Second Helpings (2 page)

Trauma #3: My parents didntand still dontget it. As Ive already mentioned, my parents told me that I was overreacting to the loss of my best friend. My mother thought I should channel all my angsty energy into becoming a boy magnet. My father wanted me to harness it toward becoming a long-distance-running legend. My parents had little experience in dealing with my unique brand of suburban-high-school misanthropy because my older sibling, Bethany, was everything I was not: uncomplicated, popular, and teen-magazine pretty.

Trauma #4: I was unable to sleep. I developed chronic insomnia after Hope moved. (I currently get about four hours of REM every nighta huge improvement.) Bored by tossing and turning, I started to sneak out of the house and go running around my neighborhood. These jaunts had a soothing, cathartic effect. It was the only time my head would clear out the clutter.

On one of those early-morning runs, I tripped over an exposed root and broke my leg. I was never as swift again. My dad was devastated, but secretly I was relieved. I never liked having to win, and was grateful for an excuse to suck.

Trauma #5: My menstrual cycle went MIA. My ovaries shut down in response to the stress, lack of sleep, and overtraining. I was as sexually mature as your average kindergartener.

Trauma #6: I developed a sick obsession with He Who Shall Remain Nameless. He wasnt my boyfriend, but He was more than just a friend. I was able to tell Him things that I couldnt share with Hope. When I couldnt run anymore, His voice soothed me, and I was actually able to fall asleep again. My period even returned, welcoming me back to the world of pubescence.

His motives werent as pure as I thought they were. Whatever relationship we had was conceived under false pretenses. I was an experiment. To see what would happen when the male slut/junkie of Pineville Highwho just happened to be my best friends dead brothers drug buddycame on to the virgin Brainiac. He thought that confessing His sinful intentions on that fateful New Years Eve would lead to forgiveness, but it just made things worse. I was profoundly disappointed in Himand myselffor ever thinking that He couldve replaced Hope.

No one can. Or should. Or will.

the third

When I was in first grade, my teacher wanted to bump me up two years in school. I was already reading, writing, and not wetting my overalls, which apparently put me years ahead of my peers. Miss Moore told my parents that I would be more intellectually stimulated if I was with third graders. I think she just wanted me out of her sight. I was bored out of my mind in Miss Moores class and had no problem letting her know it.

Miss Moore the Bore! Miss Moore the Bore! Id sing, over and over again.

My parents negged the skip idea, of course, arguing that speeding up my academic growth would have a negative effect on my social development. They were afraid that if I was two years younger than all the other kids, I would be on the receiving end of countless wedgies. So, with the exception of the two hours I spent with accelerated third-grade reading and math groups, I spent the rest of the schoolday with children my own age, learning how to play nice.

I soon found a way to combat boredom in the middle of B is for Boy and Baby and Bear lessons. Id clutch my chunky blue pencil like a microphone and walk around the classroom conducting imaginary TV interviews, but not with the classmates I was supposed to be bonding with. No, Id pose in-depth questions to the chalkboard, the fern, or whatever inanimate object had a lot to say that day. Does it tickle when we write on you? Would you like to be iced-tead instead of watered ? Thus, despite my parents best efforts, I still ended up being a freak.

So I wish that my parents had skipped me, if only to provide an acceptable excuse for my inability to relate to anyone. It would have been all my parents fault ! As it is now, I have no one to blame but myself. More important, if my parents had skipped me two grades, I would already have my freshman year of college behind me, and not just be prepping for a six-week-long collegelike experience at SPECIAL.

Never have cinder-block walls been so inviting! Never have I been so intoxicated by the scent of industrial-strength antiseptic! Never has a glorified cot with a one-inch-thick mattress seemed so comfy! Never have I been so excited by the idea of writing for six hours a day, five days a week! Never have I been so happy to see my parents pull out of the parking lot!

