Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [4]
So I wish that my parents had skipped me, if only to provide an acceptable excuse for my inability to relate to anyone. It would have been all my parents’ fault! As it is now, I have no one to blame but myself. More important, if my parents had skipped me two grades, I would already have my freshman year of college behind me, and not just be prepping for a six-week-long collegelike experience at SPECIAL.
Never have cinder-block walls been so inviting! Never have I been so intoxicated by the scent of industrial-strength antiseptic! Never has a glorified cot with a one-inch-thick mattress seemed so comfy! Never have I been so excited by the idea of writing for six hours a day, five days a week! Never have I been so happy to see my parents pull out of the parking lot!
My dad is still pissed off that I chose SPECIAL over cross-country camp. Angry sweat on his bald head sizzled as he tried to transform the former into the latter. He’s still got the sturdy, muscular frame of the star point guard he was back in the day, but the way he moped and slumped around campus gave him the appearance of a man whose athleticism was limited to beer-guzzling weekends at the Bowl-a-Rama.
Cross-country camp is just what the doctor ordered. Literally. My orthopedist said that with the proper training regimen, I could easily get back into my record-breaking shape, completely disregarding my total lack of interest in doing so. See, as a senior, a two-year captain, and four-year varsity veteran, I have a moral obligation as a mighty, mighty Pineville High Seagull to train harder than ever to overcome the leg injury that provided my father with enough video footage last spring for Notso Darling’s Agony of Defeat, Volumes 3 and 4 (both of which will be available on DVD any day now).
When he wasn’t acting depressed for my benefit, Dad spent most of the afternoon pointing out good places for me to run. This is a supreme example of parental cluelessness, as he has no inkling that my stellar SATs have made me less inclined to break a sweat than ever.
“Those stairs are good for building your uphill strength. The perimeter around the quad is roughly a quarter mile—you can do sprints around the path. If you eat dinner at the cafeteria on South campus, you can get in six miles a day right there.”
Right before he left, he gave me a six-week training schedule, forty-two hard-core workouts that I’m somehow supposed to squeeze in between my seminars. Then he kissed me on the cheek and said, “If you sit on your ass thinking about artsy-fartsy crap all summer, you’ll pay for it in September.”
Thanks, Dad. I love you, too. I didn’t even bother telling him that according to MY DAILY SCHEDULE, I will have little time to sit on my ass to take a crap, let alone contemplate it, which is just the way I like it. Being Busy = Avoiding My Issues. He of all people should appreciate this, as someone who hops on his bike and rides around greater Pineville (an oxymoron, by the way) for hours whenever I’m “testing his limits.”
Mom may be in real estate, but I think interior design is her true calling. She was in full-on Martha mode. As with a sleepwalker, it’s best not to interrupt her, or she could go psycho and strangle me with the behind-the-door shoe organizer. So I just watched as she buzzed around the room, blond hair bouncing, perky as the cheerleader she used to be. She unpacked all my clothes and arranged my closet so it would “meet its full stowing potential.” She didn’t think the room was “maximizing its blank space” and rearranged the beds and the desks before my roommate could arrive and protest the takeover of her half of the room.
Two hours past check-in, and she still hasn’t shown up. According to the pink construction-paper toe shoe on the door, her name is Mary DePasquale. Since Jessica Darling is written on a