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Mandabach, author of OR NOT



Last Updated: 11/18/2009

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Status: Single
City: OR NOT, a novel for young and other adults, set in
State: Colorado
Country: US
Signup Date: 2/9/2006

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Saturday, August 01, 2009 


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Contest from my buddy A.S. King, author of the totally original, adventuresome, and slightly twisted DUST OF 100 DOGS.

4:10 PM 
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Thursday, June 11, 2009 

Current mood:  sassy
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
So, my son's favorite superhero is now WordGirl.

I think he loves her because he's been raised on old school cartoons like Batfink, Scooby Doo, Underdog and the like. Not only does Wordgirl have some crazy villains--the most important part for him--but it has to be made by people who LOVE old cartoons.

I'm an English teacher, so I gotta love WordGirl.

And I'm me, so I gotta love things like today's episode, in which the villain Mr. Big sold WordGirl dolls that not only used bad grammar and pronunciation, but used mind control to get everyone to buy a bazillion accessories like limited edition gold-plated WordGirl back-scratchers. This is an idea channeled straight from the mind of my character Cassie!

I could go on and on, but as WordGirl said, when she got control of the mind-control recording device, "Go outside and play or read a book."

(first you can watch this teaser. WORD UP!!!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vim82PF_4yU

Currently reading:
Fugitive Pieces: A Novel
By Anne Michaels
Release date: 1998-05-26
5:06 PM 
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Thursday, March 05, 2009 

Current mood:  curious
Category: Writing and Poetry

Here's Chapter 7.  It's been awhile--
Remember that the first chapters are below, in earlier postings.

peace . . .




       7
      
       Gary liked Syd well enough, he thought, but while he and Hope were three weeks into things, taking it easy, enjoying the slow build-up of coming to know each other, Dean and Syd slammed together like, as Gary told Hope, two halves of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
       “She’s a witch,” said Gary.  “Ain’t natural.  Devil is what she is.  Red-hair devil.”
       He could tell Hope knew what he meant, because she’d already complained about how one minute, Dean was there, and then he was gone. 
            Syd picked Dean up for school in the Duster, and Hope rode with them a couple of times, but they dropped her off and went “out to breakfast.”  This meant that Dean skipped Algebra II, first hour, and usually the rest of the day as well.  Neither one of them was around to take phone calls, and before long, Hope said, she was afraid to call or stop by his house.  She knew he must be lying, making up excuses, and though Hope felt abandoned, she didn’t want to get him busted.
      Gary felt the same way, though he couldn’t help focusing on Syd.  Maybe he was changing his mind.  Maybe he didn’t like her.  She wore too much make up.  Her clothes were almost like costumes. 
        “And that way she doesn’t really look at you?” he said.  “At anybody?  She walks around like she’s pretending you aren’t looking at her.”
       “I don’t know.  That funny way she keeps her focus down—”
       “Yeah,” said Gary.  “She’s always at forty-five degrees—”
        “I think she’s shy.”
       “I think she’s a phony.”
       Gary knew he was just being jealous.  And he shouldn’t let it get to him.  After all, he had Hope, and she was the coolest thing that had ever happened to him.  He’d never had a girlfriend who liked him this much, at least not one that he’d like the same way.
      
       ***
      
       After he’d been AWOL for a couple weeks, Hope got a call from Dean. 
       “I’m in the shit,” he said.
       “What do you mean?”
       “I can’t think about anything else, anyone else, and the mailers are coming home every day:  ‘Your son/daughter was absent for periods 1-7’ and I can’t intercept them all.” 
       “So what are you going to do?”
       “I’ve got to start going to school again.”
       “Good idea.”
       “Can I get the algebra from you?”
       “Sure.” 
       So, Hope was there when Dean came up to breathe, though he obviously had no problem with drowning and was maybe only coming up for air so he could prolong the process.
       What he was experiencing was beyond her, and she wanted to trust him.  But skipping school for almost two weeks straight and creating ever more insupportable labyrinths of lie?  Was it possible that this might be okay, might even be just the right thing for Dean? 
       Gary was jealous, but Hope was trying not to be.  She’d been trying ever since before Dean and Syd actually got together, but it just kept getting worse.  Dean was her friend first, he was supposed to be her best friend, and when she got to thinking about it, it smarted more than a little because it was feeling more like just friends. 
       But she kept trying, telling herself that she had Gary, she was enjoying him, and though she wondered what might have happened with Dean last summer if she hadn’t hesitated, she really shouldn’t mind Syd being with him.
       If they were best friends, she had to trust him. 
       Anyway, Dean told her, they were going to be slowing down a little.  Neither one of them wanted to flunk out. 
       “We’ve hardly talked, though,” Hope said.  “Can you come over?”
       “I can’t,” he said.  “I’m sorry.  I have to stay in—I can’t even go out to smoke.”
       “Well, tell me about it.” 
       “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”
       “I hope not,” she said.
       “And I don’t know how to describe it.”
       “Just tell me the story.”
       Hope listened to the silence of the phone line as she waited, lacing the curly cord between her fingers.
       “Okay,” he said.  “We call it Wisconsin.”
       “Wisconsin.”
       “Yeah—we’re in Wisconsin.  Me and Syd.  America’s Dairyland.”
       “I thought you said you were home—you’re in Wisconsin?”
       “No, that’s what we call it—it’s like our secret name for what it’s like.”
       “Gary’s right.  She’s a witch.”
       “He said that?  I thought he liked her.”  Dean sounded wounded.  “Do you hate her now, too?”
       “No,” Hope said.  “Of course not.  Neither does Gary.  We just miss you.”
       “I’m sorry.  We’re still best friends.  It’s just . . .”
       He paused, and Hope waited.  She didn’t want to make this hard for him—she was the person he could talk to, right? 
       “Come on,” she said.  “Tell the story.”
       “Okay.  But I’m sorry for being a rotten friend.  You have to know that I love you like nobody else.” 
       There he was again, declarative Dean, so intense and sure, blowing Hope away by saying these things. 
       He was hard to match, it was hard to come up to the line he drew and meet him there, so Hope said, “Good,” which was better than telling him how much she loved him, too, because it did tell him how much but it also told him the other stuff she meant.  “Good.  And you’d better not forget it.  Are you going to tell me your story, or what?”
       “Yeah,” said Dean, “but one more thing.  You and Gary are going to love Syd, too.”
       Then Dean began the story:  “On our second day together we went to Wisconsin—the real place, I mean—instead of school.  Syd picked me up and we drove to Lake Geneva.  We had breakfast at a little café and bought cheese at a cheese barn and a take-out sixer at a tavern but we didn’t even drink it.  The beach was too cold for swimming, the wind was blowing whitecaps all over the lake . . .”
      
       ***
      
       The beach was cold with a wind blowing across the lake, whitecaps scudding under the deep blue sky washing foamy and scummy on the gray sandy shore, and it wasn’t the way Syd had imagined it but it didn’t matter.  She and Dean went around to the state park, to a sheltered little picnic grove amidst tall trees.  The place was deserted, and they took off into the woods, Syd following Dean through the trees, his tan cords riding low on his hips, Levi’s tag on the right. 
       She snagged his belt loop with her finger and he pulled her along through the woods. 
       “Look out for poison ivy,” she said.
       “There’s no poison ivy in the state of Wisconsin.”
       “Well, look out anyway.”   
       They found a little grassy place and made a bed there.  Their dark blankets held the warmth close around them.  It was dim inside but when the blankets flipped open at the edges, light flashed in and showed her pale, freckled skin and Dean’s smooth skin, and the warm exhalations inside mixed with cool, woodsy, green-gold air outside. 
       Then they lay with their heads out in the light, and Dean’s eyes were brown-green-blue-gray like rocks and sky and trees, flecks and points of earth and sky.  When Syd closed her own eyes, Dean kissed the lids and all over her face, kissing her nose and eyebrows and chin until they laughed and she opened her eyes and grabbed his hands with hers and said, “We’re in the state of Wisconsin,” and he said, “Is this a state of Wisconsin?”
       “THE state of Wisconsin,” she said because there could only be one.
       “And it’s ours,” he said, “our very own state, and we’re the only ones here.”
      
       ***
      
       Dean and Syd lay together, dozing brief dozes, tired but too aware of each other to really sleep.  When he peered out from under the blankets, Dean saw that the light through the trees had gone from morning past noon.  A leaf drifted down from above.  He imagined the two of them lying there all winter, covered first by leaves, then by snow, living on air, subsisting on each other until spring melted the snow and they were surrounded by wild iris thrusting up from the warm earth and opening all around them.
       On the way home, drinking cola and eating cheese and crackers, they were still in America’s Dairyland, even when they got back to the Land of Lincoln. 
       “It’s not just a state of mind,” Syd said.
       “It’s a state of body,” said Dean.
       “A state of the soul.”
       But when they were almost home, passing through Wauconda and Lake Zurich, Dean felt Illinois all around them.   
       “I’m still in Wisconsin,” he said.
       “Me too,” she said.
       “But it’s now an island.”
       “What are we doing tonight?”
       “Going to Wisconsin.”
       “How?” she said.
       “Library again?”
       “Perfect, twice in a row is too obvious to be a lie.  But we have to get home on time, or they’re never going to let us go out again.”
      
       ***
      
       Gary hadn’t seen much of Dean for a couple of weeks, and then finally, he got a call.
       “I need your help,” Dean said.  “Can you cover for me tomorrow night?”
       “Sure, man,” said Gary.  “What can I do you for?”
       Gary was surprised that he didn’t get at least a hello, how are you? before Dean asked for help.  Were they such buddies that formalities were unnecessary, or was he only a useful phone number now that Dean had better things to do? 
       “Let’s hit the Casket after school,” said Dean.  “I’ll tell you about it.
       When Gary got to the Casket, Dean was at their jukebox table with a cola and a cigarette and two butts already in the ashtray.  “Take Me to the River” was playing. 
       Dean broke into a huge grin when he saw Gary, and actually stood up to greet him. 
       “How are you,” said Dean, “what’s going on, how are you and Hope?”
       “Slow down, my man, what kind of speed are you doing?”
       “Cola and nicotine and . . .” 
       “And Syd?”
       “Yeah,” Dean said.  He put out his cigarette half smoked and got up to feed the juke box.
       Then Gary watched him fidget and smoke while “Take Me to the River” played again and Dean told about Wisconsin.
       “Half the time I don’t believe it and I’m terrified that it’s going to blow up, that it can’t last, that it’s too good, you know?”
       “Yeah,” Gary said, though he really didn’t.  But he took it all in and was more than half convinced that there was something very huge here, something real and deep and way beyond him, which was cool but made him a little nervous.
       Dean wanted him for an alibi, of course, or a ruse.  Though he had never actually spent the night at Gary’s house, he wanted to pretend to tomorrow night, so that he and Syd could go back to Wisconsin.
       And why not?  What are friends for? 
       Dean cracked ice between his teeth and chain-smoked.  His face was flushed with sun or blood or both, and his hair hung in long hunks to his shoulders like he hadn’t combed it this morning.
       “We need to hang out, too,” he said. 
       “We are,” said Gary.
       “But more time, and doing something besides me sitting here smoking cigarette after cigarette and obsessing.”
       “Let me take you out in the canoe this weekend.”
       “I can’t.  There’s no time.  Not yet, but . . .” Dean said and looked up at Gary, and he seemed to slow down somehow.  “I miss you, man.  We’re brothers, you know?  What about next week.  Is that cool?”
       “Cool, man.  I can dig it.  Can’t stop that train, so I ain’t gon’ be standin’ on no tracks wavin’ no red lantern.  Roll on through, Casey Jones, roll on through.”
       “You’re funny,” said Dean.  “But you’re right.”
       And funny though it was, and though he was still bitching to Hope about it, Gary was touched.  He liked being the ruse, he believed that Dean missed him, and he liked being part of Dean’s adventure.
      
