NaNoWriMo Day Four
January 9th, 118 total days till graduation, 93 days left of school
At church (which I missed last week because I slept in too late) I look at Jesus hanging on the cross above the alter and ask Him to please just clarify what I am. I’m not asking to be straight, I’m not asking to be gay, just asking to know which one I am. I think that one’s simple enough. Besides I know He doesn’t answer prayers to be different than you are. But how can He deny me letting me know what I am? I don’t think it’s too much to ask.
After church I drive to Jenna’s house. She’s planned a study group today for a small group of friends. The problem is that there was no class specified for this study group so there’s going to be very little studying and a crap ton of socializing. Luckily I’ve got the majority of my studying already done so I just plan on bringing some Spanish flashcards and a paper on Crime and Punishment that still needs some revising.
I pull up to her house a little after noon. I walk straight into the house and am greeted by her giant Newfoundland, Ernie. He leaps onto my chest and starts licking my face. “Down boy, down.” I tell him laughing and trying, to no avail to shove him off.
When Ernie does finally get off of me Jenna jumps on me then in a similar fashion, minus the licking my face part. “Hey, Ethan,” she pulls away from her hug then and grabs my hand dragging me to the kitchen. “Come help me set up.”
“What do you need to set up for a study party, Jenna?”
“Food, drinks. Ya know, the normal stuff.”
In the kitchen bowls of potato chips, pretzels, and puppy chow are laid out on the counter. “So what else do you need?”
She shrugs then and starts pouring a bag of kettle corn into another bowl. “You’re company mostly. There are about seven to eleven people coming.”
“I thought you said this was going to be small.”
“Well I planned six. Which is small,” she looks at me daring me to tell her that she’s wrong. “But then Laura who’s also in my anatomy class found out that I was having a party and she wanted to invite her whole group. I’m just not sure who’s going to show from her group. Which is okay. But if they do show then maybe I’ll actually get some studying in,” she grins at me now.
I grab hold of two of the bowls and bring them into the dining room and set them in the center of the table. “So when exactly is everyone else getting here?”
Jenna glances at her watch, “I don’t know, a little under an hour maybe. I just figured we could hang out for a while beforehand.”
“You don’t plan on studying at all do you?”
She gives me her full toothy smile, “studying is a great excuse for a party don’t you think?” She lets her smile slip into a simple grin then says, “but when Laura and her friends show we’ll have to all buckle down and at least pretend like we’re doing work.”
“Sounds convincing. Why are we putting on an act for them?”
“Well Laura’s calling placement for relays this upcoming season so if I let her come over and study with us then hopefully she’ll let me keep my place as string one breast stroke.”
“You’re afraid of being bumped to second string? You know Coach will call any bull shit she smells.”
“No, I’m afraid she’s going to convince Coach that I should take the free style position since you gain more ground in that position. But my breast stroke is so much stronger than everyone else’s that whatever ground we’d make up in the beginning we could quite possibly lose later.”
“So instead of just explaining this to Laura you’re buttering her up. Yeah, that makes sense.” I pop a piece of pop corn in my mouth and decide whether or not I should ask questions. The politics on girl’s sports teams are fucking ridiculous according to Jenna. I decide to be a good friend and continue the conversation. “So how did Laura get to call the shots anyway? She’s not the strongest swimmer on the team or anything.”
“No but she is the biggest kiss ass on the team. I’m totally convinced that she bought Coach an Outback gift card for Christmas or something. Coach loves her damn ribs.”
I crack up laughing at that last comment. Coach has had ribs brought in during our practice on at least two separate occasions. I walk to the opposite end of the room and start digging through the entertainment center looking for plastic cups. I finally find them in the bottom drawer and pull out a stack of about a dozen. “Well can I at least get some work done while we wait for everyone to show up?” Jenna fake pouts for a second and I shove her shoulder. “You’re fucking ridiculous, you know that?”
She gives me her toothy grin again. “Why can’t we watch a movie or something? Just hang out.”
“What movie do you plan to watch in 45 minutes?”
“Well it won’t finish before everyone else gets here but it will before the time I told Laura to show,” she smiles at me, “guess!”
I consider for a moment and then it dawns on me. “That Toothless move.”
“It’s called How to Train You Dragon. And yes, that one.” She bounces from the dining room to the living room and starts digging through the entertainment center looking for the DVD. I watch her looking for it as I lean up against the corner of the door frame and just shaking my head. When she can’t find it there she starts looking other places, under the couch, in the footstool and finally in the DVD player. Turns out it’s the last thing she watched. This doesn’t surprise me and I start laughing at the face she makes when she finally does find it.
