I NEVER HAVE TO GO BACK TO HIGH SCHOOL EVER AGAIN. NOT EVER.

for posterity

saturday was prom. no one really knew exactly what we were doing all afternoon until morgan made some executive decisions and everything worked out. at five-ish andy and annebel and cameron came over for look-pretty-for-mommy pictures, then we went and picked up michael and then morgan, whose dress was a huge puffy white wedding dress that was amazing. we all met eileen and will, martha and ryan, and bekka and newman at pete n sams in a party of 12 and ate and then everyone but eileen and will got to prom earlier than we should have probably, at about 840 and it started at 8. annebel looked so beautiful. prom was as great as i hoped even though there was no punch. we had a booty circle and danced on the chairs and stayed mainly on the edges of the too-small dance floor. other than my party i saw mainly kristen, hattie and preston, nathan and jesse, and eric some. the highlight, however, came only shortly before the end of prom, when i danced with chi zhang to knuck if you buck. oh what a time! we were the last people to leave and the lady cleaning up said "come on, partys over."

we again didnt know what we were going to do but we decided to go to ryans dads in harbor town. i took annebel and cameron home and met the rest at marthas and off we went over the high bridge and around the corner. we stayed up late and ryan made eggs and we all mostly fell asleep during the life aquatic, about 330.

at 8 ryan was up already because i guess he hates us all, and we got up except for bekka and took a morning walk most of the way to the other end of harbor town and back and i didnt wear shoes. when we got back we went by the pool and stuck our feet in. ryan and martha and michael swam for real but it was too cold for me. bekka joined us and newman left and we went to the arcade for breakfast/lunch. eileen and will joined us. after eating we crossed the street and tried on silly things at american apparel. then we dispersed, and that was prom.

"i regret to announce, this is the end."

today was the last day for the seniors who dont have to take exams. so i wonder who did i see today i will never see again? is this ridiculous? or who will i see at prom and then never again? who will i see next friday and then never again? there are 2400 people at my school and four or five hundred of them are running off to disappear just like me. who will be forgotten in a year or ten? who will forget me?

i want my friends to remember me but im afraid they wont. no matter how close i am to them now will i look behind me and see we were friends for only a year? will they? of the seven of us, five have been friends since middle school, and two we just recently picked up but i love them. i dont want to be a footnote in marthas and ryans memories in a decade. the former i knew only in passing before this year, the latter spoke to me only once before this year, but we have spent the whole year in plays together. both of them i know every day.

will we keep in touch, is it true? will you all be my friends from high school i see sometimes at holidays? will i send you cards at christmas or will we be together? the concept of college is beautiful and necessary but once jonathan larson said, "what binds a fabric together, when the raging shifting winds of change keep ripping away?" and there you have it. right now we are all in love with each other or at least i am in love with all of you. i am in love with at least the six rest of you and at least four or five more and when we go away where will we go? how many of us will settle in little memphis and how many need to get out and stay out? i dont want to recognize the possibility that we will not all always be exactly like we are, but we wont be.

please, my friends, my darlings, keep loving me when i am gone. please if you love me now let there be a little place for me always. i cannot breathe without you and i need to know you remember me. i know that the greatest impact i will make on my high school will be leaving it. but what impact have i made on my friends? will i be mentioned by name in your memoirs? will you be in mine? when josh sigler is graduating, when he is writing his high school days at the end of them, will i be in the letter? i dont know.

i want to make a list: remember this from high school. i want to make a list but i dont want to have to make a list. i just want to remember. but i am so afraid i wont, so here is the list.

