August 2006
august 1
I go on a trip to the mountains with Maria, Henrietta, Abby, and two guys named Craig and Dave. Craig goes to the gift shop to buy something while the rest of us stay back to explore this cave. We find a monster inside and we all run out, screaming. Craig comes back and the thing he bought at the gift shop keeps him safe from the monster as long as he holds it, but he drops it and gets killed. It's later that day, and Maria drops me, Dave, and Abby off at my old house. Maria leaves her backpack there, and the rest of us decide to go through it because we've all been infected by the monster, and we think that we can tell who is still safe to talk to by looking through their things. Abby says that when Maria was little, she always kept Valentine's cards in her backpack, and I start laughing and say, "She still does." Maria's bag is stuffed full of papers and notebooks and an old, large, damaged dictionary (many pages ripped out and no front or back cover). We look through everything, and I know that Maria is coming back soon so I rush to fit everything back inside. A car pulls up but it is Henrietta, not Maria. As I go to answer the door, I tell Dave, "After this we're going to go through all of my stuff together, and then yours." When Henrietta comes in I tell her about that plan, and she asks why. I tell her to look at our faces, which are starting to change. We just have wrinkles so far that make us look old, but as we continue to change into the monsters our faces will get more disfigured. Henrietta's face is changing also. We're all sitting around the table talking and I tell Dave and Henrietta (Abby is gone?) that, "I don't think they [the monsters] can see everything, and they can't hear us all the time either." They agree. Craig's mom is parked outside, and Dave and I go out to see her. She's sitting in the driver's seat, talking on her cell phone with the windows rolled up. We keep knocking on the windows until she opens the door, and we ask her for the thing that Craig had bought from the gift shop that kept him safe. She says she doesn't have it, but we don't believe me. She drives away. Later, I'm half-asleep and start dreaming about this kindergarten classroom that has a poster on the wall of a cartoon lion. I realize that the lion is a safe signal that we can use to tell who out of the group can still be trusted.
august 15
I'm back in high school. During a break, I need to go to the bathroom, so I find one and go in. It looks more like a locker room. A younger boy (12 or 13) who's in a wheelchair, is in there studying because it's the only quiet place he can find. Mr. Bailey comes in to take the boy out, and the two of us laugh hysterically for a minute. I go to my next class, which is pretty advanced algebra. Mr. Spelling is the teacher, and Gwen is in the class as well. I do okay on most of the work, but near the end of class we start one problem that I'm having trouble with. Mr. Spelling draws a graph on the chalkboard, where the X-axis is time (as in hours) and where the Y-axis is my age in years. He starts out this word problem that has to do with me being 34 years old, and catching a flight that starts at 28 minutes after the hour. I joke that I don't like his implying that I'm actually that old yet. We have to place several different dots on the graph, but I can't figure out their coordinates because I'm using regular lined paper and not graph paper, like everyone else is. Mr. Spelling starts getting frustrated that I don't understand, and opens up my book to the page where it explains how to do this type of problem. I figure out that, to get the answer, I have to connect all of the dots to each other. Mr. Spelling goes through my binder to take out anything that he thinks will distract me from my math. One of the papers he tears out is a half-sheet that has a picture of Dean Winters on it and I say, "Come on, that's not right." He also tears out and crumples a page that has just (my) handwriting on it. Class ends, and I follow him up to his desk and say that I don't want to disappoint him, so I'm going to do as best as I can in the class. I can tell he feels bad about being hard on me. It's the last class of the day, and I go out to the front steps to leave the school. Amanda and a girl named Kimmy are standing there, waiting for their rides to come. Kimmy says she lives on Hillcrest, so I tell her I can take her home. My Jeep is parked across the street, and we have to cross the lawn, which is wet and soggy and has some big puddles in places. There's no other way to get to the sidewalk, so I just keep going. While driving Kimmy home, we stop by this music store because there is a small piano she's interested in buying. You can play it the regular way, and it also has songs built into it. She only looks at the piano for a few minutes before going off to flirt with a guy who works there. I tell her that in order to do better in my math class, I'm going to have to study a lot and that I need to get home. I play one of the piano's built-in songs, trying to convince her to make a decision, and she laughs as if she likes it, but won't stop messing around. I leave her at the store and go home.
august 31
Rose and I are hanging out, and are driving by Pitt. There's a new fountain made out of big blocks, with grass growing in between the cracks. I say the new fountain is neat, but that I miss the old planter that we used to hang out on. The grass near the fountain is very wet and squishy. Mr. Bailey walks by, and he calls me Vonnie like he used to. My family is having a big party at our old house, and I'm in the kitchen with my mom, Rose and her brother and sister. Everyone is smoking but my mom and me, and I find a short cigarette in the cupboard, and some matches to light it with. As I start smoking the cigarette, I open the back door and throw the still flaming match into a puddle of water. I'm smoking the cigarette very fast, and say that I'm only going to smoke through the end of the month (October) and then I'll quit. Dana comes in, and we get into a conversation about how she got dizzy when her family went to go shopping for a houseboat. I say that it still happens to me. The kitchen turns into a giant, blue, puffy raft that has these stairs attached. I sit on these stairs and keep smoking. It's later and everyone is getting ready to sleep. In the middle of the room, there are these four curtains in a square shape, and everyone has to sleep halfway under them. I'm at one of the corners of the square, with Peter and his girlfriend on my left (I feel self-conscious with them next to me) and with a set of twins and their significant other's on my right. Everyone gets into a discussion about a male cousin of ours who was molested, and someone projects a video of him wandering around his house, empty except for a bunch of broken toys. When the video is over we try to go to sleep, but one of the older women is concerned about safety and makes all the men sit up and look around the room. Most of the women sit up, also. The room is mostly dark except for this lit-up section in the corner, where we can see floating shapes of animals - mostly flamingos - projected on the wall.
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