      
      



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Wednesday, December 10, 2008 

Category: Writing and Poetry

~earlier chapters are below~
|   
|   
V 
Don't be afraid to comment!  
    
6
    
     When Syd pulled up at Dean’s house, his mom came to the door with him.  She seemed so small, leaning out of the light and waving.  Syd waved back, and Dean got in.  She backed out of the driveway.
     “Where to?”
     “Down here,” he said.  “Then right.” 
     It was torture being next to him.  She wanted to stop in the middle of the road and climb into his lap. 
     “Pull over,” he said.
     There was a wide, gravelly shoulder, and she hardly had the car in park before he unfastened her seatbelt and pulled her on top of him as he slid down on the seat.  His mouth tasted like toothpaste and his neck smelled of soap—Manly, yes, but I like it too!—and she pressed down on him, crushing herself against him.
     “Wait,” he said.
     “Why?” she said and opened her eyes to headlights sweeping by.
     When they’d passed, he sat up, still holding her close, and opened the door. 
     “Come on.  Let’s go.”
    
           * * *   
    
     Dean took Syd’s hand and led her through the weeds to the trail.  Then he started running, down towards the swamp, because he couldn’t bear to go any slower and if they stopped they might collapse right there on the path.  The air was cool under the trees, cool on his face as they ran, and when the woods opened up it felt warm where the day’s sun still radiated from the ground.  Then they ran back into the trees where it was cool again and Syd pulled away from him and ran ahead. 
     “Catch me,” she said as she sprinted down the trail.  “You can’t catch me!”
     He kept his pace, his breathing good despite the smokes—deep, regular, in and out as his feet fell on the bare earth.  His eyes adjusted to the night and he could see Syd’s dark shape ahead of him.  He eased into a faster pace, then accelerated more until he was flying, almost flying down the trail. 
     He gained on her, and she must have heard him because she really turned on the speed, her hair flying out behind her, her footfalls quick and light.
     But he was faster and caught her just before they reached the marsh.  When he reached ahead and touched her waist, she slowed a little and they decelerated, landing on the grassy bank above the pond as pair of mallards burst quacking from the water, wings whistling into the night. 
     Dean and Syd panted and gasped.  They gulped air as the sweat rose on their skin and they lay on the cool grass, Syd resting her head on Dean’s stomach, making him conscious of how fast his diaphragm was rising and falling and his heart was hammering.  He lifted her head, bringing his hands under her neck and drawing her hair out over his chest. 
     Gradually they caught their breath, and they began to hear the sounds of the night around them: a breeze in the treetops, a cricket in the weeds, a car passing beyond the trees.  Dean kissed her hair, breathed in its scent, gently nudged her so she scooted up to his chest, and he laid her hair over his face, enveloping himself in her fragrant aura. 
     Then she rose up and bent on her knees before him.  Her face came down and her hair tented him in and her lips touched his, moved away, and came down again as he felt his heart begin to hammer again in his throat.
    
     Then they were cold, clinging to each other’s warmth, and the grass was wet with dew.  They rose again and went back up the path to the car.  In the dome light inside the Duster—very bright after the darkness outside—Syd’s watch gave them the bad news of it being almost midnight. 
     At the Sambo’s on Route 22, they ordered coffee to go and took turns using the bathroom to get cleaned up and the pay phone to call home with excuses.
     On the way back to his house, Dean said, “Can you give me a ride tomorrow?”
     “Of course,” she said. 
     They stopped just out of sight of Dean’s house and held each other for as long as they could.  Then she pulled into the driveway, and they sat artificially apart, assuming they were being watched.
     “Tomorrow morning,” he said.
     “At seven, so you can make first period.”
     “Forget first period,” he said, “let’s go out for breakfast.”
     “Forget school,” she said, “let’s go to Wisconsin.”
     “Wisconsin?”
     “Yeah.”
    
    
    
    
    




Currently listening:
Easy Tiger
By Ryan Adams
Release date: 2007-06-26
3:52 AM 
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Saturday, November 29, 2008 

Category: Writing and Poetry
Hey, here's chapter five.  Do you thing I should change the dates so that Chapt. 1 is on top, and you read down?  Or is it best with the latest chapter on top, like it is now? 

Also, I have 6 ready, too.  Should I put it up right away, or wait?

Enjoy, and thanks for commenting . . . . .

           5
     
          To Syd, it seemed like forever before anything happened with Dean, but finally, not quite three weeks after Hope and Gary's first date, it did.
     Syd had to take the bus that day.  Mom had borrowed her car, and though she'd rather walk home, she was getting blisters from her saddle shoes, which she wore for a reverse-cool effect with a mini skirt and knee socks. 
     So she was on the way to the busses when she saw Todd DeMarco getting in Dean's face.  The corner of the English wing protected them from the assistant principal who supervised the bus-loading, and a crowd of kids had begun to gather.
     "Come on, DeMarco," said one kid.  "Take him out!"
     She saw Dean turn his back on DeMarco and start to walk toward the busses.  Then the gap in the crowd filled and screened them from view.  She heard people yelling.  The crowd was loose and open at first, vaguely curious, but by the time she pushed through, it was tight and insistent.  She slid sideways between the bodies and at the center of the ring was DeMarco, yelling at Dean, who was turned away but hemmed in by a wall of kids.
     Syd saw Dean turn, then he was pushed and fell.  DeMarco stood jeering above him as Syd crossed the ring.
     "Todd," she said, and he didn't seem to hear, his thick neck thrusting his head forward and his arms pumped out.
     Syd moved to his left side, touched his wrist, and slid her hand up to his elbow.
     "Todd," she said. 
     He looked at her, and she felt his arm relax a little.
     "What are you doing?" she asked. 
     "What do you mean?"
     Dean got up while Syd said, "Come on, Todd, just let it go," and she slid her hand off his arm.
      Dean began to walk around and past her, but she hooked her arm in his elbow, and the crowd parted while DeMarco shouted, "Come back, pussy!"  
     They kept walking, away from the busses now, up toward Main Street.  Dean breathed hard, then he took a deep breath and exhaled in a sigh.  He started shaking, and Syd could feel the heat coming off him.  They didn't say anything until they got to the street and started in the direction of town.
     "Thanks," he said.
     "Sure," she said.  "It helps being a girl sometimes."
     "Yeah.  Can I buy you a pop at the Breadbasket?"
     She laughed—it sounded so old fashioned.  "Sure.  You owe me."
     They kept their arms linked, not talking anymore, and Syd noticed that he wasn't shaking, and she leaned into him a little bit.  He returned the pressure. 
     At the Breadbasket, they got the booth right by the jukebox, but neither one of them played anything.  They got 7-Ups and Dean smoked.  He told her about the fight in the locker room, and how Gary said DeMarco probably wouldn't pull anything until after football season. 
     "So I wasn't expecting to get jumped," he said.  "Yet.  But I guess I had it coming to me."
     "Because you defended yourself in the first place?"
     He blew cloudy smoke up and away from her, and the movement exposed the smoothness of his throat.  His faint Adam's apple moved.
     "That's the way it works, right?" he said.  "Blood will have blood."
     "Who'd have thought the dumb jock would have so much blood in him," she said.
     They laughed and he put out his cigarette.  She reached for his hand.  It was cold and she squeezed it.
     "But you've been humiliated," she said.  "Saved by a girl, you pussy." 
     "And gladly."
     "Let's talk about something else," she said, and they talked about Ohio and school and Gary and Hope.  She kept holding his hand and he smoked some more, lighting the match with one hand so he wouldn't have to let go of hers.  She wanted to look at him, to trace his straight eyebrows and push her fingers through his wavy dark hair, but she mostly just looked at their hands together, his large and strong, hers small and freckled.  He stretched his legs out and pressed them against hers and she put her feet up on his side of the booth and he dropped his hand and ran it down once from her knee to her foot and let it rest on the toe of her shoe.
    
           * * *   
    
     They left the Casket by the back door, Syd leading Dean up Cook Street then over to Summit, which gave them a straight shot to her house.  Dean had his arm around her waist, and her warm hand was inside his jean jacket and shirt, pressing on his back.
     Walking close like this was easier than sitting across from her in the booth, where the most Dean could do was look at Syd's hand and wrist or at the rounded toes of her shoes.  Once in a while he looked up and was caught by the motion of her lips, moving over her teeth as she spoke, the corners narrow and smiling, the middle getting full and round over her little overbite as she formed words.  He would have no idea what she was saying then and had to look away.  Her green eyes were too much for more than a glance, even in the dim restaurant, even as she looked down or away from him.
     Outside in the westering sun, her hair was so red that it hurt his eyes.  And it brought all the pain into focus because being close to her and not touching her made his whole body and brain hurt so badly he could hardly stand it, and then with the orange and gold and brown and red of her hair he absolutely could not stand it so he put his arm around her shoulder and they walked slowly and close.  This was better.  The slight pressure gave only slight relief, just enough to make it bearable, and they walked up the hill toward her house.
     "Do you want to see where I went to grade school?" she asked.
     He did, so they cut back a block to Grove Avenue School, deserted except for a few kids on the south playground.
     "Kindergarten is down at that end," she said, "and fifth grade is up here."
     She led him around the north end and they looked into the fourth and fifth grade rooms with the cursive alphabets above the blackboards and Halloween pumpkins already in the windows.  At the northwest corner they ducked into a doorway.
     In the sudden dimness Dean felt Syd spin away from his side and face him, placing one hand on each of his shoulders.  Her face turned up towards his, drawing him down, the hurt getting unbearable again as their lips touched and they clasped together, holding on hard.
     Then a janitor rapped on the diamond-wire safety glass, and they went running into the sun across the playground.
     They sat on the swings and she took off her shoes and socks.
     "These are killing me," she said, dropping them in the sand and pointing her toes as she leaned back in the swing.  "I've got to get home."
     "We should have called."
     "You can call from my house."
     Since there were no more sidewalks, they walked on the roadside, holding hands, Dean on the gravelly margin, barefoot Syd on the grassy edges of lawn, gingerly stepping when they came to cross-streets, until Dean picked her up and carried her, laughing, to the next soft grass.
     At Syd's house he called home, asking his mom to pick him up at the Casket, and he walked back to town fast, breaking into a jog, hoping to do the mile and a half before she could make the drive from North Barrington.
     As soon as he got home, he called Syd.
     "Sydney," he said, and she said, "Dean."
     "Hi."
     "Hi."
     Something about the way she said his name and the way they said hi told him that he didn't need to worry, that she didn't make out with every boy who walked her home.  He knew he could ask her what had been on his mind since about halfway between the Breadbasket and her house, but still he was terrified. 
     "Has this ever happened to you before?" he asked.
     "No."
     "Me neither.  I'm sort of freaking out."
     "Me too," she said.
     "I have to see you.  Before school.  I mean before tomorrow.  I mean . . .  I want to see you tonight."
     Too much, he thought, too much too fast, but she said, "Me too."
     "Can you drive?"
     "Yeah," she said.  "What am I going to say?  Where am I going?"
     "To my house to pick me up so we can go someplace and ravish each other." 
     Too much again, he thought, but she laughed and said, "No—where am I saying we're going?"
     "Library," he said.
    
