Third Floor Common Room, Thursday Evening
Well, around five on Thursday evening, Topher learned that Portalocity officially sucked harder than he had ever suspected, because they'd somehow managed to jostle his luggage on his return trip from Africa badly enough that his laptop screen was cracked.
He had other laptops, yeah, but this one was the fastest, so until he could replace it ( Read more... )
He had other laptops, yeah, but this one was the fastest, so until he could replace it ( Read more... )
[Olive explains in this segment WHICH IS ALSO THE LONGEST that her favorite teacher, Mr. Griffith, asked his wife -- the guidance counselor -- to speak to her. Mrs. Griffith brought Olive into her office and basically just threw a bunch of condoms at her without really listening. As she was leaving, Marianne caught her and after a brief conversation where Olive was not a total asshole to her, Marianne assumed she had 'saved' her. Their friendship, Olive explains, lasted all of a day, until...Marianne's boyfriend ended up being hospitalized with chlamydia. And under duress, who should he have said gave it to him but Olive? Marianne found Olive immediately and slapped the hell out of her, and Olive ran into Mrs. Griffith, who was freaking out...because she gave it to him. And Olive, in the name of not ruining her favorite teacher's marriage, said that she could totally have chlamydia. ("Maybe it was becoming a habit of mine, to help the downtrodden -- or maybe I just couldn't stand to see my favorite teacher's marriage crumble. But I decided to help.")
And as Olive left Mrs. Griffith's tear-streaked office, she was met with protesters and picketers. ("So I guess I shouldn't be too shocked that these people wanted my diseased ass out of there. The funny thing is, the whole time this was going down, I couldn't help but think how I could've come up with better signs.") And of course, Rhiannon was with the protesters, which was basically Olive's breaking point. She tells us how she ran around town that day trying to figure out if the religion angle had something to it. ("I was used to being by myself, but I'd never felt more alone. So I thought I should at least look into what they were running around thumping about.") Olive spent an afternoon going from a bookstore to look at a bible, to a confessional booth, to an actual minister -- who turned out to be Marianne's dad, so she ran out.
Olive explains she was feeling overwhelmed ("To say this whole thing had taken over my life would be a collossal understatement. I actually reread the book to see how Hester dealt with this, and it turns out she bore her punishment with humble silence. Which...are two concepts that I'm not comfortable with.") but that the next day at school, things were looking up. She was asked out on a date by Anson, one of the cutest guys in school and incidentally, he who Rhi was crushing on. But in the end, he was just trying to proposition her with a Home Depot gift card, and she was driven home by her friend Todd, who worked at the restaurant. As a result of this incident, Olive tried to get her 'conquests' to come out with the truth as a result, with very poor results. She tried to get Mrs. Griffith to tell the truth, too, and when she wouldn't go along with it, Olive ran and told her husband. ("Yeah, Mrs. Griffith was pure evil, but I still shouldn't have done what I did. Mr. Griffith, if you ever see this, I just want to say I was wrong to tell you that, in that way, at all. I shouldn't have done it. And I don't even feel bad for lying for your wife, but I hate myself for telling you the truth. I am so sorry. With my words, even if they were true, I ended a marriage. Looking back on it, that's the thing I regret the most.")
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He did grin a bit at the line about the signs. That detail was pure Olive.
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But man, Olive was a soft sell, wasn't she? That wasn't always a bad thing though Olive's past was proving that it could be bad. Jim wasn't judging, though.
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