My dad is still pissed off that I chose SPECIAL over cross-country camp. Angry sweat on his bald head sizzled as he tried to transform the former into the latter. Hes still got the sturdy, muscular frame of the star point guard he was back in the day, but the way he moped and slumped around campus gave him the appearance of a man whose athleticism was limited to beer-guzzling weekends at the Bowl-a-Rama.

Cross-country camp is just what the doctor ordered. Literally. My orthopedist said that with the proper training regimen, I could easily get back into my record-breaking shape, completely disregarding my total lack of interest in doing so. See, as a senior, a two-year captain, and four-year varsity veteran, I have a moral obligation as a mighty, mighty Pineville High Seagull to train harder than ever to overcome the leg injury that provided my father with enough video footage last spring for Notso Darlings Agony of Defeat , Volumes 3 and 4 (both of which will be available on DVD any day now).

When he wasnt acting depressed for my benefit, Dad spent most of the afternoon pointing out good places for me to run. This is a supreme example of parental cluelessness, as he has no inkling that my stellar SATs have made me less inclined to break a sweat than ever.

Those stairs are good for building your uphill strength. The perimeter around the quad is roughly a quarter mileyou can do sprints around the path. If you eat dinner at the cafeteria on South campus, you can get in a six miles a day right there.

Right before he left, he gave me a six-week training schedule, forty-two hard-core workouts that Im somehow supposed to squeeze in between my seminars. Then he kissed me on the cheek and said, If you sit on your ass thinking about artsy-fartsy crap all summer, youll pay for it in September.

Thanks, Dad. I love you, too. I didnt even bother telling him that according to MY DAILY SCHEDULE, I will have little time to sit on my ass to take a crap, let alone contemplate it, which is just the way I like it. Being Busy = Avoiding My Issues. He of all people should appreciate this, as someone who hops on his bike and rides around greater Pineville (an oxymoron, by the way) for hours whenever Im testing his limits.

Mom may be in real estate, but I think interior design is her true calling. She was in full-on Martha mode. As with a sleepwalker, its best not to interrupt her, or she could go psycho and strangle me with the behind-the-door shoe organizer. So I just watched as she buzzed around the room, blond hair bouncing, perky as the cheerleader she used to be. She unpacked all my clothes and arranged my closet so it would meet its full stowing potential. She didnt think the room was maximizing its blank space and rearranged the beds and the desks before my roommate could arrive and protest the takeover of her half of the room.

Two hours past check-in, and she still hasnt shown up. According to the pink construction-paper toe shoe on the door, her name is Mary DePasquale. Since Jessica Darling is written on a yellow construction paper pencil, I would assume that the toe shoe means that the mysterious Mary DePasquale is a dancer. That is all I know about the person who will be sleeping less than a foot away from me for the next six weeks of sharing ideas and making memories with other highly motivated, talented New Jersey teens one hundred actors, singers, dancers, musicians, visual artists, and writers who will shape the cultural landscape for years to come.

Bridget is the only other student from Pineville High who was accepted to this highly competitive, nationally recognized program, so its pretty much impossible to buy into all the brochures rah-rah, change-the-world rhetoric. Bridget would rather shape up her ass than shape the cultural landscape.

MEOW-ZA ! Got any nip for my cattitude?

Bridget is still offended by my decision not to room with her. When she found out that we had both been accepted, she automatically assumed wed stay together, exhibiting the special kind of naivete that is sometimes refreshingbut more often annoyingin this cynical world.

Dont you want to make a new lifelong friend? I said, intentionally hitting her weak spot, which is her unwavering need to connect with people.

And, like, you do?

Valid point. But I was not going to cave in. The mysterious Mary DePasquale was better than the certainty of living with Bridget. I know exactly what my summer would be like if I lived with her. Until I bonded with Hope in middle school, I spent the first dozen years of my life playing the quirky best friend to Bridgets leading ladyyou know, the comic sidekick whose average appearance seems downright troll-like when sharing the frame with the incandescent, above-the-marquee beauty. Like Lili Taylor in Say Anything . Or Lili Taylor in Mystic Pizza . Or Lili Taylor in any movie, ever .

