With Warm Regards, Franny

by Ben Chambers

  But I was thinking about that for a while and started wondering if maybe I was just being a very mean person. Maybe they didn’t have any other t-shirts to wear that day. Maybe they couldn’t even afford to buy any more. Or perhaps they just liked the picture, even though they didn’t know it was a picture of a famous person. I started thinking about how horrible it would be to have a mean person saying nasty stuff about your t-shirt behind your back, and it made me feel very sad. Who says anyone can say anything about anyone else.

  Then I saw my necklace! I forgot it was even in there! To be honest, I forgot I even had it. It was my raven’s eye necklace. It’s this very cool black necklace, with this little metal raven’s eye. I got it from this very cool goth shop in the city. The lady there told me that it would protect me. The raven’s eye is meant to cast a protection charm on whoever wears it. I’m not really sure if it works, though. I don’t know if I believe in that stuff. It’s kind of like religion, I suppose. And I’m not religious. But I do at least believe in karma. I’m a big believer in karma, actually. But it’s also something that I don’t really understand. I know that you’re meant to be a very good person, and that if you are, then good stuff will happen to you. So you’re meant to go around being very nice to everyone. And that if you’re mean to people, then horrible stuff will happen to you. I get all that. But what I don’t really understand very well, is whether you’re meant to be nice to people because you’re truly a nice person or if you do it just to get good karma. Like sometimes when I’m nice to people, I don’t really care about them at all. I’m only doing it to get good karma. Like if I help an old lady across the street or something, I don’t even really care if after I leave, she gets hit by a car. As long as I helped her when I saw her, just to get good karma for myself. I’m not sure if that still counts and if I’ll get a lot of good karma. Or if it actually just means that I’m being a very selfish person, and it will actually give me bad karma. I just don’t know. It worries me quite a lot sometimes.

  I also had some condoms in my locker. My friend Camila gave them to me. She has occasions to use condoms quite a lot. She told me. I’ve never needed to use them before, though. I looked at them for a second, then decided to throw them in the bin.

  Camila is from Argentina, but she moved countries for high school. She’s quite funny and quite strange. We became friends straight away. I think it was because we both didn’t have many other friends, so we decided to become friends with each other. She’s quite crazy. Sometimes, when she gets really passionate about something, she’ll start talking about it really fast. And then, without even realizing, she’ll start speaking Spanish instead of English. And she’ll keep talking to me about it, but in Spanish, even though I can’t understand what she’s saying. I don’t speak Spanish at all. Then I’ll have to try get her to stop, so I can remind her to please speak in English. But it’s very hard to get her to stop talking, once she’s already started. I quite like Camila.

  Although, unfortunately, I don’t really see her very much anymore. She caused a very big problem in my family about three years ago. She and I went to the mall together to just wander around and maybe get a few things. We were looking in the perfume section of this shop when she came up to me and said she was bored and that we should leave. I didn’t really mind either way, so we started to go. But then, as we were leaving the store, a security guard came up to us. They said that we had to go with them to talk to the police. I was very confused at the time, but I figured it must be okay if it was the police. My parents taught me to always trust the police. But then, when we were taken into this little room out the back, with the security guard and two policemen, they said they knew we had stolen their property. I started saying that I had never stolen anything in my life, which was true. I hadn’t. They kept saying that we weren’t allowed to leave until we returned what we’d taken. And that it was only going to get worse if we kept lying. Then Camila took out a bottle of perfume that she had put underneath her jumper. I think she had hidden it in her bra or something. I was very shocked. But I could hardly process it, because then they started telling me to stop lying as well. I kept telling them I didn’t steal anything, and they kept telling me to stop lying. This went on for a very long time, and eventually, they said they would have to forcibly search me, because I wouldn’t tell the truth. I was crying a lot by then. I was a complete mess. They brought in this special female policewoman who took me into a private room. She wasn’t actually too bad. She was much nicer than the other people. I think she could see how upset I was, because I was crying everywhere, and she was quite nice, saying that it would be better for me if I just gave them whatever I had taken. I kept crying and said I didn’t take anything. But then she said she would have to feel me all over, even kind of on my boobs and stuff, so that she could check to make sure. I ended up just letting her do it, because they had kept me back there for such a long time. I thought I didn’t have any choice. Eventually, they realised that I didn’t take anything and let me leave. But before I got to go home, they said we were both banned from the shopping mall for two years. I didn’t understand why they banned me as well, since I didn’t even steal anything. But I was too upset to ask. They said that they had photographs of us now and that if we came back, we would be arrested.

