Milkshakes and Gamma Rays

Milkshakes and Gamma Rays

a novel

by Scott Zimmerman

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2011 Scott Zimmerman

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/scottz

Table of Contents

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

It was about one hundred and fifty million degrees outside today. Naturally, I wore all black: a black skirt, a black blouse, black shoes and black nail polish. I’m surprised I didn't wear black tights too. I’ve done that before on inferno days. But not today. I guess that is a bit of good news. I’m not a total idiot. I must be learning.

Okay, truth be told, the temperature didn’t even bother me. I only thought about it when I looked in the mirror in my bedroom this evening and thought, wow, Brie, you did have kind of a Morticia thing going on today. No wonder you caught the attention of some schoolmates. Wearing all black on a day like today? Yep, totally a Morticia kind of move. I’m trying to laugh about it now.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me roll back to the beginning of the day.

It started off great. I couldn’t have asked for more. Well, I could have asked for a Saturday, I guess. Otherwise, it was perfection. The weather was beautiful, the birds were singing, the squirrels were playing and all of that kind of cornball crap I like. Yes, it was an enjoyable walk to St. Margaret’s. That’s my new high school, by the way. I’m a Junior there.

I had some time to kill before first period so, like I often do, I played Ms. Pac-Man. It makes me happy. Paul’s, a convenience store just down the street from school, has the machine in back. To be precise, it’s a combo game. You can play either Ms. Pac-Man or Galaga. It’s pretty neat if you’re into retro things. Both games are a blast, but I prefer Ms. Pac-Man.

I don’t know how long my average game takes. It could be three minutes. It could be five. Whatever it is, I exceeded it by a large margin this morning. I went into a spaced-out zen-like trance. Nothing was clouding my thoughts. I was free to simply eat the dots and clear the maze. I had this fantastic sensation of knowing where every ghost was going and knowing all the right moves to make. Okay, I am exaggerating a little. The machine still kicked my butt in the end, but I was closer to being one with the machine than I've ever before experienced. I scored over 90,000 points. It was great. Sure, I’ve heard that whizkid geniuses can score 500,000 points like its no big deal, but I think the best of the best devote their whole lives to it. So, not having devoted my whole life to it, I was very pleased with 90,000.

The downside of my ace game was that it made me late for first period. Not a big deal really, except you usually don’t get to sit where you want to when you’re the last to arrive for class, or anywhere. But today was an anomaly. In first period, there are precisely as many students as desks. When I arrived, to my amazement, the one empty desk was in the last row. How did that happen? I was expecting to get stuck in the harrowing front row.

The warm and cozy sensation of good fortune only lasted about ten seconds. I actually hadn’t been lucky. The illusion of everything going my way hid the reality of a conspiracy the universe had hatched against me. No, I don’t really believe in such hocus-pocus, but it did feel plausible in the moment. If my seat had been towards the front, as it should have been, the drama dominoes would not have begun to fall.

In that case, Miss Wright would have directly handed me the assignment that everybody else in class already had. But instead, she handed it to Mike.

Pass this to Brie, Miss Wright instructed him.

With the sheet of paper in his hand, while turning around in his chair, Mike asked Where’s Brie?

It was a rhetorical question. He just hadn’t seen me come in.

But in a loud mock whisper, Peyton, who was sitting next to Mike, felt compelled to answer it by saying, She’s the girl who wears all black all the time.

And that was my punch in the stomach for the morning. Ouch! What was that about? A few people even laughed. One second I was feeling high on my gaming and seating triumphs, the next, I was reeling from a cheap-shot.

Mike looked kind of embarrassed. I didn’t see her come in. I know who she is.

And that’s true. He knows who I am. The first day of school he was a tour guide, so to speak, for new students like me. He seems like a good guy. Peyton, on the other hand . . . I can’t say I’m a fan.

For the record, Peyton wasn’t even remotely correct in her assessment. I probably have worn some black every day this year, because I like black a lot, but yesterday I recall with certainty wearing blue jeans. I did wear a black t-shirt, but it had a big yellow heart on it. I think Peyton was pegging me as a goth, and this should prove I’m not. Would a goth wear a big yellow heart? I don’t think so. A big red bleeding heart with nails sticking out of it, sure.

So that stupid comment from her left me distracted the rest of the school day. I felt imprisoned. I spent my time thinking about what to do. If I wore less black, people might think I changed just because of what Peyton said. And even if they didn’t think it, even if they didn’t even notice, I would think it, and I would notice. I thought, maybe I should wear all black every day going forward. Just to make a point. But that would just prove her right. I couldn’t win! I think people do this on purpose, to distract you from the important things in life.

Between second and third period, my monochromatic appearance came up in conversation again. A guy I don’t know very well remarked to me, No black lipstick? It was a kind of question, I guess. Maybe not. I didn’t know what to make of it. I stared at him for a moment, deep into his eyes in fact, all dramatic-like, until he became uncomfortable, I guess, and then he lowered his from my gaze. It wasn’t my intention to make him uncomfortable. I was only trying to think of something to say. Finally, I informed him that I've never worn black lipstick, and besides, I had heard it was against the rules at St. Margaret’s.

He told me he liked what I wore, and that I looked sophisticated. I nodded and that was pretty much it. He gave a little wave and disappeared down the hallway. I think it was my only conversation the whole day. How pathetic. It wasn’t even a true conversation, more like an exchange. That was even more pathetic.

