IT'S FINALLY OVER (partly)

From Wednesday (didn't post because I was working on the story), but the excitement still holds.

Insert various punctuation marks, including exclamation marks, question marks, the ever-so-popular SarcMark (can't on Blogger because it's not supported), and the occasional one.

What is this special occasion?

I am celebrating the END of two most awful things that have been bogging me as of late, most notably the research paper and calc finals. I just want to jump up and down and scream for joy! (Well, not really. But you get my enthusiasm.)

Of course, who knows what will happen once I get the grades back for them? Nonetheless, that's eons away, and I'm not troubling myself with these minor details yet. (Also included in these "minor details": I have stat finals tomorrow and Thursday, a physics test on Friday, American Indian paper for US due Friday, three labs despite taking two science classes, and since we did so horribly on the latest Dr. Cans-style electrochem test, we're taking an easier version tomorrow for freebie points.)

Since I am ever so happy and ever so not wanting to study for my stat finals, I will put up a story I had been working on prior with some minor edits.




There's a thousand lies I can make up, but only one truth, and I don't know if I can ever say that out loud.

Based on a true story. But Oprah, there isn't anything that is absolutely so, not even truth, not ever truth.

one.

Friday after school I circled the hallway aimlessly. I had someplace to be, something to do, someone to see—I knew all of that, but my heart was not into it. I listened as the soles of my feet tapped along the cheap, faux-stone tiles, echoing throughout the empty hallway, just as if I had worn wooden clogs and tap danced to a worn-out pattern.

Left, right. Left, right. Left, right. Left, right. I looked up and saw Avery's red backpack ahead. Something in my mind clicked. If Avery was here, then—

I ignored the fading statement and walked faster, hoping that he would not disappear behind a set of doors before I had a chance to talk to him. He saw me, and waved, a half-motion of his arm in slow, uncertain way. I waved back, came up to him, and glanced into the glass door he was standing by.

Left, right.

"Hey," I said, my face kept carefully blank as it always was around him. "Are you waiting for Carter?"

"Yeah, he's getting his forms signed for the scholarship. You have to get forms signed by so many people, and it takes a long time."

"Oh, yeah. I realized that I didn't qualify after the first page, so I just gave up. Do you know what time it is now?"

He squinted at the clock beyond the glass doors, where Carter was pacing back and forth, making faces at us when the teacher he was talking to was not looking.

"It's two-twenty."

"All right, I have five more minutes to waste before I have to meet up with the person I'm supposed to interview."

"Why don't you just go over now?"

"I don't feel like it," I confessed—one of the few truths I had ever told him. "It's like—I don't know. Everything's falling around me."

"Yeah, the math final?"

"It's not even just that. Everything—I don't know. It's these few weeks, and I can't wait for them to be over. Can't wait."

Left out the lies. Right over the truth.

He stared at me. I stared at Carter inside, now talking to another teacher, his manila envelope in hand, then back at him.

"Is there ever going to be another club meeting?" I asked him, changing the subject.

"Well, Carter and I both have tennis in the spring, and last year we didn't have any meetings in the spring either. Fall, maybe."

"Some time in the far, far future."

"Yeah, some time far away."

"I should get going now, I don't want to be late."

"Okay, bye."

"Bye." I turned on my heels, walked away, my back straight, not once looking back. That was where the broken promises resided, and I could not look back.


two.

"—so it was over, it was all over."

I forgot the first time I saw him, but it must have been so long ago if I could not remember. Ever since I first came here, he represented all this place ever was to me. He had the ambition that the ground reeked of. He had the false charisma the building donned. He had a snide side, much like the shadows of the neglected corners.

I listened to him as he laid his story out in a monotone voice. It was a tragic story, made even more tragic in the way he told it. But it was in my best interests to listen, and so he was to be heard, the few comments scattered here and there excepted.

Most of all, he had an eerie perceptiveness, sometimes there and sometimes not, that haunted me every time I stepped foot beyond those glassy doors.

"Why didn't you stop her?" I asked. It was a risky question to put out so early in the game, but I had my confidence.

