7/12/08 - AK-47

I sincerely apologize for not posting in over two weeks.  Really.  I just haven’t been in blog mode lately.  I’m sure it must seem like I’ve left teh Interwebs, but I’ve done no such thing.  Actually, it might seem like that again.  When I wake up today, I and my mom are leaving on our vacation, out towards central PA to a place that few people have heard of called Zook & Lyter’s.  I love it there.  My Dad and brother aren’t going; too hot & not enough time/too boring, respectively.

I’ll be there for a week, and there’s no Internet.  If we head to the McDonald’s one day for lunch then I’ll be sure to bring my laptop there and correspond.  This week will be very good for me.  I want to do stuff during it, like write.  In fact, determined to have something to post somewhere before I leave, I wrote this.

Oh, and what genre would you say this is?

The boy walked carefully around broken toys and piles of boxes as he made his way to the back of the basement. There, four large open crates were pushed against the wall, off to one side, the contents spilling over the tops onto the floor. The boy looked up at them through the airborne dust and flyaway cobwebs. He hadn’t needed to make a trip to the basement in months. He usually tried his best to avoid it. There was always darkness in the basement, dark corners where things could hide, shadows that made moving quickly amongst the rubble difficult.

The junk that had been stored in the basement was in complete dismay, busted into pieces and ripped to bits, spread about on the floor and tables and shelves. A depressing carnage of destroyed stuffed animals littered one particular area next to the boy. The head of a teddy bear stared up at him. It filled the boy with an intense surge of fear, and he suddenly became newly aware of the eerie stillness all around him. Dust covered everything and floated into the air like a fog. There was no ventilation in the basement, and the dust had become concentrated there like nothing the boy had ever known. It frequently made him cough and choke. He was determined not to when he first went down, but his efforts were in vain, and now he was sure that he possessed no stealth.

He continued on through the harsh cloud of dust and piles of debris to the crates in the corner. There spilling out of the large wooden boxes was an innumerable supply of magazines made for a Kalashnikov assault rifle. The boy looked down at the colossal store of ammunition only for a moment, quickly kneeling down and placing the three empty backpacks he had been carrying beside him on the carpet of dirt. He unzipped one of them and removed his own AK-47, one that had been of great use to the boy so far, and one that was currently stuck in its semi-automatic setting. He set it down thoughtfully next to him and poured the magazines into the bags, stuffing each one as full as he could, until he could barely zip them closed.

He then took up his firearm again and popped out the old magazine, which fell to the floor with a clack. The boy stopped and stared at the empty case. It had held his last cartridge. He remembered the horror that had come with losing his last defense, when he was forced to run instead of shoot. The horror he had felt began trickling through his body once more, but he shook it out. He grabbed the empty magazine, stood, turned, and hurled it far away into the basement. It whipped through the dust and disappeared out of sight, but made no sound afterward. The boy listened for when it would hit the floor, but the silence of the room remained intact. This made the boy feel uneasy.

The boy shivered. He turned back around to the vast hoard of magazines and picked one up off the dusty floor. It was absolutely the last one he could bring. He loaded it into the gun, then held the weapon at the ready for a few moments. He felt replenished, as if he had just restored an entire stock of food, and a lush bounty awaited him.

He kept the gun in his hand as he tried to pick up all three of the backpacks at once, an attempt that failed miserably. The backpacks weighed far more than he could lift. It was all he could do to drag them along towards the stairs on the opposite wall, no longer stepping carefully over the broken objects but rather walking headlong through them, inching the bags on behind him with his left hand, his right hand occupied by the Kalashnikov. The clamor he made was stifled in the dirty air, the silence imposing itself upon him still, except for the boy’s occasional loud choking.

Suddenly there was a noise. It came from around the staircase, on the opposite side of the room. The boy let go of the backpacks, and positioned his left hand in front of his right on the gun. He looked, but he couldn’t see through the air. The staircase itself was barely visible. Fear twinged in the boy. He shivered. A box fell off of a table to his left, causing a disturbing crash. The boy wheeled the gun around in that direction. Adrenaline coursed through his body. The pile of rubble on the floor burst and a shock of surprise ran through the boy, but he didn’t move. He had never had a direct encounter before. His finger wavered on the gun’s trigger. Slowly, up from the center of the scattered pile rose an inky black figure. It had no distinguishable features and it made no sound as it positioned itself atop the boxes, balanced as though it had no physical weight.