remember this from high school:

my friends, my very best friends, the ones i will always love, i am in love with them all and they are not in order: morgan, eileen, bekka, ryan, newman, martha, hattie, kristen, mercer, annebel. my friends, the ones who got me by: lilla, josh, chris, lena, sean, lane, huddleston. the friends i did not have: amelia and mouse, who left me too early and against their will. how i spent my time: novus, the ergolytes, moved, trezevant manor my first job, kelly green, bang bang youre dead. the teachers i loved: ms kitts, mr munter, ms lafon, herr sturgis, mr cartwright, mr stephenson. the teachers i hated: mr smith, ms douglas, ms haughton, mr whitehead, ms sugarmon. the places i went: lakeshore, florida, the rope swing, the river, mpc, harbor town, otherlands. the horrible things: exams, dialectical journals, julius caesar, eileens 16th birthday party, losing at state, losing amelia. everything else. dance parties, wrestling, the summer of amelia, choir, michael ingersoll, the camry, the volvo, sadness mixes, ROME and ROAM, early mornings, birthdays, the warm air and the grass, matt birdsong, the spaniards, late nights. watching americas next top model or having pillow fights at bbyd rehearsal instead of rehearsing. learning math from ryan before kelly green rehearsal. everything about who is kelly green. sunburn, latin convention, thespian conference, the ani difranco concert. prom. popcorn and ovaltine. everyone i know.

this is it. the end. the finish. the destination. the next step toward independence, the next step toward being alone. my friends, please, if you love me now, remember me later. please, please, please remember me.

"unprecedented president"

is what i named my teddy roosevelt essay on the APUS exam, which was about 30% information and 70% "TR IS SO GREAT" because come on, he so is.

on friday i took the biggest test ever and when it was over whizzed on out of that building like a cat on ice, whatever that means. i took morgan and we whizzed on home for what else but popcorn and lost. i took her home to get a haircut but wouldnt you know it picked her up again that night and we went with brett to cks. i had a waffle i probably didnt need but man it was good. mfox and suzi were there and when we left we had to stop by my house to get an insurance card but ended up staying and watching harry potter and blood drips on newsies square. i took brett home and morgan and i went to sleep in my room.

she woke up before me but i got up too and we watched more lost and i took her home and took a walk and had annebel over for probably the second-to-last precal attack ever. we got very very frustrated and no one was in the house and annebel said "we have to get out of here" so we got in the car and drove and drove. we went to the rhodes part of midtown and drove past some friends houses. ryan was on his porch and i waved. we went to harbor town which is over a steep bridge and i never even knew it was there. there is a park by the river but hardly anyone was there, and all the houses are big and bright and lovely. we found a frisbee but we have no skill with it. when we left we had to skip otherlands to get home for dinner and more math. i guess we got some done. i took her home at ten and went to sleep early because i was tired.

this morning i woke up at eight hurting all over and went into the bathroom and stayed there. then i had breakfast and was still hurting all over so i took some pills and went to get gas and mail some letters and get my mother presents. i got her the golden compass and a rufus wainwright cd and drew got her chocolate and coffee. after lunch mom and i went prom dress shopping. we went to oak court and searched dillards, macys, charlotte russe, banana republic, and a store i dont know, and we found nothing, so we went to flashback, garbos (which was closed), and the place that used to be moondance, and found nothing, so we went out to wolfchase and went to its macys and dillards and found nothing, and went to jc penneys and found a lot. so i got a dress, and i like it, but it needs to be hemmed.

now i am home and i had a lot of cereal and i yelled at annebel on the phone because i guess now that calculus is my only source of stress it sort of explodes when i get into it.

ten days left ever.

buble

Dragonfly out in the sun, you know what I mean
Butterflies all having fun, you know what I mean
Sleep in peace when the day is done
And this old world is a new world
And a bold world, for me

Stars when you shine, you know how I feel
Scent of the pine, you know how I feel
Yeah freedom is mine, and I know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me

And I'm feeling--
good!

influential person essay, for ms wexler

As humans we are sometimes told that we are products of our surroundings, infinitely influenced by the environments in which we go about our little lives. Well, my surroundings are and have always been Morgan, so it must be that I am a product of her. When we met we were two years old, and when we part we will be two hundred. Living always within the reach of her sweet arm, I have no choice—and want nothing more—than to be shaped by her presence.

