Second Helpings

by Megan Mccafferty

  “Write it from his perspective,” said the Lump.

  There were nods of approval all around the room.

  And Mac said, “Tch.”

  I don’t think it’s fair for me to steal someone else’s tragedy for the sake of completing an assignment. This makes it very hard for me to “dig deeper and darker.” We all know that nothing really bad has ever happened to me—just take a look at my Top Trauma List. Every day, I wait for that doomsday shoe to drop on my head and crush my spirit.

  If my classmates have any say in the matter, that shoe will be made by one Dr. Marten.

  Until the Doc drops, what can I possibly have to write about? What made the admissions people believe that I belong here? Why didn’t I choose cross-country camp instead? Oh, that’s right. Because I suck. I broke every school distance record in my sophomore year. The only thing I’ve broken since then is my leg. I’m still waiting for the day I finally shatter my father’s dreams of NCAA glory.

  But right now, limping through workouts seems preferable to this. I may be the best writer at Pineville High, but that really isn’t saying much now, is it? I just don’t have it in me. If there’s one thing I’ve learned at the New Jersey Summer Pre-College Enrichment Curriculum in Artistic Learning, it’s this: I may be SPECIAL, but I’m not all that special. Good thing I figured this out here and now instead of next year.

  the twenty-first

  Having lost all hope for friendship with my classmates, I’ve tried to expand my social sphere here at SPECIAL, not because I really want to but because I think it would be a good run-through for college.

  Spurred by Bridget’s endorsements or—more likely—in desperate need of one more order, which would put them over the twelve-dollar Chinese delivery minimum, her acting-class buddy Ashleigh knocked on my door and invited me to dine with them. I was hungry and tired of the dining hall’s grilled-cheese sandwiches, so I accepted. Against my better judgment, mind you, because I do not like Ashleigh.

  In Ashleigh, I’ve discovered a unique breed of girlie annoyingness, different from that of the Clueless Two. Manda and Sara are annoying because their whole belief system is in opposition to my own. They live by a Grand Theft Auto morality, by which lying, whoring, and stealing scores innumerable points. Manda has a compulsive need to sleep with other girls’ boyfriends, then uses pseudo-feminist arguments to justify why her actions are a fight against the patriarchy and not just an exhibition of heinous skankitude. Sara delights in spreading the word about her best friend’s misdeeds (and everyone else’s, for that matter) yet doesn’t think it’s hypocritical to get pissed when the gossipmongering exposes her own shady debaucheries.

  Anyway, Ashleigh’s annoyingness manifests itself more in form than content. Meaning, her comments aren’t inherently annoying. In fact, she often says things that I’ve been thinking myself. The problem is, even Ashleigh’s most banal observations become annoying by the irritating force of her personality. She has a compulsive need to not only be right about everything, but to stake her claim as the first genius/philosopher to have ever thought that particular thought. She will argue and argue and argue until you give in to her point-of-view voodoo and see things her all-knowing way.

  For example, the first time I met Ashleigh, Bridget tried to speed up the bonding process by pointing out that we are both huge fans of John Hughes’s earlier work.

  “I’ve loved the Molly Ringwald movies forever,” she said. “Not just because the eighties are trendy.”

  As you know, this same comment could also be applied to yours truly. But my fascination with the eighties goes way beyond John Hughes, and has long superceded all interest in my own generation. (With the exception of The Real World, which I still love even though it’s totally predictable and lame. Like, who’s the gay one this year? Who’s the one who will have issues with her long-distance boyfriend? Who are gonna be the platonic sexual-tension couple? Duh. But I still love it more than my own real world.) Ashleigh was clearly insinuating that I liked those flicks only because Seventeen and YM had approved their retro-kitsch appeal. But we had just met, and I was practicing my personable personality.

  “Me, too,” I replied, calmly. “I watched them when I was little because my sister liked them and—”

  “I didn’t need anyone to introduce me.”

  “Well, uh . . . okay.”

  “And it makes me mad when girls suddenly decide that Breakfast Club is their favorite movie, when they haven’t even seen the version that isn’t edited for TV. . . .”