The boy didn’t waste any time. He lined up the sights and fired a shot at the creature. It fell back and dissipated into the air. He could hear more crashes by the stairs. There more of the shadowy, silhouetted monsters waited, and again the boy wasted no time. He pivoted ninety degrees back to face the stairs and took down two more. As the adrenaline raced through his veins and affected his body, he knew he had to use it. Stuck in that house, it was hellish trying to survive. Day in and day out, lurking though the house, living under fear of the encroaching evil presence. He had made his choice to survive in that house.

He took out another creature with a shot, wasting no bullets so far. Fiercely he whipped around to the backpacks and hoisted all three onto his shoulders with his left arm, sure to maintain use of the weapon with his right.

His choice was made to survive. He had to protect himself.

The boy began to walk toward the stairs, not even thinking about the objects in his path. More creatures rose up to block his progression.

This was what it felt like to fight instead of flee. The boy felt invincible, traipsing through the basement with enemies all around him. He felt strong, lifting the heavy backpacks, skilled picking off his foes with single shots. He kept on advancing, when the bags shifted on his shoulders, and one fell onto his right arm. With a groan, he heaved the bag back and took another shot at the creatures. Instead of hitting, the shot missed, and the creature lunged out at the boy. He dropped the bags and held the gun with both hands, taking the creature out, but provoking the others now, too. They all came out at him, ten of them, or more. He dove and rolled behind a table and rose behind a stack of boxes. But the creatures defied evasion, and one of them tore violently at his arm.

The boy screamed in pain. Blood gushed out just below his left shoulder. Thirsty for revenge the boy aimed the gun at the nearby thing and blew it away, unloading the rest of the rounds into its body, which evaporated mid-spray.

The boy stopped, and gazed at his gun. It had come unstuck, and the lever had been moved down to the “automatic” position. It had happened when he dived. The gun had caught the arm of a broken action figure, a soldier. The action figure had been destroyed by the roll, but the gun had merely been reset.

The boy smirked and ejected the magazine, then reached for another before realizing that the bag was some fifteen feet in front of him, behind a wall of darkness. A wall of darkness that was steadily approaching him.

In a panic, the boy fled, sprinting at the door. Fear once again flooded through him. When he reached the foot of the stairs, he gaped up in horror. The door at the top, which the boy had left ajar, was instead not even any longer a door. The passage was covered with jet blackness, and the boy didn’t bet that it was a good idea to go near it. With no ventilation, no other ways out of the basement, the boy turned and peered at the wall of shadows, which had shifted direction and was now approaching him at his new location. His option of flight was cut off. He had to try and take the evil darkness, the pitch-black, shapeless, weightless forms, which never died, but only disappeared like ghosts. These things that could be overcome, but that never went away.

More Sketches

Oh yeahs, I’ve been doing it again.

http://floipoid.tumblr.com

Doing a sketch every day, that is.  More on top of it than I was before.

And there is a small brown insect of some kind living in my desk.  I have named him Lucky.

Summer

This summer vacation feels way busier than I thought it would.  Within the first two weeks, I’ve been out of the house for twenty-four straight hours on two separate occasions, and out for about twelve hours on two or three other separate occasions.  I had D&D the Tuesday before last and the Saturday after that, saw Spiro the Friday before last and the Thursday after that, went to the graduation parties of two friends, and stayed over some friends houses on other times.  It’s very confusing, and I’m not even going to bother going back and checking to see if I could even have done all of that. … Okay, yeah, I can’t figure it out; like I said it’s confusing.

