Like Virginia Parker
Rip has the ball and throws it to Rasheed. Artest gets it back, and the popcorn machine below the net is frenzied. Wallace knocks it clear, Billups picks it up and throws it home. Go Pistones. Wish I was there.
*****
Once upon a time, I didn't wear jeans so tight that it is giving me a stomach ache from sitting here on the floor. What a weirdo I was. It's too bad you can't be comfortable and normal at the same time. Since I'm fat, I have to always wear a shirt that will cover my stomach where it bulges over, which sucks. Tina Green can tuck in her Stones t-shirt and walk around the hall and look great, but I'd be a joke. I can look okay as long as that hang-over stomach part is hidden. The hooded sweatshirt is a great device for me. Thank you, whoever invented the hooded sweatshrt. And also it is good that those are cool, too. Not just fat people wear them.
It is weird to have to hide your fatness, and then act like fat people are gross and stuff. I don't understand how other people just go around letting it hang out and not hiding it. Like Virginia Parker: She can never fit in the way she goes around wtih her stomach not even sucked in and loose, comfortable pants. Doesn't she want to try? What is wrong with a person to make them that way? I can't even begin to picture what it would be like to not care what people thought of you like that.
It's not like I'm hugely fat, but I am also not normal. I do pretty well the way I camoflauge it all. I am known for my good ass, even by some high schoolers. It really is not that good, because it's sort of flat, but whatever. I'll take it where I can get it.
I wish my mom would get here. I don't want to be sitting here when classes change. If the bell rings and she's still not here, I'm going to sit in the office and wait. A lot of people here hate me. The 8th grade girls, they hate me the most. They want to beat my ass, but so far I have avoided that. I just want to be at home where it's safe for a while, and that's only when Nick isn't there. So today I'll have like three hours of safeness before he gets home, and after I leave here. It is a hostile world, I guess. Or am I just "over dramatic" like everyone says? Everyone is pretty much my mom. My stepdad would agree with that statement, but he would not stop at the words over and dramatic, and that would be only the nice fringe of what he thought of me.
He really does hate me, my stepdad. What is up with that? How can I be so disgusting and not even control it? Why can't I get a handle on it and change it? Probably because he's a fucking asshole. I hate him. I hate him so much. I wish he would go away or die.
The Stones sticker is coming off my purse. It's peeling around the top edge. It is just of the lips. I don't really know what songs the Rolling Stones even do, that's how secretly lame I am. But I like the lips of it, and I like the image around the Stones. They aren't too scary-rocked-out like Judas Priest or something, but are cool and old school in a good way. The cool older people like the Stones, where, like, Def Leppard is more just my age group.
I talk weird for a 7th grader, don't I? I can tell that I do. Sometimes people point it out, but mostly I've gotten good at talking normal in front of people now. But when I'm talking in my head, or to you, the regular me takes over, and this is what you get. Weird words and stuff.
A blue van just drove by outside, but it wasn't ours. My mom will probably be driving the orange truck. It is very small and very Nick. Everything we have is very Nick. This is not a good thing. It is humiliating and embarassing and keeps normal people away from our house. Because he's a fucking asshole dick; did I mention that part? It is true. And in addition to being a dick, he is also a power monger, and takes it out on everything he can, even if he sucks ass at it. Like putting bumpers on our cars. He, like, soldered these huge-ass, round, heavy steel pipes or something on the cars as the bumpers. They are like at least four inches round. Why? So "any mother fucker" who "wants to smash into" him cannot damage the vehicle. It is retarded, trust me. I have to go to the bathroom. I doubt she'll be here that fast, anyway. She has to get dressed and all that when you call in the middle of the day to be picked up.
******
Do you know that Bryan Adams song that goes, "I need somebody, somebody to love!" or something that? I really feel like that song understands my life. Seriously, last weekend we were driving around in John's van, and that song came on, and somehow my life felt perfect, sitting on the cooler behind John's seat, buzzed from beer, just driving around on a Saturday night, with Donny looking back at me and making faces and calling me "little girl." Something about the mixture of it all, with that song jamming on the stereo, and I felt so good that I never wanted it to end. Because when the song ends, then Donny becomes someone too uncool for me to really like, even though there is something really strong with him and me, and life is confusing and miserable and I am just queasy from beer and guys too old for me want to kiss me and I don't know how to do anything about it because I can't lift my head.
There is a stall in the girls bathroom by the gym that says, "Amber Bach is a slut." I am Amber Bach. Am I a slut? Are those girls right? I don't see how it can be true when I'm a virgin and I've only made out with two guys in my life, but there is a lot of people who things I am a slut. Do they know something about me that I don't? Maybe I am just a budding slut, and it will happen later. Maybe a true slut doesn't have to go through the actions, because it's something more. I always take a slut to mean someone who sleeps with a bunch of guys, any guys, all the time. But maybe it is more than that. I seems to be in my skin, my clothes, my hair, my face, my personality. Why can't I shake it? It doesn't seem like it matches me. But yet it won't go away, this having people call me a slut. It doesn't make sense to me how I got here. I am just a girl who likes to climb trees and hang out with my grandpa and think about thoughts. I don't get how this ever happened, and I can't get out of it.
I wish my mom would get here. I want to get away from school. And I wish I had somewhere to go where I wasn't a slut. But Nick thinks I am one, too, and he will be home in a few hours. I wish my dad lived here still.
