the first
I can’t believe I used to do this nearly every day. Or night, rather. In the wee hours, when the sky was purple and the house sighed with sleep, I’d hover, wide awake, over my beat-up black-and-white-speckled composition notebook. I’d scribble, scratch, and scrawl until my hand, and sometimes my heart, ached.
I wrote and wrote and wrote. Then, one day, I stopped.
With the exception of letters to Hope and editorials for the school newspaper, I haven’t written anything real in months. (Which is why it’s such a crock that I’m attending SPECIAL.) I have no choice but to start up again because I’m required to keep a journal for SPECIAL’s writing program. But this journal will be different. It has to be different.
My last journal was the only eyewitness to every mortifying and just plain empty-headed thought I had throughout my sophomore and junior years. And like the mob, I had the sole observer whacked. Specifically, I slipped page after page into my dad’s paper shredder, leaving nothing but guilty confetti behind. I wanted to have a ritualistic burning in the fireplace, but my mom wouldn’t let me because she was afraid the ink from my pen would emit a toxic cloud and kill us all. Even I can admit that would have been an unnecessarily melodramatic touch.
I destroyed that journal because it contained all the things I should’ve been telling my best friend. I trashed it on New Year’s Day, the last time I saw Hope, which was the first time I had seen her since she moved to Tennessee. My resolution: to stop pouring my soul out to an anonymous person on paper and start telling her everything again. And everything included everything that had happened between me and He Who Shall Remain Nameless.
Instead of hating me for the weird whatever relationship he and I used to have, Hope proved once and for all that she is a better best friend than I am. She swore to me on that January day, and a bajillion times since, that I have the right to be friends and/or more with whomever I want to be friends and/or more with. She assured me of this, even though his debaucherous activities indirectly contributed to her own brother’s overdose, and very directly led to her parents moving her a thousand miles away from Pineville’s supposedly evil influence. Because when it comes down to it, as she told me that shivery afternoon, and again and again, her brother Heath’s death was no one’s fault but his own. No one stuck that lethal needle in his arm; Heath did it himself. And if I feel a real connection with him, she told me then, and keeps telling me, and telling me, and telling me, I shouldn’t be so quick to cut it off.
I’ve told Hope a bajillion times right back that I’m not removing him from my life out of respect for Heath’s memory. I’m doing it because it simply doesn’t do me any good to keep him there. Especially when he hasn’t spoken a word to me since I said “fuck you” to him last New Year’s Eve.
That’s not totally true. He has spoken to me. And that’s how I know that when it comes to He Who Shall Remain Nameless and me, there’s something far worse than silence: small talk. We used to talk about everything from stem cells to Trading Spaces. Now the deepest he gets is: “Would you mind moving your head, please? I can’t see the blackboard.” (2/9/01—first period. World History II.)
STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don’t want to have to burn this journal before I even begin.
the second
Now, here’s a fun and totally not bananas topic to write about!
Today I got the all-time ass-kickingest going-away present: 780 Verbal, 780 Math.
GOD BLESS THE SCHOLASTIC APTITUDE TEST!
That’s a combined score of 1560, for those of you who are perhaps not as mathematically inclined as I am. YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I’ve done it. I’ve written my ticket out of Pineville, and I won’t have to run in circles for it. I am the first person to admit that if an athletic scholarship were my only option, I’d be out running laps and pumping performance-enhancing drugs right now. But my brain, for once, has helped, not hindered. I AM SO HAPPY I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR CROSS-COUNTRY CAMP.
As annoying as all those vocabulary drills and Princeton Review process-of-elimination practice sessions were, I’m totally against the movement to get rid of the SAT. It is the only way to prove to admissions officers that I’m smart. A 4.4 GPA, glowing recommendations, and a number-one class rank mean absolutely nothing when you’re up against applicants from schools that don’t suck.
Of course, with scores like these, my problem isn’t whether I’ll get accepted to college, but deciding which of the 1600 schools in the Princeton Review guide to colleges I should attend in the first place. I’ve been banking on the idea that college will be the place where I finally find people who understand me. My niche. I have no idea if Utopia University exists. But there is one consolation. Even if I pick the wrong school, and the odds are 1600 to 1 that I will, it can’t be worse than my four years at Pineville High.
Incidentally, I didn’t rock the SATs because I’m a genius. One campus tour of Harvard taught me the difference between freaky brilliance and the rest of us. No, my scores didn’t reflect my superior intellect as much as they did my ability to memorize all the little tricks for acing the test. For me the SATs were a necessary annoyance, but not the big trauma that they are for most high school students. Way more things were harder for me to deal with in my sophomore and junior years than the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Since I destroyed all the evidence of my hardships, let’s review:
Jessica Darling’s Top Traumas:
2000–2001 Edition
TRAUMA #1: MY BEST FRIEND MOVED A THOUSAND MILES AWAY.
After her brother’s overdose, Hope’s parents stole her away to their tiny Southern hometown, where good old-fashioned morals prevail, apparently. I can’t blame the Weavers for trying to protect her innocence, as Hope is probably the last guileless person on the planet. Her absence hit me right in the middle of the school year, nineteen days before my bitter sixteen, shortly before the turn of this century. Humankind survived Y2K, but my world came to an end.
Here’s the kind of best friend Hope was (is) to me: She was the only person who understood why I couldn’t stand the Clueless Crew (as Manda, Sara, and Bridget were collectively known before Manda slept with Bridget’s boyfriend, Burke). And when I started changing the lyrics to pop songs as a creative way of making fun of them, she showcased her numerous artistic talents by recording herself singing them (with her own piano accompaniment), compiling the cuts on a CD (Now, That’s What I Call Amusing!, Volume 1), and designing a professional-quality cover complete with liner notes. (“Very special muchas gracias go out to Julio and Enrique Iglesias for all the love and inspiration you’ve given me over the years. Te amo y te amo…”) I’m listening to her soaring rendition of “Cellulite” (a.k.a. Sara’s song) right now. (Sung to the tune of the Dave Matthews Band’s “Satellite.”)
Cellulite, on my thighs
Looks like stucco, makes me cry
Butt of blubber
Cellulite, no swimsuit will do
I must find a muumuu
But I can’t face those dressing room mirrors
[Chorus]
Creams don’t work, and squats, forget it!
My parents won’t pay for lipo just yet
My puckered ass needs replacing
Look up, look down, it’s all around
My cellulite.
Copyright © 2021 by Megan McCafferty