I take pride in, and admit shamelessly, my decidedly upstanding morals. Whatever they tell their parents or imply to their teachers, I know without doubt that most high school students at all levels are involved in drugs or alcohol or both; I am not one of them. I have grown up watching Morgan, who knows exactly the difference between having a glass of wine at dinner and not remembering what you did last weekend, and I have followed her. In the first four months of her life, before I was born, she must have learned all the wisdom on the earth and grown in mental leaps that take others decades to navigate. She and I don’t need any chemicals in us to have a good time; we have each other and plenty of hours of anything at all.

Because Morgan will hold my hands, I have survived high school. In the roughest weeks of teeth grinding and dark circles, she is awake too, and in the shadows of early morning, every step she can still take, I can still take. Every hour she can muddle through, I can muddle through. We are so bound that no boy scout could unlock our knots, just as no chiseled diamond could chip us away. We are earth and water. If she dies, I die.

Morgan exceeds me in all things except my love for her. I feel like a poet except when I read her perfect prose. I feel like an actor except when I watch her against the black background of a stage. She has led me into both of these passions, and in both she has risen above, but still I hang on; she will not let me fall, I am small but not left behind, I am complete and only myself or any self at all in the grasp of her tiny hand.

in 87 hours i will be taking the apus history exam. in 90 hours it will be over.

this week is so so so so so so so so bad. i know it. next week though. oh man. awesome.

may day

this is a list of foods that taste good but make me feel horrible after i eat them. i will not be eating them in the month of may. this is a commitment i dont know if i can keep. but i want to feel better.

bagels
ice cream
chips
muffins
pasta
fried foods of all kinds
rice

"bang bang i wish you were all dead"

is probably what the judges put on our comment sheets at state. we got fifth place. out of five. lauren said "we're not here to win, we're here to do a good job." but since we got last i guess we didnt do that either.

but its done.
over.
forever.

and i am not relieved.

dance party was last night which was nice for mollifying the melancholy. we boogied pretty hard and had a little fight and in the morning lounged on blankets in the yard and fought with sticks and rolled around on scooters and skateboards.

i was so tired of bbyd but now its over i really dont know what to do with myself. i mean, its been five months. i mean, i am really, really sad.

wish i had a boy to kiss me better and wrap me all up in limbs. wanna hold my breath in his neck and close my eyes and fall down and feel safe.

personal statement one, for ms wexler

When I am tired and busy for weeks and weeks I dream over and over about my teeth falling out. The internet says that that indicates a sense of powerlessness, but I know it indicates a certain type of fear, the creeping kind that always gets at me when there are not enough hours in the day and I feel like I’m not getting anything accomplished. I always wake up shaking with my hands clawing at my mouth.

I hate when I try to say something beautiful and it just comes out as facts. I wish everything I said fell out like water on rocks and was beautiful but usually it isn’t.

After grad school I want to build wells in Africa for a year, then spend some time teaching kids in Namibia, then marry a man like Anatole and move back to America to teach college in Arizona or New Mexico until I’m old and deaf. If I’m successful, my campaigns for saving Africans and promoting proper grammar will outlive me.

In the summer of 2005, I got up at six in the morning to protest “Love in Action”—a program that tries to convert (mostly unwilling) gay teenagers to heterosexuality—because I know that God loves everyone.

My middle school principal said no when I tried to skip the eighth grade, but now that I am skipping the twelfth grade he is saying yes. If he had said no again I would have done it anyway because I hate high school and I don’t need it anymore. College is what I need now and I know that beyond any doubt. My friends pout and ask me why I’m leaving them, and I say, “because I have to.”

When I get letters from universities telling me about how exciting it must be for me to be beginning to think about college, I laugh. I have been thinking about college since the fourth grade and actively searching since seventh.

No one will ever love me because I have a huge head. That’s probably not true.

I can’t strike a match.

My fingernails are soft. I know the sign language for “secretary.” I taught myself how to make an omelette. Before I die, I want to play Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods. I can’t dance but I do anyway. I love yellow roses.

I’m trying to define myself for you, College, because I want you to know what I’m here for. I’m here to study creative writing because the only thing that I know I will always love is words. I’m here to study history so I don’t repeat the mistakes of my ancestors. I’m here to learn every language I can because the only way I can be happy is if I go everywhere.