*****
Once upon a time, I didn't wear jeans so tight that it is giving me a stomach ache from sitting here on the floor. What a weirdo I was. It's too bad you can't be comfortable and normal at the same time. Since I'm fat, I have to always wear a shirt that will cover my stomach where it bulges over, which sucks. Tina Green can tuck in her Stones t-shirt and walk around the hall and look great, but I'd be a joke. I can look okay as long as that hang-over stomach part is hidden. The hooded sweatshirt is a great device for me. Thank you, whoever invented the hooded sweatshrt. And also it is good that those are cool, too. Not just fat people wear them.
It is weird to have to hide your fatness, and then act like fat people are gross and stuff. I don't understand how other people just go around letting it hang out and not hiding it. Like Virginia Parker: She can never fit in the way she goes around wtih her stomach not even sucked in and loose, comfortable pants. Doesn't she want to try? What is wrong with a person to make them that way? I can't even begin to picture what it would be like to not care what people thought of you like that.
It's not like I'm hugely fat, but I am also not normal. I do pretty well the way I camoflauge it all. I am known for my good ass, even by some high schoolers. It really is not that good, because it's sort of flat, but whatever. I'll take it where I can get it.
I wish my mom would get here. I don't want to be sitting here when classes change. If the bell rings and she's still not here, I'm going to sit in the office and wait. A lot of people here hate me. The 8th grade girls, they hate me the most. They want to beat my ass, but so far I have avoided that. I just want to be at home where it's safe for a while, and that's only when Nick isn't there. So today I'll have like three hours of safeness before he gets home, and after I leave here. It is a hostile world, I guess. Or am I just "over dramatic" like everyone says? Everyone is pretty much my mom. My stepdad would agree with that statement, but he would not stop at the words over and dramatic, and that would be only the nice fringe of what he thought of me.
He really does hate me, my stepdad. What is up with that? How can I be so disgusting and not even control it? Why can't I get a handle on it and change it? Probably because he's a fucking asshole. I hate him. I hate him so much. I wish he would go away or die.
Tonight I am supposed to go over Theresa's. I probably won't be able to now, since I am going home sick. It just depends. On whether Nick wants to drive home that if I am supposedly too sick for school, then I am too sick to go to Theresa's, or if he is glad to get rid of me. Most of the time, he will pick the chance to keep me around for torturing purposes. But sometimes he gets a streak of humanness, like he can't quite keep up the level of evil required to have me around, so he'll let me go somewhere.
I'm cold and only have my blue hooded sweatshirt jacket on. You really can't get away with wearing a full winter coat to school unless there's snow on the ground. Kelly Johnson sometimes still doesn't wear a jacket. Neither does Kathy Miller. Kathy can stand outside and smoke for fifteen minutes with no coat on, in the snow. There's no way I can come in with some big ass winter jacket on. Like Virginia Parker or something.
The Stones sticker is coming off my purse. It's peeling around the top edge. It is just of the lips. I don't really know what songs the Rolling Stones even do, that's how secretly lame I am. But I like the lips of it, and I like the image around the Stones. They aren't too scary-rocked-out like Judas Priest or something, but are cool and old school in a good way. The cool older people like the Stones, where, like, Def Leppard is more just my age group.
I talk weird for a 7th grader, don't I? I can tell that I do. Sometimes people point it out, but mostly I've gotten good at talking normal in front of people now. But when I'm talking in my head, or to you, the regular me takes over, and this is what you get. Weird words and stuff.
A blue van just drove by outside, but it wasn't ours. My mom will probably be driving the orange truck. It is very small and very Nick. Everything we have is very Nick. This is not a good thing. It is humiliating and embarassing and keeps normal people away from our house. Because he's a fucking asshole dick; did I mention that part? It is true. And in addition to being a dick, he is also a power monger, and takes it out on everything he can, even if he sucks ass at it. Like putting bumpers on our cars. He, like, soldered these huge-ass, round, heavy steel pipes or something on the cars as the bumpers. They are like at least four inches round. Why? So "any mother fucker" who "wants to smash into" him cannot damage the vehicle. It is retarded, trust me. I have to go to the bathroom. I doubt she'll be here that fast, anyway. She has to get dressed and all that when you call in the middle of the day to be picked up.
******
Do you know that Bryan Adams song that goes, "I need somebody, somebody to love!" or something that? I really feel like that song understands my life. Seriously, last weekend we were driving around in John's van, and that song came on, and somehow my life felt perfect, sitting on the cooler behind John's seat, buzzed from beer, just driving around on a Saturday night, with Donny looking back at me and making faces and calling me "little girl." Something about the mixture of it all, with that song jamming on the stereo, and I felt so good that I never wanted it to end. Because when the song ends, then Donny becomes someone too uncool for me to really like, even though there is something really strong with him and me, and life is confusing and miserable and I am just queasy from beer and guys too old for me want to kiss me and I don't know how to do anything about it because I can't lift my head.
There is a stall in the girls bathroom by the gym that says, "Amber Bach is a slut." I am Amber Bach. Am I a slut? Are those girls right? I don't see how it can be true when I'm a virgin and I've only made out with two guys in my life, but there is a lot of people who things I am a slut. Do they know something about me that I don't? Maybe I am just a budding slut, and it will happen later. Maybe a true slut doesn't have to go through the actions, because it's something more. I always take a slut to mean someone who sleeps with a bunch of guys, any guys, all the time. But maybe it is more than that. I seems to be in my skin, my clothes, my hair, my face, my personality. Why can't I shake it? It doesn't seem like it matches me. But yet it won't go away, this having people call me a slut. It doesn't make sense to me how I got here. I am just a girl who likes to climb trees and hang out with my grandpa and think about thoughts. I don't get how this ever happened, and I can't get out of it.
I wish my mom would get here. I want to get away from school. And I wish I had somewhere to go where I wasn't a slut. But Nick thinks I am one, too, and he will be home in a few hours. I wish my dad lived here still.
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