I had probably not said anything to him, for I did not remember talking to him at all for the longest time. It was always someone around him—someone he knew, or someone who stood within earshot of him—and I brushed off those coincidences as mere coincidences. I wanted to talk to those people, yes, I really did.

"I—what can I do? Tell her not to go? Why would she listen to me? I've never been once nice to her."

Eventually I persuaded myself that I was meant for better, and I took solace in my revelation. I pulled on my brightest smile, and I gave it to everyone else. I was happy, I was loved, and I was not lonely. I was definitely not lonely.

"You had your excuses, but now is not the time." I held out my hand, and he shook it, and we both knew that he would lose, no matter what he chose.


three.

They were gone when I came by again, my feet tapping against the tiles. I stared at the empty space behind the glass doors, but it was just that. Empty. No amount of staring changed it. Walking by the computer labs on my way to the front door, I remembered that computer club usually met every Friday. I peered into the room, trying to see if I could find Sam and ask if I could borrow his phone, since I had forgotten mine.

Sam was not there, but Chris was, so I hurried away. He was another person I would rather not see. I continued on my way, stopping at the main foyer to see Tom, Stephen, and Nina climbing the stairs along the railing.

"Hey," Tom said, waving to me, then, as I came closer, he pulled me into an embrace. "I love your candy bracelet."

"Oh, it's not a candy bracelet."

He took a closer look at my wrist. "Aw. Well, I still love it anyway."

"Are you staying here for long?" I asked, as we pulled away.

"For about ten minutes, until my mom comes."

"Okay."

I left him as he turned his attention to Nina, who had made it to the second floor and was looking down, mocking Stephen's cowardice. I walked outside and stood next to Melissa, who was waiting for her ride.

Left, right.

"Hi," I said. "Do you know if there's tennis practice today?"

"No, I don't think so. Why?"

"Oh, just wondering if I should walk all the way over to the tennis courts."

"Do you have practice or something?"

"No, I just wanted to find something to do."

"Okay, well, I can't see anyone there right now, so there probably isn't practice. I have to go now, I'll talk to you later."

"Thanks, bye."

I watched as Melissa boarded the car and left. Then I tipped my toes and stared at the tennis courts on the hill. They were empty, as Melissa had said. Scott came out, carrying a racket case, just as I was about to go inside again.

Left out the past. Right into the future.

"Hey, Scott, is there tennis practice today?"

"Girls' team?"

"No, the boys."

"Yeah, but we just ran for twenty-five minutes. It's over now."

"Oh, okay. Are you on varsity or JV?"

"Varsity."

"Do you know if the JV team had practice today?"

"I don't know, I'm sorry."

"It's all right. Thanks." I walked inside again, where Tom was still there, now singing with Stephen. I asked to borrow his phone, and called my mom as I watched Callie sit in one of the benches beside the front door. I wondered briefly if her brother was here, but then decided it did not matter.


four.

We walked to the parking lot behind the supermarket and watched as the truck unloaded crate after crate of potatoes. He stared at those crates, then at me, and I could tell he was upset, more so than he had ever been when he had told me his story. I had given him hope, and hope was more frightful than the lack of it.

When he smiled at me I smiled back, seeing no harm in the exchange. He was just another person I would encounter in my life, with no more special preference than anyone else I acknowledged in the halls. He waved, an awkward, hey you're here type of wave, and I said hi, and he did not say anything back, and we left it at that.

"You're sure she's going to be here? How can you know?"

I tried my hardest with my excuses. The clock is right there—that was all I was looking at. Ben and Alex always made some sort of joke, and they were in that corner. I had a question, and no one else could possibly have known the answer. I deluded myself, told myself I did not know, told myself I had no other choice, and in doing so I believed it.

I smiled. "I have my ways, or I would not be in this business. Oh, and, you know what you owe me. Remember that, whatever choice you decide to make in the end."

One day I woke up and I knew—I simply knew. It was in the way the wind blew, or maybe how the clouds had rearranged themselves. It was in the air, and I simply knew. When I went downstairs I had my confirmation in brown, stiff cardboard. I played with the roll of tape on the table for a while, and I was almost relieved.