  After all that, they had to call my parents to pick me up. That was the only time I’ve ever seen my dad get very angry at me. It was awful. My mum gets quite upset with me frequently, so I don’t mind that too much. But I felt so bad when even my dad started yelling at me. He said that Camila was a bad influence and that I wasn’t allowed to spend time with her any more. After that, I just went to my room and cried for the whole night. It felt so awful that my dad was so upset with me. But then later that night, my dad came into my room. I was just in my bed, feeling upset, and he came and gave me this really big hug. He said that he was very sorry for getting so angry at me and that he didn’t mean to be so mean. He said he was only scared about me getting into trouble and that he just wanted to make sure I didn’t get into any more trouble. I thought that was very nice of him. He was always very kind like that. Whenever he’d get a bit angry at me, he’d always come later and give me a big hug and apologise. And then he’d always bring me a glass of water. The reason is because he taught me that if you’re ever crying a lot, that if you just start slowly sipping a glass of water, it will almost always help you stop crying. He said it was something about the muscles in your throat. I don’t know too much about it, but it always seems to work. It’s a very good trick he showed me ever since I was young. You should try it some time, if you ever need to. I drank about five glasses of water that night, because I had cried so much and lost all my water in my tears. My dad was so kind. I really loved him a lot.

  I took my towel out of the locker, as well as this fruit bar thing I had in there. It wasn’t very appetizing to me, but I thought I should probably eat something. But I sure did eat that little bar very quickly. I must have forgotten how hungry I was, because as soon as I opened it, I had practically already swallowed it. It felt very warm in my tummy.

  When I got back to the bathroom, I hardly couldn’t believe it, but someone was in my shower. The shower I had all my stuff in just before. I could hear the water running and see a lot of steam coming out of the stall. So I just went over to the shower next to it instead. But when I got close, I heard the girl in the other stall sort of talking to herself. She was singing something, or talking, I wasn’t quite sure, because she was doing it very quietly. But it was very annoying. I just wanted to have a shower, but she wouldn’t keep quiet. I got very frustrated actually, and I almost told her to shut up. But I didn’t. I just left instead. I didn’t feel like having a shower right next to someone else who was making a lot of noise. I put my towel and stuff back in my locker and went outside.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There was something that I wanted to do. I wanted to deliver a letter to this lecturer of mine that I had that semester. I
wanted to tell them exactly what I thought of them. I had written the letter about a week before, when I was first thinking about writing my essay, and I hadn’t delivered it yet. It had just been in my bag that whole time. The reason I wanted to write a letter was because I wanted to complain about the Barbarians: Antiquity to Vikings class. It was an absolutely terrible class. The lecturer’s name was Helen. I felt weird calling her by her first name, but she said that we had to. What made the class terrible was that Helen would never just do normal lectures. Instead, she would make us do all these ridiculous educational games. They were supposed to be games that would help you learn, but all they did was make me anxious and very annoyed. There was this stupid game where if you had a question, you had to put up your hand. Then she would run over and put this Viking’s helmet on your head. Even if you were way down the back of the room, in the middle of the row. She would take about ten minutes going all the way across the class just to get to you. Then you had to stand up in your seat and say something like, “I am Eric Ironthorn, Slayer of Champions, and I have a question!” You’d have to make up a Viking name that was supposed to sound very cool. And you had to yell it out, across the room, like Vikings do. And then, if Helen liked the name you had made up, she would say, “What is your question, Eric Ironthorn?” And then you could ask your question. But if she didn’t like the name you made up, like if you just said, “I am Eric Thompson, and I have a question,” then she wouldn’t let you ask your question. She would just say something like, “I do not speak with Vikings with such pathetic titles,” or she’d just shake her head and wave at you to sit down. That made me so mad sometimes! Sometimes I’d even have a question that I wanted to ask, but I wouldn’t ask it, just because I couldn’t think of a good Viking name! It was so stupid. I never asked a single question once in that whole class, just because of her. What if someone couldn’t think of a good name? Or what if they were a bit too shy? Then what? Then they could never ask questions, that’s what. I hated it.

  There was another awful thing she did to us at the start of the semester. I arrived on the day of the first lecture, all ready to learn and get excited about the class. But we didn’t learn one single thing. All she did was that she got up in front of the room and told us that the best way to start the semester was by getting to know our fellow classmates. Our class was pretty small, only about thirty people. And she said she had a game for us to play so that we all became friends. It wasn’t even hardly a game; it was just this stupid thing we had to do. We had to go around the room with a piece of paper and talk to every single person in the class. We had to ask them what their name was, and we had to get them to tell us one interesting fact about themselves. Helen said that after about half an hour, we would all have to sit back down. Then, she would call out our names, one by one, and we’d have to stand in front of the class. Then she would choose another name at random, and we would have to tell the whole class what that person’s interesting fact was. Which means we had to get a fact from every single person, just in case she called their name out. It was ridiculous. So I spent half an hour rushing around trying to get a silly fact from each person. And I couldn’t even remember who I’d asked already, and who I hadn’t. There were about ten times when I went up to someone to ask them for their interesting fact, and they said that they had already talked to me. It was so embarrassing! Then I even had to talk in front of the whole class! I don’t even remember who I got to talk about. Some girl who said that her interesting fact was that she used to live in Canada. That was apparently her most interesting fact that she could think of. It was ridiculous. I guess my fact wasn’t too interesting, either. I just couldn’t really think of anything good. Mine was just that I taught myself how to juggle. Which was true. I learned it all by myself one summer when I was about sixteen. I started off practicing with mandarins, because that was all that we had around the house. But eventually, I got pretty good, and I bought some of those proper juggling balls. I got pretty good at it, actually. I suppose it’s not that interesting, but it’s certainly more interesting than Canada.

