Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [15]
I was contemplating my next move when I looked up and saw Bridget standing over me, chewing on her twenty-four-carat ponytail, looking sincerely apologetic.
“I’m, like, so sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have told Ashleigh that you’re, like, you know, a virgin.” She whispered the last word as if she’d said “necrophiliac” or “crackhead.” Come to think of it, it would be more socially acceptable at SPECIAL if she had.
“Ash is gone, by the way, if you want to, like, come back to my room with me.”
It was better than listening to Call Me Chantalle climax with Joe, “the multimedia hottie.”
“By the way, you, like, forgot this,” she said, handing me a fortune cookie.
I opened it up and it said: The road less traveled will not be smooth.
As if I didn’t know that already. I should share it with Mac so he can add it to his repertoire.
the thirtieth
Since that last entry, much has happened:
Call Me Chantalle had an Unspecified Intimate Moment with all Lucky Seven, and two others who weren’t hot enough to make the list. I hope that this hellish roommate means that next year I will blessed by the higher powers in charge of housing assignments.
I spend little time in my own room because it is an incubator for STDs. So I’ve struck up quasi-friendships with girls on my floor, which gives me faith that I’ll be able to suppress my naturally antisocial tendencies next year and bond with people who aren’t Hope.
I was quite surprised by Bridget’s skillful portrayal of Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her success in last year’s spring play wasn’t a fluke after all. She insists that she isn’t going to college but straight to Hollywood stardom. This has become our favorite ponytail-chewing debate.
I’ve heard more poems about the futility of human life than I care to mention.
All the evidence is in: I am a sucker for queer bait.
You might be wondering why I didn’t write about any of these things. Well, the reason I didn’t write about any of these things is that I didn’t have this journal to write in. And the reason I didn’t have it is so utterly moronic that it could only happen to me.
As you know, we are all required to keep a journal for class. In it, we were supposed to do a half hour of free writing a day, work on drafts of our assignments, and so on. Of course, it didn’t take me very long to get back into the habit of writing only the most humiliating things in my journal, because deep down, I don’t think anyone, even Hope, should be subjected to these ramblings in real life. Since I knew Mac would eventually ask for our notebooks, I started a new class journal that was highly censored, unlike this personal journal, which isn’t censored enough. Both are of the traditional black-and-white-speckled composition-notebook variety.
Last Friday, Mac asked us to turn in our journals so he could start reading them over the weekend. You see where this is going, so I’ll just get to the moronic part:
I TURNED IN THE WRONG JOURNAL.
Psychologists would say that I did this on purpose. An intentional accident, because I wanted him to read all my ramblings, which he did, including those about him.
I think my only conscious thought in the forty-eight hours between that realization and my next class was, HOLY SHIT. When I tried explaining my mortifying mistake on Monday morning, he said it was all the more reason for him to read it. Then he quoted Alexander Pope.
“ ‘To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for the observer’s sake.’ ”
“Uh . . . but . . .”
“No buts,” he replied. “Discussion over.”
And it was over. For the next five days, Mac didn’t say anything about the journal. In the meantime, I hoped that my pagan peers had filled their journals with way more psychotic stuff than I did. I prayed that they were certifiable enough for Mac to overlook my erotic overtures. I even considered asking the Wiccans to cast a spell involving all five points of the pentagram, one that would make these hopes and prayers come