Second Helpings Read online

  This response was deemed unacceptable by everyone in the room.

  “Is that your idea of satire?” asked a guy who—literally—had the word LOSER tattooed in tiny letters across his forehead.

  “Do you know how many serious writers were dying to get into this program?” grumbled the Grim Reaper.

  “I know her type,” murmured the Lump. “She’s here so she can put one last accomplishment on her Harvard application.”

  And Mac clicked his tongue. “Tch.”

  I deserve this abuse, but not for the reasons they thought I did. My essay was the biggest pack of lies this side of Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace. It’s one thing to lie to my (hot!) teacher. But I know I’ve sunk to a truly sad state when I’m tempted to lie in here, in the effort of making myself look better to the hypothetical reader in the future who has nothing better to do but pour over this journal. (Wouldn’t you rather beam yourself to another planet, or something twenty-third century like that?)

  So in the spirit of full disclosure and unflinching honesty (that is totally unnecessary for anyone who has been reading this notebook from the beginning and sees my confession coming), I will reveal the truth. I am here for one reason.

  Because He isn’t.

  He.

  Him.

  HIM.

  He Who Shall Remain Nameless . . .

  ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.

  This self-prescribed cognitive behavioral therapy isn’t getting any easier.

  According to my Psych book, shrinks sometimes tell patients who have been traumatized to convince themselves that the heinous event never happened. Apparently, if the delusion lasts long enough, you’ll trick yourself into really believing that it did not occur. So I decided to remove the name of He Who Shall Remain Nameless from my vocabulary until I forget him entirely. At that point He’ll still be nameless, but I won’t be excruciatingly aware of it anymore.

  It’s been seven months and my carefully selective amnesia hasn’t kicked in yet.

  But I wasn’t about to write about Him. Nope. Just like I’m not going to think about Him now. Instead I will think about Mac. And I will think about Mac out of his boxer briefs. . . .

  the tenth

  Well, after a week of endless introductions, it’s official: I can’t revel in my relative obscurity anymore. Until six months ago, Pineville was fairly anonymous, even to fellow New Jerseyans. If Pineville High was known at all, it was only for its proximity to other notorious high schools.

  Heightstown High School, for example, the upscale enclave for Wall Street commuters’ kids that saw its hoity-toity reputation plummet when it was revealed that one-third of the graduating class of 1996 had contracted syphilis at one of several Senior Class Orgies organized by the student-body president in the attempt to “boost school spirit.” (“Go SCO!” was a popular motto among those in the know.)

  Or perhaps you recall hearing about PHS’s archrival, Eastland High School, aka the Prom Mom’s alma mater. Back in 1999, she left the dance floor and dropped a six-pound, two-ounce bundle of joy in the backseat of the rented limousine. Prom Mom left him screeching and covered with amniotic slime while she headed back inside and asked the deejay to play “Boom Boom Boom (Let Me Hear You Say Way-Oh).” Psychologists scratched their heads over interpreting the symbolic meaning of the song choice, oblivious to the obvious explanation, which was, simply, that she was a Hoochie Mama. (Ha. In more ways than one.)

  These tabloid stories occurred at high schools less than a half hour from home, thereby providing an amusing way to pinpoint Pineville’s location when introducing myself to strangers, i.e., “Oh, Pineville? It’s fifteen minutes from Prom Mom.” I appreciated the relative anonymity, as it spared me the embarrassment of apologizing about my origins with a reflexive, “Yeah, I know. I live in the stankiest, hairiest crook within the armpit of the nation.”

  Here at SPECIAL, my fears have been confirmed. Pineville is now as well known as its neighbors for not one but two different claims to fame: (1) The inspiration behind Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace’s book and motion picture. (2) The birthplace of gangsta “pap” trailblazer Kayjay Johnson and the video bitch who broke his heart.

  I refuse to waste ink on the former because it’s only going to get worse in the coming months, a thought that makes me want to pull out my teeth one by one with a medieval dental instrument as my SPECIAL classmates cheer me on.

