Tin Universe Monthly #6

by Brian C. Williams

  ‘Hey!’ Gail said angery, ‘Right here walking beside you.’

  Karen did not even turn her eyes to her sister, ‘I noticed. Now go to the principal’s office and get your schedule. We will meet you in the lunchroom in an hour.’

  ‘But where…?’

  Karen angrily interrupted, this time look straight at her younger sister, ‘Offices to the left and follow the signs to find the lunchroom. You are Einstein Coma Girl after all. You shouldn’t have any problems finding simple locations should you?’

  Jeff was ready to say something but Karen drags him away by the arm leaving Gail standing in the scrambling herds of the hallway traffic alone.

  Jeff stopped Karen’s pulling of him ten or twelve lockers down the hallway and got into her face, ‘Beyond harsh?’

  Karen rolled her eyes, ‘Well, she isn’t in a coma now.’

  She walks away from Jeff in a march, ‘I’m over the whole feel sorry for her deal. Way over it.’

  CHAPTER 7

  Gail closed her eyes as all of the people hussled and hurried and probably another “H” word around her, past her, and smellingly too close to her. Her last school was a really small school and this crowding feeling was the same she gets sometimes when she’s in Ryan-Mart. Most of the time she’s fine but sometimes when they go there she starts to feel, not claustrophobic, but still kind of claustrophobic?

  The halls were crammed with hope, fear, and fear. It’s the same old, same old of high school angst. People dressed in young emotional states of preepy, goth, slut, emo, jock, the stereotype of your pick is there for your viewing pleasure. Most want a fast track to some kind of youthful identity that will make them feel happy. The road to those identity searches are paved with unpleasantness and pain and most when they arrive at the end of the road will find nothing about the same time someone tells them they’re an adult and need to get past trying to find out who they are.

  For a moment all Gail could think about was the accident and that’s sort of pointless since she does not remember anything about it. She is almost living within a nothing thought as this passage of time passes. The only thing she knows about what put her into a coma was what her parents and Karen told her.

  She was told what happen when she finally came out of the coma. The story goes that her and Karen were playing in Wickam Park when Gail climbed a tree and fell and hit her head. A rather 1950’s thing for her to be doing climbing a tree. Karen went to get help but in the meantime Gail recovered enough to stand up, stagger off, and fall down a set of high cement steps that lead down to the mini dog park. The nice lady who worked checking dog tags in the mini park held her until the ambulance and her sister found them.

  As she daydreamed about head, crash, hurt, coma, the only other thing to enter her audio focus was the sound of footsteps, the sound of loud heel, toe, heel clipping footsteps. This was high heels against new school floors, the sound of money.

  Why had this become her thought focus?

  Destiny?

  Gail opened her eyes as Joanna Osip ran face to face with her at a pace that knocked them both on their ass.

  A very cliché movie scene that was and I really can’t believe I wrote it, nor the fact that I was able to spell cliché first attempt....ok second attempt…SHUT UP!

  When she first started in kindergarten the teachers called Joanna Osip the little albino rich girl. Some people have no feelings at all but that also has a lot to do with the very nature of being around so many young minds for so many hours out of the day. You want to film a documentary on cruelty, set a camera secretly in a school for a year or day.

  That is was too deep of a topic to get into here.

  Karen even admits with delight to starting the mantra many called her in 3rd grade, “Whiteout Stick.”

  The next year after 3rd grade Joanna was hardly recognizable to anyone who knew her. She started then and still does go a long way everyday to change how she looks. Her hair color is keep to a dark brown but not too dark, the designer outfits she wears cover most of her body, and it is hard to catch her without sunglasses on.

  Karen once called the way Joanna dresses as a self-hatred form of racism but more important pure racism on her families’ part for encouraging her to try to hide who she is at each opportunity. No wonder she has a hard on hate for most of the rest of the world.

  What most do not know about Joanna and her family is the illegal and painful skin darkening treatments her parents put her through on summer breaks. The treatments didn’t work even in the slightest but to make Joanna learn how to deal with pain on many levels.

  Joanna was ass on the floor in the hallway of the school after the hallway collision like a tossed to the side Barbie as Gail finally got a full look at the person she had collided with. Her first thought was that she had just knocked down Malibu Stacey.

  Joanna slapped away Gail’s reached out hand, ‘God, you stupid people should be shot!’ Joanna shouting caused everyone in the halls to stop and look at the crash scene, ‘Every last one of you dissidents to good taste, lined up against the nearest Goodwill and executed.’

  Gail handed Joanna her handbag, frightentened about how fast she is screwing up on her first day in high school. Her heart was beating so fast she was starting to get sick. She did not want to start school this way was the rapid verse repeated over and over in her head.

  ‘Sorry,’ was the best Gail could think of to say out loud.

  Joanna looked around to snap everyone’s eyes away from her and then she looked Gail over like she wanted to dissect her with a small melon baller. Matter of fact she probably would have done so if given the chance since the collision ripped one of the straps on her new pair of high heeled shoes.

  Joanna made another pass setting her cold stare in Gail’s direction. Then she looked her over up and down, ‘Tennis shoes, jeans. Shopping across the street are we? A geek t-shirt and right out of the gate the year shows me pathedic personified. You really should boycott the Easter sales at Ryan-Mart dear.’