 
Currently listening:
Surrealistic Pillow
By Jefferson Airplane
Release date: 2003-08-19
12:04 PM 
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Thursday, November 20, 2008 

Category: Writing and Poetry
Hey, since some of you wanted more of the new novel, here it is. 

Read the previous entry first, of course.  Since we start here with chapter 3.

It's just about ready for my agent to send around to editors.  So, sadly, I can't promise you a date or even that it will be published at all, but I'm thinking positively! 

I love comments, btw! 



      3
      
      After a couple of weeks, Hope got used her after-school routine: Dean did homework or read, waiting for her to get out of practice, and then they rode home together.  But today he and Gary were headed downtown to the Breadbasket to hang out.  
      And probably to talk about Dean's new crush.
      It's cute, she told herself, as she did her warm-ups, the way Syd looked at him while trying not to seem like she was.  Dean was so shy—Hope wasn't sure he noticed it.  Still, he was interested.  He'd started detouring on his way to gym, walking with Hope to chorus, hanging around outside the door until Syd got there.  
      And Syd was always happy to see him.  She mostly kept her eyes down as she hugged her books to her chest, but Hope could see the corners of her mouth turn up and a little extra color fill in the spaces between her freckles.
      Well, maybe Hope had her own crush.  And since she was doing a solo run today instead of Oak Knoll Road with Coach, she might see Gary and Dean on their way to the Breadbasket.  
      The moment warm-ups were over, she took off, running up Main Street, past the railroad tracks and Ron Majewki's Minute Man Service.  After a couple of blocks, under the shade of trees before the houses gave way to the Jewel Grocery, the Post Office, and the shops of downtown, Hope smelled Dean's cigarette and saw the boys walking side by side.  Gary was taller, and he bounced on the balls of his feet as he walked, his shiny dark hair rising and falling.
      Keeping on the grass so they wouldn't hear her, she ran up right beside them.  
      "Hi!" she shouted, and Gary jumped.  
       "Thanks for scaring me, jock-girl," he said.
      "You're welcome," Hope said, pivoting and stepping backward on the sidewalk in front of them.  "All in a day's work for a bullying jock."  Hope turned, ran across the street, kicking in the speed to show off.  "Enjoy your cancer sticks, freak-boys!"
      "I don't smoke," yelled Gary.  "And I refuse to be labeled by society!"
      Hope kept up the fast pace, running hard up the hill, but instead of jogging in place while she waited for traffic at Hillside, she just stopped, leaning over with her hands on her knees.
      It was fun to goof around with Gary, but the smell of smoke had made Hope a little sad, bringing back the summer when she and Dean were best friends and she didn't have to share him.  
      It was okay, though.  They were still best friends, and she couldn't expect Dean to just wait around for her every day.  
      But still Hope felt a little sad.  If only it hadn't been for that contact high kiss.
      
      * * *    
      
      "Your friend is one good-looking jockette," said Gary as Hope ran off, a vision of long, tan legs and swinging ponytail.  
      "Girls like that don't go for freaky guys like us," said Dean.
      "Society, man!  It sucks!"
      Dean laughed as they strode up the street under a few remaining old elm trees and younger maples and ashes.  
      At the Breadbasket—downtown café of Anytown, USA—they ordered a couple of pops and played the jukebox:  "White Rabbit" and "Take Me to the River" and "Let the Good Times Roll."  
      "So, if you like Syd," said Gary, "ask her out."
      "Maybe," said Dean.  "I wonder where she was today.  Maybe she's sick."  
      "I know where she lives.  We could go over there, check on her, she if she needs you to massage some Vicks Vapo-rub into her shoulders or, um, her chest, maybe."
      Dean said, "If that's the way you think, I can see why you don't have a girlfriend."
      "That's deliberate," said Gary.  "I'm trying to focus on my studies, and I can't be distracted by girls."  
      "So, that's the secret of your 2.1 GPA?"
      "2.63."
      Then the drums of "Take Me To the River" came in again—the third time Dean had played it that day—and Gary watched him space out, drifting away in the music and the smoke of his cigarette.
      Today at the Breadbasket Gary felt like they were real friends.  It was the first time they took it out of school, and Gary felt glad, somehow chosen to be Dean's friend—Dean who seemed to hold most people in disdain.  Dean reminded him of Darry from The Outsiders.  Though he wasn't huge like Darry, he was built like an athlete, and as Darry could have been a soc, Dean could have been a jock.  But Darry was a greaser because of his brothers and his lack of money—because of "society"—while Dean was freaky because he had a mind of his own.
      More than Gary did.  Though Gary liked some new music, he was totally prejudiced against punk and new wave until Dean got him to listen to it.
      Dean loved Sixties music almost as much as Gary—who admitted that he was ten years behind the times—but he made Gary appreciate The Talking Heads.  And who could argue with The Cars when they sang about "rock and roll hair?"  
      Gary's hippie older brothers had cut theirs by this time, and the Sixties were long gone, but Gary still admired long hair like he still listened to all the old records he could find.  The Jefferson Airplane, his pick on the jukebox, seemed sort of obvious, but Dean seemed to like the story of how he'd found the record, lost by his brother among their Dad's classical and jazz.  Gary had thought it was the coolest thing he'd ever discovered, and he used to say the name over and over again, Surrealistic Pillow, Surrealistic Pillow, staring at Grace Slick's perfect face on the album cover.  He'd found Freak Out! by The Mothers of Invention the same way, and again it was like finding an artifact from an old and powerful civilization.  No wonder people thought Gary was strange, Dean told him, when he would say to kids he didn't even know, "Who would imaaaaa-gine that they would freak-out in Kansas?" or to every Susan he ever met, "Suzie Creamcheese, what's got into you?"
      "You should ask her out," Gary said, assuming that Dean could only be daydreaming about Syd.
      "I don't want to ask her out.  I just want to get to know her."
      "Well, asking her out might be one way of getting to know her."
      There wasn't any ash on his cigarette, but Dean was rolling the cherry against the bottom of the ashtray.  
      "I have this image," he said.  "I see myself asking her out, and she gives me a look as if she'd expected something more original.  But she grins with those little corners of her mouth going up, and her dimple, and maybe she blushes a little—"  
      "And then she'd say something like, 'That's an interesting question,' and go fiddle with some scraps of metal as if she had business more urgent that high school dating."  
      "I couldn't see her being that cold," said Dean.  "She's not a tease."
      Gary wasn't sure.  He was a little skeptical of Syd, thinking that her mysterious shtick was just that.  
      
      * * *    
      
      After school at the Breadbasket became a tradition for Dean and Gary.  First it was playing the jukebox, talking about music, and wondering about Syd.  Next it was Dean telling the story of his altercation with Todd DeMarco.  
      When Hope tried to say that jocks weren't so bad, Dean knew she was just being Hope—she was nice to everyone, everyone was nice to her.  And it might be true, as she said, that the cheerleaders and football men were no different than any kids.  Idiots were spread out evenly among the whole population.  
      Just Dean's luck that, out of the whole population, he had to piss off a 195-pound lineman.  
      Flag football was usually a fun part of gym class because Dean had played in junior high and was pretty good.  The class was all juniors and seniors and, by some great stroke of luck, half of them were on the varsity football squad, and most of them thought they were super tough.  Todd DeMarco growled at him, actually growled at him across the line, but Dean saw the running back take off and was quick enough to be right on him.  Then the pass was sailing over, and Dean grabbed it almost out of the receiver's hands.  
      Taking off up field, he had blockers in the center, and DeMarco was the only person near the big hole along the sideline.  Dean ran straight for him, then cut around his outstretched arms and ran like hell, leaving everyone behind and spiking the ball in the end zone.
      Coach pulled him aside as he bent with his hands on his knees, gasping and thinking how he should cut down on the smoke.  Coach said he was a natural.  It was late, but he was new, and if he came out he could get in enough practices to play part of the season.  
      "No thanks, Coach," he said.
      "We could sure use you.  With that speed, you put on some weight, kick the cancer sticks—yeah, I seen you in the lounge, dipshit—you never know."
      "I appreciate the offer, coach."  
      In the locker room, DeMarco wanted to know what the coach had said.
      "Just wanted to tell me it was a nice run," he said.
      "He wants you on the team," said DeMarco.
      "Not me," said Dean.
      Then DeMarco started giving him shit.
      "The new boy is too good for our team," he said.  "Or too much of a pussy.  I'd like to take him on in real scrimmage and see what kind of fancy running he can do after one good hit."
      Another kid joined in, "Maybe it's that long hair.  Pretty boy don't want to cut it."
      "Yeah, he's pretty all right," said DeMarco.  "Fuckin' freak."
      "Get over it, DeMarco," said the receiver whose pass Dean had stolen.  "Maybe the coach didn't ask him."
      "Shut your fucking face, Oestry," said DeMarco.
      "At least I don't talk out my ass, douche-bag."
      "Hey, kid!"  DeMarco turned back to Dean, who was pulling on his jeans, facing away and ignoring for all he was worth.
      "Hey, new kid," DeMarco said and, wearing only tube socks and a jockstrap, shoved his way between the lockers and the bench until he was opposite Dean.  
      And did he really say, "I'm talking to you"?  Could it really have been that stupid a line?  
      But when DeMarco grabbed his hair, Dean spun around, put both hands around DeMarco's bristly head, pulled down hard, and felt the little button of cartilage that was DeMarco's nose squash against his knee, which happened to jerk up in the way of DeMarco's descending face.  
      Blood gushed and DeMarco howled and then coach was between them, bellowing, "Break it up!"  He grabbed a towel, pushed it against DeMarco's face, and pulled him towards the PE office.  
      "I'b gudda kill ib!" shouted DeMarco.  "I'b gudda kill ib, Coach!"
      Another gym teacher escorted Dean to the office where the assistant principal chewed him out to holy hell, called his mom, and sent him home.
      He'd told Hope all about it on the phone—he was grounded—but didn't tell Gary until they went to the Casket, as he'd started calling their hang-out, when he got back from his suspension.  
      "Personally," said Gary, "I'm a lover, not a fighter."  He paused and cocked his brow.  "But I would love to smash that guy's nose."  
      "Yeah, well it wasn't really such great experience."
      "If, that is," said Gary, "I could escape vengeance."
      "This isn't really helping."
      "Live by the sword—"
      "You think I wanted to bust his face?"
      "No, I—"
      "Because I really didn't.  I haven't been in a fight since fourth grade.  But this was fucking scary.  I was being cool, not paying any attention to him.  Then he yanked my hair and . . ."
      Dean lit another cigarette and exhaled.
      "I don't know what happened," he said in a cloud of smoke.  "But one second later—one second later, he was bleeding."  
      He took another big hit from his cigarette and blew the smoke up into the space above their heads.
      "Hey, let me try one of those," said Gary.
      "You don't smoke."
      "Yeah, but you make it look so cool, I'm not sure I can live without it.  Gimme one."
      Dean gave him one and Gary lit it and sort of played with it, puffing, trying smoke rings, testing out different types of holds: between his first two fingers, between his thumb and pointer, acting cool, or debonair, or effeminate.
      "So here's the deal," said Gary, crushing his smoke for emphasis.  "If DeMarco pummels you during the season, he's gonna miss at least one game.  So he'll wait 'til football's over.  And considering his lack of brain capacity, he'll probably forget by then."
      "That," Dean said, "is slightly more encouraging."  
      "That's what I do, though brave-hearted knight!  I give thee courage!"
      "Take a flying fuck at a rolling donut," Dean said.
      "Is that Vonnegut?  Slaughter House 5 maybe?"
      "The new one, Slapstick."
      "Well," Gary said, "Look out for DeMarco.  You might still get the shtick slapped out of you."
      "Take a flying fuck at the moon!"
            "And so it goes."
      