I don’t remember really just when the times were that I went to do stuff with my friends, staying overnight at Richie’s house, usually.  We sort of just hang out, watch movies on Richie’s computer, play video games.  By we I mean Paul, Richie, Rob and I.  Sometimes not Rob.  We stay up past midnight, until it’s light outside.  Last night, a twelve-hour excursion, we went out biking at 4 in the morning to go and get food, wary of being seen by police and getting in trouble for being out after curfew.  Actually, we might have been safe; none of us know at what time curfew ends.  If we hadn’t gone out to get food, I wouldn’t have been able to stay awake that whole night, sleeping for about an hour and a half on Richie’s floor (under a blanket and with a pillow, though) at around 11 AM.  After that amount of sleep I was dirt tired going to see Paul, who had to go back to his house early morning.  I biked home to take a shower and finally rest, though not go to sleep.

I’ve seen an overwhelming amount of movies during these past two weeks, now that I think about it.  Including all mediums in which a movie can be viewed, I’ve seen The Incredible Hulk, most of Fight Club (surprisingly deep and good), Star Wars IV V and VI, House of 1000 Corpses, Devil’s Rejects, part of I am Legend, Kung Fu Panda, The Incredible Hulk (again), part of Disturbia, Diary of the Dead, and Be Kind Rewind.  So I’ve seen ten movies for the first time (including Fight Club in that), in less than fourteen days.  Spiro was determined to have me watch the original Star Wars Trilogy, and I was willing, so we made a marathon of that.

But I need to get away from all of this pretty soon.  I need to clean up my room, then I can start doing work for my AP Art class, and I want to start working at the cardshop too.  I won’t be able to just hang around with my friends for days at a time.  I also want to finally get my driver’s license.

But nonetheless, we’re going to see Hancock right when it comes out.  That’s gonna be awesome.

6/21 - Unusual Superpower #1 (pt.2)

Part One

Whoa am I up late.

Gregory’s next period was lunch. He went down to the cafeteria and took to a circular table where he sat down alone and buried his head in his arms. He could only remember the shame, the embarrassment. He was sure that he hadn’t been saying anything out loud about Tiffany, yet everyone laughed at him. They laughed at him. Like they knew. How could they know? Greg shot up straight in his chair. What if they could hear me? A girl at a nearby table turned her head to look at him and he glared back at her. She curled her lip and turned back to her friends. This possibility shocked him. It can’t be true he thought. No, that’s not right. I’m just being paranoid. He lost his glare, but kept his eyes fixed on the girl at the table near him. A tall, skinny, busty blonde slipped into a yellow t-shirt and cotton shorts that read “CHEER” across the rear. He stared at her, sure that no one could see him due to his position behind a column. He began to imagine sitting before her, running his hands down her sides; she leaning over him playfully, a mischievous smile on her face, placing a hand on his chest as she advanced closer, placing the other hand on his shoulder as she came closer still. Their faces nearing, her nose grazing his as she moved, and she kissing him lustfully for a few long moments. Then slipping in the tongue.

Greg snapped out of his thoughts. The girl was turned in her seat and gaping at him. By her mouth, she was startled and horrified; by her eyes, she was startled and confused. Greg looked down for a few moments, then looked back up at her. She was staring at the wall near the table now, trying to comprehend. She had been merely sitting and chatting with her friends when all of a sudden a vivid, unprovoked image popped into her head. She saw flashes of herself leaning over someone, getting closer and closer, then finally kissing that weird kid who had been talking out loud to himself moments before. The thought had seemed so unfamiliar that she had turned and gaped at the boy, yet since she had known that it was a thought that had formed in her own mind, her own thought, her eyes had acquired an appropriate look of bewilderment. She was simply aghast that such a thought could be hers, that it would ever have occurred. Looking at the boy again, he wasn’t too bad looking, but nothing to have sexual fantasies over.

The girl’s friend sitting opposite the girl at the table spoke up. “Kayla, is something wrong?”

“I don’t know…do you know that kid? The one who was talking to himself?”

“What kid?”

“Back there.” She pointed. “Just now, he was talking to himself. Didn’t you hear?”

“No, I didn’t hear him.”

She turned to the friend at her right. “Did you?”

