Chapter 4, Part 1 - Dawn

Dawn finds a job and high school gets a little more dramatic.

            “Daaa-aawwwn, phone’s for you,” DJ shouted. He was somewhere downstairs, somewhere beyond my attention, as I tried to finish my chem. homework. “DAWN!”

            “I’m coming, just shut up!” I shouted back, stomping out of my room. I hated to be interrupted during homework. That was why I closed the door, and most of the family was well trained in the reading of my door signals. Closed was off limits. No words in, no words out. I was busy, and that was that. Only natural disasters could tear me from my concentration. But DJ was young, only ten years old, and sometimes he didn’t bother to think about my door.

            He was in the living room, holding the phone out at arms length, pointing it towards me but staring in a trance at the deafening TV.

            “Can you turn that down?” I snapped at him, grabbing the phone away and shoving the remote control in his direction. He slowly hit the volume button, and I hurried into a different room with the wireless phone. “Hello?”

            “Hi, is this Dawn Chilingarian?” It was a woman’s voice, warm and comfortable, yet professional.

            “This is she.”

            “Hi Dawn, this is Heidi Libreman from Marshall’s Department Store. We were reviewing your application and would like to offer you a job if you’re interested.”

            Yes, yes, and Yes! Of course I was interested, why else would I have applied? Besides that I desperately needed it despite not wanting a job in general, but finally I would be making money to repay my demanding parents!

            “Thank you, I’m definitely interested in a job,” I hoped I sounded as mature about it all as Heidi did. Her voice said it all, she was used to making calls like these and wasn’t afraid of what answers she got. A trait gained through experience, of course, but hopefully I didn’t sound like a broke high school student who just wanted money.

            “Great! We’re going to be holding a training session for new employees this coming Saturday at noon. Can you make it to that?”

            What else did I have to do? Study, read, sit around at home…I could make it.

            “That’s perfect.”

            “Alright, I’ll just mark you down for it and we’ll get all the paperwork sorted out then! See you on Saturday, Dawn, and have a nice day!”

            “You too, thank you very much!” I hung up the phone and cheered. A job! Suddenly I didn’t care so much about the fact that life was hard enough with my current obligations. I was officially employed, paid, and starting my resume! My vibrant good mood carried me back to the living room, dancing in circles towards the phone charger. DJ stared at me, his eyebrows arched almost to his hairline, mouth slightly opened.

            “What was it?” he asked.

            “Money!” I said cheerily, tapping his nose and skipping back to my room. If I was going to start working soon, I’d have to make sure I stayed on top of my schoolwork. That meant that chemistry had to be tackled immediately.

 

            I picked Asia up early the next morning so I could have the satisfaction of telling her about my new job without feeling rushed. I probably could’ve just called her the night before, but I had been working on homework up until my dad got home from the office, at which point my parents decided to take us out for dinner in celebration of my being hired. Studying and family time occupied my night. By the time I got home and thought to tell Asia, it was too late at night for phone calls.

            “Too late? Dawn. I stay up until at least eleven every night. And that’s the earliest I’ll got to bed,” she chastised me for not telling her before.

            “I am well aware of your skewed sleep patterns. I meant too late for me to be on the phone. I like to get a decent night of sleep,” Of course, even though I was usually in bed early, sleep didn’t come until after I had spent about an hour reflecting on the day. Not by choice, in some cases, when I was truly tired and didn’t want to think. But other times, bedtime was the best time I could find to slow down the day’s events and take the next day into consideration.

            “This is high school. We aren’t supposed to get much sleep, remember? I don’t know what it’s called, something to do with biology, like Canadian rhythm? Is that it?” Asia shook her head at the idea and slurped her coffee.

            “Yes. Canadian rhythm. We are constantly affected by drum beats from Canada here in high school,” I couldn’t help but sound scathing. Seriously, Canadian rhythm? Did she really believe that?”

            “So correct me, Little Dawn. I’m not surprised if it’s wrong. I was asleep all through Biology,” she said superiorly. Oh, I hated when she got high and mighty like that. She would be all gullible and superficial, and then be accepting and humble when you didn’t expect it. It got intensely annoying.

            “Circadian Rhythm, you idiot. It’s the inner sleep schedule we’re all on! High school bends it down to Hell, making us start classes at seven-thirty in the morning,” I raged, even though I honestly had no problem with early classes. It led to getting out of school earlier, clearing up the afternoon and evening for us. “Did you know that teenagers have an innate schedule to stay up late? That’s why you’re up so late, Asia, because you’re programmed that way. Except then you have to wake up early instead of get the sleep you really need, so it throws you all off balance.”

            Asia shrugged. “I don’t notice it that much. Only when the alarm goes off and all I can think of is hitting the snooze.”