  I have avoided writing about the latter because I keep hoping that he will cross over into “Where are they now?” oblivion. But it’s clear that neither is going to happen anytime soon. I’m known throughout the dorm as “the girl from Pineville who knows the other girl from Pineville who went with Kayjay Johnson!” So much for me wanting to establish an identity completely separate from Bridget’s.

  Karl Joseph Johnson is a shoulda-been graduate of PHS Class of 1999. He was sent to juvie after the top-notch Pineville police department discovered that he was stealing his neighbors’ lawn mowers and selling them for crack money. (The giveaway? The Johnsons were the only family in the Bay Gate section of town whose lawn wasn’t a weedy, overgrown mess.) But unlike every one of Pineville’s juvenile delinquents before him, Johnson parlayed his petty criminal status into a full-time career when he was rechristened Kayjay, one of the five demi-himbos in the “baaaaaad” boy band Hum-V.

  Because it is doubtful that Hum-V will be remembered in the annals of music history, I will briefly describe their contribution to popular culture here.

  Hum-V is what I predict will be the last teenybopper trifle to come off the Orlando assembly line, a group put together in a desperately calculated attempt to cash in on TRL’s *NSYNC–Eminem polarization, squeezing every last bit of air out of the barely breathing boy-band genre. Hum-V’s faux-funky jams and toothachey ballads sound as synth-cheesy as their nonthreatening, harmonizing predecessors’, but their lyrics are painstakingly incendiary. Hum-V is the first boy band to earn a Parental Advisory Warning label.

  Kayjay was the most vocally challenged member, whose only reason for being in the group was because he had red hair and freckles. The evil geniuses behind Hum-V decided they needed Cute Redhead Freckled Juvie Boy to balance out the delicate yet deviant mix (the other fourfifths of which are Cute Baby-Faced Blond Sex Addict Boy, Cute Olive-Skinned Maybe-Italian, Maybe-Latino Junkie Boy, Cute Black Gangbanger Boy, and Cute Chinese-French-Canadian-Cuban-Swedish Multicultural Gay-Bashing Boy).

  Last spring, as the five Hum-V hunks poured over hundreds of eight-by-ten glossies to hand-pick the girls who would portray “bitches” in the video for their straight-to-the-middle single, “Bitch (Y U B Trippin?),” Kayjay instantly recognized the aspiring model Bridge Milhouse as none other than Pineville High’s Bridget Milhokovich, the blond babe who was ranked number one on the Fuckable Freshmen List when he was a senior. Kayjay never got a crack at her before he was bounced out of PHS because Bridget was still with Burke, as he had yet to cheat on her with Manda. So to make his high-school fantasy a reality, Kayjay picked Bridget to portray the bitch who b trippin’ on him. Their portion of the video “plot” involved screaming at each other, then kiss-and-making-up in a torrential downpour, all shot in the slo-mo style that signifies heavy emotional stuff in the music video world.

  Neither the wrath of his then-girlfriend, Shy’la, from the girl group Jillbait nor the fire-hose rain could put out the fire of Kayjay’s desire. (Hmm . . . that sounds familiar. Oh, no. I think that’s a line from the Hum-V Song. Christ.) Kayjay was smitten with Bridge Milhouse and was obsessed with winning her over. Bridget is a sucker for glamour and couldn’t resist his offer to be his arm candy for important PR ops like movie premieres, awards shows, and parties thrown by people he’d never met. Incredibly, it only took one such outing for Bridget to discover that fame had only expanded the dimensions of Kayjay’s sphincter.

  “He was, like, the biggest asshole I’d ever gone out with,” she reported to a rapt audience at PHS the Monday morning after the
big date.

  Considering that “Bitch (Y U B Trippin?)” peaked at number 8 on TRL and barely cracked the Billboard chart, Hum-V’s appearance on the covers of teenybopper bibles continues to baffle me. Apparently, Hum-V’s small but intense fan base—the “Hummers,” as they call themselves—guarantees that Kayjay enjoys a cushy existence that has little to do with Hum-V’s overall popularity. They are also responsible for the relentless haterade spewed on message boards toward “the blond ho from the video” who “broke poor Kayjay’s heart” months after their one and only and very insignificant date. Bridget has vowed to never, ever date a celebrity (or quasi-celebrity) again.