All the friends she asked at her table agreed: none of them had heard him, only a few of them had seen him before, and one thought that he was cute.

“I can’t believe I’m the only one that heard him.” She looked down at her lunch tray. “It was so weird. I mean I—I like, started thinking about him all of a sudden. Out of nowhere. I don’t know what came over me.”

The event confused the girls for some time and made Gregory the topic of their discussion for the duration of the period. Gregory, aware that they were now talking about him and making furtive yet obvious glances in his direction, tried to ignore them. He picked up his sandwich and took a bite, then went back to his thinking. I wonder if she knows I thought that. That was a really big coincidence, otherwise. No, it can’t be, I’m just crazy. I’m just paranoid, that’s all. I’m just paranoid. Just paranoid. I’m just paranoid. Paranoid. That’s all. He repeated the words over again in his head. He felt safe thinking them. Like no one could hear him. That’s crazy. No one can hear me. I’m just crazy. Later in the day, he began to actually feel as though people could hear his thoughts, as though becoming aware of it. To combat the feeling, he did all he could not to think anything personal, or insulting, or sexual. His mind became a torrent of repeated words, over and over again, his tongue moving inside his mouth like he was saying them. He screamed things in his head, just to get the feeling to stop, to stop thoughts before they happened, to drown thoughts out. The only time he felt at peace was when he was alone.

Over the coming weeks, he discovered that in trying his best not to think anything insulting or sexual, powerful thoughts arose in his head to the contrary, as if just to be contrary. Every time he passed a girl, he began screaming safe thoughts in his head. For some reason, when he felt as though his thoughts were safe, people didn’t seem to hear them, but when he wasn’t paying attention, his head became a stereo to all. He had to keep on his guard, be aware of his thoughts all the time. Keep mentally screaming at himself to stop thinking bad thoughts. It was difficult, and every day became a trial. He sometimes felt that it was simply too much for him to handle.

Cool, I learned how to quote.

The Dream

There are several vague concepts floating around in front of my head that I want to grab and articulate into blog posts.  My dreams: that’s one of them.  A dream is something that you can lie down and smile over, a perfect thing that would feel incredible to experience.

The dream for me is to write.  I want to write short stories, novels.  Ever since I was in seventh grade, I’ve wanted to be a writer.  My seventh grade English teacher really made us write.  We had about a composition a week–or maybe it was really way less, I can’t remember now.  I was writing a short story, and I realized that I really liked to write, and that I wasn’t bad at it.  Looking back, I was pretty bad.  But hey, seventh grade.  I’ve always had a natural aptitude for spelling words and for correct grammatical forms.  I’ve gotten blatant encouragement to do something involving writing from my ninth grade English teacher, and just this year from my Reading SAT Prep teacher, though that wasn’t as blatant.  I scored a 720 on the writing section of the SATs.  So I’m not bad at writing, and I really want to take advantage of that.  But I still think my writing’s iffy.  I need to read more.

One good thing about deciding that I wanted to write was that I took the games that I used to play with my friend in the park across the street–the ones that we stopped playing because we realized that we looked like idiots running around flailing our imaginations–and began using them to get ideas for things to write.  I still got the same kind of ideas, I just expressed them differently.

Also, the dream for me is to draw.  I want to cartoon.  Well, not cartoon–I mean, do comic books.  But there’s no verb for that, I don’t think.  I want to…comic…book…  Yeah, that’s not so good.  But I want to do it.  Near the end of 10th grade I had doodled down this evil kinda looking fellow (so much for grammar).  I did up this Goth-looking girl, too.  I began doodling them on my school papers and drawing them a LOT.  And I got a lot better at drawing them.  I did a strip or two with them, and my friends began saying to me that I should do a web comic.  That never worked.  I can’t think of enough jokes for that.  It’s freaking hard.  But I had begun to think of a plot to use them in, and while now I don’t want to use that same plot, I still want to use them in comics.  I’m also now practicing cartooning slightly more realistic-looking cartoons, like in most comic books, but not quite that detailed.  I just think there’s more I can do with characters that look more realistic.