      
      
      
      
      4
      
      At first, Syd thought Dean might be going out with Hope.  She clearly wasn't with Gary, and the three of them were together all the time.  So in chorus Syd mentioned how she was in jewelry with Hope's friend Gary and her "boyfriend" Dean.  
      "I know," Hope said.  "But it's best friend—not boyfriend."
      Even so, Syd thought Hope seemed a little proprietary when she talked about Dean, how he'd moved onto her street over the summer, how they'd hit it off right away, they spent almost every day together—she even got him a job.  But then she asked if Syd didn't live in Gary's neighborhood.
      "Across the lake," Syd said.
      "What's he like?"
      Hope changed instantly when they started talking about Gary.  Her dark eyes seemed to get larger, and then she looked quickly away after she asked, "What's he like?" and Syd saw that it was Gary—Hope was interested in Gary.  
      "I don't really know," Syd said.  "We've been in school together since kindergarten but never been friends.  He was kind of an annoying kid, but he seems cool now.  You know how boys are sort of these weird little things, and then all of a sudden it's like, hmmm . . .  is this the same kid that jumped on my coat in second grade and cried when the teacher pointed out that he had stepped in dog shit, and he was insisting it wasn't him until she pointed out that, not only was it all over Sydney's coat, but all over his shoe as well?"  
      "I just noticed him, too," Hope said.  
      She didn't sound jealous, but Syd said, "I didn't notice notice him—it's just that we've been in school together forever."
      Hope laughed.  "I guess I notice noticed him," she said, and Syd laughed, too.
      Syd had never noticed Hope either, and she was surprised that someone so jocky-looking was friendly.  She was so tall and brown and skinny and natural looking.  Like a Cover-girl model or something.  Not that Hope looked mean, but Syd had never been friends with the North Barrington or Barrington Hills types.
      
      * * *    
      
      When Syd told Gary that Hope "liked" him, he said, stupidly, "I like her too," and rambled about how he was surprised at how cool she but not about how good looking she was, which made this news pretty unbelievable.
      "What about her and Dean?" said Syd.
      "Best friends, they say."
      "Anyway, it's you she's taken a shine to."
      "She said that?"
      Syd rolled her eyes and went back to her corner table.
      
      In the caf, it didn't seem like Hope was paying any special attention to him, but Gary was scared to look at her and could hardly talk.  He kept wondering what kind of date to ask her on.  Something typical like a movie?  Or something unconventional like a canoe trip across the lake?  
      He thought about it all afternoon, deciding he would ask her out eighth period in the library.  She was always there, and since he had eighth off, too, he'd started sitting at her table instead of heading home.   
      Today, as usual, Hope paid a lot more attention to her English and chemistry than she did him.  Was Syd wrong about it?  And why did he suddenly care so much about getting shot down when just hours ago he hadn't even thought about asking her out?  Eventually, he couldn't stand it anymore, and he slid a note over to her side of the table:
      Hope,
      Sorry to distract you from your studies, but
      would you picnic with me in North Park tomorrow?
      Hopefully,
      Gary
      
      She barely turned her head to look at it, then her perfect teeth showed in a smile, her dark eyes turned up to his for just a second, then went back to the paper as she wrote in rounded, neat-girl printing, Yes.  (I work at 4)  
      He wrote, Pick you up 11:30?
      She circled the "Yes."
      I'll bring the vittles.
      I'll bring drinks, she wrote, and added a smiley face.
      
      * * *    
      
      Hope had a great race on Friday, 3rd place and a personal best, riding high on her excitement about tomorrow's date.  When she got home, she called Dean to find out why Gary, who hadn't seemed to notice her at all, suddenly asked her out.  Could it be that he was trying to fix her up, so that then he could feel free to go for it with Syd?  
      "He finally got a clue, I guess," Dean said.
      "You mean you told him?"
      "I didn't say I gave him a clue.  But he did ask me about you."
      "What did you say?"
      "He wanted," Dean said, "to know if he had a chance with you."
      "What did you say?"  
      "I told him to go for it."
      So, at least Dean hadn't put him up to it.  Maybe Syd?
      Anyway, something about Gary had been growing on Hope as they'd been spending their free periods together.  She first noticed him 3rd period when they hung out in the caf with Dean.  Part of what she like was the way he and Dean hit it off, talking about music and Vonnegut books, getting into their ironic rants about "society" and the tyranny of school.  
      But 8th period was when she notice noticed him.  That's when he showed his quiet, sweet side.  He didn't seem to get much of his own work done, usually he just read, and they talked a little.  But mostly he let her get her stuff done, and one day when he went home early, she realized how much she looked forward to sitting across from him.  She missed him, missed glancing up from her work, caught by the motion of Gary pushing his hair back, his blue eyes looking so intense as they moved across his book.
      
      For the picnic, which was a really cute idea for a first date, she made lemonade, with slices of lemon floating in it.  She was waiting when he pulled up in a giant, wood-paneled station wagon.  He was mysterious about the food until he turned into the Chinese take-out on 14 and picked up their order.
      He carried the cooler and the big basket he'd brought, packed with Mexican blankets, plates, and smooth, lacquered chopsticks.  They spread out under a tree near the duck pond and sat cross-legged while he opened the Chinese food and she poured lemonades and set them in the recessed lid of the cooler.
      "An egg roll," he said, "must be properly condimented."
      "Okay."
      "First, take a small bite to open it up."  
      She watched him demonstrate, then nibbled the top of her egg roll.  The wrapper was just starting to go soggy, and the papery layers released the fragrant heat within.
      "Now," he said, producing a bottle of soy sauce and taking her roll.  "This is the real deal.  That caramel colored crap in the packets isn't worth a damn.  You pour in some soy, dab on a little sweet and sour and all the hot mustard you dare."  
      He passed it to her, holding the plate underneath to catch the dripping soy.
      He watched as she bit into it.  
      First the sweet and salty filled her mouth, then the mustard rose up into her sinuses and almost choked her, and finally a wave of warmth melded everything together.
      "What do you think?"
      "Mmm," she said.  "I didn't know an egg roll could taste like that."
      "It's the mustard—it's everything, but mostly the mustard.  It's like a drug."
      He doctored his own egg roll and took a bite, gasping from the mustard and washing it down with lemonade.
      "Ahhh!" he said.  "Your lemonade is sublime."
      "Thank you."
      He piled rice onto their plates and served them egg foo young and chicken with snow peas.  They ate until they were stuffed, then they lay back and looked at the branches of the trees spreading above them.  
      
      * * *    
      
      Gary was nervous on his picnic date with Hope, wondering if she'd think he was weird as he played the gourmet with his Japanese shoyu and hot mustard.  But it was good—great even—because after they ate and talked and strolled around the duck ponds, and after he took her home to get ready for work, they kissed goodbye.  
      A good afternoon kiss.  
      He couldn't believe his luck.
      Later, after work, she called him, and they talked until late, lazily continuing the conversation, going over childhood, music, family, her sports successes and his failures.  Through it all, he felt a wonderful sensation rising up—having someone who wanted him, who wanted nothing more than to while away the hours on the phone until their necks ached and their ears were warm and red and they suddenly noticed they had to change ears.  The smooth plastic became hot as the coiled chord transferred their words along the wires swooping down the roadsides between their houses.  Wanting and eager listening came through the phone, the desire to tell everything and hear everything, all the words, the breath and the voices as they each lay in their own beds, whispering into each other's pillows.
      
      
      
 I should thank some people who read drafts of this thing and helped me out:

Taylor, Bill, Meredith, Walter, Rachel, Devin, and Emily.  And Erica.    
      
      

Currently listening:
Freak Out!
By Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention
Release date: 1995-05-02
2:59 PM 
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Thursday, November 13, 2008 

Category: Writing and Poetry
Here are the first couple of chapters of my next book. I'm in the process of making some edits, but my agent (the fabulous Gary Heidt of Signature Literary Agency, NYC) loves it and is working on finding a home for it in the world of publishing.
Enjoy! And comment hell out of it.
(sorry about the small font, I can't get the larger size to work. Maybe you can enlarge it with your browser--try pulling down the view menu and increasing text size. )

CONTACT HIGH

by

Brian Mandabach


If you didn't care
what happened to me,
and I didn't care
for you—
We would zigzag our way
through the boredom and pain,
occasionally glancing up through the rain . . .

—Pink Floyd, "Pigs on the Wing"

PART ONE:
CONTACT HIGH


July-October
of a year in the late 1970s
in northwest suburban Chicagoland


1

Hope and Dean were best friends that summer, lazing in the sun by her pool, lying around in the basement listening to records, and walking in the evenings trailing a cloud of his smoke. The timing was just right. Dean moved in two drives down on the cul-de-sac that was really just a gravel loop at the end of the road, and though Hope had friends, there was a space in her life, right next to her, waiting to be filled.
When Hope and her mom and dad made their welcome visit and invited the new neighbors to the Fourth of July party, Dean was a little shy. Hope felt awkward, too, because when the new boy is just your age—17, about to start junior year—and cute, there's a little tension.
At the party, Dean and his sister lagged behind their parents, him stuffed into an alligator shirt and Dana in short cut-offs and a halter made of bandanas, college aged and clearly out of her parents' control. Dana cut out early, and Hope and Dean were left alone in a crowd of little kids racing around and adults focused on what Dean called "milling and swilling," the conversations and the laughter growing louder as the contents of the liquor bottles emptied.
Hope was afraid things would be awkward again, so she asked him a lot of questions about moving, Ohio, his old school. Soon they were really talking.
"This is absolutely the same," he said, shaking his mess of brown hair at the scene. "You've lived here all your life, so you probably think that other places would be different."
"What about accents?" she said.
"The only things different are superficial," Dean said. He was so intense, so assured. "And even where they tawk funny, on Long Island and down south, everybody's the same, and we end up in the same clone neighborhoods with the same clone people."
She was afraid he meant her, too, but he said, "I mean, not you . . ."
She smiled and said, "That's okay. I'm pretty much your average, normal, teenage clone."
"No, you're not, or I wouldn't have said that." Again, he spoke with such conviction.
"I get good grades," Hope said. "I wear nice clothes, play some sports, do what I'm supposed to do—"
"Yeah, but that's not what I'm talking about," he said. "Maybe because we move so much, all I see is the surface, it makes me as shallow, too. But still, I could tell I'd be able to talk to you."
"Me too," she said, and then she didn't know what to say next. All she'd meant was she knew they'd be able to talk—no big deal. And now they couldn't.
But maybe being able to talk was a big deal. How often do you meet someone and feel, immediately, that you'll be able to communicate?
They were sitting on steps outside the screened in porch. She looked down at her feet in her wooden-soled sandals, pointing her toes down at the pool.
"Want to go swimming?" she asked.
He winced and said, "Maybe a walk?"
"Sure. There's a path behind the house and down to the nature preserve."
"Perfect. Can we get there from my house? I need something."
He left her in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs as he ran up, then came down in a Led Zeppelin t-shirt.
Much better, Hope thought. Dean was clearly not a Polo/Lacoste guy. And it wasn't just his long, brown, wavy hair—it was more the disdain he carried. Or was it discomfort? Anyway, he was more relaxed now.
When they reached the trail he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one.
"I'd offer, but I don't think you want to damage your lungs."
"Not really."
The trail led them down and away through thickets of chokecherry with wild grapevines roped among the slender trunks, and the sounds of the party faded, though fireworks still cracked in the distance around them. When they reached the marsh, its shallow pools choked with tall cattails, the trail led them in a circle around it. Insects were singing here, and it smelled of mud and decay. The cattails were bright green in the lowering sun, their green-brown staffs rising heavily above.