  “It’s pretty hilarious when they say ‘Flip you!’ instead of ‘Fuck you!’ ” I said, trying to salvage the conversation. She steamrolled right over me.

  “I didn’t jump on the bandwagon. I discovered them on my own.”

  Ashleigh made this declaration as if she were Columbus, Magellan, and Ponce de León all rolled up into one ugly little package. Not so incidentally, Ashleigh uses a similarly contagious mind-over-matter to convince others she’s cute. She believes in her cuteness so deeply that others see it, too, despite the evidence to the contrary: flyaway bottle-blond hair, crazed, bulging eyes, and a nose that resembles a stalk of broccoli, inverted. (This is an externalized version of my He Who Shall Remain Nameless trick, which still isn’t working.)

  I so dislike Ashleigh’s desperate need for conversation domination that I intentionally pick fights with her, even when I’m in total agreement with what she’s saying. Very immature, I know. But it wasn’t until tonight that my combative behavior came back to chomp me in the ass. No sooner had I looped my first lo mein noodle onto my chopsticks than Ashleigh gave the Last Word on the most infamously self-proclaimed virgin in the pop music community.

  “Britney? No way,” Ashleigh said. “She lives with Justin. Case closed.”

  It would be difficult to find someone in the Western world who disagrees with this. I mean, the only virgins left in the world are, uh, me, Hope, and those True Love Waits religious zealots who wear “hip” Holy Roller T-shirts with sayings like CHRIST’S MAMA WAS A VIRGIN AND SO AM I. But I just couldn’t let Ashleigh go through life thinking that she’s right about everything.

  “How do you know Britney’s motto isn’t ‘How about a hand job instead’?” I countered.

  “Is that your motto?” Ashleigh asked, in the snotty way that only a not-cute-who-thinks-she’s-cute devirginized girl can.

  Splotches sprouted all over Bridget’s face and neck, like a harvest of cherry tomatoes. Make that a harvest of cherry tomatoes with a guilt complex.

  “Well, like, Ashleigh asked if you were a virgin, so, like . . .”

  I didn’t let her finish her sentence. I just picked up my carton and left.

  To add to the insult of my nonsexed status, I returned to my room to discover that Call Me Chantalle had tied one of her toe shoes on the doorknob, her way of letting me know she was “getting her wettins on.” Unspecified Intimate Moment #6. Ack.

  Her moans easily escaped through the walls, so the warning was totally unnecessary. Call Me Chantalle’s pleasure grunts were so specific that I could tell that her partner was slurping, not screwing. Where, oh where, was the resident adviser when I needed one?

  Tonight’s sexile destroys all hope that my roommate and I will be anything but mortal enemies. Oh, I’ve seen her freak side, all right. Unfortunately, it’s the Rick James, from-her-head-down-to-her-toenails variety. And to think my first impression of Call Me Chantalle, the one I kept to myself because I was being nice—that she was a prissy, anorexic nutcase with an unhealthy obsession with hygiene—was a dream compared to the reality. Call Me Chantalle is far more complex than I had thought. She’s a prissy, anorexic nutcase with an unhealthy obsession with personal hygiene that is at odds with her heinous skankitude.

  I was contemplating my next move when I looked up and saw Bridget standing over me, chewing on her twenty-four-carat ponytail, looking sincerely apologetic.

  “I’m, like, so sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have
told Ashleigh that you’re, like, you know, a virgin.” She whispered the last word as if she’d said “necrophiliac” or “crackhead.” Come to think of it, it would be more socially acceptable at SPECIAL if she had.

  “Ash is gone, by the way, if you want to, like, come back to my room with me.”

  It was better than listening to Call Me Chantalle climax with Joe, “the multimedia hottie.”

  “By the way, you, like, forgot this,” she said, handing me a fortune cookie.

  I opened it up and it said: The road less traveled will not be smooth.

