4: I May or May Not Be Insane

In which pants are leather and tables taste bad.

I’m epileptic. I must be. Maybe that’s what my parents have been spiking my juice with " it never does taste the same at anyone else’s house. Yes, it’s a conspiracy to hide a major medical disorder by slipping meds into my morning pick me up. Note to file, never accept anything from my parents again. Not that I normally do, but anywho.

 

I waited a while for the seizure I was obviously having to stop but it didn’t. “Stupid shaking, stop!” I groaned into my pillow.

 

“Does the first day of school ring a bell? You have to get up.” Oh, it was just Dad. Making stupid puns about bells and schools and school bells ringing. In my room. At seven in the morning. While I was lying in bed in only my jammies.

 

“Oh, my God, I could be naked!” I screamed, burrowing farther under the covers and curling up into the fetal position. “I practically am!” My voice was muffled by the covers and my breath sent bits of condensation back into my face. It was already hot and stuffy after about thirty seconds so I grudgingly popped my head back out.

 

“Up, missy,” Dad commanded. He stood in the corner of my room and waited for me to follow his order.

 

Feeling more self-conscious than the time when I’d pantsed my friend in front of the entire seventh grade, I threw back the covers. If it had been winter there would have been a sweater over my bed post but seeing as it was still summer I was forced to get up in my tiny little pajamas shorts that only I, the washing machine, and my best friend ever got to see and a tank top that barely covered all of me. When I’d found an old pair of track pants in my closet and put them on so I didn’t moon my stuffies, I looked back to the corner of the room and saw Dad still standing there. And I was still almost half naked. Incestuous pervert. I shooed him out of my room and got faced the ominous choice of what I would wear for the monumental First Day. The day that’s so epic it deserves to be capitalized.

 

With a flourish that would make any Hollywood blonde with b***s bigger than my head jealous, I threw open my closet. In a not so awe-inspiring manner I ran over my foot and scratched the hell out of the top of my toe. It would probably scar, which is unfortunate as that was my favourite toe. Now I must go back to my standby of the ring toe on my left foot, which is knobbly and kind of crooked. Like Aaron’s nose.

 

I bravely shut my eyes and dove in, whipping various bits of clothing onto my bed according to what they felt like. I turned around and looked at my bed. A pair of jean capris were lying in a crumpled pile on the foot of the bed, almost entirely covered by a three-quarter sleeve yellow shirt that would clash magnificently with my hair. Excellent, I wouldn’t have to march through the halls naked except for my backpack, which wouldn’t cover a whole lot that I would need covered.

 

When I was done getting dressed and putting away the bra (meaning stuffing it under my bed, let Aaron find that!) that had gotten snagged on my bedpost when I’d been chucking things out of my closet, I was trying to find a pair of shoes that actually matched when I was rudely disturbed.

 

“Ava, breakfast!” bellowed Dad.

 

I gave the door a dirty look like the doorknob was Dad (well, in my defence, bald people do share a striking resemblance to doorknobs) before stampeding down the stairs.

 

I waved at Sheba in her corner; she didn’t wave back, just licked her face and stuck the tip of her tongue up her nose (fulfilling her daily movement quota) and I ignored my parents while I helped myself to some of Aaron’s toast. He was lying face down on the table, stiller than Sheba on a good day. Perhaps he was dead. At least I’d get whatever was in his savings account because I’d dibsed it the day he made it.

 

“That’s mine,” he said to the table. Damn, he’s not dead. Bye-bye money! But at least I now know he can still talk. Monosyllabically, but talking nonetheless.

 

“Want me to regurgitate it so you can have it back?”

 

He groaned and grabbed another piece off his plate; the toast then disappeared under his curtain of hair and presumably into his mouth. I hope that was why he was making loud, chewing noises. Maybe he’s decided he wants to be a beaver when he grows up so he’s practicing with the table. Varnished maple " yummy!

 

For the record, varnished maple doesn’t taste good. It must be polish that Mom uses whenever she’s in the mood to clean, so about once every decade or so. And I think I cracked a tooth.

 

Dad was angry that I bit the table so he decided I was going to walk. It was twenty-five friggen degrees outside and he was going to make me walk! I would melt and then I’d evaporate and rain back down on their heads when it got cold enough. Let’s hope there’s some smog that day so I can pollute them all, maybe play home to some mosquito larvae that will infect them with West Nile virus and then they’ll be all itchy and die. I’ll teach them to make me walk. They will die slow, painful deaths while I laugh at them. Yes, I’ll be a laughing puddle. Who wants to be a vet or a firefighter when you can be a puddle who laughs at people, like the snotty little freshman at school who always accidentally step in puddles in their gazillion inches tall heels? I can barely keep upright in sneakers; I don’t know how they don’t snap their legs off at the knees. Maybe they have evil superpowers.

 

I heard a car pull up alongside me. Let them mock me. When I’m a puddle I’ll make them hydroplane straight into a tree.

