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At least SOMETHING is going my way today.
Friday, September 10, between French and Lunch
My cell phone just buzzed. Michael left the following text message:
MICHAELM: At least let me come by and try to explain. Even though that won’t be easy because I’m still not clear on what, exactly, I did that was so wrong.
What is he talking about, come by and try to explain? How can he come by and try to explain? I’m in SCHOOL.
And how can he still not know what he did wrong?????
Friday, September 10, Lunch
You know what? I don’t care. LET them stare at me. This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten in this cafeteria. If I’d known the cheeseburgers were this good, as a matter of fact, I’d have started eating them a long time ago.
And you know what? I don’t even care. I mean, I still feel bad for the animals, and stuff.
But in a way it’s like…well, tough luck for them. The world is an unfair place. Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes you’re the bug.
That’s from a song my mom likes.
If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I’ll probably come back as a cow, and I’ll spend my whole life in a tiny stall I can barely move around in, and eventually someone will come around and bonk me on the head and then skin me and make my skin into a leather miniskirt and the rest of me into hamburger and a girl whose boyfriend gave his Precious Gift to Judith Gershner will eat me, and that will just be too bad for me. It’s the circle of life, baby.
Wow. I guess I’m a total nihilist now.
Lilly seems to think so. And she can’t seem to believe it.
“A burger?” She just kept staring at my tray. “You’re eating a CHEESEBURGER?”
“I don’t care anymore,” I said. Because it’s true. I don’t. About anything. Being a nihilist, and all.
“You and my brother,” she said, “get into one fight, and you break up with him and start eating meat? He’s right. You HAVE lost your mind.”
I put my burger down at that one.
“He SAID that?” I demanded. I didn’t care that we were having this discussion in front of the whole lunch crowd—J.P., Boris, Ling Su, Tina, Perin. Why should I? I don’t care about anything anymore. “Michael said I’ve lost my mind?”
“Basically,” Lilly said. “And the fact that you’re sitting there eating a cheeseburger proves it. You haven’t eaten meat since you were six years old!”
“Well, maybe it’s time I started,” I said. “Maybe if I’d been getting more protein this whole time, I wouldn’t have made so many boneheaded decisions.”
“Which one of your many are you referring to?” Lilly asked acidly.
“Hey, Lilly,” J.P. said, quietly but firmly. “Cut it out.”
Lilly looked startled. She isn’t used to J.P. butting in on her conversations with me. Because he’s never done it before.
But it was too late. Because my eyes were already filling up with tears. Again.
I guess I’m not a nihilist after all.
“If he thinks I’ve lost my mind,” I said to Lilly, barely able to contain a sob, “then he doesn’t get it AT ALL. I HAVEN’T lost my mind. I just can’t DEAL with it anymore.”
“Deal with what?” Lilly wanted to know. “Having a guy who loves you so much that while you were off in Genovia this summer, he invented this fantastic thing that could change the face of medical history as we know it, just so he could prove he was good enough to be with you, only to have you slap him in the face when he explained that in order to get the thing off the ground he has to go away for a while?”
I just glared at her, even though it was kind of hard to see her through my tears.
“That’s not it,” I said, “and you know it.”