"Yeah, yeah. This had better be worth it." But he knew already, and I needed no further persuasion. I watched as he left, his back an awkward, retreating shape, as though he were not certain of the path he was taking.

It was over. Finally over. One last time, and everything would be over.

It could not have been so. He knew his choices, and I knew mine. After so many years, I had long ago learned that the secrets to this trade was not business savvy, but a willingness to make sacrifices.


five.

When I got home my mother was on the computer, but I told her I needed to finish writing up my plan for the trip, and she went into her room to watch TV. I opened up a new browser and typed in the address for my email. It took a while to load, and when it finally did, I searched the side panel and saw Ronnie online.

I opened a chat window with her, and debated what to type. There were several things I wanted to ask her about, but I needed to tailor them to fit my persona, and I wondered how far I could go with tampering with the words until they became too obscure to be understood. That was happening a lot lately, if any of Dena's feedback on my short fictions were of any hint.

Left, right.

"Hey," I wrote, making up my mind.

"Hi," Ronnie replied back. "Did you talk with Jennifer yet?"

"No, why?"

"She said she knew something interesting about you and Jack, but she wouldn't say what."

"Oh. I bet it's nothing. There's nothing between Jack and me, but she doesn't believe me."

"Well, you guys sure act that way. People are always going to think things if you keep that up."

"I suppose. Did Jennifer say anything else?"

"I don't think so. Oh, wait, she said that Carter wanted to talk to you about something. Not sure what either. I think he didn't tell her."

"Huh. I wonder why?"

"I don't know. He's a strange boy. Oh, and, have I told you about the new physics teacher?"

"No, you haven't."

"Well, the new physics teacher has a PhD in the study of enthalpy and entropy, and he's a huge fan of alternate dimensions and inter-dimensional travel!"

"Really? Wow, that's so cool!"

"I'm going to ask him some questions about the field later, but I want to do some independent research first to get a general idea."

"That sounds like fun. Tell me what you find out. I have to go now, dinner."

"Okay, I'll talk to you later. Bye."

"Bye."

Left without a mark. Right here in nowhere.

I clicked the chat panel and made myself invisible, then stared at my inbox. It stared back, taunting me with its bold, unread messages. I pressed alt-F4 as fast as I could, then ran into my room and grabbed a coat. "I'll be back soon," I told my mother, and she asked me where I was going.

"Just out for a walk."

"Come back before it's dark," she said. I nodded, but I was already half-way out the door, and she could not have possibly seen me. I had places to be, things to do, people to see—and never enough time.


six.

"You could have told me."

I looked down, my eyes not meeting his. "I meant to, last week, but you were so busy, and I thought maybe, maybe—"

"You had plenty of time, and I wasn't ever that busy."

"I—Okay, I wanted to tell you earlier, but I figured you wouldn't care, so I decided not to instead."

I raised my head, this time staring into his eyes before remembering why I had chosen not to. I stared at the spot on the bridge of his nose, between his eyes, and told myself the intensity of my stare was enough to dispel all suspicions.

"That's not true. I'm here, aren't I?"

I did not respond.

"Why are you doing this?"

"It's not my choice," I said. "I don't have a say in this."

"Yeah right. You could've said no. Could've—how long will you be gone?"

"Long enough."

He looked as though he wanted to say something more, but he merely nodded. I smiled, apologetically and not so at the same time. I supposed I would regret this moment, years later. I would berate myself for letting such an opportunity slip through my fingers. But right now, I needed to escape. I needed to
stop this toxic cycle, and this was the only way I knew how. I was running away, I knew that. I had always known that.

"Just—one thing that's been bothering me."

"What?"

"How did you find out? How did you know I would be here?"

"I just know," he said, his eyes unwaveringly trained on mine. "Just like I know that you will be coming back, and I will wait here until you do."

Left here once upon a time, came back and there was nothing left. Right here where I made my vows, I'm staring at old memories wondering if I was ever right.