And the dream is love.  I used to think that maybe I fell in love easy.  But it’s not that; I just fall in love with the prospect of love, again and again.  When I get the idea into my head that someone actually likes me, I fantasize, and fall head-over-heels for the same love that always plays out in my head.  But my brain steps in; I want to love the girl, too.  It’s this that keeps the situation I’m in with a girl at school consistently awkward when she tells me that she loves me, and I can’t really respond.  But I don’t think there’s anyone at my school for me.  I think I should set the range of my scope farther out.

There are some specific things that I lie awake in bed and think about sometimes, or that I waste time in the shower thinking about.  One of them is getting a table at Artist Alley, at Wizard World, someday.  They tend to be dreams of moderate recognition and fame, and sincere love and affection.  I will have them, someday.

Spiro

Right now my room’s a mess.  A cleaning mess.  Meaning the mess is a mess resulting from having sorted the trash from stuff I want to keep, creating new piles of things that I have nowhere else to put.  School’s over until September due to the coming of summer, and relatives are coming over to the house this Saturday; whether I’m off playing D&D or not someone will inevitably poke into my room.  My parents are having clean.  Right now I’m only taking a break from cleaning up the horrible mess.  In the panorama that I just made the blog’s banner, it doesn’t look so bad as I think it really is.  You’re not really able to stand in front of the dresser at all.

But yes, school has ended until September.  Then I will be a Senior, standing above all of the other less mature students while trying to ignore them for that same immaturity and yearning for the summer to come once again.  That summer will be the one in which I and my good friend Spiro look for apartments in Philadelphia so that we can bum around together as legitimate adults.  No matter what we do as adults, we’ll be legitimate adults. Isn’t that cool?  The reason we’ll be bumming around as such in Philly is because that’s where the University of the Arts is, and that’s the place I want to go to for college.

I first met Spiro back when I was a Freshman, in 9th grade, about two or three years ago.  He hung out with two other friends that I met back then, Jake and Dan.  Jake and Dan were Sophomores then, now they’re graduating.  Over two years of high school–from maybe halfway through 9th grade to about halfway through 11th–I got to know Spiro in a school environment, and after he stopped coming to school to learn online I got to know him on Fridays when I’d go over to his house, with Jake sometimes at first, then just by myself.  By the time he left I already knew him very well.  He’s one of my closest friends now.  We’re actually a lot alike, I’ve noticed, which no doubt adds to why we get along so well.

Spiro has aspirations of becoming a writer, like me.  Boy was I ecstatically surprised when I found out that he along with two other friends were in my Writing to Publish class earlier this year.  After I started going to his house on Fridays, I discovered that he was great for giving me ideas and for inspiring me.  One of the more remarkable things about us is how we bounce ideas off of each other.  It’ll be great living with him, ’cause I’ll have a constant flow of ideas.  He’s like a muse.  It’s with him that I sometimes get ideas for the D&D campaign that I’m constantly working on but never getting much work done on.

He’s been introducing me to movies that I would never otherwise see, and he’s sparked a gigantic interest in comics in me.  Beginning this Saturday, in fact, since I’ve read a total of zero comic books so far, he’s lent me his volumes of Ultimate X-Men and I’m going to do almost nothing but read comics for an entire week.  Like I mean wake up, open a comic book, then read for the rest of the day.  I’ll eat, and shower, but mostly I’ll read comics.  I’m pretty sure that my concentration for AP Art my Senior year depends on me being able to portray comic book-like things, so I want to get exposure to that kind of art, get comic book inspiration.  As well, if I want to eventually write and draw my own comics, I’ll need to read comics, same as with writing stories.  But now I’m getting off track.

Thanks to Spiro, I’ve seen just about all of the well known zombie movies, though there are still plenty of classic horror ones I haven’t seen.  I don’t think I’m as into kung-fu movies as he is.  Spiro’s big on movies.  He knows a lot of actors, and has seen a lot of movies in general.  He’s got a whole bookshelf in his house filled with movies.  I saw Iron Man with him.  That’s one thing I like about being friends with Spiro: I’m gradually getting more into movie culture.  Rooming with him’s gonna rock.  And we’ll probably hardly ever clean up.  That will rock less.  I mean, I want my room to be clean.  It’s too disorganized, and being crowded-in makes it hard for me to work.  I also need to make room in here for a studio set up so I can art over the course of this summer.  But Spiro and I’ll be neat enough; we’ll at least make sure that we’re able to move around…somewhat.