By the time August rolled around, Hope and Dean were together all the time. They'd connected as friends, and Hope thought they'd stopped worrying about the other thing, stopped wondering if their being thrown together was some kind of romantic opportunity. But one night, after Hope got home from work, after they took a long walk and sat talking on a bench up the hill as he got high and smoked, something shifted.
They went for a swim and were listening to records in the basement, lying side by side. She could feel the bass in her body while her mind followed the guitar. And she had the feeling—more than that, she knew—that Dean was experiencing the same thing, the two of them riding along together, riding with the guitar, each note so long, slow, mournful, and sustained, each note following the last and leading to the next in a seemingly endless progression, lifting Hope and Dean together and taking them away until the song faded to the circular pattern of needle on record, the clicking of the tone arm lifting, and they were left with the hum of the speakers.
"Wow," she said.
"Yeah," Dean said.
Hope opened her eyes and saw Dean up on his elbow, looking at her in the glow of the receiver.
"Either that is the most amazing guitar of all time," he said, "or I am totally stoned."
"Or both. I heard it too."
Dean's eyes were very dark, their grey-green-brown lost in the black pupils and the dimness of the stereo light.
"Contact high?" he said.
"Contact high," she repeated, and then he kissed her.
She pushed her lips up against his in return, just for a moment before she pulled away, not noticing in time how soft and warm and good it felt.
When Dean opened his eyes, Hope realized that she'd never closed hers, and she felt how wide they were as Dean froze and looked away.
"Sorry," he said and sat up. "I just—"
"It's okay," she said and sat up, too.
It was nice, she liked it. She was just surprised, and—
"No. I was giving myself mixed signals—does that make sense? I'd better go."
"Okay," Hope said, but she didn't want him to. He looked so embarrassed, and she didn't know what to say.
"No," she said. "Not because you. . . I don't know why I said okay."
"Okay," he said, and they laughed. "See you tomorrow?"
"Of course. We're getting you a job at the club."
"Yeah."
"And I'll come over before."

The next day it was still weird. Dean's mom gave them lunch and kept hanging around. Finally they got out of there, and on the way to the country club where Hope worked as a hostess, they could talk.
"I can't really blame it on the weed," he said, "but that was part of it. I was in this faraway space, engulfed in the music. And I felt that you were there too—"
"I was. It was amazing. What's contact high?"
"When you're with someone who's high, and you start to feel high, too—that's a contact high. I never really believed in it."
"I do," she said. "Now I do."
After the kiss though, after he left, she wished he'd stayed. Why not? They had become so close, maybe there was something there, maybe there should be something more.
"But you're my best friend," Dean said. "This isn't going to mess us up, right?"
"No," she said, surprised that he would declare it like that, best especially when they'd only been hanging out for a few weeks.
He was driving his mom's big Buick, and Hope slid the seat way back and put her bare feet up on the dash. There was a pale mark on her shin from an old mosquito bite and a red blotch showing through her tan from a new one.
"Best friends," Hope tried it out, and smiled.
She had a whole history with Wendy, since second grade, more than half their lives of being best friends. But Wendy wasn't her best friend anymore, hadn't been a real best friend for, how long? A year? She was more like a habit, and Hope had hardly even noticed that they were growing apart until now, until she had a new best friend.
"Best friends," she said again, adding, "Not blow-off friends, not just friends, but real friends."
"Good," he said. "Just friends is the worst."
"And now," Hope said, "We're going to get my best friend a job at the country club."
He started training that night, so not only did they spend days by the pool soaking in the hot sun and listening to records in the cool of the basement, but they worked together, too. She hostessed and he bussed tables until she discovered that he was making more money and traded her pretty dresses for hideous black and white polyester.

And that was summer. As well as swimming, Hope was running every day, getting ready for cross country. But all of a sudden practice started, breaking the stride of her days. Hope's legs ached and jerked as she stretched out in bed, early, and there were no more nighttime walks with Dean because of practice: two-a-days, early mornings in the sprinkler-fresh grass and afternoons in the humidity when the fields went algae-smelling.
In years before, she'd looked forward to school. Not this time. She didn't want to be pulled away from Dean, or to share him, maybe, and now that she had a real friend she didn't want to waste her time on enforced schedules and acquaintance. But summer was over, like it or not, and school was about to begin.





2

Dean sat at a table in the back of the art room with a longhaired senior named Gary in a Wish You Were Here shirt. Jewelry was a random elective, but maybe it was going to be cool.
In the corner nearby was a redheaded girl, already working on something. Was this how she spent her free period? The teacher hadn't called her name. She looked interesting: black high-tops, short skirt, and long, wavy, very red hair piled up on top of her head.
"Her name's Syd," Gary said in a low voice, keeping his eyes on the teacher but nodding in Syd's direction.
Gary's straight black hair, dislodged from its precarious placement behind his ears, was scattered across his face. He ignored it and kept talking, "She's a senior, lives across the lake from me, but I don't really know her. Mostly freak, definitely not a jock, but neither one really."
When he told Gary he was from out of state, Gary proceeded to give the run-down on Barrington High School. People were either freaks or jocks, though most weren't really either one. Freaks ate in the student center—or freak center—and jocks ate in the caf. But some freaks and semi-freaks, or "frocks," or just misfits, ate in the dark side of the caf, which was Gary's spot. The freak center was right across the hall from the lounge, as everybody called the smoking area—a covered outdoor corner between two wings that Dean had already, joyfully, discovered.
"Jocks aren't really jocks," said Gary. "They aren't all athletes, that is. It's more like a social class."
Freaks listened to Zeppelin and Rush and Sabbath. Jocks listened to REO and who knows what else. Disco or fucking jock rock or so-called singer-songwriter Billy Joel-type shit.
Floyd was true freak music, though jocks listened to it too.
Nobody listened to real music anymore—Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors.
Jocks ruled and Freaks sucked.
"Or vice verse," Gary said, shaking the hair off his face, and grinning as if it were a joke that only Dean would get.

***

As he'd lectured Dean about his new hometown, Gary hadn't realized Dean had been hanging around with a local girl for two months. So he felt a little silly when, after a stop at the smoking lounge, they went to lunch and Hope was there waiting. Even though he'd been talking too much already, this made Gary talk even more, and made him self conscious about the way his hair kept falling over his face. He'd grown it out over the summer and started parting it in the middle, but he wasn't used to it.
Summer had been kind of lonely. On his youth group trip in June, he'd finally gotten the nerve to make a move on Cindy, a sophomore that he'd had a crush on, but she only liked him "as a friend." And though Mitch—his best friend who lived up the block—had nursed him through the humiliation on the rest of the trip, when they got home the two of them didn't hang out much. Mitch was busy with his baseball friends and other assorted jocks and wasn't around for canoeing on the lake or the other stuff they'd done when they were younger.
So it was cool to meet Dean on the first day of school. It wasn't only that Dean was from someplace else and seemed different and older than a typical Barrington kid or that he wasn't like the freaks or the jocks. Gary just liked him right away and wanted Dean for his new friend, which made him a little embarrassed and worried that he'd be rejected again.
At first he thought Hope was Dean's girlfriend. He was sure he'd seen Hope around but had never noticed her. At first glance, with her neat clothes, fresh face, sun-bleached brown hair pulled over the top with a partial ponytail and hanging long on the sides and back, she looked the perfect jock, or maybe the perfect good girl.
She was different, though. First of all because she was friends with Dean, who was decidedly freaky. Clean looking, but freaky. Hope didn't seem like the kind of girl who would get friendly with the kind of guy who had to hit the lounge on his open hour.
Kind of girl, kind of guy, Gary thought. So am I the kind who labels everybody and puts them away on a shelf where they no longer need to be considered?
Apparently so.
But Dean and Hope were the real thing. Real people, not just plastic shells robotically activated. Close up, he could see that Hope was no typical jock, no phony baloney. The blush on her checks was real, not makeup, and she had to be some sort of misfit to be sitting with them in the dark side of the caf.

***

On the first day of school, Syd watched the two boys in the jewelry studio where she had independent study. Gary was a piece of work, talking quietly with his nose sticking out of his new long hair, as if he thought she didn't know they were discussing her. He'd been such a strange little kid, always doing goofy things to get the teacher's attention, and he seemed to peak in his annoyingness about seventh grade.
Gary got tall and sort of cute freshman year, his blue eyes intense in his new, grown-up face with its pointy nose and adorable, full lower lip. He seemed to mellow out a little, too—at least he stopped doing Monty Python silly walks in the hall, which was good because his normal walk was silly enough. She'd seen him walking to school, cruising on his long legs, rising up with every step, and swinging his arms like he hadn't gotten used to being six feet tall.
But the one that interested Syd was the new guy. All broad shoulders and wild brown hair, he was not only gorgeous but somehow looked like a serious person, like he was more mature than the rest of the boys.
She said hi to him later that week, pretending that she needed some of the copper wire he was rummaging through.
"Can't find what you need?" she asked.
"Silver wire," he said.
"Back here," she said. "Too expensive to keep in the drawers, but Mr. D. lets me get it."
"Are you the student assistant?"
"No, I'm Syd," she said, affecting a brisk manner and extending her hand.
"Dean," he said.
His hand was cool and dry, which made her won feel hot and moist against it. She was trying to be sassy, but she had to break eye contact because some kind of rush had come through her hand or her eyes or had maybe just jumped from him to her.
She'd planned on asking him what he was making and helping him, but her heart started hammering and a flush blasted across her skin and she had to flee.
Opening the silver drawer, she said, "Measure and cut and show it to Mr. D." And she raced back to her table in the corner.


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Thursday, November 13, 2008 

Category: Writing and Poetry

So here is a re-posting of the first section of the novel.  I think there might be some changes since I uploaded this.  Here's a link to the original posting with lots of love in the comments. origianal posting with comments Leave some yourself, and I'll love you right back.  Oh, and pick it up!  the whole book.  It's available, but you might have to ask.  xoxoxo


OR NOT 


by

Brian Mandabach

           

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone. . . .

                                                                   —Edgar Allen Poe

JOURNAL I

20 August 2002

In my attic room, the heat surrounds me even as my fan blows in the cool evening air.  I'm holding a small hunk of granite, shot with milky quartz, and I place it next to a dried Amanita, deep cherry, and a northern goshawk feather, smooth and barred with gray.  These are my tokens of the mountains, my antidotes against toxicity, my quiet space amid layers of noise.

And this is my new "Sketch Diary"—seventy plain sheets of acid-free paper bound with a wire.  It is to be my canvas, my confidant, my Big-Chief tablet.  It is my testimony, my not going out with a climbing rope and swinging from a tall pine tree.  It is my not ending my beginning.

I've had the journal for ten days—a gift from a friend I miss too much to tell about—but I haven't written until now.  I have only looked at the drawings of the two of us in the front, and re-read her admonition to write.  And now, I have begun.

At dinner tonight, Mom and Dad wanted to know all about my first day of school.  So I told them it was brutal—moronic kids, teachers offering, what?  Rules and procedures?  Couldn't I just go back to the cabin and live by myself?

            "How about the walk, Cassie?" said Dad.  "Did you have a nice walk to school and back home?"

            My father is very smart, and he likes to talk. 

            "The walks were okay."  

