daughter enter the room.  “Hey, hun,” she crooned.  “How was the funeral?”  Lily glanced downwards and grunted a little.  “Well, I should know the answer to that one, I suppose.”  Mrs. Tucker brushed Lily’s shoulder gracefully with her palm and left the room patting her on the back until she could reach it no more.

            “Hey.”

            Lily looked back up to see that Julian had spun around in the chair and was now facing her, his lopsided smile pasted uneasily to his face.  “Hola,” she reciprocated, giving a pitiful wave.

            Julian heaved himself out of the chair and smothered her in a bear hug, kissing her forehead, and Lily sighed heavily into his chest.  She was trying to forget all the things she’d thought, all the things she’d felt during her drive home and desperately wishing to melt away and be forgotten herself.  She wouldn’t need the funeral or the tears or the headstone or even the pictures of her that dotted the walls of her home.  She simply wanted to disappear.  She didn’t want a divorce from the present, just an annulment, like it had never even happened—no trace, no clue that it ever existed.  She ever existed. 

            She could feel Julian breathing into her hair and slowly moving his thumb back and forth, stroking one small spot on her back.  “Bad, huh?” he finally asked.

            Lily sighed, slipping in a small, “Mhm.”  She closed her eyes and tried to absorb Julian’s cologne into her pores, where it would fill her senses forever.  She always bought it for him, every time he ran out.  It wasn’t expensive, but she loved it, and he loved that she loved it. 

            He loosened his embrace a bit, and pulled slightly away from her.  “You don’t even look like you cried.”  He said it like a compliment, not a question.

            “Oh,” Lily replied, “I redid my makeup before I left.  I didn’t want my eyes to be all puffy.”  Liar, she insulted herself.  You’re just a cold-hearted you-know-what and you can’t even admit it.  Liar, liar, liar. 

            It’s harder than you think, her brain’s emotion headquarters countered.  But she hadn’t cried.  Her eyes had welled when she was up in front of everyone, but that was it.  She’d thrown her head backward back in the pew and the tears had slipped back to wherever they came from.  She’d thought about the five stages of grief that she’d learned about in seventh grade.  The first, of course, was denial.  She had no doubt Linus Eubanks was dead, she’d just been to his funeral for God’s sake.  It definitely hadn’t quite hit her, though, or at least that’s what she suspected.  It will later, she’d told herself, but she’d also prepared herself for tissues by the truckload pulling out of the driveway that morning.  She didn’t know what to expect.

            As she argued with herself, Julian said, “Well, I thought you might need some cheering up anyway.  This kind of stuff is emotionally draining.”  This caught Lily’s attention.  She loved to hear him say the word emotional because somewhere, in her sick and twisted head, it made him emotional.  Sensitivity, what every girl on every sitcom looked for in a guy.  “If you wanna change I’ll wait,” he continued.  “I can’t believe you’re wearing those sleeves on a day like this.”

-

i can’t wait for next year to start.  some things are going to change - not just me, but the things around me as well.  i want to be more assertive, but i can wish all i want, right?  i’m going to take my senior year very seriously, which of course means plenty of goofing off.  basically, i want my entire 2009-10 school year to be one, huge, fat, imposing, and obtrusive oxymoron.

however ridiculous that may sound.

blink tickets for birmingham are as low as 7.75, then 20 bucks.  i say we go :)