Only the Message Mattered

Sorry it's a bit long. I've been playing around with style - let me know what you think. Change in person from third to first is intentional - let me know if it's too awkward to work.
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Ladies and gentlemen - the class of 2010!

Cue the victory music.

Yeah, right.

The next morning Meria put on her pants as she always had - one leg and then the other - and ate breakfast as she always had, as if graduation had not just happened. As if the last four years of high school had not just come to a sudden and resounding close leaving her with a ridiculous number of essays, a greater appreciation for good old-fashioned quiet and little else. Ah yes, here was the sweet freedom she'd been waiting for. Irony, irony.

Cue the job-search music.

The phone rang shortly - didn't ring so much as shriek like an exploding cockatoo - and Meria, having nothing better to do, put the exploding cockatoo out of its misery, answered with a noncommittal

"Uh, hello."

"Class of twenty-fucking-ten, bitches!" hollered the voice of Quincy Maria Taylor, who clearly thought that she was talking to more than one female dog, and found general hilarity in the fact that her middle name was phonetically identical to Meria's first.

"Good morning, Q," Meria replied docilely.

"You know, I'm still a little bit drunk from all the post-secondary partying I did last night." Belch, giggle.

"Why are we friends again?" No seriously, Meria wondered. Why.

"Maybe that's post-post - secondary. What - " belch "-ever. Hey. Meria, darling. Friend. Let's road trip."

"Uh, no." Turning down social engagements of any kind was Meria's primary nature, especially social engagements involving Red-Bull-fuelled, white-knuckle driving across solitary roads in the middle of the night with Quincy Maria Taylor for company.

"Great! I'll be at your house in a couple hours. Don't worry, I got Red Bull."

Well. It wasn't like Meria could have let Q go alone.

Mom,
Gone road tripping w/ QMT, will keep apartment hunting.
-M

Perhaps there were worse things than Red-Bull-induced, red-eyed, termbling-fingered all-night driving, Meria conceded halfway through Pennsylvania. Worse things than a diet of Pop-Tarts and Chewy bars; worse things than QMT belting oldies in an off-key soprano; worse than six hundred miles away, tires overheating beneath them and nowhere to get to in such a hurry.

But god damn it, there was no one in the universe quite as annoying as Q Maria.



This was Meria, usually: third-rate scholar, virgin, no money for college, doggedly pursuing early death by chain-smoking emphysema, sulking shadow-girl too scared to breathe

This was Meria with QMT: Quiet the snarky sniveling inner-voice and just BE with the windows down (can't smell the rubber with 'em up) and the music up, pedal to the medal, bitches, let's ride. They the everlasting youth with beautiful faces and beautiful (sometimes) lives trading blonde jokes and war stories, they the everlasting hopeful, free.

Quincy Maria drove a 1993 craptrap with rust for a bumper and no CD player and cigarette burns in all the seats. Smoky blue.

"Let's give this bitch a name," Q suggested mid West Virginia.

"She has a gender already?"

What?" Synapses firing audibly. "Oh. No. It's a he. Or an it."

"Malcolm X."

"Xavier."

"Pope Innocence."

"What the hell, Meria, I'm not naming my car after a pope."

No solution was reached.

That night we slept like logs by the side of the highway - damn the damn authorities, I hate that term - with QMT's feet in my face mine in hers. Virginia no different from West Virginia, save a traveling Jesus truck with flashing crosses trundling past near midnight.

"America, eh?"

Quincy M did not respond. O but then: "Meria, why are you so pissy all the time?"

Who gave you, the queen of teen drunkenness, the right to question my attitude? "Go fuck yourself."

I felt her shift beside me on the seat. "Bitch."

"Why do you drink?"

Silence.

Hahahahaha love it. (i am laghuing cuz i have perverted mind.) lol hahahahahahahahaha

Yo,
I just read the three chapters. A very pleasant and snappy three chapters. The rhythm of the narrative was disrupted only by Santo's lyricism, and I found it amusing that you assigned rowdy male roles to the two girls and an introspective-poetic role (at least so far) to the mysterious boy. I also like the little bits where you go for phonetic aesthetics, like "Maria drawled, drooled..."

In some places the car is Innocence, in others - Innocent.

Here:"early death by chain-smoking emphysema", there's something missing, like "induced by", of course this will mean some word place juggling.

There seems so far no place for cellphones or other mobile devices of this sort in your story, although the bitches are said to be of twenty-fucking-ten class, thus in our time. The lack of cellphones allows them to be able to not keep in touch, which is of importance for the plot, but you have to deal with this in some way or another, unless it's a paralell reality without mobile phones.

On a more personal note I can't help but remember my own post-high school graduation partying, which lasted about five months. When the vapors of alcohol and the evil weed cleared I suddenly found myself working in a newspaper, playing in a death metal band, and in the clutches of a 'serious relationship' with an incredibly older woman, who must have been like twenty five, hahaha. Weird.

In summary: I like the playfull, not inelegant narrative as a whole and some word choices/sentence structuring in particular. I don't know about the grammar, I never know about the grammar, but as a whole there are no amateur bits, it read quite like the real thing, we see different plot strands developing, and set to converge in New Orleans, point of view changes, enough puke to satisfy most puke enthusiasts, just the bursts of Santo lyricism - this disorients me as I read, but then again, I've never been good at appreciating poetry, except when I was ten - there flared up a brief fascination with Mithril-oriented stanzas in the Lord of the Rings.

Good job, keep going, tell me when you're ready with chapter 4!