            I wanted to add "hot and smoggy and noisy," but I was getting tired of complaining.  And since I suppose that's what journals are for, among other things—complaining—here's my portrait of day one, grade eight:     

            Everybody's early, thronging around under the big blue spruces and the Chinese elms on the over-watered but still splotchy grass.  Eighth-graders are swollen.  Many of the boys are suddenly as tall as I am.  Girls show off of their summer swellings with their fresh, tight Abercrumby t-shirts and low-rise jeans.  For two long years we have waited to rule the school, looking up to the tall, the bosomy, the rude.  They were our inspiration, our role models—and now, we'll become them.

            Classes are the first-day same as ever.  In our seats well ahead of the almighty bell, everybody listens to the teachers, which is a shame because they all say exactly the same thing.

The one difference this year lies in our new responsibilities.  First, we must conduct ourselves like good role models.  Surely we remember how we looked up to our older peers.  So we must rise to this occasion.  And we will, usually by setting the standard of rudeness and cruelty.  The second responsibility is preparing for high school.  High school will be different.  High school will be hard.  High school is practically the real world, and it will be a lot easier for us to "slip through the cracks." 

            Several kids perk up at this—they like the idea of unnoticed failure and wish it could begin right now.  But they don't like the next part about having to earn credits by actually passing classes. 

            So, with this small difference, it's the same as it ever was.  Kids fresh and clean and listening to their teachers' rules and suggestions for success.  Kids optimistic about having a good year.  Kids having high hopes about friends and grades and girlfriends and boyfriends and sports.  Don't they know that everything will be the same?

            The smart kids will stay smart.  The dummies will goof off.  And the popular people will chirp in their little flocks, have their little pecking parties, and then run crying to the counselor.

            The school year spreads before me like an endless pool of thick, green Jell-O, though which I am going to have to swim. 

I should try to sleep.

           

Sleep and try don't work together, as I should know.  I'm going to put on a record—headphones so I don't wake anyone up—and tell how I got into records.

One May Saturday, just before the end of fourth grade, we stopped at a garage sale.  My brother Sean had seen a bundle of fishing poles sticking up out of a barrel with baseball bats and hockey sticks, and he and Dad are always on the lookout for old fly rods. 

This time they didn't see anything good, but just as we were about to leave, a few crates of records and a turntable caught my eye. 

"Bet you've never heard an LP record, young lady," said the man.

"Oh, I allow as she has," said my dad, who has a few favorite records and a turntable on top of the CD player.  "But she is a child of the digital age."

For some reason, I didn't like that "child of the digital age," and I didn't think it was true.  I liked the look and feel of Dad's old records, and the sound of them too, so for fifty dollars—a good chunk of my life savings—I bought the record player, two big old speakers, and all the records. 

21 August 2002

            Homework finished: math and a language worksheet.  I read ahead in the history book, American history this year, which is cool, though the teacher is a flag-waver with a whole "Proud to be an American" wall.  I consider myself patriotic, but I doubt he would.  And why should I be proud just because I happened to be born in the USA?

            But I am a privileged American child with a super-cool room.  I have the third floor attic and even my own bathroom.  The walls have a steep slope and there are lots of cool angles.  Two windows and a skylight give me light and air, but in the summer the heat builds up 'til it's sweltering.  A big fan in my north window makes it just bearable, and I can always go out onto my little iron-railed balcony outside the east window.  That's my favorite feature, with just enough room for me to lie down and a view of the giant spruce trees that screen me from the old mansion accross the alley. 

 

            I must have dozed off there, because a moment ago I woke up all freaked out by Mom kissing my head.  Why is it that when you get to a certain age your mother's kisses are like needles sticking in your spine?

"I just came up to wake you for dinner, sweetie.  Fifteen minutes," she said. 

Are you sure it wasn't to prick my flesh with stingy nettles?

            "Okay, Mom, sorry.  Can you leave me alone now?"  Trying hard to be nice, I still sounded like a brat. 

She creaked across the floor and down the stairs.  This house is one hundred and ten years old and sounds like it's auditioning for a role in a ghost story.  I love it though—it's old and wooden and real, with high ceilings and old windowpanes that give the view a slight distortion.  Mom says it's like her vintage cello, the wood supple and mellow and resonant with age. 

Even though our family seems small since Sean went off to school last year, we still have a family dinner unless Dad is in trial or Mom is in rehearsals with the symphony.  I have to give my parents credit for not bugging me too much, but I don't like being the only child.  Too much pressure.

Tonight I said school was fine—using the old monosyllabic teen routine.  It killed me when Sean went through that—I was just a little kid when he started acting freaky.  Dad called him Mr. Monosyllable and challenged Sean to actually pronounce it himself.  According to Dad, it meant that Sean wanted to be alone and was as good as alone even when he was in the same room.  Dad would say this right in front of him, which, of course, made him sulk off.

So I said my day was okay, school was fine, homework was easy and done, I'd slept okay.  Was I tired?  A little.  Did I want to watch a DVD with them?  Not really, I'd just go upstairs.

So here I am, listening to a scratchy Todd Rundgren record, using the cover—featuring a rainbow-haired Todd—as a surface to write on.

The summer I got the record player was the last time I was really close to my ex-friend Jenny.  I quit soccer after that season because I would rather be in the mountains than driving all over the state for tournaments.  Jenny, on the other hand, joined a more competitive league. 

Mom and I were close that summer, too, because she was driving us to practice and games, and we didn't get up to the cabin with Sean and Dad very much.

Sometimes Jenny came to the mountains with us, but she tended to get bored.  I tried to interest her in my new record collection, but she was obsessed with boy bands and had no interest in obscure classical LPs, jazz-fusion, and the endless synthesizer solos of the seventies.  She thought the Seventies were cool, of course, but not real Seventies stuff—just the TV Seventies. 

Eventually we got sick of each other, but there were some good times before that:  summer days at her country club pool, sleepovers, and early morning soccer practices.  I remember sitting out on my balcony under the stars, very late, whispering, giggling, and discovering infinity.  We could just cram the both of us out there, lying back on pillows under sleeping bags, each with the legs of the other along one side. 

"Have you seen the stars in the mountains, Jenny, how bright they are?  Just think how many we can't even see.  And past them, more, and past them, more, and past them, more . . ."

"Where do you think they end?"

"They don't."

"But that's impossible . . ."

"That's the fun part," I said.  "Trying to imagine infinity—what's beyond the beyond."

It seemed that we were the first kids to play with these thoughts, that we were onto something special and profound. 

But then Jenny decided that it made her feel small to imagine the enormity of the infinite universe.  She spoiled it by claiming that God knew the number of the stars, God had created them all, and beyond them was God, who was also within them and within us—Him and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

Jenny's mother had told her this, but what made it worse was that Jenny had asked.  These were our private thoughts, I thought, and I felt betrayed.   

"Then God is infinity," I said, trying to preserve the mystery.

"I don't think so," she said.  "I'll ask my mom."

22 August        

            Today in my reading class, we discussed an article from Natural History magazine.  Mr. Sinclair asked us to read the article, one page titled "What is a Species?"  Then, he said, we would have a different kind of discussion.  He would start us with a topic or question and let us take it from there.  This sounded interesting for a change, but I had no idea how interesting it would get, especially since the topic was so dull.  Come on—didn't he know that the seventh grade teachers had rammed main ideas down our throats and made us puke them out on about seven hundred standardized practice tests?

            Anyway, the main idea was that scientists were having a hard time defining species, and the article outlined the various definitions and the problems with each.  It wasn't easy, but I spent the summers in the mountains with my dad's collection of natural history books.  Call me a freak—I like that stuff. 

            But I wasn't about to raise my hand.

            "I don't believe in evolution," was the very first comment, courtesy of Stephanie Seabrook.

            "Okay," said Mr. Sinclair.  "Matthew."

            "I think Darwin was wrong."

            "Anyone want to respond to that?"  He was looking puzzled, maybe because his question had been about the main idea.  He matched a raised hand with a name on his seating chart.

            "Kallie."

            "I agree with Matthew."

            "Because . . ."

            "I just don't think it's possible for life to evolve.  It's not like we see life evolving now."

            "We're supposed to be discussing the main idea or ideas of the article," said Sinclair.  "And one way to get there is to ask yourself what it's about.  I'll stop talking now and turn it over to you.  What is this article about?"

            Half the kids in the room had been sticking their arms in the air, and now there wasn't one hand up. 

            "Well, I think this shows that maybe things go better when the teacher keeps out of it.  You have a lot to say, then I tell you what I want you to talk about, and you all shut up.  I still think we should start with what the article is about.  We need someone to be brave and tell us."

            He searched his chart again, to find me, shrugging off cowardice with a hand in the air.

            "Cassandra."

            "Cassie."

            "Sorry, Cassie.  What's the article about?"

            "The definition of species, not evolution."

            "Matthew."

            "I disagree with Cassie because the article quotes Darwin."

            "Christine."

            "Darwin's dead and God isn't."

            "Okay . . .  Shelly."

            "You go, girl!"  Shelly said, and she and Christine did a high five. 

Several others in the room flashed righteous smiles.

"Interesting," said Sinclair.  "Rae?"

"I thought that fossils prove that life evolved."

"Matthew."

"Then how come apes aren't evolving and becoming people today?"  And then he started making chimp noises.  "Ooo-ooh!  Ooo-oo-oo-oooh."

A bunch of other people started making ape noises and scratching themselves.  Monkey see, monkey do.  They didn't realize it, but they were doing pretty good job of proving their primate status. 

"Okay, wait a minute," said Sinclair.  "Hush, everybody.  Attention."  He waited for quiet.  "Let's let Rae respond."

"It takes millions of years."

"Christine?" 

"I just don't believe that the earth is a million years old."

"What about the fossil record, carbon dating, basic geology?"  I couldn't stand it anymore.  "Wasn't that you I saw in science today?"

"Please don't interrupt, Cassie.  Jenny?"

"Actually, the earth is six thousand years old, Cassie.  All the fossils came from the time of the great flood, and most of the animals from the Ark are still alive today."

"Like dinosaurs, right?  How the heck did Noah get those guys on his boat?  Must've been a big boat.  I would have loved to see ol' T-rex chompin' down the breeding stock."

"What about Dragons, Cassie?  They were sighted at least until the Middle Ages."

"Okay, hold on a minute girls—"

"Dragons?  We're talking about dragons?"

"Cassie—"

"Holy mother of the living God you guys are a bunch of—"

 "Cassie!  Class!"  Sinclair tried to gain control, but I couldn't shut up.

"—freakin' morons.  I cannot believe we are talking about dragons and that the earth is only six thousand years old." 

"Cassie, you can take a time-out in the hall."

"Dragons?"

"Out!"

"Okay, okay—I'm sorry—I'm going."

So I got to stand around in the hall like your average dummy.  Beautiful.

Eventually, the bell rang.  Rae was the first one out the door and she passed me by without looking at me.  And do you suppose my other classmates were warm and jovial?

             Done with my homework now, and I don't feel like writing.  If I were up at the cabin, I would hike up to the rocks to watch the sunset, but the thought occurs, what's to stop me from walking now?

            What's to stop me?  Parents.  It's their job.  But mine is to argue, so it worked out okay.

            "I'm going for a walk, Mom," I said, walking past her door.  "Be back soon."

            "No, sweetie, it's getting dark." 

            "It's twilight, I'll be back before dark."

            "No way," said Dad, from the bottom of the stairs.

            "Da-ad." I hated the sound of my whiney voice.

            "No-o."  His mocking really helped.