I am here because every time a teacher tells me I’m being prepared for the real world, I know that either I’m already prepared, or I’m already there.

gifts

in no particular order...

college gave me 2 more k.
mr brown gave me his approval.
eileens mom gave me a pretty stellar recommendation.
amelia gave me hope for humanity (ie, to see her this summer)
ms wexler gave me a useless project.
my mom gave me a hint that could mean she is buying me a car.

letters

-i sent beth ryan an email letter asking her to write me a recommendation to counsel.
-i sent eileens mom an email letter telling her all the great things about myself so she'll write me a good recommendation to counsel.
-i got a big hefty letter from UE asking me to sign up for a meal plan and a dorm and summer orientation and to get a physical.
-i sealed the letter to UE with my housing application and meal plan form in it and will mail it tomorrow.
-i sealed the letter to UE with my summer orientation registration in it and will mail it tomorrow.
-i found the letter i tried to send lakeshore with my counselor application in it muddy on the ground in my yard because the storm knocked it off the mailbox before the postman came.
-i completed the counselor application letter again and glued in my pastors muddy signature with an explanation and took it to the post office today.

on a different note, i need to call danielle, lora jean gowan, steve may, and ray chandler, and convince them that i am morally sound and well-rounded and responsible enough to counsel their camps. i also need to do three precal homeworks and correct my test, tell mr stephe whether truman was a war criminal, and take a shower.

six more weeks and then some responsibilities ill enjoy.
ideal summer schedule (* = confirmed):
may27-june2: counsel treehouse 1
june3-july6: governors school*
july8-july14: counsel jr high 2
july15-july21: counsel jr high music/drama
july22-july28: sr high treehouse*
july29-august4: counsel elementary 4
august15-august21: florida*
august23: COLLEGE*

i just got sent the letter i wrote myself at lakeshore last summer. it couldnt have come at a better time.

feet

today i got an envelope from evansville. is was very big. inside was a purple folder. inside that were several letters and documents, the first of which started with "congratulations!" and the second of which also started with "congratulations" but then went on to eventually say "academic scholarship worth $12,000.00 per year."

i have submitted my nonrefundable admission deposit, securing my place in the university of evansville freshman class.

this is for real.
this is confirmed.
this is big.

inches

evansville has received my application.

one tiny step closer.
every inch counts.

district/birthday/etc

speedweekend because i need to sleep

friday:
bbyd went to district
cast minus nathan and jenee plus annebel went to mpc
then the rope swing in the dark
then the spanish party
kristen and annebel came over to watch diego movies
sleep.

saturday:
they woke me up too early
they left
i cleaned my room
we won district
im in the top ten actors at district and so is most of the cast
ryan is number one (surprise)
i cleaned my room more
party city closes at 6 on saturdays
had my party and it was great
hattie martha newman and ryan stayed till two
morgan bekka and kristy spent the night
went to sleep.

sunday:
they woke me up too early
kristy and bekka left
morgan and i watched lost
she left
i tried to do my dbq (failed)
went to 300 with hattie
tried to do my dbq (failed)
went to the last ROME party
tried to do my dbq (failed)

going to bed now ill do it in the morning.

"Everything's Going So Well!"

today my mother had a meeting scheduled with mr brown, but no one told him about it, so when she got there he was gone. so instead, ms sowell came and took my mom to the 11th grade office and she met with sowell and ms kirkwood. now ms kirkwood i think is a pretty friendly lady. at any rate she is fond of me and hugged me when i got my psat score. not only that, but she hugged my mother at the end of their meeting and from that you can see where this is going.

my mother talked to them about what i am going to do and guess who graduated when she was sixteen? thats right, ms kirkwood. she said "when i was in school this wasnt an issue at all! i dont know why anyone as gifted as her would want to spend another year in high school." she gave my mother the number of the woman at the board to determine if my gov school english would be able to count, but ms kirkwood said probably that wouldnt be a problem.

it is fairly likely that ms sowell will be able to sign off all this stuff for me and that we wont have to talk to mr brown at all, thank god.