But turning her down did me little good. This dorm has forty rooms on four floors. Yet is it any surprise that Bridget has been assigned a room just two doors down?

You can ignore me if you want to, she said with a pout.

I should give Bridget more credit because the acting program had more applicants than any other, but I probably wont. Im pissed at her for crashing what was supposed to be my summertime banishment. Dropping out of Pineville society had a purpose, you know. This was supposed to be my test run for college, my only opportunity to practice spinning my personality into a more alluring and/or amusing alternative to the Real Me. I couldve worked out all the kinks this summer so I dont waste a moment of real college life next September.

For example (and this is just an example, one of many possibilities), I couldve written erotica and transformed myself into suburban New Jerseys jailbait answer to Anais Nin. No one wouldve known any better to question the authenticity. I mean, what kind of starved-for-attention sicko would make up a whole new identity for herself just for amusements sake? Oh, yeah. Thats right. One who wanted to score a book contract, a movie deal, and an acceptance letter from Harvard. None other than the trustafarian turncoat herself, Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace. Ack.

Too bad Bridgets pathological honesty makes such a temporary image makeover impossible for me. I can just imagine her calling out my bullshit in front of my SPECIAL classmates. Jess is a virgin . Like, what does she know about throbbing, pulsating passion?

While I dont look forward to exhausting the energy it will require to ignore Bridget all summer, I do look forward to all the possibilities of getting out of Pineville, mostly (as much as I hate to admit it because it gives in to my girliest tendencies) the chance that Ill meet the magnetic, brilliant boy who proves once and for all that a particular Pineville High student, He Who Shall Remain Nameless, does not corner the market on magnetism or brilliance.

the fifth

The first two days of SPECIAL are devoted to Orientation, during which were supposed to meet people and get cozy with the campus. Instead of just letting us meet people on our own, in a natural, uncon-trived way, the powers that be organize agonizing events like last nights Get-to-Know-Ya Games.

It was during the GTKY Games that I looked into the face of pure evil. She wore blue eye shadow and hot-pink spandex leggings, and went by the name of Pammi. She had eighties soap-opera hair and a well-rehearsed bubbliness that instantly reminded me of Brandi, the schools mental-health expert, with whom I had several run-ins last year. I swear Pinevilles Professional Counselor and Pammi were separated at birth, with only one brain between them. Pammi is one of the teachers in the acting program (lucky, lucky Bridget), but for last night she was the Play Leader, a sort of referee for these inane games. Her main responsibilities were (1) whoo-hooing at random intervals, (2) shouting the rules for the next GTKY game, and (3) blowing the start signal into the beak of a plastic whistle shapedinexplicablylike a toucan.

For example:

Whoo-hoo ! Find each and every person in the program who shares your birth month! Go!

Tweet!

Then I would have to find each and every person in the program who shared my birth month until all one hundred of us were in the proper zodialogical grouping.

Or:

Whoo-hoo ! Dance butt-to-butt with someone wearing the same color shirt as you but who is not in your birth month group! Go!

Tweet.!

And then 1 would have to dance butt-to-butt with someone who was also wearing a white shirt but was not born in January.

This went on for three hours.

They cant possibly make us do this during Freshman Orientation next year, can they? I dont get how this is supposed to help us fit in. In theory, youre supposed to get everyones names and become lifelong friends. I literally had contact with half the kids here last night, but how in hell do they expect me to differentiate one of my butt-to-butt dancing partners from another? Am I supposed to randomly rub my buttocks up against people to see if weve bonded booties before? Yes, the particular musculature of your ass does feel familiar. 1 remember you now! Duh.

Now that I think about it, buttocks-bumping was an unintentionally appropriate prelude to the fun we have in store for the next month. The unspoken objective for the overwhelming majority of SPECIAL students has clearly revealed itself, and its a lot more straightforward than the enrichment crap listed in the brochure: GET LAID.