            "I'll come with you," said Mom

Please, no, I thought. 

"Unless you want to be alone," she added.

            "Of course she wants to be alone," said Dad.  "But she should be alone indoors."

            "Oh, that's healthy advice," I said.

            "It's safe."

            "Let's let her go for a short one, Gale."  Unexpected help from the maternal quarter.

            "Deb . . . Cassie . . ." 

The problem is that Dad, as if being a dad wasn't enough to make him worry, is a public defender.  I guess it would be the same for any criminal lawyer, but with the high PD caseload and twenty years in the system, he's defended more than a few people accused of doing very ugly things.  So, he has a hard time letting me out in the big, bad world—too many crime-scene photos.

            I knew this was what he was thinking about, and I started getting nervous and scared myself.  But I still wanted to go—even more, maybe.

"Just a short one, Gale.  It isn't dark yet, and we don't want her feeling like a prisoner."

            "Take my cell phone," Dad said to me.  "Be aware of your surroundings.  Don't talk to anyone or look at anyone you don't know.  And be back in twenty minutes."

            I ran down the stairs, took the phone, and reached up to kiss his cheek.  He put both arms around me and hugged me hard. 

            And I made for the door.

Unlike every other kid in the American universe, I have never bugged my parents to buy me a cell phone.  So I didn't instantly fire off a three-way call to my two best friends to gossip about the next best two.  (Who would these friends be, anyway?)  When it comes to consumer electronics, I'm not interested.  I prefer real life to mLife or any other campaign for "digital enhancement of emotional life significance."  That's actually what they called it—I Googled it once, mLife, though I'm not sure I understand it any better than I did before. 

Do people really think they're more alive if they are digitally connected to everything?  And what are you really connected to if you're virtually connected to everything?

            Cassie Sullivan, asking those tough questions—so you don't have to.

            By the time I got out the door, I forgot why I wanted to be out so bad.  Was I upset about the incident at school, or was I just about to jump out of my own skin because I couldn't stand being in here anymore? 

            Asking those tough questions.

Ten minutes away, in Valley Park, there's a good hill for catching the sunset, so I made for that.  It looks out on a greenway along the creek, which has been converted from a wandering stream along the seam of the mountains and the prairie into a riprap and concrete-walled ditch that drains our acres and acres of pavement.  Red gravel jogging and bike trails thread along the creek and split off along the edges of ball-fields, woods, and playgrounds.  And past that are more of the semi-real neighborhoods, where people live their semi-real existences, and then the mountains rise—mine-ridden, road-scarred, over-recreated, but still grand—to a horizon where the peach sky glows with sunlit smog.  Beautiful.

Up there on the other side of the Peak is our family's own little piece of ground with our cabin and my tipi.  This summer—last summer, I guess—Sean and I would have been up on the rocks, bathing in the last rays as the sun hung above the glacier-white of the Collegiate Peaks.  We sit for a while.  The sun sets.  We talk a little, then slowly walk back in the dark, leaving our flashlights off, as it grows darker and darker, cooler and cooler, and bats skim the beaver pond to make ripples that shimmer reflections of the suspended stars.

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Wednesday, November 12, 2008 

Category: Writing and Poetry

I've changed the date on this so it will apear at the top of my blog, at least on the list on my profile.   


Hope you like it and will look for it a the bookstore or library.  If you don't see it, ask your bookseller or librarian--that's what they're there for!!                


p.s.  I love comments and kudos!!!

 


 


OR NOT


      



by


      


       Brian Mandabach


 


a novel coming in October of 2007 from FLUX --for the new literati


      



      


       Alone


      


       From childhood's hour I have not been


       As others were; I have not seen


       As others saw; I could not bring


       My passions from a common spring.


       From the same source I have not taken


       My sorrow; I could not awaken


       My heart to joy at the same tone;


       And all I loved, I loved alone. . . .


      


                        --Edgar Allen Poe


             


 


      


            


       JOURNAL I


      


      


       20 August


       In my attic room, the heat surrounds me even as my fan blows in the cool evening air.  I'm holding a small hunk of granite, shot with milky quartz, and I place it next to a dried Amanita, deep cherry, and a northern goshawk feather, smooth and barred with gray.  These are my tokens of the mountains, my antidotes against toxicity, my quiet space amid layers of noise.


       And this is my new "Sketch Diary"--seventy plain sheets of acid-free paper bound with a wire.  It is to be my canvas, my confidant, my Big-Chief tablet.  It is my testimony, my not going out with a short rope and swinging from a tall pine tree.  It is my not ending my beginning.


       I've had the journal for ten days--a gift from a friend I miss too much to tell about--but I haven't written until now.  I have only looked at the drawings of the two of us in the front, and re-read her admonition to write.  And now, I have begun.


      


       At dinner tonight, Mom and Dad wanted to know all about my first day of school.  So I told them it was brutal--moronic kids, teachers offering, what?  Rules and procedures?  Couldn't I just go back to the cabin and live by myself?


            "How about the walk, Cassie?" said Dad.  "Did you have a nice walk to school and back home?"


            My father is very smart, and he likes to ask penetrating questions. 


            "The walks were okay," I said. 


            I wanted to add "hot and smoggy and noisy," but I was getting tired of complaining.  And since I suppose that's what journals are for, among other things--complaining--here's my portrait of day one, grade eight:    


            Everybody's early, thronging around under the big blue spruces and the Chinese elms on the over-watered but still splotchy grass.  Many of the boys are suddenly as tall as I am, and all the eighth-graders are somehow swollen.  Girls show off their summer swellings with their fresh, tight Abercrumby t-shirts and low-rise jeans.  For two long years we have waited to rule the school, looking up to the tall, the bosomy, the rude.  They were our inspiration, our role models--and now, we'll become them.


            Classes are the first-day same as ever.  In our seats well ahead of the almighty bell, everybody listens to the teachers, which is a shame because they all say exactly the same thing.


       The one difference this year lies in our new responsibilities.  First, we must conduct ourselves like good role models.  Surely, we remember how we looked up to our older peers.  So we must rise to this occasion.  And we will, usually by setting the standard of rudeness and cruelty.  The second responsibility is preparing for high school.  High school will be different.  High school will be hard.  High school is practically the real world, and it will be a lot easier for us to "slip through the cracks." 


            Several kids perk up at this--they like the idea of unnoticed failure and wish it could begin right now.  But they don't like the next part about having to earn credits by actually passing classes. 


            So, with this small difference, it's the same as it ever was.  Kids fresh and clean and listening to their teachers' rules and suggestions for success.  Kids optimistic about having a good year.  Kids having high hopes about friends and grades and girlfriends and boyfriends and sports. 


       Don't they know that everything will be the same? 


            The smart kids will stay smart.  The dummies will goof off.  And the popular people will chirp in their little flocks, have their little pecking parties, and then run crying to the counselor.


            The school year spreads before me like an endless pool of thick, green Jell-O, through which I am going to have to swim. 


       I should try to sleep.


           


       *


      


       Sleep and try don't work together, as I should know.  I'm going to put on a record--headphones so I don't keep anyone up--and tell how I got into records.


       One Saturday in May, just before the end of fourth grade, we stopped at a garage sale.  My brother Sean had seen a bundle of fishing poles sticking up out of a barrel with baseball bats and hockey sticks, and he and Dad are always on the lookout for old fly rods. 


       This time they didn't see anything good, but just as we were about to leave, a few crates of records and a turntable caught my eye. 


       "Bet you've never heard an LP record, young lady," said the man.


       "Oh, I allow as she has," said my dad, who has a few favorite records and a turntable on top of the CD player.  "But she is a child of the digital age."


       For some reason, I didn't like that "child of the digital age," and I didn't think it was true.  I liked the look and feel of Dad's old records, and the sound of them too, so for fifty dollars--a good chunk of my life savings--I bought the record player, two big old speakers, and all the records. 


      


      


       21 August


            Homework finished: math and a language worksheet.  I read ahead in the history book, American history this year, which is cool, though the teacher is a flag-waver with a whole "Proud to be an American" wall.  I consider myself patriotic, but I doubt he would.  And why should I be proud just because I happened to be born in the USA?


            But I am a privileged American child with a super-cool room.  I have the third floor attic and even my own bathroom.  The walls have a steep slope and there are lots of cool angles.  Two windows and a skylight give me light and air, but on summer days, the heat builds up 'til it's sweltering.  A big fan in my north window makes it just bearable, and I can always go out onto my little iron-railed balcony outside the east window.  There's just enough room to lie down and look at the stars, and the giant spruce trees at the end of our yard screen me from the alley and the old mansion across the way. 


        


       *


      


            I must have dozed off there, because a moment ago I woke up all freaked out by Mom kissing my head.  Why is it that when you get to a certain age your mother's kisses are like needles sticking in your spine?


       "I just came up to wake you for dinner, sweetie.  Fifteen minutes," she said. 


       Are you sure it wasn't to prick my flesh with stingy nettles?


            "Okay, Mom, sorry.  Can you leave me alone now?"  Trying hard to be nice, I still sounded like a brat. 


       She creaked across the floor and down the stairs.  Our house is one hundred and ten years old and sounds like it's auditioning for a role in a ghost story.  I love it though--it's old and wooden and real, with high ceilings and old windowpanes that give the view a slight distortion.  Mom says it's like her vintage cello, the wood supple, mellow, and resonant with age. 


       Even though our family seems small since Sean went off to college last year, we still have a family dinner unless Dad is in trial or Mom is in rehearsals with the symphony.  I have to give my parents credit for not bugging me too much, but I don't like being the only child.  Too much pressure.


       Tonight I said school was fine--using the old monosyllabic teen routine.  It killed me when Sean went through that--I was just a little kid when he started acting freaky.  Dad called him Mr. Monosyllable and challenged Sean to actually pronounce it himself.  According to Dad, it meant that Sean wanted to be alone and was as good as alone even when he was in the same room.  Dad would say this right in front of him, which, of course, made him sulk off.


       So I said my day was okay, school was fine, homework was easy and done.  Was I tired?  A little.  Did I want to watch a DVD with them?  Not really, I'd just go upstairs.


       So here I am, listening to a scratchy Todd Rundgren record, using the cover--featuring a rainbow-haired Todd--as a surface to write on. 


       The summer I got the record player was the last time I was really close to my former friend and soccer teammate Jenny.  I quit soccer after that season because I would rather be in the mountains than driving all over the state for tournaments.  Jenny, on the other hand, joined a more competitive league. 


       Mom and I were close that summer, too, because she drove us to practice and games, and we didn't get up to the cabin with Sean and Dad very much.


       Sometimes Jenny came to the mountains with us, but she tended to get bored.  And at home, I tried to interest her in my new record collection, but she was obsessed with boy bands and had no interest in obscure classical LPs, jazz-fusion, and the endless synthesizer solos of the seventies.  She thought the Seventies were cool, of course, but not real Seventies stuff--just the TV Seventies. 


       So maybe the end was already in sight, but we still had some good times:  summer days at her country club pool, sleepovers, and early morning practices.  I remember how we'd sit on my balcony under the stars until way past midnight, whispering, giggling, and discovering infinity.  We could just cram the both of us out there, lying back on pillows under sleeping bags, each with the legs of the other along one side. 


       "Have you seen the stars in the mountains, Jenny, how bright they are?  Just think how many we can't even see.  And past them, more, and past them, more, and past them, more . . ."


       "Where do you think they end?"


       "They don't."


       "But that's impossible . . ."


       "That's the fun part," I said.  "Trying to imagine infinity--what's beyond the beyond."


