Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [47]
It can’t be very healthy, though.
Hope suggested that I replace running with yoga as my way of releasing some insomniatic tension. She even sent me a book and a video to help me get started. It’s from a series called “Yoga for You.” I’m not sure it’s for me. But if yoga mellowed Madonna into an earth mama, it should at least help me get more than my current average of three minutes of sleep every night. The negligible brain activity PHS asks from its seniors is about all I can muster right now. This is the one advantage to not attending a real high school, you know, one with academic standards.
Still, I’m pretty skeptical of the om-ing and all those other New Agey trappings of yoga, but I should at least try them so Hope’s money doesn’t go to waste. I appreciate any effort that she makes these days, only because I don’t know how much longer it will last. It’s really only a matter of time before her real life in Tennessee—or wherever she winds up—takes precedence over the one she left behind.
the fourteenth
The first, belated edition of The Seagull’s Voice came out today. And my editorial, “Sycophants, Suck-Ups, and Scrubs: How High-School Hero Worship Hurts Us All,” was nowhere to be found. Not that anyone would have noticed besides me, of course. I stalked Haviland as soon as I discovered the omission.
“Where’s my editorial?”
Haviland wrung her bony hands. “It seems the administration thought your editorial was too controversial.”
“What?” I asked, truly shocked. “It wasn’t any more or less controversial than anything else I’ve written!”
“Well, it seems that the administration couldn’t condone any writing that castigates your fellow students.”
“ ‘If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing,’ ” I replied, channeling Mac. “Kingsley Amis.”
“Well, it seems that the administration thinks that in these troubled times, we need to be more sensitive and promote positive relationships among all social groups. Don’t you see how your editorial might have a devastating effect on your peers’ self-worth?”
“I was trying to help!” I said, literally hopping up and down in frustration. “You’re the one who wanted me to broaden my point of view. I was trying to show how true heroism is overlooked in favor of treating jocks and cheerleaders and other members of the high-school hoi polloi like gods.”
“I see,” said Haviland.
“High-school hero worship screws everyone’s self-worth. So-called losers hate themselves for not being like the upper crust. And the upper crust gets caught up in their own hype and are devastated when their post-graduation lives don’t live up to their high-school glories.” I was gasping for breath, I was so worked up.
“I know, I know,” she said, placing her hand on my shoulder and giving me a grandmotherly sympathetic head-shake. “But we’re dealing with a lot of close-minded Puritans who don’t see things the same way you and I do. I agree that we need to have agitating points of view—they are a necessary part of the conversation of humankind.”
I think I started eye-rolling at this point, as Haviland was starting to get all hippie-dippy on me.
“And,” she continued, “as students of the world, they should be privy to these divergent thoughts, to question them, analyze them, and critique them.”
“Okay, then as my adviser, shouldn’t you have fought to keep it in?”
She twitched her nose in annoyance, like I was a gnat that wouldn’t go away.
“If I didn’t cut your editorial, I was told I’d lose funding for The Seagull’s Voice.”
“So it’s better to have a paper that’s full of nicey-nicey,