  Joanna is the Queen senior class princess of the school and where you find Joanna Osip you will also find Lisa Rowe, her junior in walking preppy attutuide, her lacky if you need it said that way.

  Lisa helps Joanna to her feet. She patted non-existent dust off her cloths once Joanna was standing upright shifting into a stature of nasty grace.

  ‘What happen?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘The ugly here happen,’ Joanna pointed at Gail, ‘Stepped into my path like a cripple just off the bus. They should embargo these.’

  ‘They should keep her in the band storage rooms with the other retards,’ Lisa said in support like the good tumble weed that she pretends to be.

  Then in unison Joanna and Lisa walked off together as if Gail did not even exist. Joanna shoved her books into Lisa’s hands, ‘She’s probably a voucher transfer.’

  Gail gets angry watching them disapear into the unherded hallway. From behind her a calm voice speaks, this moment needed a calm voice, ‘Joanna hasn’t been right since your sister hit her with a Sloppy Joe in first grade. I think she has been running on anger every since that moment. Maybe anger and Victoria Secret?’

  Gail turned around to see a young woman standing there about the same height and weight of her older sister but dressed like a model right out of an issue of Gothic Beauty who was showing off a sense of Victorian vampire fashion that rivials patroints of The Beautiful Mind club in Vancouver where she was known by name on sight.

  Gail was puzzled thinking she knew this person standing in front of her, but mostly her brain keep saying, “Cool cloths,” over and over. The pressure of the day must be interrfering with her total recall.

  You know how it is for us normal people, you meet someone knowing you know them, but you can not even remember their name or anything else about them, and hoping, and praying nothing comes up in conversation that will let the person you should know “who they are” know that you can’t for the life of you remember who they are. It is a
s aquaward of a situation as a first kiss.

  ‘You know my sister?’ Gail asked the person who she should know the name of who dressed very cool.

  ‘We use to be friends when you were barely walking.’ She picks up Gail’s trapper keeper giving it a glance before handing it over, ‘Spaced? This has to be bootleg?’

  Gail starts putting pages back into the trapper keeper which were poking out from the sides ready to fall from it, ‘Yea, I got it online. You’ve seen...?..’ She stops talking when she sees the person who was standing in front of her was no longer there.

  Gail turned around and now the goth girl was behind her.

  ‘You should probably try to avoid Joanna and Lisa or they will become a pain to your life.’ was directed at Gail and the stylish person walked away.

  As she walks away Gail recalls a few memories fast and a name, ‘Fox?’

  CHAPTER 8

  Although it was the first day of classes and it was pretty busy as the classroom was filling fast with students claiming spots for the year for this period of Ms. Dry’s art class, Victor San was still finding enough time to remind everyone out loud how last year he had scouts from some of the biggest colleges come to see his games.

  He also had time to start to bully Albert out of a chair the shy ginger haired young man had quickly found in the back corner of the room before Jeff tapped him on the shoulder and ignoring Victor completely moved past him and started talking to Albert. His actions sent Victor and his friends to sit up front where even Ms. Dry could see him doing absolutely nothing in class.

  ‘Hey, Albert.’

  ‘Hey, Jeff.’

  Jeff was ready to sit down in the seat in front of Albert when he noticed Karen had came into the room after a last second run back to her locker and was sitting down in the other back row corner seat on the other side of the room.

  Jeff turned back to Albert, ‘We should talk Naruto at lunch one day. I’m just now getting into the series. I’m going to head over and sit with Karen. Hope your first days cool.’

  Albert nodded and pulled out a notebook from his backpack to nervously sketch in until class started.

  Jeff felt back but knew Karen wouldn’t sit with Albert. She always thought he was really creepy calling him a, “School shooting waiting to happen.”

  Victor watched Jeff cross desks in the middle of the room to get over to Karen. He was talking to his friends about how he should have kicked Jeff’s ass when he pushed his way between him and Albert. But even his friends agreeing with him to his face knew that’s not how things turned out last time he had a throw down with Jeff.

  There were other students standing by and sitting at their desks wondering just what this school was going to be like and really what it would be like to fail an art class because that might be a scar not only on their permanent record but a scar beside their name in the book of life. Though all of them knew beyond first class, first day nerves, that art classes were usually easer to ace than gym.

  I myself never failed an art class.

  I did fail gym once but that wasn’t my fault.

  Funny the only person really afraid of failing the class was Jeff, ‘What class are we in again?’

  Karen is his best friend and most knowing when it comes down to how much bullshit he is releasing into the world and how much truth. There is truthful bullshit also but that’s just complicated.

  ‘This is why you always do bad in art classes. You have this stick up your butt that your too good to be drawing trees and fruit baskets.’ Karen

  ‘I am.’ Jeff

  ‘No shit, you should be teaching this class but it’s not helping your GPA any if you fail.’

  ‘I don’t have a stick up my butt by the way. I’ve passed that phase. Too many splinters anyways.’

  ‘Bad joke alert.’

  ‘You sounded like Gail right there.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up alert.’