She flips through the menu options and turns the movie on with subtitles then sets the remote down and pats the spot on the couch beside where she’s sat down. I walk over and sit. She lays her body across mine and I wrap her in my arms. She tucks her head into my chest then squeals as the opening music starts.
“You’re such a dork,” I inform her.
She rolls onto her back so that she can see me better, “shhhhh! The movie’s starting!” She giggles and pushes her finger over my lips. I mock bite it and she screams and jumps up from my lap. “Ethan bit my finger!” she shouts in a fake English accent.
We both start cracking up laughing and she comes back to the couch curling up beside me and wrapping herself up in my arms. “I’m serious,” she informs me once we’re situated correctly, “be quiet. This one’s a good one.”
The irony in this is that I know she won’t be quiet through the movie. She quotes every line that Hiccup has and the vast majority of the other characters. She even tries to imitate the sounds that Toothless makes. I laugh at her whenever she does that though.
Jenna jumps up to get the door whenever the doorbell rings but instead of starting to study they simply join us on the couch or the floor and join in with the quoting. Jenna’s showed this to far too many people far too many times. I think I’ve personally been forced to watch it about four times now.
When the movie finally ends (and Jenna cries because she’s so happy) we all head into the dining room with whatever we brought to work on. I pull out my Crime and Punishment paper and start going through it with a red pen. I’m totally convinced that Fyodor Dostoevsky has a fetish with P and R names. I consider writing this in my paper but sincerely doubt that my world lit teacher will find it as funny as I did.
Along with my paper I’ve brought a copy of the book and the spark notes. I had the most difficult time following all of the characters because their names were so out there and, well, Russian. While I read the entire book I had to read the chapter summary in spark notes after every single chapter. Even then the names continued to trip me up. Basically I’m using the spark notes section about the books theme to write this whole damn report. Luckily I’m one of the only kids that’s paid attention in class so I’m figuring that I’ve scored at least a few bonus points in that class.
A group of six of us, the four others all girls from the swim team are sit at the dining room table working, mostly quietly, on whatever our respective projects are. We snack on munchies and drink glasses of caffeine, Diet Coke or Mountain Dew. Maybe a half an hour into our study session the doorbell rings once again and Jenna jumps up to get the door.
As soon as the door is opened I can hear Laura’s nasal voice asking sarcastically if she’s late. Jenna answers something indiscernible but Laura instantly shoots back “well then why is everyone else already here? I thought I’d come early to help but it seems like you don’t need any help. You know if you didn’t want me here you could have just told me.”
Jenna’s voice gets an octave higher than normal, “no, I must have just told you the wrong time. You and your friends are welcome of course.”
There’s a reason I can’t stand Laura. She’s pompous and assumes that everyone should simply like her and never works for anyone’s respect and so I refuse to give her any. It’s caused friction between Jenna and I before because Jenna is always an incredibly nice person who can’t seem to say no to anyone if it might hurt their feelings.
“You’re lying,” Laura shoots back. “You’re an awful liar, Jenna.”
Everyone at the dining room table have set down their pens and highlighters and are watching the doorway almost as though if they can see the fight that we all wish were about to happen but know won’t. I would love to see Jenna punch Laura in the face. She’s had it coming for as long as I can remember. I’d do it myself if she weren’t, well, a girl.
“Laura, I’m sorry. I must have just forgotten to call and tell you that I changed the time then. I’m really very sorry.”
Silence for a moment and then Laura gives a sharp, “fine. I’ll stay.”
“Great!” Jenna tells her falsely happy. “Um… are any of your other friends coming?” The two girls start walking down the hall. We can hear the voices getting closer. Everyone looks away from the door and back to what they were working on originally.
“No, they couldn’t make it,” she says just outside the doorway. Then much quieter but still just loud enough to hear she hisses, “don’t think I don’t know you did this on purpose. And if you thought you were going to gain brownie points by asking me here you are very very wrong.” Then the two girls enter the room. “Hey everyone,” Laura says with false sweetness. The best she gets in return is a nod from some of the girls.
Jenna looks as though she’s about to burst into tears and as we make eye contact she just closes her eyes and shakes her head. We all heard Laura say it clearly. Jenna’s screwed for all of the teams upcoming relays.
7,164 words