More Adventures (in Chile) + Panic IRL

This was long overdue but necessary in the grand scheme of life this trip. Therefore, it is here, and I will be off to do my homework ("Gasp!") because I just checked the schedule and the CALC FINAL (-cue screaming sound effects-) is in two weeks. (±Math run-offs, AIME's, and an assortment of other things.) Therefore, I probably won't be getting any homework done, and so I might as well post this now so I don't get too distracted.


ALSO YOU GUYS: Ignore tenses in this thing. I don't know what land I'm in, but this land's Laws decree that normal tense situations do not apply here. That, or I'm writing about past/present/future at the same time, so I'm really, really confused.


Today is the first day of our (Gretchie has joined my trip) adventures! After an entire day of packing, we have decided that we have EVERYTHING we could possibly need that we can think of right now. So, relying upon our trusty RANDOM.ORG random coordinates generator, we have decided to travel to the most coveted—

Chile!

But first things first. We need a picture of Gretchie since she's coming along as well.

After quite some time of fiddling with paint the camera once again, here is a picture of Gretch (to the right). (A/N: This picture did not exist prior to this post; however, due to unfortunate media leakage, this picture is now old news and therefore lacks the "wow" factor it was supposed to bring.)

Great, now we can begin!

So, since we're in the middle of nowhere not anywhere near Chile, I ordered tickets from TravelWithUsJerk.com (see bottom of page). They came in the mail yesterday, while we were still packing, and boy, were we excited! I literally jumped up and down until I got tired and had to stop.


Gretchie added a water filter, cards, a Spanish-English dictionary, a Swiss army knife, eating utensils, and walkie-talkies to her bag. I've also last-minutely added a small, hand-held mirror, just in case we're plane-wrecked in the middle of the ocean and we need to flash Morse code signals at planes to make them notice us.


Anyway, at 9:30AM, we decided that we had everything. With a few final checks (making sure we locked the doors and windows and said a teary farewell to our friends for the hour day week possibly eternity), we were ready to depart!

The closest international airport is JFK, and it's a very, very far distance away (anything that can't be tackled reasonably by foot is a very far distance for me), so naturally we rode a taxi! I love yellow taxis—they make me feel happy on the inside, especially if it's raining outside and the water puddles make the road all reflection-y when the yellow taxis drive by.


The ride to the airport was pretty fun, and when we got to the airport, we still had plenty of time left (the plane was scheduled to leave at 2PM—haha, 2PM—and we arrived at 11AM). So we did what normal people do when they're about to embark on a round-the-world voyage.


We jumped up and down (figuratively for Gretchie and literally for me) and ooh'd and ahh'd over everything we saw. Well, of course, we had to get our boarding pass first, go through numerous layers of customs (tricky—I never did like customs), and find our waiting room. Once we got there, however, the realization that the trip was finally happening made both of us giddy. I pulled out my laptop and we went over the itinerary for the next few days, which I will outline below in order to pacify you because the actual trip writing may take a long time to solidify give you an idea of what is to come:

• Day 1: Arrive at Santiago (the capital of Chile and where the major International airport is located), look around, check into a hotel, scream, "WE'RE IN CHILE!!!" (Preferably in Spanish, although that is a feat only Gretchie can accomplish right now.)
• Day 2: Continue tour of Santiago (I've heard that they have amazing food there), in the afternoon take a plane to Atacama Desert and stay the night there.
• Day 3-6: Explore Atacama. Highlights: museums, geysers, beautiful views, adobe hotels! On the last day, take a plane to Easter Island.
• Day 7-11: Explore Easter Island. (More) highlights: Moai (those stone faces Easter Island is famous for), volcanic craters, scuba diving/snorkeling. On the last day/afternoon, take a plane back to Santiago.
• Day 12: Rest a bit, check any really good tourist attractions (or restaurants), then depart for our next destination (undecided as of yet).

So, there you have it! Almost two weeks of fun in Chile, or at least we hope it will be. Alas, time flies when you're rechecking over itineraries (or maybe just when you're having fun in general), and by the time we finished going over the details and planning what we will do after we get off the plane, it was about time to board our plane.


