the newspaper office at Oglethorpe. Alyssa Milano / Natalie Portman was in charge and yapping about layout. She wanted us all to sketch out a basic idea for the front page. I didn't understand what the challenge was but everyone else was having trouble. I decided I was better off without these morons and when she started the tour, I pretended to follow but snuck out, leaving behind the 500-page version of Strunk and White she'd given each of us. I stole a stack of paper. Later when I went back, my feet splashed in puddles of dead text.
looking through the newspaper for free passes, only ones I could find were to the damn Natalie Portman movie.
My same kids but a much larger school. I walked in, feeling odd in such a large building. I snapped at all the kids who whined for me to take them outside - hadn't even put my purse and books down. Mr. Byrne ran up beside me and talked nonstop as I walked to my locker. He was worried about the book his daughter had chosen for her report, wanted to know what I thought about it. I put my books away slowly, something not quite connecting, and I didn't realize until after he was gone that he had been smiling too much, that he had been flirting with me.
Text dream where I was living some of it and reading some. I don't know how the car ended up in the lake or why I was not in it, but my daughters were, and they exploded into bloody clouds in the water. Just like that, two lives over, no explanation. In the dream it made no sense to me - how could the pressure change have been that great? wouldn't they have drowned instead of exploded? but it didn't matter, with or without answers or reasonable physics, they were dead. I swam to the bottom and tried to think of how I could have saved them. I knew a hundred ways. I was very heavy but my lungs forced me back to the surface. Back on land, I was cruel to the dogs.
Our first date and I was nervous, sometimes in my body, sometimes watching us as an outside observer, to the point that I was outside the cabin, in someone else's body, separated from them by a windowpane.
My hair was down; I had spent too much time on it, I felt, it looked "done." I didn't want him to know I had gone out of my way. We were both too nervous to have much fun, just there to carry out our duties until we could get away from each other and relax and think about how wonderful it had been.
As he was leaving, the vicar showed up. I didn't want him to know this had been a date, so I made a big deal of inviting him in for cake, which I talked too much and too loudly about. This cake is divine. Just one bite - you will be amazed. And it was good cake, and the vicar was someone harmless to talk to, and suddenly we were all full of talk and laughter there in the kitchen. When he left, we kept what he had given us, and talked and talked and suddenly it was so late I really had to go home. I waited outside for him in the garden, sitting on the low brick wall, wondering why he wasn't in love with me, suddenly my mirth was gone and I started to cry but stopped before he came outside. It was dark; he couldn't tell. He sat beside me and sang a silly little made-up song about destiny, and I could see he meant at least part of it. I was baffled, but then he kissed me, and I wasn't.