But it could have been worse. Given the clothes-related stress Peyton had thrust upon me earlier, my first instinct for an appropriate response had been to give him some combination of a four letter word followed by a three letter word. I was leaning towards a piss off because that sounds so British and I love the British, so much so in fact that I daydream about living in London or Manchester someday dishing out the piss offs all day long. That might sound bad, but in this fantasy life, I wouldn't be dishing it out just to be a shrew like Peyton. Not at all! I mostly just like the way the phrase sounds. It's so melodic to my ears. A phrase of affection even. But this afternoon, especially with a near stranger, I figured a piss off would have made me sound like a total poseur, as we are living in the land of the red, white and blue and all. America I mean. The British are red, white and blue too, of course. I knew that. Really. I just forgot it for a second.

What really saved me was that I could not figure out if his query was an insult or simply a harmless observation made in the name of small talk. I know now it was the latter.

So today was a reminder that I’ve been having trouble fitting in at St. Margaret’s, at least with a certain variety of student. Yes, some people, like Peyton, have pegged me as a goth or just a trouble maker in general, and that’s not correct at all. Even if I do identify with goths and troublemakers a bit, wearing black is more of a lazy habit I got into than a crazy quasi-religion or any of the more extreme things people might think. Perhaps my initial gravitation towards it was because I thought it made me look like a serious person to be taken seriously. Sophisticated wouldn’t be too far off the mark from what I was aiming for, so I appreciated what what’s-his-name said. It’s also been a representation of mourning. I would think there would be more of it, given the state of world events.

Mourning? Did I just say that? Geez, that does sound gothic.

After school, I went to Paul’s again to chill out. I played a few games of Ms. Pac-Man and a few games of Galaga. But my head was so clogged up, it was like flushing quarters down the toilet. I left disappointed.

Aside from laughing at myself in the mirror, the whole day had become a mental bummer. I wanted to find the zen again. I needed to sleep on it, probably. But before I went to sleep, I watched a movie. War Games. It’s been surging in popularity recently. I’d never seen it before. It was kind of spooky. Dated, but, still relevant. Maybe more so than ever. It was also really entertaining. I loved how Matthew Broderick played Galaga in the movie. That was great. It totally caught me by surprise. So I went to bed amused.

Friday

After yesterday, it is going to sound like I am obsessing over my clothes. Sorry. Fashion probably isn’t even in my top 25 interests, but I just had to deal with it. Today I went with a black skirt, a green shirt, green nail polish, and my black shoes with a buckle. Patent leather of course. Always patent leather. I also wear Doc Martens a lot, and canvas Chuck Taylor low-tops and high-tops.

It dawned on me that the school colors are green and black, so if I diverted from all black to green and black, I could say with confidence, if only to myself, that it had nothing to do with Peyton, and everything to do with school spirit. Rah-rah. The matter was resolved. And the combination looked good on me. The shirt matched my eyes.

Nothing notable happened in the morning. Well, except I turned in a twist on the Hare vs. the Tortoise story for second period English. We had to write a minimum 750 word story involving animals. I hope the teacher likes it. I used the f-word once. I’ll probably get in trouble for that. But I tried using all kinds of other words in its place and none of them worked for me. That was really dumb. It seemed like a bold move at the time, but now I’m regretting it. I should’ve just written heck. But heck sounds so stupid, like a fifth grade word. Then again I’m not writing for HBO. Geez.

Anyway, I’ll skip to lunch. I was still feeling a little stupid not knowing what’s-his-name’s name yesterday, so I set out to find what’s-his-name. It was something to do. Plus, a friend would be nice. Does that sound desperate? I checked the cafeteria, the benches, the parking lot, various classrooms. I even humored myself by looking in some closets. If anybody saw me, I probably looked lost, or like a little thief. If a ream of paper goes missing, they’ll probably start pointing fingers at me first. I circled the school a couple times. He was nowhere. Maybe he was a bad boy lighting something up in the boy’s bathroom. I could see that. I did my share of it at another school, the one I went to before my mother and I had to move. That may kind of explain why I ended up at this school, instead of my preferred transfer choices. I had been caught, and it was on my record.

At St. Margaret’s, it’s a closed campus, so you are not supposed to wander off of it, but if you do, I doubt they give you the guillotine or the electric chair or anything like that. So he could have left. Or he could have just been absent. Or who knows what. I decided to play the rebel and wander off campus myself. I love to walk anyway. I walked ten or fifteen miles a day a lot of times this summer, usually with no particular destination at all. This time I used very little imagination at all. I headed for Paul’s. It was time for some more Ms. Pac-Man and maybe Galaga too.

As soon as I walked in the store I was struck with a hunger for one of those sketchy Hostess berry pies that aren’t shaped like pies at all, but more like Hot Pockets (also sketchy). This urge formed probably as the result of some subliminal messages the store embeds under the grotesque Top 40 music. The economy has been abysmal, so stores need to try anything they can to make a sale. I pictured the pie being all hard and stale and then totally cutting my mouth open on a rough edge on the first bite, having to go to the hospital for stitches, and being busted for being off-campus on top of it, but it sounded good, so I pulled out a big fat dollar and got one.

So you’re one of the last holdouts, the man at the register said. It may have been Paul himself. I’d never asked.

"Yep. I like souvenirs. Hey, what will you be doing about Galaga?"

It will still take quarters. We’re going to buy thousands in bulk on Monday. Then we’ll sell fifteen quarters for five dollars.

So, a quarter will now be a third.

Exactly.

Confusing.

By the way, I haven’t been bringing any lunch to school all year. So maybe my stomach was finally starting to rebel in regards to the hunger strike. I wonder if I look like one of those girls totally obsessed with their weight? Because I’m not at all. It’s