  “Unless it’s, like, James Dean back from the dead,” she says.

  “Well, that’s sensible,” I say.

  Though the relationship tanked, this little credit on her résumé has already made Bridget the envy of all the other girls in SPECIAL’s acting program. Still, I realized that her notoriety had spread beyond the world of wanna-be actress-models when my roommate recognized Bridget right away. My roommate just happens to be Hum-V’s biggest fan, or so she shrieks.

  You might have noticed my roommate’s conspicuous absence from my journal thus far. Every time I picked up this journal to start writing, she’d hover over my shoulder and say, “You’re writing about me, aren’t you???”

  This is just one of many quirks I’ve observed about the person with whom I’m supposed to share a room for the next three weeks and five days. For the time being, I will stick to irrefutable facts, untainted by my cynical analysis. We’ve still got a long haul ahead of us and I don’t want to damn her right away with my first, second, and third impressions, as my character analyses are usually for shit. I could very well find out tomorrow that she really is cool, despite surface characteristics that indicate otherwise. If I avoid jumping to conclusions now, I won’t have to feel guilty about all the mean things I’ll most likely write about her later.

  So here are the facts and just the facts:

  Name: Mary “Call Me Chantalle” DePasquale.

  Hometown: Huntsdale, which means she is from the wealthiest town in the wealthiest county in the wealthiest state in the wealthiest nation in the world.

  Long-Term Goal: Principal dancer with the American Ballet Company.

  Short-Term Goal: To share an unspecified “intimate moment” with each and every one of the Lucky Seven. Ack.

  Aesthetic Icon: It’s hard to tell. Her body is so teeny that her head looks supersized in comparison, giving her the appearance of a lollipop in a tutu. She makes me (at five-foot-five and 105 boobless, assless pounds) look like a WWF she-male.

  Telltale Quote: “Call me Chantalle.” These were her first words to me. “Is Chantalle your middle name?” I asked. “Call. Me. Chantalle,” she replied. Then she ripped Mary DePasquale’s toe shoe off the door, the only evidence that her birth name was more spinster than Parisian prostitute. This switch is fitting, considering it took her less than twenty-four hours to provide Derek, the vocal music hottie, with a manual release. Unspecified Intimate Moment #1. Ack. The thing that really irks me about Call Me Chantalle’s name change is that it’s precisely the kind of summer identity-morphing that I can’t get away with. Damn that Bridget!

  Potentially Troubling Fact: On the bookshelves above her bed, Call Me Chantalle displays three foot-high Nutcrackers, like the hero from the ballet of the same name, a mere fraction of the extensive collection she keeps in a display case at home. They are all dressed in military garb but carry different weapons—a gun, a sword, a British bobby baton—as if they were guarding her virginity. They’d better be on high alert, because I walked in on her in full-frontal frottage with “the saxophone player hottie” on Day 5. Unspecified Intimate Moment #2. Ack.

  Positively Troubling Fact: Call Me Chantalle brought a half-dozen bottles of Summer’s Eve douche, which she keeps in plain view in her closet, not to mention the Summer’s Eve body wash in her shower caddy, and the travel-size Summer’s Eve disposable wipes stashed in her backpack. What makes this hygienic hoarding so odd is that she doesn’t even try to hide it, which makes me feel like I’m wrong for thinking it’s weird. But it is weird, isn’t it? Then again, maybe there’s something that I’ve been doing in the privacy of my own bedroom my whole life that I think is perfectly normal but is actually illegal in thirty-two states. Call Me Chantalle could observe the way I clip my toenails and think, My God, how can she cut the pinky toenail first, when every sane person knows you finish with the littlest piggie???

  I am doing my best to be positive, by celebrating Call Me Chantalle’s quirks. After all, isn’t this the beauty of having a roommate? Getting a glimpse of someone else’s private world and discovering that everyone is as big a freak as you are, just in different ways?