  As if I didn’t know that already. I should share it with Mac so he can add it to his repertoire.

  the thirtieth

  Since that last entry, much has happened:

  Call Me Chantalle had an Unspecified Intimate Moment with all Lucky Seven, and two others who weren’t hot enough to make the list. I hope that this hellish roommate means that next year I will blessed by the higher powers in charge of housing assignments.

  I spend little time in my own room because it is an incubator for STDs. So I’ve struck up quasi-friendships with girls on my floor, which gives me faith that I’ll be able to suppress my naturally antisocial tendencies next year and bond with people who aren’t Hope.

  I was quite surprised by Bridget’s skillful portrayal of Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her success in last year’s spring play wasn’t a fluke after all. She insists that she isn’t going to college but straight to Hollywood stardom. This has become our favorite ponytail-chewing debate.

  I’ve heard more poems about the futility of human life than I care to mention.

  All the evidence is in: I am a sucker for queer bait.

  You might be wondering why I didn’t write about any of these things. Well, the reason I didn’t write about any of these things is that I didn’t have this journal to write in. And the reason I didn’t have it is so utterly moronic that it could only happen to me.

  As you know, we are all required to keep a journal for class. In it, we were supposed to do a half hour of free writing a day, work on drafts of our assignments, and so on. Of course, it didn’t take me very long to get back into the habit of writing only the most humiliating things in my journal, because deep down, I don’t think anyone, even Hope, should be subjected to these ramblings in real life. Since I knew Mac would eventually ask for our notebooks, I started a new class journal that was highly censored, unlike this personal journal, which isn’t censored enough. Both are of the traditional black-and-white-speckled composition-notebook variety.

  Last Friday, Mac asked us to turn in our journals so he could start reading them over the weekend. You see where this is going, so I’ll just get to the moronic part:

  I TURNED IN THE WRONG JOURNAL.

  Psychologists would say that I did this on purpose. An intentional accident, because I wanted him to read all my ramblings, which he did, including those about him.

  I think my only conscious thought in the forty-eight hours between that realization and my next class was, HOLY SHIT. When I tried explaining my mortifying mistake on Monday morning, he said it was all the more reason for him to read it. Then he quoted Alexander Pope.

  “ ‘To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for the observer’s sake.’ ”

  “Uh . . . but . . .”

  “No buts,” he replied. “Discussion over.”

  And it was over. For the next five days, Mac didn’t say anything about the journal. In the meantime, I hoped that my pagan peers had filled their journals with way more psychotic stuff than I did. I prayed that they were certifiable enough for Mac to overlook my erotic overtures. I even considered asking the Wiccans to cast a spell involving all five points of the pentagram, one that would make these hopes and prayers come true. So what if I had to repay the debt by turning my soul over to the dark lord of the underworld? A small price, indeed.

  Finally, today, Monday, as the class took a break for lunch (me) and ceremonial bloodletting (everyone else), Mac held up the wrong journal and said, “ ‘The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.’ Oscar Wilde.”

  “Uh.”

  “Let’s discuss this.”

  Sure, let’s discuss that he’s thirtysomething and I’m a minor and I’m lusting after him in a totally inappropriate student/teacher “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” kind of way that ruins reputations and gets people arrested and now we’re alone in a classroom together and no one is around and it’s very hot and sweaty and he’s talking about leading me astray and I’m not wearing that much clothing and—

  “Don’t be embarrassed about the things you wrote about me,” he started.

  I wanted to say, Oh no, I am not embarrassed at all. I believe in articulating one’s deepest thoughts and feelings, even those that may be unconventional or, yes, illegal. After all, what use is a mind if we disallow freedom of expression?

  But it came out like this: “Nuhhh.”

  “You are familiar with my work, right?”

  “Uh, sure! Of course! I love your books!” I lied. I’d never heard of him or his work before I showed up at SPECIAL.

  “Then you know that my first novel, Mama’s Boy, was a semiautobiographical account of my struggle to come out of the closet.”

  Out of the closet.

  “And that it was dedicated to my longtime lover. . . .”

  Lover.

  “Raul.”

  Raul.

  “So you know I’m gay. . . .”