  So I’d written Helen a letter. I had been meaning to slip it under her door at her office, so I figured I better do it then. I went over to the history building where most of my lectures were. While I was walking there, this weird kid came up to me. He didn’t even look like a university student; he only looked like he was about fifteen years old. He seemed very panicked and worried.

  “Do you know where Building 206 is?” he said. The strangest thing about him, though, was that he had glitter in his hair. His hair was completely full of this blue glitter. It was everywhere. It had even dropped down over his face and onto his shoulders. And there was even a little piece caught in his eyebrows. He had these very big, bushy eyebrows, too. I couldn’t really stop looking at them. I was very curious about why he had so much glitter all over him, but I didn’t want to ask. I thought it might be a bit impolite.

  “Sorry, I don’t know that one,” I said. I didn’t really know buildings’ numbers. Each building at university had a number, but mostly I just called them like ‘history building’ or ‘science building’, because I’m not very good at remembering numbers. But then he started making all these strange noises like he was very upset, almost like he was going to start crying. I felt so bad for him. He was just lost in this big university all covered in glitter. “I can help you find it if you like,” I said. I told him we could go to the student advice building, because they have a giant map there with all the different buildings on it.

  He seemed like he was in a pretty big rush, because he started saying, “Which way?” and trying to walk off very quickly, even though I hadn’t even told him which direction it was yet. So I sort of walked very quickly, almost running, just to help him find that building. He didn’t really say anything to me, except, “Which way?” That’s all he really seemed to care about. We made it over to the map very quickly. I bet we might have even set a world record, if we bothered to time it. We had a good look all over the map together, until we eventually saw building 206.

  “That’s the old commerce building,” I said. I knew exactly what it was; I just didn’t know it by the number. It used to be the commerce building before they built a big new shiny one a little while ago. I don’t really know what it’s used for now.

  I led him back across the university grounds. We ran even faster this time. It was funny, because while he was running, I saw little bits of glitter falling off him. They spun all the way down to the ground. It looked quite cool.

  When we got there, I pointed to it and told him it was that one. He ran straight up the stairs and yelled, “Thanks!”

  After he’d gone inside, I looked at the sign that said, ‘Old Commerce Building, 260’. It was 260, not 206! I’d taken him to the wrong building! I felt like a total idiot. I actually felt pretty bad, too. I thought about going inside to find him and tell him about my mistake. But he had already run off at a million miles per hour, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to find him again. I decided to just sneak off instead. I felt sort of bad, but I didn’t really want to run all around university with him again. To be honest, I’m not sure if I’d even be able to. My legs actually felt pretty sore when I started walking again. I’d given them quite a workout.

  I went back to the history building. It was this kind of small building. It was a little bit smelly, too. I think it was quite old. It certainly didn’t look as nice as some of the other buildings at university. Like the new engineering building, which was this huge big flashy thing that they had renovated only a few years ago. It always looked like there were all sorts of cool things going on in that building. But the history building was always the same. It was just kind of plopped down at the back of the university grounds somewhere. It never really looked like anyone was even in there; it was pretty quiet. I kind of liked it like that though.

  I went in and up the staircase on the right. But then I was very stupid. When I was going up the staircase, I s
tarted tripping over. I tripped and slid down about four stairs and scraped my shin all the way. It hurt a lot. I didn’t cry though, which I was very happy about. It was just very sore. I started limping up the rest of the stairs. I thought maybe I should turn around and go to the nurse to get my shin checked out. It was bleeding a bit. But I didn’t really want to go to the nurse. I’ve only been to the nurse one other time before when I had a lot of pain in my appendix. It was an awful experience. I didn’t even know it was my appendix at first; I just thought it was just a sore tummy. But the nurse did a bunch of tests where she had to push on my stomach which hurt quite a lot, by the way. I don’t think it’s a very good test if it makes you be in a lot of pain. But after the tests, she said that my appendix was inflamed and that I might need to have it removed. With surgery! I’d never even thought about surgery before. I didn’t think I’d ever need it until I was about a hundred and needed my hip replaced or something. It wasn’t even on my list of worries at the time. But I certainly did start worrying about it then. The nurse had to call my parents, and we went on this big crazy trip to the hospital. I had to wait around for about six hours until a doctor could see me. It was pretty terrible waiting in the hospital like that. I had these very sore pains when I came in, so a nurse gave me some pills that I took right away. It actually helped a lot. I didn’t really feel any pain at all pretty soon. I was just sitting there, waiting around. I even started to forget that I had any pain in the first place at all. I thought maybe it was just a mistake and that I was all better. I tried to get my parents to take me home, because I was feeling a bit bad for making them rush out from work to take me to the hospital. But they said that we couldn’t leave until we’d seen the doctor.