Oh yeah, I just remembered!  Now that it’s summer, I can write more fiction.  I’ll be sure to do that.

Chalk Day

What was it…Friday.  No, two days ago, Thursday, I and the rest of my art class from Art III to AP Art (not art IV though, I don’t think) went outside to do up sidewalk chalk drawings on the slabs of pavement outside of the school.

Aw, damn.  I wish I had taken pictures of more than just my own.  They would have made a great post.  Next year.

After going to first period, then homeroom, all who were participating shuffled into the lobby, then outside, where we each claimed a square.  Blank and with spots of gum littered about, they were our canvases.  In preparation for that day, we were each supposed to find a picture from an artist that was either colorful or textured, and do a rendition of that piece onto the sidewalk.  Most of the students, myself included, didn’t have one chosen beforehand, but that was okay.  The art teachers brought out books and posters and whatnot all displaying such works as would be suitable for picking.  I found one with a giant fish being caught by three fishermen, and took it.  I really can’t remember the name of it.

http://floipoid.tumblr.com/post/36527578/chalk-picture

I picked a square adjacent to my friend’s square, and his was next to another friend’s square.  We were advised to use white chalk to sketch out the picture first.  I went to doing that, and felt a little overwhelmed.  I’m so used to doing small hand-sized drawings.  I’m used to using the wrist, not the elbow.  After some undesirably-placed beginning lines for the fish, I stepped back from my work and declared that it was the kind of thing I would erase to do over had I done it on paper.  I fixed it with other lines, and was able to cover the crap ones up.  I cut up my hands fairly badly in the process of blending colors together.  I began to use a paper towel at one point, but I just began not to bother with it and used my hands still.

I gradually got the hang of it; it went from being overwhelming and awkward to being more natural and something I could do over-intensely, making myself look somewhat odd, I’m sure.  I think my face was the only one that got dirty somehow, probably because I part the hair from my eyes frequently, getting the chalk that layered over my hands on my forehead and whatnot.  I was also the only one to cut up my hands I think, too.  That’s more surprising to me.  However, I wasn’t the only one to get sunburned.  In school the next day, you could tell a good number of people who had been outside, because we all had sunburns.  I used the suntan lotion they offered on my arms and neck where I felt like I was burning, and while it worked beautifully, those areas didn’t include the whole rest of my arms and my face.  I’m going to have awkward tans now.  I think.

By the end of the school day my picture was finished.  There was a whole lot more I could have done, but I didn’t have that kind of time, there wouldn’t have been enough chalk, and the background didn’t seem all that important anyway, as long as you could tell that the boat was in some form of larger body of water.  It rained last night, or early this morning, so I’m sure that the pictures are either gone or very nearly gone, but that’s alright.  I actually find this easy to accept.  Going in you kind of had to know it was going to wash away.  Then again I got a few suitable pictures of mine.

This has gone on too long.  I’ll just say, now I kind of want to do something like this on my own.  Maybe.  But not get sunburned or cut up my hands.  Those things suck a little.

Sketches

Nothing there yet.

http://floipoid.tumblr.com/

I am denied access to my scanner right now, so it might be a while before I get started.  But the color scheme is actually finished.  I like the black-and-whiteosity.

EDIT: Nevermind, it’s got its first sketch.  I scanned that one in, but if I can’t scan others I’ll just upload with my phone.

EDIT EDIT: It’s actually coming along nicely.  I’m committing to it better than other things I’ve committed to before.  The writing-something-every-day-for-practice of this blog didn’t happen at all, or at least fell apart very quickly.  I should write more.  But I’ll save talk for another post.

