I'm still happy

-07:00

I love my new name.

I saw it yesterday for the first time on my new school ID. It made me sooooooo happy. I'm still happy.

My day has been like a late fee

-07:00

The school sent me a bill that had a late fee if paid after the 15th.

They mailed it on the 16th.

I got an e-mail for a scholarship to learn a language in a far away country. It’s the same scholarship I was rejected from last summer. I don’t know if I should apply again.

It’ll never live up to my expectations of what I’d want to see and do over there. I’d be daydreaming of meeting all kinds of cool “qué chido” people and I bet I’d just end up fighting over the bathroom. Or maybe I’d make some life-long friends? I don't know.

At summer school everyone was talking to me and being cool, and then I come back here and everyone looks at me like I'm a freak, which I don't get. There isn't much of a difference in appearances between me and the sorority girls. They aren't beautiful, well maybe in their heads. They just have better clothes and better electronic toys.

I finally got my name changed, and I’ve already been teased. Twice.

step by step

-07:00

In the darkness of the night, a faint light can be seen under each head of the gas stove. Something I notice, mainly because I notice little things.

I’d been sleeping with the air conditioner full blast to deter the noise of my neighbor’s stereos. I woke up around 4 a.m. freezing like I always do. Only, this time I was wearing a sweater, a thick cotton shirt and my warmest pants. I staggered to the bathroom without turning any of the lights on when I noticed only two of the four lights on the stove were lit.

Come to think of it, the apartment did smell like gas.

I opened all the windows and lit heads and let them burn for awhile. I turned it off, and then turned it on again and they wouldn’t come back on. No, it was just that sickly smell of gas filling up the apartment.
I put jacket on top of my sweater and shirt and slept with the front door open. I fell asleep through the calming noises of police sirens and drunks throwing up from the apartments across the alley. Somehow, that sounds better than my neighbor’s choices in “music”.

I called my landlord to tell her about the problem, but she said she couldn’t turn off the gas and then started talking about herself. I think I’ve told her that my cell phone cost $.25 a minute to use and I don’t like to chat a lot on it. Anyway, I told her I had to go to school, and then I locked up the apartment and left.

If it did blow up, I’d like very much to see it. From afar, of course. I wonder if it would be like in the movies, with just one single orange-yellow blast of fire mushrooming up into the sky as lumber rains down on the surrounding area. There would be no way of putting it out. There is no way a fire truck could fit in the alley. It would just burn and burn until a smart fireman decides the closest way would be through the parking lot of the apartment building that sits on the other side of the fence of the dead-end street.

I was in the computer lab trying to watch a show online that my sister was bragging about. I had my headphones plugged in and was watching it. Everyone around me got up at the same time and left. I thought it was a class and their class was over. A guy tapped me and told me to evacuate as I pulled out my earphone. When I pulled out the earphone that’s when I heard the deafening sound of the fire alarm. Did you know I can hear my neighbor’s music even when I have my headphones on? That essentially means they are louder than a fire alarm.
I wondered for a second if my apartment did blow up and the whole city was ablaze. It wasn’t. I was a little relieved. Just a little.

Step by step… I’m wearing the shoes I promised myself I wouldn’t wear because I was saving them for next year. They feel weird on my feet.Last night my grungy green shoes got ruined when I was running home from the library through a lightning storm.

The things I do for a freaking education!

The rain was coming down hard and this guy on a bike was trying to turn around on the street and rode past me. We stopped for a split second and laughed each other. He looked like a drowned rat, water streaming off his thick black hair, and I probably looked ridiculous with my hoodie on my sweater pulled up around my face. I could see the giant, laughing smile on his face as lightning hit a few hundred feet away.

When I got home, my pants were soaked from the ends to mid-calf. My backpack was ruined and my shoes were a wet muddy mess.

Luckily my book was only a little wet, but everything in the front pockets on my backpack, like my only calculator, was soaked.

gunslinger

I'm still happy

My day has been like a late fee

step by step