OCD, the Dude, and Me - By Lauren Roedy Vaughn Page 0,4
the money and just pay for the other person and not me. No dice, they say. They want me to socialize, not have my head in a book the entire time. No one is going to want to room with me, Mom. Nonsense, she says in her everything-is-always-glorious way. She’s so clueless sometimes. During dinner, I wore my blue ski mask over my face in protest. Dad insisted I take it off because I was disrespecting my mother. I didn’t. I had to eat dinner in my room. Fine.
*CLASS ASSIGNMENT* 10/7
Essay #4: The Class Trip
(How I really felt but did not turn in for fear that I would have to read it in front of the class. I did not make an appointment to tell Ms. Harrison my thoughts. These are my thoughts, just for me.)
Danielle Levine
English 12
Ms. Harrison
Period 4
I have been to England before, and I have zero interest in going again with my school because I have no friends and spending a week away from home where no one but tour guides and teachers will talk to me (occasionally) is not my idea of fun. Even though I know my father will give me Xanax to deal with the twelve-hour flight, “better living through chemistry,” he always jokes, there aren’t enough of those pills to stop my mind from obsessively repeating magical chants, hoping I hit on just the right combination of words to render me totally invisible while Sara and Heather sit huddled in the back of the tour bus whispering about how glad they are that they don’t have my fat ass and red hair. Yeah, well they should be glad. My body is Rubenesque while the current fashion is Toothpick-esque, and centuries of scientific research have met their match with my hair. The Hubble telescope floats around in space, but not one product on the market is able to straighten and/or soften my hair. Go flippin’ figure.
I would love to see Stonehenge and Bath and Stratford-upon-Avon. Those are places where a love of literature is acceptable because so many great authors wrote there that you still feel all their words floating in the air. I’ve only been to one place in the United States where I could feel words in the air and that was Gettysburg, and the words I felt were heavier and pricklier than the ones blanketing Stratford-upon-Avon. So that’s really why I would want to go back to England. Maybe the invisible language would be enough to make me forget the thirty people in my senior class who I would be traveling with.
But not enough to forget about Jacob. He would be there, of course. He and Keira would both be there. I wish he were mean or something. But he isn’t. I love him. Writing those words makes me hot. Admitting it makes me hot, makes me hotter. Am boiling as I type. May spontaneously combust. And even though I somehow wrote those three sizzling words seemingly against my will, I would deny it even if I were being held in Guantanamo Bay and admitting my love for him were the only thing that would release me. I’d rather stay imprisoned than have anyone know how much I love Jacob. I am just not going on the school trip.
*SECRET ME-MOIR ENTRY* 10/8
Secret #2 (#1 is that I love Jacob Kingston)
Assignment given by me for my eyes only
I think about all the girls in my class and honestly, I’d love to have any one of them write my name down on that slip of paper. Even the really mean ones. I wish I could hate them and say I would never want to be seen with any of them or that I would never, not in a million years, ever want to share a room with them on the school trip. But it’s not true. I’d love for just one of them (even the ice queen, Heather) to be willing to share a hotel room with me for just one week. But they don’t. In a movie I would get to have psycho powers, and after they spilled a bucket of blood on me at the prom, I would have my revenge through Satan’s hellish magic. But in real life I don’t even hate them. I just hate me.
*CLASS ASSIGNMENT* 10/9
Essay #4: The Class Trip
(What I did turn in along with a note begging Ms. Harrison not to make me read it aloud. I got a C+. I still had to read