Next Year

It’s been a while, and I don’t think I have anything to say. I don’t prefer to just give updates on my life, unless I can take up the entirety of the post with a single subject, and even then I don’t like writing about every subject. I would just post prose, but I don’t write that much. It doesn’t feel as though I have time. But time will come in the Summer. Aha! A subject! I could possess both lust and disdain for this coming Summer. Lust for the release from schoolwork, disdain for the departure of my college-bound friends.

A bunch of my friends are Seniors. It will honestly suck when they leave. Not only are they leaving me, but they’re leaving the school, which in my opinion will be worse off for their absence. The school lobby is being overtaken by Emo kids. Such degradation leaves very little hope that another group will spring up to take the place of the people I knew. I am being left as successor to one of my friends. It’ll be up to me to call him while he’s at college in order to enforce my new rule at the circular lunch table we currently sit at. Shit, I hope we can get one next year. Apart from unfit lobby kids, the new school year invariably introduces a general wave of freshmen who are basically still eighth graders until about March. Young, annoying, unrespectful freshmen. Aside from just them, an entire cavalcade of students three grades deep that have nothing to do with me. I’ll have to ignore them.

I expect to travel through next year with a horrible rash from all the Senioritis, and a general overwhelming longing for independence. I have that longing right now. Next year, I’ll be back to the few friends I came into the school with. I wish I had Spiro. I mean, I’ll still see him, just not in school.

I was almost a Senior. Born in October, with a cutoff in September. I could’ve been a Senior, with a small word from my parents. I might have fit in better in middle school. I wouldn’t have the Junior friends I have now, but I would know certain Seniors far better than I do. Or maybe being a Junior I get the best of both worlds. Either way, I can’t change it, and I don’t regret being where I am with the people I’m with.

After next year, I hope to get into the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. I’ll move out of my house, and live either in a dorm or in an apartment with Spiro. That’ll be a lot of fun. I might get to see some friends I’ll have missed for a year, too.

I look forward to next year. It’ll just be painfully lonely.

4/29/08 - Unusual Superpower #1 (pt.1)

“

It was Friday.  The class was busy at work on a math test, silently plugging away at the problems, when a snicker went up amongst some of the students.  Gregory looked up, and the snicker died down.

A few moments later, a quiet laugh arose, and more students snickered.  Gregory looked up again, and looked around the room.  The laughter died down once more.  Gregory went back to staring at the girl who sat in front of him.

She’s so beautiful, he thought to himself.  If I could just touch her hair…

The laughter burst out again from a few students.

“Who’s talking?” the teacher asked.  “Quiet down and get back to work.”

The laughter died down again.

I think I love her.

The snicker arose.  Gregory began to imagine kissing the girl, holding her in his arms.

Tiffany, I love you.

The whole class broke out into laughter, and Gregory snapped out of his fantasy with a start.  Other students were looking at him and laughing, pointing and laughing, turning to one another and then back to him and laughing.  “What?” he asserted.  He had thought maybe that they had seen him staring.

“Greg, do you want a detention?” the teacher demanded.

“I didn’t do anything,” Greg explained.

“You can confess your love for Tiffany after class,” the teacher said sternly.  “Now get back to work.”

Greg was mortified.  He hadn’t been speaking out loud.  He couldn’t have been.  At least, he didn’t think so.

The class began to laugh again.  “All of you, get back to work!” shouted the teacher.  Greg put his head down in his arms.  He was humiliated.  He wanted to disappear.  The girl in front of him looked almost as embarrassed, holding her head down and blushing, glancing around the room and down at Greg, who felt on the verge of tears.  He hid his face completely until the end of the test, thinking of nothing but how embarrassed he was, and how he couldn’t believe that he had been talking out loud.  When the bell rang, he waited until all of the other students had left, keeping his face hidden, trying to ignore the laughter and mockery of his classmates as they walked by.  He didn’t even look up when Tiffany, face as red as a beet, had gotten up to leave.  Finally, when the last student had left, he took his unfinished paper to the teacher’s desk and placed it in the bin with the others before hurriedly leaving the room himself, keeping his head low, still experiencing the intense shame of what had just happened.

 ”