            “It’s really not that good. It messes with our brains. I read somewhere that getting less sleep than you need shortens your life,” This was probably one of the things that scared me the most about life in general. Right under failure, there was a spot for death by gradual sleep deprivation. “That’s not all, either. We get ripped out of bed so early that our bodies don’t have time to recuperate from the day before. Then we start drinking coffee and getting hooked on caffeine because we can’t refill our energy overnight anymore.”

            “So…my coffee is proof that I’m going to die early?” Asia looked suspiciously at her coffee mug.

            “In a roundabouts way, yes. Of course, that’s something that can be completely on its own. Caffeine dependency.”

            “My mom can’t go to work without a cup.”

            “Your mom is addicted.”

            “She gets, like, headaches and stuff if she doesn’t have any coffee.”

            “Yes. Yes, that is addiction.”

            Asia looked mildly shell-shocked, her eyes lightly bloodshot from the early morning, fixed on the mug in her hand. I thought she might throw it out, see the light. Instead, she leaned against the wall between the receptionist’s window and the bulletin board, tilted her head back, and downed the rest of her coffee.

            “You’re only dooming yourself,” I warned her.

            She smiled at me, all perfect teeth and understanding. “I always am, aren’t I?”

            I was about to start in how her bad habits could negatively affect her in the long run, but Stacy burst towards us out of nowhere. She was bouncing on her toes, all excited…too excited, for so early in the day. And Stacy wasn’t normally a morning person, preferring to scuff around until after first period, when she’d had time to drink a bottle of soda. Just more caffeine dependency at work on breaking down the student body, quite literally.

            “Why didn’t you call me back last night!?” She grabbed Asia by the shoulders frantically.

            “Did you call? I’m sorry, I was on the phone with Andrew until really late. What’s wrong?” Asia gently pushed Stacy off her and blinked away her tired eyes. Friends meant business to Asia, sleep deprived or not. I wondered if the current dilemma had anything to do with Stacy’s dad. Her parents had gotten divorced at the beginning of sophomore year, mostly to Stacy’s delight because she couldn’t stand them being in the same house anymore. But every so often, something would happen between her estranged parents, like financial issues or the more recent discovery of her dad’s alcohol issues, and she would come to us overflowing with the need to vent about it.

            “Danella was so talking about you in psych yesterday,” she said, wrinkling her nose like this was something they’d been expecting for awhile and felt a sort of disgusted satisfaction that it had finally happened.

            Asia relaxed a little and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, she talks about everyone, doesn’t she? That’s why she has no friends,” she asserted, almost like she had to hear it for herself. Danella had somewhat leeched onto Asia’s old crowd in the past year, and I think it made her a little jealous.

            “Did she mention any of Asia’s various complexes, or the possibility that she severed the connections to her frontal lobe, thus explaining her inability to hide any emotion?” I suggested, unable to help but smirk. It was possibly one of the best lines I’d ever come up with on the spot, and put to use so many psychological terms that I was almost giddy by the knowledge crammed into it.

            Asia and Stacy, however, seemed less impressed. They stared at me, eyes wide and dark, as if making walls between us. Stacy took a step back and pursed her lips, trying to find something to say back. Asia just glanced away, her eyes dancing over the throngs of students milling around us, focusing on anything but me.

            I sighed. Of course they wouldn’t have understood it. Where was Maggie when I needed her? “Well, you said it was in psych class, I just thought it might apply…”

            Stacy laughed and her body lost the tension it had momentarily adopted. “No way, Danella has no idea what’s going on in there. She doesn’t know the difference between the id and the ego!” She giggled for a minute, then blinked at me and sombered up quickly as if I’d just asked her to explain the actual difference and said, “I mean, it mostly was stuff about the way you look, Asia, you know, that old wound.”

            Asia glared back at her, cheeks rapidly flushing scarlet, hair whipping around behind her. There was no denying that Asia was beautiful, her looks less conventional and less like the other popular, pretty drones in the school. People had always been making snide comments about her looks, since before I even knew her, because that’s what people did when a girl was prettier than they were. Asia knew it, and she knew that their petty insults meant nothing and had no impact whatsoever on the school’s overall opinion of her; she was still going to be one of the most popular, well liked girls in school. I don’t know if it was because it was Danella, her secret enemy, who was saying it, or if she was just feeling sensitive to criticism that made her get so suddenly angry, but that’s what happened. And when Asia was angry, scary things could happen.

            “Yeah? Like what?” Asia asked loudly.

            Stacy looked at me nervously for help, but I could give none. I didn’t know what Danella had said, and I could tell Asia wouldn’t leave it alone until she found out. “Well, your hair for one. I mean, she firmly believes your wear hair extensions, or even a full weave. Eyelashes too…fake ones. And like, some kind of thing in your lips?”

            Now I was surprised. Danella was accusing Asia of plastic surgery? “What, collagen?”