 

“Want a ride?” My saviour!

 

I turned to see who it was. Aaron had the window rolled down and was watching me, the car inching along at a few kilometres an hour. I thought he was too cool to be seen with me, which is why he normally doesn’t drive me. I nodded and ran around to the other side of the car, and hopped in. “I thought you were too cool to be seen with me,” I said, stowing my bag between my knees and buckling my seatbelt.

 

He grunted noncommittally. Now there’s the Aaron we all know and love. Like a blonde little pig. Oink oink.

 

It only took us five minutes to get to the high school, and I spied a group of Aaron’s scary jock friends, most of who towered over me and had tiny little eyes that flitted all over, generally in the direction of the nearest girl’s chest. Apparently b***s are magnets for eyes. Guys just don’t get it, it’s not as if girls all walked around with our eyes glued to their crotches, mind that would be really awkward and I’d walk into more poles than normal. Not that kind of pole, pervert.  I didn’t say goodbye, just jumped out and sprinted into the back doors to stop myself from thinking about poles of any sort.

 

There was a board on the wall with our names and homerooms written all over, so I found my name, figured that I had biology first thing and went to make sure I had the right room. I did, and I didn’t find any of my friends so I moped about in a lonely sort of fashion, keeping my eyes on the floor and walking into a total of three doorframes. Which is pretty good for me, most of the time there are several more that decide to hit me before the first bell rings.

 

The bell rang, and I managed to make it to my classroom without being crushed, though I did accidentally elbow a grade nine in the head. Is it just me or are they getting shorter? Maybe I’m just getting taller. Yes, I like that idea. I’m officially taller. I’ll be like a tree soon. A raspberry tree. Wait a tick, do raspberries grow on tries? Dad says money doesn’t, but I refuse to believe that. Money obviously grows on trees and it’s picked up by little pixies where it is then deposited in his wallet for my use.

 

“Hello, class,” said a voice, barely audible through the heavy door that was open just a crack.  Slowly it was pushed open and our teacher walked out. The boys’ jaws hit the floor simultaneously. “My name is Ms. Cloutier and I’m very excited to meet you.” She stepped out from behind the front counter, her dainty, and incredibly high heels clicking along the linoleum. Her tight, low-cut white dress that I highly doubted would be allowed on a student, contrasted extravagantly with her hooker red lips and dark, sultry eyes. Oh, my God, a call girl is going to be teaching us biology. A call girl who happened to bear a striking resemblance to Marilyn Monroe. Stupid blondes, am I the only one in this entire world who isn’t blonde? I could always dye my hair but then I’d look like an albino with brown eyes, like I did the time I’d accidentally sloshed bleach on my head and a big patch of hair fell out. But I suppose I looked more like a lab rat. An albino lab rat.

 

“Today we’re going to go over safety in the lab, and deal with textbooks.” She had the faintest hint of a lisp and for some reason I wanted to punch her front teeth out. Let’s see if she can keep up the baby talk then! She launched into a longwinded lecture on how to use a microscope and what to do in the event if a slide broke or someone sloshed formaldehyde on themselves. Boring! Every time she spoke a little part of me died, screaming in agony ‘there is nothing sexual about a wet mount’, and every time it did I laughed, because the words wet and mount should never be put together in the same sentence.

 

I suffered through that class and then my next class with a teacher who was the exact opposite of Ms. Cloutier, who droned through our introduction to law. Her voice was deeper than my dad’s. And she had a bushier moustache than him too. It was like someone’s ferret decided that it would like to nap under her nose. At least I think it was a her. It did say its name was Mrs Robillard. I feel sorry for her husband; her manliness would certainly emasculate any man within a kazillion and a half miles.

 

I found my locker, which was a million miles away from my homeroom, but fortunately I was between a locker with an owner who would be constantly off with her boyfriend, probably fogging up his car windows, and another who never showed up to school and apparently would be moving to Switzerland. I was slamming the door shut, nearly kicking it in to get it to close enough so I could lock it when something landed on my shoulder and didn’t move.

 

“I can see down your shirt,” said a voice.

 

It startled me, so I jumped and the guy’s head on my shoulder bounced with me, his teeth clicking together in an ominous sort of manner. Oh, well, it was just Dougie. It’s not like his teeth matter. Friendlies don’t care if you accidentally on purpose break their chompers.

 

I’d been best friends with Dougie since the sixth grade when I’d scribbled on the wall in my elementary school ‘Sharpies rock!!’ and he’d written ‘D’ACCORD’ underneath. Nobody realized it was me who started it, and I had no idea who had answered my scribble in a language I didn’t understand that made it so I had to look it up in my handy dandy pocket sized dictionary (the one with the sticker on the cover). And so we bonded over a mutual love of markers after I’d had to hunt him down through various mediums, which may or may not have been legal. I’m not going to say whether or not it involved hacking into the RCMP’s database or trackers implanted in people’s foreheads.  

 

“Why were you looking?”

