Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen

We had bonded forever by the end of the day.

It took longer than I’d anticipated, but I finally made Deadwood High recognize my true potential. There are people – like my parents and Mrs Baggoli – who look at what happened another way, of course, as doubters and scoffers always will. My mother said I was lucky. My father said I was lucky. The cops said I was lucky, but also brave. Mrs Baggoli said that I never cease to amaze her.

It was Mrs Baggoli’s idea that I write about what happened in my own “inimitable style” for my final English project.

“Perhaps if you put it down in black and white, you’ll see things a little more objectively,” Mrs Baggoli suggested. She sighed. “Try very hard to stick to the facts, Lola. Don’t embellish too much.”

“I don’t,” I said. “I always try to be as objective as a person can be.”

Mrs Baggoli sighed again. “Well, try a little harder.”

So I’m trying really hard to make sure that the real truth is told. And this is the real truth. Everything I’m about to tell you occurred exactly as I say. And I don’t mean just the everyday, boring things about school, and my family, and stuff like that. I mean everything. Even the things that seem so incredible, so totally out of this solar system, that you think I must have made them up, they’re true too. And nothing’s been exaggerated. Not the teensiest, tiniest, most subatomic bit. It all happened exactly as I’m telling it.

This is my story.

It starts with the end of the world.

The World Ends

The world ended on March 5th at exactly 11.13 p.m., give or take a second or two.

It started out as just a regular day. In a play you know something terrible’s about to happen because the weather’s so bad, or you run into a few witches on your way home. But not even the weather was giving any clues that day. It was cold, but bright and sunny, and there wasn’t a witch in sight, unless you count Carla Santini.

I was in a Gone with the Wind kind of mood when I got up that morning, so I wore the black velvet cape I’d just bought in a local charity shop. In the afternoon Ella and I went to her house. We usually go to her house because she’s an only child and, consequently, is allowed to live her life in peace and privacy, unlike some of us who were less fortunate in our choice of parents.

Mr and Mrs Gerard have always been polite and pleasant to me, but I don’t kid myself that that means they like me. They don’t like me. They’re just always polite and pleasant, period. They never yell or are sarcastic, like some people’s parents. They never have bad moods, and they never fight with each other. They’re always giving each other quick cheek smooches and calling each other “darling” and “honey”. They remind me of parents in a cornflakes commercial. You know, perfect and pleasant and reasonable, even when the box is empty.

Ella’s house is always clean and neat, and most of the furniture is covered in plastic. There are never any shoes under the coffee-table or empty cups left by the side of the couch. You never have to wipe off the TV with your sleeve so you can see the picture. Ella’s house is so immaculately frightful that it looks more like a model home than a real house. I’m afraid to touch anything; which is just as well because I can tell from the way Mrs Gerard usually watches me (closely and with a stiff smile) that she’s afraid, too.

That afternoon I caught Mrs Gerard looking at me as she put the snack she’d made us on the table. In my house, though my mother will occasionally stretch to tossing you a bag of potato chips or pretzels, the only way a person usually gets fed is if she feeds herself (and then she usually has to feed everybody else, as well), but not in Ella’s house. Mrs Gerard is a professional mother. She not only does three meals a day, she also does anything in between. That afternoon she made us grilled cheese sandwiches and fries in the microwave. She used two different kinds of cheese and she cut each sandwich in quarters and decorated it with a sprig of parsley.

“Wow,” I said, “this is just like eating in a diner.”

Ella choked back a giggle.

That was when I caught Mrs Gerard looking at me. I’d seen that look before. Kind of awe-struck but worried, as though she’d just realized I was related to Edward Scissorhands and couldn’t touch anything without cutting it into shreds.

When she saw that I was watching her with a contemplative look of my own, Mrs Gerard laughed. Hers is a laugh that makes me nervous. It doesn’t sound happy, like a laugh should; it sounds as though she couldn’t think of anything else to say or do.

“Surely you have grilled cheese sandwiches at home,” said Mrs Gerard. You could hear the rest of her sentence kind of dangling in the air: don’t you?

Mrs Gerard is always curious about what I do “at home”. You’d think she was taking a course in sociology and not advanced cooking.

I nodded. “Oh, sure, only they’re usually burnt because all we have is this sandwich toaster you put on the stove, and we never have parsley with them.” My mother’s idea of a garnish is a napkin.

“No microwave?” Mrs Gerard laughed again. “I thought everyone had a microwave these days.”

As far as I can tell, Mrs Gerard also thinks that everyone has a housekeeper, a gold American Express card, and limitless time to make sure there are no water marks on the glasses.

“We don’t.” I bit into my sandwich. It was delicious. “My mother doesn’t approve of them.”

I hadn’t meant to say that last part, it just kind of came out. Mrs Gerard’s even more curious about my mother than she is about what I do at home. Mrs Gerard can’t get over the fact that Karen Kapok and I have different last names, and she’s never before met a woman who has biceps like Bruce Willis and is always covered in clay.

Mrs Gerard arched one impeccable eyebrow.

“Doesn’t approve of them?” She rattled out a little more nervous laughter. “I’ve never heard of anyone taking a moral stand on an appliance before.”

Mrs Gerard had never before cracked a joke in my presence. Since Mr Gerard works fourteen hours a day and is almost never seen by me, he hadn’t either, but I’d always assumed that Ella’s sense of humour must come from him. This was the first time it seemed like I might be wrong about that. I laughed, too, enthusiastic and encouraging.

Mrs Gerard, however, had stopped laughing.

“Are you serious?” she asked. “Your mother really doesn’t approve of microwaves?” You’d think I’d said she didn’t approve of breathing.

I decided not to get into this discussion. If Ella’s mother pressed me on what things my mother did and did not approve of, we could be there till the morning.

“She has very strong opinions,” I said, vaguely. I took another bite. “It’s because she’s Polish.”

There’s no food allowed in the Gerard bedrooms because of Mrs Gerard’s terror of attracting insects, so after we had eaten Ella and I went to her room to listen to the new Sidartha CD again. We knew most of the songs by heart even though we’d only had it two days. Ella likes Sidartha’s first album better, but I think this one is more profound and emotionally powerful. Their other albums make me think, but this one really engulfs my soul. When Stu Wolff (the band’s creative heart) sings, There’s something in me that always wants more … more moons and stars and music in the wind… it’s as though he’s talking just to me.

Sidartha, if you haven’t guessed, is our absolute favourite band. I’d been lobbying my mother for months to let me see them the next time they played in the City, but not with a lot of success. My mother said she’d see – which meant I was in with a chance if I handled her right – but Ella wouldn’t even ask her parents because it would upset them and make them worry about her. Mr and Mrs Gerard are actively terrified of young men with black leather and tattoos. They tolerate her love of Sidartha, but warily. You can tell that they see it as the thin end of the wedge; you know, one day Sidartha, the next day hard drugs and all-night parties. My plan was to work on Karen Kapok first, and then worry about how I was going to get Ella to come with me. I believe in dealing with one problem at a time.

“Why doesn’t your mother like me?” I asked Ella as we settled on her floor. (Beds, apparently, are for sleeping, not sitting – Mrs Gerard has a thing about bedspreads as well as insects.)