  Gay.

  He’s . . . gay.

  Of course.

  OF COURSE HE’S GAY.

  Why would I ever lust after someone who isn’t gay? First Paul Parlipiano, now Mac. Are all Manhattan hotties gay? How many more until I’m officially a princess among queens? This would only happen to me.

  “Which means there’s no reason for you to be embarrassed or uncomfortable about what you wrote.”

  He said it matter-of-factly, to make it so, even though he knew the exact opposite was true. I felt like a busted horse’s ass, one whose only redeeming quality was that it could be shot and turned into glue.

  “Now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to talk to you about what I read. Why is it that nothing you’ve written for me in class holds up to what I read in this journal?”

  I wanted to say, What do you mean? But instead it came out: “Wuhhh?”

  “I want more of this,” he said, handing my journal back to me. “This is real. This is you. If you want to be a writer, you need to stop censoring yourself. You need to write like this.”

  He massaged his scalp, waiting for some kind of multisyllabic response that I couldn’t give him.

  “The Noir Bards, as you aptly describe them, are more concerned with the stereotypical, self-loathing trappings of being a writer. But they all lack the one thing that you have: a writer’s soul.”

  Jesus Christ. It was like Miss Haviland all over again.

  “You’re as bad as my English teacher,” I said. “I’m here because I didn’t want to go to cross-country camp or work on the boardwalk.” Mac’s eyebrows shot up in doubt. That’s when I remembered that he had read the truth. So I switched gears. “Who says I want to be a writer?”

  He removed his hands from his head. “ ‘We are what we pretend to be.’ Kurt Vonnegut.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You already are a writer,” he said. “All you have to do is be yourself.”

  Huh. All this time, I thought Mac hated me and my writing. I told him this.

  “The only thing you lack is life experience. Your life so far has been lived in one of those self-contained, shake-it-up-and-watch-it-snow globes. You owe it to yourself to go explore beyond your picture-perfect suburban surroundings. You owe it to the rest of us to go out into the world and describe what you see and feel from your unique point of view.”

  Okay. My surroundings are far from picture perfect, but I got the point.

  “I p
ushed you because you were better than all the other kids in the class. You’ve only got two weeks left here; don’t waste it. Don’t blow this opportunity by being what everyone else wants you to be. Are you afraid of offending people? Telling them things that they don’t want to hear?”

  “Yuh,” I said, nodding vigorously.

  “ ‘If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing,’ ” he replied. “Kingsley Amis.”

  “I’m afraid of embarrassing myself,” I said. “I reveal excruciating things. Things like my illegal lust for my gay writing teacher. The me in my journal is a total moron.”

  This cracked Mac up.

  “ ‘The ignorant take themselves too seriously. The brilliant know better, and laugh at themselves.’ ”

  “Who said that?”

  “I did,” he said, pausing long enough to shine the high beams on my stupidity. “In my second novel.”

  “Oh,” I said, wincing. “Yeah.”

  “Tch.”

  While I’m relieved that Mac doesn’t think I’m a pervy loser, his praise doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to be a writer. I’ve already decided to major in psychology. I analyze everyone so much already, I might as well get paid for it.

  I was on my way out the door when Mac called out to me.

  “Oh, one last thing,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Who is He Who Shall Remain Nameless?”

  “Muhhh,” I replied, stripped of my powers of speech. Again.

  August 1st

  Hope,

  Now that I’ve FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY got my journal back, I’ve been looking through it more carefully than usual, for glimpses of genius. Personally, I don’t see it.

  What I do know is that my journal is a very shabby representation of my SPECIAL experience so far. I’ve been here for four weeks, and yet I’ve neglected to write about any of the fun stuff I’ve done, or the cool people I’ve met since I’ve been here. No, I’d much rather dwell on Ashleigh and Call Me Chantalle, who have taught me a very valuable lesson: Bitches and skanks are everywhere. They’re at school. They’re at camp. And they’ll surely be in college. I might as well get used to it. But I won’t. And that, my friend, is because I am a moron.