  ‘Don’t even for a second act like I’m the only one not happy about having to take this class, you go together with art like…?...?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I don’t know... me and having to take a freaking art class.’

  Ms. Dry came in and closed the door just as everyone was finally finding their seats. Before saying anything she starts handing out sketchbooks and art pencil packs to everyone.

  ‘Who ever made the deal with the Devil to fund this school deserves extra praise. Go Devil Worship.’ Jeff

  Ms. Dry was either trying to be the cool teacher or the sexy spankbank teacher by sitting up on her desk and crossing her legs, ‘I’m not going to surprise you people in this class. Nothing off the wall..’

  ‘Nothing worth doing.’ Jeff

  ‘...what I am going to do is give you a fundamental understanding of what it takes to create art.’

  ‘I would learn more about art in my sleep.’ Jeff

  ‘Only because you have exotic dreams about Van Gogh naked.’ Karen

  ‘It’s the ginger hair. It drives me nuts.’

  ‘Is that why you were talking to Albert?’

  ‘Give the guy a break. Not everyone can rage against the machine like you do.’

  ‘I will pose no questions to you as your teacher. I will give you no answers. I will give you...

  ‘Empty sketch pads and pencils, man Disney should give her an award. High school art classes are like Congress. They are always there and always have been but what’s the point.’ Jeff

  ‘You only say that because you actually don’t know what Congress does. And you should really be careful about referencing the mouse, those ears are huge when it come to lawsuits.’

  ‘Oh, go three finger Minnie.’

  ‘That jokes as old as that old drawing of Bart giving Maggie the pacifier.’

  ‘I need a drink.’

  ‘You don’t drink.’

  ‘I need drugs.’

  ‘I’ll give you something after class.’

  ‘Most boring class in high school and they give it to a teacher named Ms. Dry to teach.’

  ‘And this is how this class is going to go day in and day out for the whole year. You complain, don’t do your assignments, I mother hen you, and you make boring political comments or old jokes that you probably don’t understand.’

  ‘Just like when you’re on the rag.’

  ‘I hate art classes.’

  ‘I hate art classes.’

  Ms. Dry slides off her desk and circles around it to sit in her seat. She pulls her copy of the class textbook from her bag and opens it. She looks out and around the class at her students, ‘So you’re going to love taking this class.’

  Art classes.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Busiek family does not like Principal Carol as a whole. See here comes what some would call a bit of back-story. My old Philosophy teacher would have called that sentence a sort of repeating the essay question to fill half the page but you know what? I really liked my old Philosophy teacher and agree with him on most things.

  Bit of back-story or just story. The Busiek family has had a long tradition of being sent to the principal’s office or just ending up there for one reason or the other. To be honest most of those times were not of the pleasant type.

  Well, this one isn’t either as no one is on the verge of being hit by wooden boards or being expelled. Gail just has to put up with a media or just attention in general attention seeking Principal.

  The only thing Gail was paying attention to in the whole room was a set of books Principal Carol has bookend on his offices window ledge, five books on finding fame in the modern world.

  ‘What do you think about the campus Gail?’

  Gail froze for second because he phrased that question like used car salesman and it gave her a little chill. He raised his eyebrows waiting for an answer.

  ‘Everything is very new.’ And right away she knew that sounded more than little smartass and she had not intended for it to. She didn’t even want to do this meet with him on her fir
st day of classes, being already nervous enough, but her mom said she should do it and maybe he would leave her alone for the rest of the year.

  Her dad just wanted to tell him to fuck off because Principal Carol has set up interview after interview with local newspapers and Tv broadcasts and anyone else who would listen about how his New school would also be the school that Coma Girl would be attending.

  Not to mention the hundreds of calls he made to their home; which only stopped when Karen explained what a necktie torture was.

  ‘I hope your family sees that I only have your best interests at heart. You are our little minor celebrity here and I just want the best for you.’

  She didn’t know what pissed her off more. That he was the only reason her name keeps popping up in news stories or that even with his slight obsession with her he called her a minor celebrity.

  ‘I hope you will not only take your required classes but take part in many of the extracurricular activities we will be offering. I’m sure the cheerleading squad would like to have you on the team. I’ve seen videos of you cheering and you were pretty good.’

  Just a little creepy that last bit was.

  CHAPTER 10

  Standing by a friends locker is a place of conclave and rebellion against all of the wrongs that have happen the night before school, during school so far, what may happen after school, and how they could or should escape from all of the stress of having no rights or freedoms under law, even though a lot of them may be of the age already to die for their country, no matter what blasted minded things their government maybe up to.

  Karen was standing by Jeff’s locker planning no rebellions as he puts away his newly purchased in the school supply store for way too much notebook. She hasn’t even opened her locker yet today, carrying everything around with her in an oversized book bag and using Jeff’s to store everything else she needed, much to his unlike.

  ‘I’m just saying less American Eagle would not hurt you,’ Karen said that while poking Jeff in the shirt. She coutinued her line of thinking, ‘I’m going to go all stereotype here, even though you are very much as lesbian as any man can be, you really should know mostly lesbians shop there.’

  ‘What about Old Navy, I shop there?’