Here's a picture of the plane we're going to board:


Isn't it pretty?


This is a plane owned by Lan Chile Airlines, the major airline company in Chile. It's also the only plane that travels to Easter Island, which is where we're going to go later. (How this hasn't directly attributed to grossly unreasonable fares, I have no idea, but I assume I'll know next year with a year of econ under my figurative belt.)

I found some random picture online took a picture of the landscape as we were about to depart. Can you believe it? We're going to leave the country soon, and then our continent!


South America, here we come!


Of course, for the entire flight, Gretchie and I watched this strange documentary about glaciers in Greenland. I don't really remember much of it, because I was more focused on the beautiful background music they played while showing the films of the glaciers.


It takes around nine hours to go by plane from NYC to Chile, and so by the time we arrived, it was a staggeringly late 11PM by our watches. However, by the Chilean time zone (UTC-04), it was already midnight. Gretchie and I were both pretty tired by now, so our first priority was to find a hotel and rest for the night.


(I think we'll have to push back our schedule for a day, because rest is very, very important and visiting Santiago is also very, very important, and we have plenty of time to spare anyway.)


Gretchie took some pictures of the night-time Santiago as we rode in our taxi and headed toward our hotel. Here's one that we both really liked:

After much sight-seeing through the streets of Santiago, we arrived at our hotel which is not named because I have been too lazy to actually find one, duh. Tired as we were, we did not forget to take a picture of our room. So, here it is, and we'll update infinitely later tomorrow on how our first actual day in Santiago goes!

OOH (see earlier posts): 


We (both of Mr. Coffee's AP chem classes) got back our acid/base equilibrium test today—or, at least, the multiple choice part. The "bell curve" for test score distributions were one 95+ (Bryant, most likely, as this spot is usually reserved for him), a small cluster of 90+, a huge cluster of 80+ (including 85+), pitifully few in the 70+ (including 75+), and another huge cluster at or below 65+.


On the bright side, this unit is so dubbed, "If you can survive this, you can do anything." So, seeing as I survived the test (with lots of freebie points from Mr. Coffee because he messed up on several questions to help), I must be able to do anything!


(Well, anything except my research paper, it seems, because I almost failed that, and the only reason I didn't fail was because I had clear sentences and good language usage, so the next two weeks will be frantic as I basically rewrite my entire paper.)


I am also awaiting my free response for this unit, which I have my doubts in because I didn't (unlike Bryant and Nyx and basically everyone else who was sane) do any of the AP problems on College Board. Well. On the even brighter side, the next unit is relatively easier (although it also seems that easier units are the ones I perform worse on in tests), so everything should be fine until I start panicking about the calc finals.


Which, if the introduction paragraph haven't warned you yet, CALC FINALS! MAY 5TH IS APPROACHING! APRIL 12TH IS APPROACHING! Ahem. Right.


Our class has yet to panic, it appears, because we spent today discussing what the "ç" was called ("A cedilla." "Oh, Ginny, can you teach me French?") and whether the cardioid looked like a "butt." Dino also spent considerable time persuading Mrs. James to hit the "print" button on the Smartboard so he could go grab a copy of the calc notes he forgot to print out ("We were supposed to bring 10.6? No one told me that!") while Jay used "going to the bathroom" as an excuse to print out a copy of the notes himself but forgot to print out an extra set for Dino.


Not that I did anything in any of my other classes. We had a sub for physics, and Camel, lamenting that the $10 he spent on buying Monty Python was wasted because he couldn't open the file, used his laptop to go on Youtube to watch more Monty Python. I took this time to use an extremely long yard-stick (meter-stick, actually, and they can't be extremely long because they're supposed to be one meter long, but that's not the point) to draw scatterplots for stat. Nevertheless, it wasn't necessary, it seemed, because Mrs. MacDonald wasn't here either, and we had another sub (who suspiciously looked like the sub we had for physics, but I'm bad at recognizing people so I'm not sure). Matt and I worked on another sudoku puzzle, and then later on we (mostly me) worked on some math packets. I can say now with 70% confidence that I can tackle most of the round 1 questions, half of the round 2 questions, and maybe half of the round 3 questions.