            “Yeah, that! And then just weight things, you know, like how you throw up every third meal and still manage to have hips the size of the Dominican Republic.”

            Asia’s face seemed to stretch out. Her eyes bugged, mouth flew open, colors bursting everywhere under her skin. “The Dominican Republic!” she shrieked. “I bet she doesn’t even know where it is!”

            A nearby cluster of thespians looked over at us, eyebrows raised in amusement but not thoroughly interested. Her voice was getting shrill, and that was too loud for my preferences. “Asia.” I said sharply. “Do you?”

            “And anyway, she sure has room to talk! Her hips are like the size of…of… Argentina!”

            “Okay, starting to be a little immature and annoying…” I could certainly understand how she was getting so upset, but to carry on in such loud tones just reminded me of Anne. Always complaining at the top of her lungs, just to prove she was capable of disagreeing.

            “And what the hell! I’ve been nothing but absolute nice to her!”

            That definitely wasn’t true. Sure Asia would be friendly to Danella’s face, if Danella was friendly to Asia’s, but she generally treated her like a lower being. It was one of the only ways Asia was two-faced anymore, and it wasn’t entirely without warrant.

            “Don’t take it to heart. You know Danella’s just as fake as she thinks you are,” Stacy reminded her, trying to calm her down by using a quiet voice that was rare for the energetic and vivacious Stacy. But Asia was in a place inside her head that we referred to as “Little Italy”. Based off the aggressive actions of the Italian Mob as portrayed in movies, it was easy to see Asia’s temper as being Italian when she was really angry. Her grandmother had cornered me during Asia’s quinceanera and explained how Colombians were some of the happiest people in the world, which explained why she was usually so upbeat. But if that was true, then her Italian heritage accounted for the opposite. What else would explain it? Give her a plate of spaghetti and a gun, and Asia would be a natural Mob Princess.

            “She’s twice as fake, and I’m going to make sure she knows! Nobody insults Amira Soraida Iniga Adalgisa Addario and gets away with it!” she tossed her hair violently and strode off down the hall, the underclassmen magically clearing her path for her. It was almost something out of a movie, the senior sending fear through the hearts of the freshmen as they scurry out of her way. I almost forgot to run after her, as did Stacy, but that may have been because she referred to herself by her full name and we weren’t used to responding to that. She had been calling herself “Asia” since before I met her, and hardly anyone knew that her name was actually an acronym, technically A.S.I.A., because her legal name was impossibly long and rarely mentioned.

            But eventually we remembered, in time to tear after her, barely able to keep up with the warpath she was forging.

We spotted Danella slinking down the sophomore hallway, where the cleanest bathrooms were. She had probably been busy turning them black from her cigarette smoke, but at the time she was just wandering between classrooms, most likely looking for someone to wander with.

“Da-nella! What the hell?” Asia posed herself smack in the middle of the hallway, painted nails on her hips, shiny black hair waving behind her, like some fabulous Spanish conquistador who was one hundred percent ready to wipe out the Aztecs.

Danella Monroe was a junior, a glitter and Gucci yuppie who was always in the spring musical chorus and the co-captain of the JV dance squad. Not only that, but she hailed from Asia’s very own Colombia. Her hair was dark and her eyes were darker, giving her that mysteriously seductive look all the time, even when she was throwing up her lunch behind the auditorium, which I’ve been unfortunate enough to witness at least three times. She was the kind of girl Asia used to hang out with, and sometimes still did, when Asia was pretending to still be that shallow.

“Que?” Danella’s eyes were wide as she approached Asia, feigning innocence. Applesauce. In my experience, a girl who looks like that has no right to be doe-eyed.

“The next time you want to go complaining about my big hips, you consider their heritage. I’ve got Shakira and J-Lo and Salma Hayek with me on this,” Asia’s voice was the trained snobby tone I had first heard in eighth grade, something she used to talk, as she put it, to the people like her. Full of glamour and martini glasses, it sounded to me, a thin crystal tone that could shatter at any minute. Like the people who used that voice were just rolling in pride and lust and the other five deadly sins.

“Salma Hayek doesn’t have big hips,” Danella protested, eyes still round.

“Stacy told me what you said in Psych yesterday. That I had hips the size of the Dominican Republic. Danella, do you even know anything about the Dominican Republic besides the name?”

“It shares an island with Haiti?” Her voice also had that annoying upswing, where everything was a question. ‘Hi? I’m Danella? Yes, I have a brain?’

 “I’m just saying that it’s pretty rich coming from a girl who has to get her jeans custom-fit over her thighs,” Asia ran her eyes up and down Danella, daring her to deny it when it had been all the junior class could talk about last fall. Behind me, Stacy was snickering.