 

“Something to do. Wasn’t much to see. Nice bra, though, monkeys are certainly classy.”

 

“Wonderful.”

 

He linked his arm through mine without another word and dragged me towards the cafeteria, his backpack continually banging into my shoulder.

 

“What’ve you got in that thing?” I demanded as it slammed into me for what felt like the millionth time.

 

“Textbooks, water bottle, a couple of cinderblocks, the kitchen sink and an Abercrombie model.”

 

I snorted a giggle and he oinked at me. Like I’m some sort of pig. A redheaded pig. I mean really, can he get more absurd? “Can I steal the model?”

 

“Who says it’s a guy? Maybe it’s a girl. Funny, I didn’t know you swung that way.”

 

“Nope, that’s just you, and because it’s you it’ll be a guy.” I’d long thought Dougie was gay, but he’s having too much fun hiding in the closet. Maybe that’s why his jeans always smell like mothballs, he’s been having little escapades in the closet. I burst out laughing from the brilliance of my wit. He glared at me. It had been a very touchy subject for him. Which was why I enjoyed exploiting him for it. Because what kind of pimp doesn’t exploit their favourite b***h? He even had it written on his backpack (in Sharpie, might I add, though he didn’t know I’d been writing it until I was finishing up the ‘h’). “I’m exploiting you.”

 

“And violating my personal space, watch where you’re putting your hands, little missy!” I jammed my hands into my pockets so he couldn’t yell at me again.  

 

“So how was the rest of your summer?” I asked, shovelling some soda crackers smothered in peanut butter down my throat and hoping that the mean girl from my law class who happened to be allergic to nuts (of the legume variety, any other kind were fine in her mouth if you know what I mean) was sitting nearby so I could accidentally on purpose kill her. She’d informed the teacher that her daddy was one of the top criminal defence lawyers in the province. I told her where she could stick it. Fortunately Mrs. Robillard (née Marilyn Manson) had her back turned so she didn’t hear. I don’t think my parents want me to with a detention under my belt after the first day. Even though I wasn’t wearing a belt. My only one had suspiciously gone missing. Maybe Aaron’s girlfriend uses it to tie him to the bed. Stupid, stupid, stupid, brain! Gaaaaack, unwanted visuals.

 

“Fine, lots of tanned people in tiny shorts. And don’t get me started on the girls.” Dougie had spent the last month of his summer with family in North Carolina. It was just like him to say what the guys had been wearing first. Mr. May-or-may-not-be-gay. (I’m voting for the may.) “Yours?”

 

“Don’t get me started.” But he already had.

 

After I’d babbled myself out (well, actually, when he threatened to duct tape my mouth shut, the abusive little twerp), we discovered that we would have our afternoon classes together (history and English) so we agreed to sit together for English, seeing as the history teacher we had always had a seating arrangement set up ahead of time.

 

“Welcome back, everyone,” said our English teacher, who was a creepy looking, balding man in his mid-forties by the name of Mr. Hollins. He spoke in a high, breathy voice not unlike that of Ms. Cloutier-Monroe, and leaned on his desk with one leg pulled up. I wonder how many hours of jazzercize he had to do in order to get flexible enough to do that. Apparently not enough, because he got stuck so a few of the people in the front had to use metre sticks to force his leg down from the ledge. “Everyone take out paper and get your minds rolling. Nobody will have to see what you’re writing, and you don’t have to read it aloud, I just want you all to think about your goals for this next year. Or your entire life, really, it doesn’t matter. Nobody sees this so you could technically write about what you want. Like sexual fantasies.”

 

Everybody grew silent and dropped their gazes. He was looking straight at Dougie while he said this and Dougie blushed a shade of crimson that even my hair would envy. Somebody coughed and broke the spell, and we all pulled out our binders and started writing furiously, as though if we talked he would come over to us and start giving us examples of what we could write. The rest of the class went by in almost total silence and Dougie adamantly refused to look at Mr. Hollins. 

 

“I think someone likes you,” I crooned when the bell rang.

 

Dougie pretended he hadn’t heard me, instead saying, “So what did you write about?”

 

“Sexual fantasies,” I said. He glowered at me and I laughed. “No, I’ve decided that, I, Ava Elizabeth Riel, am going to completely normalize my life. My parents will no longer be creepy in public; in fact they shall remain indoors. I will de-redhead-ize my hair so I won’t look like an electrocuted Scot. I shall conquer the world while eating more ice cream without my teeth hurting. And I will ignore Aaron’s obvious leaning towards sexual deviancy.”

 

“Aaron? You’re joking right?” he said after my declaration.

 

“He’s obviously a kinky little guy, all you blondes are.” He raised a hand to his head self-consciously. “I rest my case.”

 

“How? I didn’t say anything? Do you see any studs or thigh-high boots in my bag?”

 

“No…” I began, “but I have seen you in leather pants.” That shut him up. 

Author's Note

So, how am I doing so far? Thoughts on the matter at all?