it is fairly likely that the application to the university of evansville which i will give to ms kirkwood tomorrow for completion will end up in the hands of the dean of admissions who will proceed to admit me there for the 2007-2008 school year and by the 2008-2009 school year at the latest offer me full tuition for national merit. thank you. thank you.

thank you. thank you, thank you thankyouthankyou.

finally everything is coming together. i have my ducks in a row. o please, please let this happen.

spring break 07

no one probably cares what i did over spring break but i am going to tell you anyway and if you choose to read it then good for you.

on friday i went to lunch with bekka, newman, morgan, and neimeyer. it was a little bit of a mess but eventually we all got to los compadres and had a good time. i had to go because i was unexpectedly going out of town.

friday afternoon i left with lauren reed and ms nancy for pangburn, arkansas, population 654, to relax for a few days. we played scrabble and spades and team scrabble and uno and ate ice cream and went fishing and sat in the sun. the fishing was terrifying; i always thought lauren was torturing the fish because she wouldnt hurry enough getting the hooks out of their mouths. if i had to fish for survival i dont know if i could do it. but in general it was nice and very refreshing to not have anything i really had to do for a few days. i came home on monday.

on tuesday, i think, i drove around a lot with kristen and annebel and then they came home with me and eventually lauren huddleston came over and i made omelettes (because that morning i asked morgan what was in an omelette and she said "milk, i think" and so i just figured it out.) we sort of made crafts and talked about the potluck the next day and were silly and good. at some point they went home.

wednesday was my birthday. i woke up and went to morgans and she gave me smore pies and then went to the scribbler meeting. i snuck into her house for a nap and when she got back we went to mpc and then charlotte russe and then back to her house where we watched part of the two towers and made two types of chicken for the primavera potluck and headed to the neimeyer house. i got a journal from eileen and flowers from martha and ryan and a lot of warm faces and good food. we all decided to be models and took lots and lots of pictures. when it was over morgan spent the night.

in the morning we watched lost and i took her home. when my mother got off work she took me out for presents: troy, the prestige, another dress, green converses with starry starry laces.

friday i got up and packed and my mother took me and annebel to evansville indiana and the university of evansville. i cannot say how good it was. i went back on bread and chocolate for 24 hours because i am allowed to do that three times during lent. the drive was complicated but not too long (five hours) and when we got there we snuck around for a while on campus without announcing ourselves. we got in through the back of the theatre and were on the stage when the stage manager came in and did not ask us to leave. instead she invited us to come watch rehearsal for the comedy of errors, so we went to eat and then came back for shakespeare. they were really, really good. molly holmes, assistant stage manager, introduced herself to us and talked to us about the school and harlaxton and the theatre and everything for a good while and gave me her email address for questions, and another girl gave us chocolate altoids. when we left we went and watched 300 on the imax and then came back to the hotel to sleep.

the next morning was the open house, which we expected to be very contrived and not very real but it was only a little contrived. we met the german professor, the chair of the english dept, the chair of the history dept, the theatre teacher, the dean of admissions, and everyone was just nice. the campus is reasonably small but not tiny and the city is like a smaller, cleaner, more german memphis, even with a river on the west end.

my mother had a meeting with admissions people and they said they are much more generous with scholarships for freshman than transfer students.
the dean of admissions said i should not have a problem getting in for 2007.
the scholarship booklet said national merit finalists get full tuition and semifinalists get 75% tuition.

i started my application on the drive home.

mr brown you will not stop me from getting out of white station and you will not stop me from getting my national merit. that is the key.

kristen and i are going to thirty-five states and no one else can come. sorry.

10,225 miles.
166.1 hours of driving.

(there are 168 hours in a week.)

important things that need to happen

[X] get accepted to the u of m evansville
[X] send the u of m evansville my stuff
[X] get money from the u of m evansville ($12k!)
[X] send gov school my stuff
[X] have a meeting with mr brown
[X] find out what i have to do this summer
[X] get recommendations to counsel
[X] not eat bread or chocolate (complete! success!)
[X] sign up for senior high wilderness
[X] sign up for writers retreat