Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [31]
• Wally D’s Sweet Treat Shoppe employee T-shirt, wrinkled, torn around the collar, stained with chocolate syrup, smelling of rancid sweat and skunky Budweiser, worn during a one-night stand in the basement of Wally D’s Sweet Treat Shoppe on July 31, 2005
• Handwritten note dated August 1, 2005, on linen card stock personalized in Engravers MT font (LEN LEVY) thanking me kindly for the one-night stand that had unburdened the author of his virginity
• Printout of first e-mail ever sent by pparlipiano@columbia.edu to notsodarling@hotmail.com, dated March 1, 2002: an invitation from Paul Parlipiano—my high school crush-to-end-all-crushes, obsessive object of horniness, and gay man of my dreams—to a Snake March, a nonviolent demonstration protesting all forms of tyranny thrown by Columbia University’s People Against Conformity and Oppression
• Pink gingham print birth announcement for Marin Sonoma Doczyl-kowski; born May 30, 2002; six pounds, four ounces, nineteen and a half inches long; handwritten note from my sister: “Congratulations on becoming an aunt!”
• Rainbow-colored silk ribbons that decorated my grandmother Gladdie’s walker when she lived at Silver Meadows Assisted Living Facility; removed after her death in May 2002
• Pair of malodorous low-top Converse worn almost exclusively throughout high school
• A handwritten poem titled “Fall,” inspired by the Adam and Eve Creation myth, dating back to Spring 2000, written by Marcus Flutie on a torn-out piece of notebook paper that was and still is origami-folded into a mouth that opens and closes; sample lines: “But if I am exiled/alone/I know we will be/together again someday/naked/without shame/in Paradise”
• Handwritten lyrics to the song “Crocodile Lies,” written and performed by Marcus Flutie on June 8, 2002, also known as the date of Pineville High School’s Senior Prom, and the night I was blissfully unburdened of my virginity; sample lines: “You, yes, you linger inside my heart/The same you who stopped us before we could start…”
• Red T-shirt, neatly folded and washed, though not in recent memory, with iron-on letters spelling ME, YES, ME across the chest; handmade by Marcus Flutie and given to me to wear under my high school graduation gown as I delivered my salutatorian speech on June 30, 2002; inside the front breast pocket, a folded-up handwritten draft of that graduation speech, titled “Real-World Revelation: A Malcontent Makes Peace with Pineville” final sentence reads: “For better or for worse, you have helped me become the person I was always meant to be: Me, Yes, Me.”
• Thirty-three printouts of Poetry Spam, in which junk e-mail was rewritten into haikus, e-mailed between September 2002 and December 2003 from flutie_marcus@gakkai.edu to jdarling@columbia.edu, including the very first one that arrived during my own college orientation program precisely four years ago today (see attached)
* * *
To: jdarling@columbia.edu
From: flutie_marcus@gakkai.edu
Date: September 3, 2002
Subject: Poetry Spam #1
* * *
jumbled nonsense in
quixotic combinations
becomes meaningful
* * *
Original message:
To: flutie_marcus@gakkai.edu
From: beatricem@teletech.net
Date: September 3, 2002
Subject: in price gambit
* * *
looking momentous histamines very combinations good suave regarding money kahn rich upside anode multifarious jumbled flavor cursor look becomes what calypso giving christmas spectacular incredible summit caleb perfect abscissa allegheny segregation local nonsense russian girls reunion waiting right email quixotic they’re exclusive meaningful bleary residual income biz low journey introduction peacetime
twenty-three
I’m reminded of the story that occurred fresh off your last stint in rehab, in tenth grade, when you were doing your mandatory community-service hours at Silver Meadows Assisted Living Facility. The Turtle Lady Story.
A never-married woman (Hester?) died in her sleep at the age of eighty-seven. She