Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [75]
“Stop doing that. It makes you look Down’s syndrome-ish.”
“I can’t help it,” she said.
“Well, try.”
We walked into the center of town to the courthouse and sat down on the grass in front of the water fountain. Here we had an excellent view of Main Street and all the shops. Natalie pulled a joint out of her shirt pocket. “We should get a buzz first,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
We passed the joint back and forth. “Do you feel stoned yet?” she asked.
I exhaled. “Yeah.”
“This is good stuff. Sense.”
“It’s good,” I said. It was starting already. Whereas pot either made Natalie contemplative or silly, for me it provided a kaleidoscopic view of everything that was wrong with me. I could already feel it opening all the windows in my head, giving me a panoramic view of my flaws.
“I have such skinny legs,” I said, looking at them stretched out in front of me. “They’re basically deformed.”
Natalie stretched her own legs out and hiked up her skirt. “At least you’re not fat like me.” She pinched her flesh and shook. “See? Exactly like Jell-O. It’s nauseating. And you know what’s really depressing? It just makes me want to eat.”
“When I get depressed, I don’t want to eat at all.” When I got depressed, all I wanted to do was sleep. Which is basically what I did for fourteen hours a day.
Natalie sighed. “Do you think I’ll ever get into Smith? Or am I too fucked up?”
“I think you can still be fucked up and get into Smith. I mean, think of all the privileged girls that must be suicidal when they first get there. You know, from living this really sheltered, traditional life. All the secret shit that goes on in families. I don’t know what I mean. But you know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” she said vaguely. “I guess. It’s just that sometimes, I worry I won’t ever be undepressed.”
I had the same worry that we wouldn’t later be able to undo whatever it was we were doing to ourselves. “We should go. Start looking for work.”
Natalie tucked the roach back into her pocket and we stood, stretching. Now all I wanted to do was sleep. The pot had made me depressed about my life. But Natalie was right, we needed jobs.
“Look,” Natalie said as we crossed the street. “Sweeties needs help.” She pointed to the sign in the window of the candy store.
We stepped inside and asked the guy behind the counter for two applications. He looked us up and down before saying, “Sorry, I should have taken that sign out of the window. We filled that position yesterday.”
Natalie said, “Sure. No problem.”
We walked up Main Street toward Smith, checking the windows for Help Wanted signs. We filled out applications at Woolworth’s, Harlow Luggage and The Academy of Music, a grand old movie theater. Then we started hitting the stores without Help Wanted signs, asking if we could fill out applications in case something came up. After an hour and a half, we’d filled out nine applications each.
“Well, that’s enough for one day. Who knows? Maybe something will come up,” Natalie said with forced optimism.
“Yeah,” I said brightly. Although what I felt was that nobody would hire us, we didn’t have a chance. And not just because we didn’t have any experience. But because we seemed somehow off. Like Finches.
“Let’s go to Smith,” Natalie said. “We could use a little Smith right now.”
Smith College was easily the most beautiful campus in America. I knew this from my extensive television viewing. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Berkeley, Northwestern, DePaul. They had all been featured in one made-for-TV movie or another. I seemed to remember Lynn Redgrave in a wrap dress running from a stalker on the grounds of Mt. Holyoke. But I could have this confused with Ali McGraw weeping at Harvard.
The Smith campus consisted of a hundred and fifty acres of brick and ivy and rolling green hills, dressed for the occasion with hardwood trees and thoughtfully placed benches. There was even a tree swing that overlooked Paradise Pond and the expansive soccer field that lay beyond. Merely being in this glorious environment soothed any personal