The Basic Eight

I hadn't felt such disgust for a boy since the early days, when they'd tease girls on the playground, kicking us and throwing gravel and raising their voices in high screechy mockery. "They do that because they like you," all the adults said, grinning like pumpkins. We believed them, back then. Back then we thought it was true, and we were drawn toward all that meanness because it meant we were special, let them kick us, let them like us. We liked them back. But now it was turning out that our first instincts were right. Boys weren't mean because they liked you; it was because they were mean.

She had the look in her eye when you kick and kick at the door and it doesn't open, when you write a boy letters and letters and he never loves you, not ‘til the day he dies. Not even then.

May we generally be happy, generally be witty, generally be honest, but above all always be interesting.

Maybe, generations ago, young people rebelled out of some clear motive, but now, we know we’re rebelling. Between teen movies and sex-ed textbooks we’re so ready for our rebellious phase we can’t help but feel it’s safe, contained. It will turn out all right, despite the risk, snug in the shell of rebellion narrative. Rebellion narrative, does that make sense? It was appropriate to do, so we did it.

She gave me a hug and for a second I was embraced by a body that makes me want to go home and never eat again.

How confusing. Could it be that our narrator is unreliable? No such chance. Mind like a steel trap, I have.

She licked her lips and then wiped them on her hand, her dark lipstick staining her wrist like a suicide.

Dark, light, dark, light, dark-I swung and missed.

I'm sitting on the lumbering late bus, thinking about the way I'm going to start my Monday: by filling out an unexcused absence form for the cranky secretary. The last time the bus was late she actually told me, "Don't tell me the bus was late. That excuse won't work anymore today. About ten kids ahead of you said that their bus was late, too." I tried to explain that we all took the same bus, but there was no pulling the wool over her eyes. She wasn't born yesterday.

We are a nation of children letting horrible things happen, and flunking Calc.

You'd think that sweet would be a land far, far away from irritating, but as it turns out they're right next door and always having border disputes.

I think one of the reasons it ended was that his eyes never lit up for me the way they did for classical music. I realize that in the long run I may not be as wonderful as a Brahms symphony but I think I’m good for a Haydn quintet.

The bus driver gave me a why-the-hell-aren't-you-at-school look and I gave him a shut-up-you're-a-bus-driver-so-bus-drive look right back.

You know, despite all my world-weariness and cynicism, I think I've always believed that there is one person in the universe for whom you are truly meant - and the fact that sometimes there are two or even more people on the earth you can fall in love with really bothers me. It suggests that if you work hard you can be meant for anyone.

I saw myself, clearly, a scorned woman drunk and angry at a party. Hell hath no fury etc.

I'm alone. There's a poem in that, but I don't want to write it. I don't want to be someone who spends Saturday night alone at home, writing poems about being alone.

She spun the car through a right turn that would have killed us all had we been minor characters.

I don’t have to answer to you,” Adam said, instantly and harshly. He brushed his pants off like he’d just buried his mother.

Come on in," I said again, and he came on in and I hugged him. I felt his arms, warm through the linen. Suddenly there was a reason to leave the house and see other humans, because some of them were good.

If there were any seeds of doubt in my mind as to whether I really loved Adam or just some image of Adam, they were all killed by the frost that was tonight's dinner party. No, wait, that sounds like it was some cold, deadly evening. I mean the opposite. I guess I mean that if the flower of my love for Adam wass being stunted by any feelings of doubt, then tonight fully fertilized my seed and allowed it to grow. That works if you don't think about the face that fertilizer is made if shit.

Relax," she said. "You will be wise. You're young. You can't have everything right away." When something simple and true takes you by surprise, it hits you in the stomach.

After all, I was only eighteen then. I’m almost twenty now. I learned lots about narrative structure in my Honors English classes so I know what I’m doing.

You fat bitch!" he said, and the party gasped like a Greek chorus.

Dammit, Flora, why do you always ruin everything? A prophetic remark. I hope you picked up on that.

I'm very happy for you guys." I heard my voice, so false it was all the statues could do to keep themselves from rolling their eyes.

The flames rose bright on everyone's screens, flickering lipstick red and traffic-cone orange and Lord knows what else, depending on how your television's colour was.

I reached out for something else and found it: the red croquet mallet, just occurring there on the ground like some easy device, some plot element stashed there for the big finale.

Most of those people won't meet my eyes, now, but I'm not one of them. Every morning I get up, and while brushing my teeth, look at my showered self, calmly foaming at the mouth.

I walked around and around it, not because I felt I had to, but because I felt like it deserved that much attention from me. I found myself looking at each individual part closely, rather than the entire thing, because if I looked at the entire thing it would be like staring at the sun. It was such an unblinking portrayal of a person that it rose above any hack-neyed hype about it. It flicked away all my cynicism about Seeing Art without flinching and just made me look. I walked out of there thinking, Now I am older.