  I got a postcard today from Hope, who’s in London, where she has had a far more interesting assortment of cool characters to observe. I’d like to think that she’s got the advantage of a fascinating location, but I know that it’s just the way she is. At first, strangers are struck by her appearance—six feet of luminous, alabaster skin topped by wild, flamecolored curls. But then they’re drawn to her warmth, sensitivity, and good humor. No matter where she ends up at college, Hope will make lasting connections with the chatty girls in her dorm, the brooding guys in her art classes, the awkward sopranos and tenors in her choir, whoever. She could find redeeming qualities in Call Me Chantalle, that’s for sure.

  I’m afraid that Hope will still be as vital to my sanity but I won’t be as important to hers, simply because she will have made new friends to fill the void. I don’t think she’ll forget me, but she’ll move beyond me, because that’s the healthy thing to do when your best friend lives a thousand miles away and you can only talk to her once a week, and see her once a year.

  Maybe I should try to get used to this now. Maybe I should accept that this journal is the only place that’s safe to express what’s really going on inside my mixed-up mind. Or maybe I should give others the benefit of the doubt. Maybe, just maybe, I should stop blaming SPECIAL or Pineville for not serving up my soul mate on a silver platter with caviar on the side. Drop me anywhere on the map and I’d quickly prove that location isn’t the problem—it’s me.

  the seventeenth

  My trial run for college is still not going well. My classmates hate me. I should have known SPECIAL would be a haven for Noir Bards, and that they would have no tolerance for a fraud like me.

  Pretentious and depressed, a Noir Bard is very big on the fact that he/she is a writer. They write a lot about writing, often rhyming words like verse and hearse. To them, black is always the new black. They spend a lot of time at poetry slams and other literary events, chain-smoking and washing down Paxil with (black) coffee. Their intricate facial hardware and Goth getups are painfully obvious cries for help. Here’s a brief archetypal member profile, very much tainted by my cynical analysis. (But that’s okay because cynicism is in keeping with the true, blackened spirit of the Noir Bard.)

  Name: Rebecca Adams (aka the Female Nosferatu).

  Hometown: Cherry Hill, by way of Transylvania.

  Long-Term Goal: To be the next Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton. (Read: Suicidal, then dead.)

  Short-Term Goal: To creep me out.

  Aesthetic Icon: Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice.

  Telltale Quote: “Why is/Anyone/Anywhere?” (From her poem “Dying All the Time.”)

  Potentially Troubling Fact: She has fangs. Genuine fangs, not those detachable ones that club kids wear to torment their elders.

  Positively Troubling Fact: She bares them whenever Mac calls on me in class.

  I admit that there are certain aspects of my personality—my chronic, low-grade depression, for example—that would prompt Pineville High classmates to vouch for my card-carrying status in the Noir Bard camp, despite the lack of funereal tones in my wardrobe. But now that we’ve shared our work with one another over the past few weeks, it is clear that I am not one of them.<
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  Take today’s assignment, for example. We were asked to write a dramatic monologue in which the character talked about a Life-Changing Experience. Proving the theory that writers are a tortured bunch, I was the only student in the writing program who didn’t write about being rehabbed, raped, or rejected by a parent in a viciously ambivalent child-custody case. I’ve never felt so normal in my entire life. Of course, SPECIAL is the one place on earth where being normal is a liability.

  My monologue, told from Hope’s perspective about moving to Tennessee, was not very well received. After I read it out loud, Mac made it clear that I am probably the most sunshiney, superficial student he’s ever had. This, by the way, is making it much more difficult to have a crush on him, but not impossible.

  “ ‘The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph,’ ” Mac said. “Thomas Paine.”

  “Uh, okay.”

  “Dig deeper, Jessica. Work harder. Struggle with your writing. It will be worth it.”

  “Uh, how?”

  “Tch.” Mac grabbed two handfuls of his curls, right above both ears. “Any suggestions?”

  “Use her departure as a metaphor for man’s journey to the grave,” urged Loser.

  “Make the narrator a voice from the grave,” suggested the Grim Reaper.

  “But she’s not dead,” I argued, not so eager to kill off my best friend for the sake of satisfying this bloodthirsty group.

  “Do you know anyone who’s moved on to the next realm?” asked Barbella.

  “Her brother died of a drug overdose when he was eighteen.”

  “That is the best thing I’ve heard out of you since we’ve been here,” said Nosferatu.