       It seemed that we were the first kids to play with these thoughts, that we were onto something special and profound. 


       But then Jenny decided that it made her feel small to imagine the enormity of the infinite universe.  She spoiled it by claiming that God knew the number of the stars, God had created them all, and beyond them was God, who was also within them and within us--Him and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 


       Jenny's mother had told her this, but what made it worse was that Jenny had asked.  To me, these were our private thoughts, and I felt betrayed.   


       "Then God is infinity," I said, trying to preserve the mystery.


       "I don't think so," she said.  "I'll ask my mom."


      


      


       22 August 


            Today was wonderful--the first and hopefully the last time I open my big mouth in a class "discussion."  Dad says I "don't suffer fools gladly," but suffering them silently is a lot easier than trying to reason with them.  Especially since I seem to have only two modes: mute and rant. 


       Here's what happened:  


       In my reading class, we were supposed to be talking about an article from Natural History magazine.  Mr. Sinclair asked us to read the article, one page titled "What is a Species?"  Then, he said, we would have a different kind of discussion.  He would start us with a topic--the main idea--and let us take it from there.  This sounded interesting for a change, but I had no idea how interesting it would get, especially since the topic was so dull.  Come on--didn't he know that the seventh grade teachers had rammed main ideas down our throats and made us puke them out on about seven hundred standardized practice tests?


            Anyway, the main idea was that scientists were having a hard time defining species, and the article outlined the various definitions and the problems with each.  It wasn't easy, but I spent the summers in the mountains with my dad's collection of natural history books.  Call me a freak--I like that stuff. 


            But I wasn't about to raise my hand.


            "I don't believe in evolution," was the very first comment, courtesy of Stephanie Seabrook.


            "Okay," said Mr. Sinclair.  "Matthew."


            "I think Darwin was wrong."


            "Anyone want to respond to that?"  He was looking puzzled, maybe because his question had been about the main idea.  He matched a raised hand with a name on his seating chart.


            "Kallie."


            "I agree with Matthew."


            "Because . . ."


            "I just don't think it's possible for life to evolve.  It's not like we see life evolving now."


            "We're supposed to be discussing the main idea or ideas of the article," said Sinclair.  "And one way to get there is to ask yourself what it's about.  I'll stop talking now and turn it back to you.  What is this article about?"


            Half the kids in the room had been sticking their arms in the air, and now there wasn't one hand up. 


            "Well, I think this shows that maybe things go better when the teacher keeps out of it.  You have a lot to say, then I tell you what I want you to talk about, and you all clam up.  I still think we should start with what the article is about.  We need someone to be brave and tell us."


            He searched his chart again, to find me, shrugging off cowardice with a hand in the air.


            "Cassandra."


            "Cassie."


            "Sorry, Cassie.  What's the article about?"


            "The definition of species, not evolution."


            "Matthew."


            "I disagree with Cassie because the article quotes Darwin."


            "Christine."


            "Darwin's dead and God isn't."


            "Okay . . .  Shelly."


            "You go, girl!"  Shelly said, and she and Christine did a high five. 


       Several others in the room flashed righteous smiles.


       "Interesting," said Sinclair.  "Rae?"


       "I thought fossils prove that life evolved."


       "Matthew."


       "Then how come monkeys aren't evolving and becoming people today?"  And then he started making chimp noises.  "Ooo-ooh!  Ooo-oo-oo-oooh."


       A bunch of other people started making ape noises and scratching themselves.  They didn't realize it, but they were doing pretty good job of proving their primate status. 


       "Okay, wait a minute," said Sinclair.  "Hush, everybody.  Attention."  He waited for quiet.  "Let's let Rae respond."


       "It takes millions of years."


       "Christine?" 


       "I just don't believe that the earth is a million years old."


       "What about the fossil record, carbon dating, basic geology?"  I couldn't stand it anymore.  "Wasn't that you I saw in science today?"


       "Please raise your hand, Cassie.  Jenny?"


       "Actually, the earth is six thousand years old, Cassie.  All the fossils came from the time of the great flood, and most of the animals from the Ark are still alive today."


       "What about dinosaurs?" I said.  "How the heck did Noah get those guys on his boat?  I would have loved to see that--ol' T-rex chompin' down the breeding stock."


       "What about Dragons, Cassie?  They were sighted at least until the Middle Ages."


       "Okay, hold on a minute, girls--"


       "You're kidding right?  Dragons?  We're talking about dragons?"


       "Cassie--"


Currently reading:
Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems
By Edgar Allan Poe
11:22 AM 
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Friday, August 29, 2008 

Current mood:  adventurous
Category: Writing and Poetry
I'm hoping to get a whole bunch of books ordered for the library at my new school, and I'm looking for recommendations.

We have a very diverse group here, from voracious readers to reluctant ones, and they like everything from Orson Scott Card to Ellen Hopkins to Kerouac. 

But we're alternative, so I'm thinking that the usual high school setting as it appears in the young adult novel won't appeal very much.  Or I'm thinking that they typical suburban issues won't appeal very much.  

At the very least, I'm looking for stuff that's close to the edge, but maybe I'm wrong in my assumptions.  Maybe our students will dig into any good read—regardless of my prejudices.  

So, please comment!!  I'd be happy to get your list of top titles for the 15-19-year-old set.  

Currently reading:
Flight: A Novel
By Sherman Alexie
3:38 AM 
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Monday, August 18, 2008 

Current mood:  chipper
Category: School, College, Greek
ANOTHER NEW beginning tomorrow.  The cycle begins again, this time at a different school, with new hopes and challenges, but its reassuring to feel the old wheel turning past the familiar "starting point" again.

I'm tired tonight from a intense day, especially a hot yoga class, that's left me drained.  My mushy brain is wandering in circles, thinking of how all of life rolls around like a wheel, but I'll keep it short.

My wish to all my friends who are beginning a new school year is:  have a good spin.  My hope is that you are filled with hope and promise of rebirth and, at the same time that you're empty and ready to be filled again.  Like your lungs after you exhale all the air, every molecule you can push out, I hope you're ready to expand and take in the freshness of new knowledge and experience.

Wow!  is that ever corny!  I'm thinking of how my daughter, when asked what she was looking forward to this school year, said, "Nothing," then admitted that she was happy about band starting again. So maybe I should wish that everybody in school has at least one beloved teacher, one class. 

And if you're not in school, I hope you're still starting fresh every now and again, and that every new spin of the wheel gives you something new to learn.


Currently reading:
We Are Quiet, We Are Loud (Best Young Writers And Artists In America)
By Various
10:57 AM 
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Saturday, August 16, 2008 

Current mood:  adventurous
Category: School, College, Greek
Kayla II inspired this little story by complaining about her summer reading assignment, which is indeed a heinous tradition. 

One morning, so early that normal people are either dreaming away in their beds or up straightening their hair before a day of looking fabulous, two English teachers are sitting in the teacher's lounge feeling depressed.  It's late May, and no matter how they have buffered themselves within their literary cocoons, they  feel the icy emptiness of the ultimate void: summer.

Suddenly, one is inspired!  Rosy fingered dawn reaches above the horizon, and the Muse begins to sing:

Mr. Predicate:   "Eureka!"
Ms. Subect:      "What is it, Predicate?  Have you discovered a new exception to make our grammar even more obfuscating?"
Mr. P:    "Even better!  I think we can sabotage a least part of summer!"
Ms. S :   "Oh, no wonder Principal Cabeza in Colon made you Department Chair!
Mr. P:   *beams with pride* "Well, I still don't know what to do about the losers in regular English, but are you ready?" *dramatic pause* "We can give the little snot-nosed Honors and AP children SUMMER READING ASSIGNMENTS!!!"
Ms. S :   "And most of them will procrastinate, so the end of summer will be totally ruined."
Mr. P:   "Little bastards get four more days of vacation than we do, but this should make them suffer."
Ms. S :   "Especially if they have to do a STUDY GUIDE and WRitiNG!"
*vilainous cackling*
Mr. P:   "I feel so good now!  Let's put an extra teaspoon of Folgers Columbian in the English office coffee maker!"
Ms. S :   *gasp* "With Caffiene?"
Mr. P:   "You only exist in a singular instance, Ms. Subject."
Ms. S :   "Ye, gads, Mr. Predicate! Who says English teachers don't know how to party!"
Mr. P:   *wink* "After the department meeting, maybe we can have a second cup, and just contemplate those firking AP/Honors  kids sweating in out in THE INFERNO!"
*delighted shiver*
Ms. S :   "It's getting a little hot in the teacher's lounge, too, Predicate."
Mr. P:   "If we keep talking this way, we might have to get together after school for a little, shall I say, predicate nominative?" *lascivious grin*
Ms. S :   *blushes* "Oh, Predicate!  Or maybe I should I say, linking verb!!!"
*Arm in arm, they head for the coffee pot, singing the preposition song*
Currently watching:
Schoolhouse Rock! (Special 30th Anniversary Edition)
Release date: 2002-08-27
12:21 PM 
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Thursday, August 14, 2008 
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Thursday, July 03, 2008 

Current mood:  curious
Category: Life
But first, here is a book that I keep hearing wonderful things about:
 The Shape of Water, by fellow FLUXOR Anne Spollen.



Anne has an interesting blog on what she calls THE ZONE OF NON PRESENCE.   Reading it gave me my question for you!

My novel in progress is set in this time Anne references, when one had to find a pay phone, when a friend across the country was far, far away.  It's fun to write about because if gives the characters some space---free from parents, free from each other.

But I'm not sure how the the current realm of hyper-connectedness feels to others---especially teens in regards to missing people, abscence, and the possible lack of space . . .

Here's a bit of what Anne has to say:

I realized that most teens are never away. Not anymore. Remember when your family went to the cabin or the beach for a week and you had to wait for your friend to return? My kids will never have that memory: they text, call, and send immediate pictures - here we are RIGHT NOW at dinner and here we are RIGHT NOW in our motel room, and here we are RIGHT NOW, texting YOU...


What do you think? 
Currently listening:
Fillmore West 1969
By The Grateful Dead
Release date: 2005-11-01
3:30 PM 
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Saturday, June 28, 2008 

Current mood:  weird
Category: Friends
So, I thought I might tell you, gentle reader, that if I haven't heard from you in a while, I probably miss you.

If I have, I'm probably not sick of you.

That said,

I'm nearing the end of break time. I finished the latest draft of my work in progress 13 days ago, and am going back to work on the next round of revisions on Monday.

>The novel is called CONTACT HIGH.
>It takes place in the late 1970's.
>There are no cell phones (or even cordless ones.)
>There is a lot of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and the Stones. **
>It's the story of one year, four friends, two couples, best friends, complications, breaking into an abandoned round barn, breaking up, breaking walls that maybe stood for a reason (of which the heart knows nothing), getting back together, driving to Wisconsin, a 1971 Duster, a motel, a bonfire, a beach fire, breaking up again, camping, Special Export, German Wine, rain, strip poker, stomach flu, stories, cigarettes & other combustibles, a redhead, the police, swimming, a basement, another basement, a pizza joint, a lake, a canoe, a field party, another lake, long hair, THE SOUND AND THE FURY, THE SUN ALSO RISES, blankets under the oak trees, blankets on the hay, sleeping bags, mosquitoes, OFF!,



** I hate Journey and Foreigner and REO, and so do my heroes! {but not thier girlfriends, and like my heroes, I also adore some people who enjoy these horrid bands--my wife and Kylie C. among others.}



Currently listening:
Meddle
By Pink Floyd
Release date: 1990-10-25
6:15 AM 
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