Danella tossed her permed hair, sizing Asia up. Asia wasn’t going to win any wrestling matches – her arms were weaker than they looked and she got incredibly jumpy when people moved too fast – but her years of soccer made her look tougher than she was. You have to remember that Asia was as painted and polished as Danella was, being from a similar social crowd, but she had the scathing “Touch Me and DIE” stance down pat. Besides, Danella couldn’t have been much taller than me, so Asia had to look intimidating with heels adding to her naturally prominent height.

“Whatever, Asia. Eres Colombina finja. Go back to Italy, puta,” Danella shook her head, rolled her eyes, and flounced back down the hall. Probably back to the girls’ bathroom to finish her cigarettes before class. Upper class kids were all the same, bragging and showing off their designer clothes, then turning the bathroom into a smoke bar. Why they couldn’t just keep to private school and let the public school be left to the friendly lower class scum was beyond me.

Asia’s mouth was hanging open in her typical melodrama fashion, green eyes flashing. “Did you hear that?” She glared at me, almost knocking me back with her eyes.

“She told you to go back to Italy,” I had taken Spanish at Maple Creek, but abandoned it two years ago because I wanted to take Latin instead. I felt something that would help me to better appreciate my own language, whereas in Spanish I just loathed words altogether, would be better for me. Unfortunately, the Latin classes were mostly overrun with s****y girls who just couldn’t cut it in other foreign language classes, and we never learned anything because the teacher spent half her time yelling at them. In any case, I couldn’t guess what Danella had said.

“The b***h, she called me a w***e! And told me that I was a fake Columbian! Because what, I’m part Italian?” Asia was nearly screeching.

Stacy very lightly placed her hand on Asia’s shoulder, glancing sideways at me to make sure there was backup. Like I said, Asia could be scary sometimes. Right then, she was clenching her fists into white balls and struggling against a lip that desperately wanted to curl up and bare sharp teeth. And that didn’t begin to cover the irrational thoughts that were surely occupying her mind. We knew she wouldn’t hurt us, but she could make it difficult for us to get anything through to her. Neither of us wanted to calm her down alone.

“This is Danella, remember? She’s never even been to Colombia. You have, you’ve been to weddings and birthday parties and all kinds of celebrations,” Stacy said patiently. “What has she done?”

I nodded. “Learned enough Spanish to curse people off, and that’s all. I think it’s pretty clear who the fake Columbian is. People used to call you ‘Bolivar’, remember? You’re so Columbian, it’s not even funny.” That was actually an isolated incident, from World History class last year when we had to write short essays on what historical figure we would most want to be and Asia wrote hers on Simon Bolivar. “I want to be Simon Bolivar because he is the greatest man in existence,” her paper began, and right away you knew people were going to poke fun at it. But Asia being Asia, she was good about it and loved the fact that people were calling her Bolivar. She was sad when they stopped, a week later.

Asia heaved a massive sigh, threw a dirty look at Danella’s retreating figure (which incidentally was quite a bit rounder than Asia’s), and forced a half smile for us.

“Yeah, true. Okay. I’m over that now. Let’s get to class before we’re late,” she said, and glided off towards the stairwell.

“She’s got a whole five minutes, she’s not going to be late,” Stacy checked her watch, confused.

“Let her be early, it’ll be a first.” Besides, it wasn’t every day that Asia did battle before first period. Usually, if there was someone to be dealt with, it was handled during lunch or after school. Danella had been a special case.

“Hey, you girls seen Asia?” Andrew appeared behind Stacy out of nowhere. “She usually meets me in the lobby.”

“Oh, she went up to her class. If you hurry you can still catch her, she’s not moving that fast,” Stacy said, pointing towards the stairs. Andrew thanked us and hurried off. “Ah love, how nice.”

“If that’s what you want to call it,” I shrugged, shaking my head.

“Nice?”

“Love. It’s an infatuation, and it’s cute and all, but it’s not love. It’s too early for that.”

“Romeo and Juliet fell in love right away,” Stacy protested.

“I’ll bet you that if Andrew killed himself tomorrow, Asia wouldn’t stab herself over it. Not that she wouldn’t be really sad, but I don’t think it would be like losing your true love.” But when I thought about it, I wasn’t too sure. Sometimes, the way she moped after break-ups, it was like every guy she dated was her true love. There were some that she was happy to get away from, but most of them she was sad to let go of. Then again, Asia was like that. She hated to lose friends, hated it more than anything in the world, which was why she still socialized with people like Danella even though she didn’t like them as much.

“Yeah, because she’s not suicidal,” Stacy laughed and turned away. She always ended little arguments with a laugh, always before they got too heated. Stacy loved gossip and to stir things up, but she herself was not a fan of confrontation. “See you at lunch, Dawn.”

Author's Note

I think the events in the chapter should probably happen sooner, but here it is nonetheless.