The Famous Last Words of California and I-Ch 1

First chapter of novel #2. In progress.

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—San Francisco, Cyber café. (30 minutes)

It started as a bad joke.

Well, if you want to be technical, it started when I was born. Or maybe when I learned my first famous last words: “I see black light,” Victor Hugo, who wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame. My mom had a rather unhealthy obsession with Victor Hugo, especially the aforementioned novel. Such an obsession, if fact, that she named me Esmeralda. But please, call me Anya, my middle name. So much easier to say.

Anyway, it started as a bad joke and accidentally evolved into a crusade involving 300 cans of spray paint and the greater part of Sacramento, California.

Let’s pretend this is a conversation, not me sitting in front of a computer and typing this with manic speed. Imagine you and I are sitting down somewhere…let’s say a table, in a coffee shop. I’ll be at the table in the corner, sipping at a mug of pale brown brew, probably reading a book.

You: Hi.

Me: Hi.

You: So now that I’m here, do you mind telling me what exactly happened?

Me: Sigh. That ruins everything. To get the full impact of the story, we have to go all the way back to the cafeteria.

You: Cafeteria?

Me: Yeah. You know—the kind they have at schools that serve inedible goop that resembles nothing so much as hair gel mixed in with garbage can leftovers.

You: Oh.

Yeah. If you haven’t yet noticed, I use the word ‘yeah’ the way teachers use rags—to wipe off a slate real quick and start over with a new problem. So…yeah. If you see me using that word a lot, don’t freak. I mean, it’s got to be a hell of a lot better than when teenagers say ‘like’ every other word.

Um…back on subject.

Cafeteria. Thursday, my first day of this new school in Sacramento. We had just moved here from Los Angeles, and I hated it. Sacramento is full of gray buildings covered in graffiti and streets that have trees planted down the middle of them. It was fall, and there were leaves everywhere.

Yeah…back to the cafeteria. I was all alone, the new kid in a sea of high school students. This was why it’s such a pain to begin school in the middle of the year. By then, everyone had found their clique, their group, and even the most salient loners have been adopted. I was alone, but I didn’t mind. I spend most of my time alone.

I memorize people’s last words. James Joyce, “Does nobody understand?” 1941. Timothy Leary, “Why not? Yeah.” 1996. Emily Dickinson, “I must go in, the fog is rising.” 1886. It’s become a hobby for my in the last few years, ever since we started moving around all the time. See, I used to have a lot of friends, a whole big group of us that went out to school dances on Friday nights and to movies on Saturday mornings.

But after we moved the first few times, I learned pretty quickly not to make real friends or set down roots. What I did was embrace a group of losers. I’m arrogant enough to admit that I am most definitely not a loser, or at least I wasn’t. Anyway, I would take on a group of losers and make them into my pseudo-friends. Just a small bunch of pseudo-friends so it didn’t look like I spent all my time alone. While they were in my care, I did my best to get my pseudo-friends to be more confident. I’m nothing if not a good manipulator, and high school students want nothing more than to be liked and accepted. I liked to thing that I leave them as better people.

Yeah. Back to the cafeteria. I was sitting down at the edge of one of the fake-wood tables with all my notes from history class out so I could study. Now, I hate studying about as much as the next kid, but I hate crappy grades even more. I was going to go to college one day, but not for a degree in law like my mom, or a degree in medicine, like my dad. They were always after me to do something useful for my life, so I had every intention of majoring in philosophy or folklore or something equally ‘useless’.

I have a tendency to talk about all kinds of random crap, so don't mind if just start talking about something out of the blue that seemingly has no connection to what I was just recently saying. If you get too impatient, just skip down a paragraph.

I’m rambling again. So, I’m reading over my notes and checking the book just to make sure I have everything right, and the next time I look up, there’s a bundle of students near me. It was crowded in the MP room, but there had been a gaping hole around the corner seat I had taken. The kids were your typical mixed group of the kind I habitually took under my metaphorical wing.

There was a nerdy looking boy with glasses almost as big as my fist and your usual ‘mom-picked-my-clothes-out’ looks. The other guy was more normal looking, except that he had a lazy eye and a huge bruise across one cheekbone. He was skinny, rail thin. I wondered who had beaten him up. Of the two girls, one was a genuine Goth, with the long black Morticia Addams dress and enough eyeliner to outfit a professional cheerleading squad. The other girl looked insane. I mean honestly, certifiable insane. She was wearing what looked like a potato sack made into a shirt (or it might have been flannel—I couldn’t tell under her haystack hair) and had gleaming slate-gray eyes, like she had too many tear ducts.

Not much surprises me anymore, but these people surprised me. And interested me. Made me curious. So I abandoned my studies and scooted over so I sat next to the guy with the glasses. I pasted on my best ‘gosh-what-a-beautiful-day-it-is-so-lovely-to-meet-you’ smile.

Me: Hi.

Boy w/ glasses: Who are you?

Me: Anya. I just moved here. And you?

Goth Girl: That’s Ted. I’m Rosemarie, but call me Rose. Over there—points to Mr. Lazy Eye—is Matthew, but he goes by Matt. And that is Terry.

Me: *Smiling cheerfully* It’s nice to meet y’all.

I lived in Texas for a few years, and I can pull out the thick southern accent at the drop of a hat. We proceeded to have a conversation about different teachers and where I had lived previously. The bell rang shortly after I introduced myself, but I had enough of a feel for the group to know that they were the most directionless bunch of misfits I ever aspired to change.

****** Shit. Thirty minutes is up. Saving file to desktop. I won’t be back to this computer.

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What do you think? I'm experimenting with format, and this is a first draft, so it's not exactly up to par.