Oh, I'm doomed.


But wait, there's more! If you call NOW AIME is coming up, Wednesday. I still have to ask Tybalt what room I'm supposed to be in, and I still have to go over at least some of the problems to see what they're like and what my probability of failing is (very high, although I shall try a Nate Silver-esque approach and conduct some research based on past problem performance).


So. Anyway. Homework.


DISCLAIMER (read the small font): Any hyper-link not "linked" is not true and is merely a figment of the authoress' imagination. There may, however, be a slight chance that such a link exists in real life and therefore accessible. We [Gretchie and I] do not wish to infringe upon the rights of those organizations, and we are not associated with them in any way. We are not liable for any loss, whether financial, physical, laptopial, or any thing else, incurred due to the searching and/or subsequent visiting of said websites. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact us at ginnyofnephria(at)gmail.com or comment below. Please note that we reserve the right to ignore you (within reasonable boundaries of law) or delete your comment as we see fit. For further questions, read the sentence before the sentence before this sentence.

Life Is Strange.

I probably had already concluded this some time prior to today, but I feel there needs to be a reassertion.

Life is strange. Bizarre. Weird. Odd. Completely wacko.

What has made me come to this conclusion (again)? Well, it all started . . .

(-cue person sitting in a wicker chair reminiscing about the past-)

Anyway, this Wednesday, sometime in its glorious sunny afternoon, my mom received a phone call from the Superintendent informing us of the extremely likely possibility of school the next day. The exact words were more along the lines of, yes, there is school tomorrow, but after last weekend, anything could happen.

I was psyched. I wanted to go to school really badly. Staying at home for a prolonged period of time was not my idea of fun.

However, it appears that my body had a different idea.

I spent an entire Thursday, home, sick, stomach hurting and drowsy (although that could be a side-effect of sleeping too much). It was miserable. I went to the doctor's on Friday, received some general information coupled with fancy words, but I was too out of it to comprehend. My mom took me to the pharmacist's to get my new medication, and then we went to Barnes and Noble's somewhere to just "wander around," as I had suggested.

When we came home, it was already late (3pm-ish), so I decided to ask around and see what I had missed.

Lacking phone numbers (not that I use my phone regularly anyway, besides the occasional call to my mom to pick me up), I went online. Bryant was, as I suspected, there, and so I asked him about chem and physics.

"We learned titration curves in chem," he said. "They're not that bad."

Well, for the past most likely every time I've asked him about anything schoolwork related, he has said, "It's not that bad." Not sure how much his words applied to me.

"What about physics?" I asked. "Was there a lab?"

"No, we learned about series and parallel combinations, and how you would go about solving them."

"How do you go about solving them?"

And thus he launched into a very long near-monologue about the complexities of solving circuits, interrupted occasionally by my odd, "Oh, it's like in that video we watched!" or the ever-so-common, "Okay." It got to the point where I decided, no, I wasn't ever going to memorize everything he said, so I went ahead and copied our conversation and pasted it elsewhere for future reference.

Then, Bryant said, "There's a couple questions about circuit breakers on UTexas."

Wait, what?

I hurriedly checked my Quest account, and, there they were, 45 brand new questions sitting there, waiting for me to unravel their evilness mysteriousness. With a nice message at the top reminding us that the network will be down over the weekend due to maintenance, so we should print out a hard copy to work on it instead.

Before I had a chance to start on those questions, Dora started a conversation with me.

"Hi Ginny! Why weren't you in class today?"

"I was sick," I said. "Did I miss anything?"

"Yeah, we handed in our papers today. Mrs. Tallchief thought you gave your paper to me. She was surprised you weren't there."

Oh. Oops. Right, research paper.

"Don't worry about it," Dora said. "Just send her an email. You should be fine."

Which I did later on, but I haven't received a reply yet, so I'm not sure how that's going. I also have several books I accidentally left in my English classroom, all of which are in danger of disappearing.

I saw Dino as well, so I figured I would ask him about calc. Except, of course, he disappeared right after I attempted to start a conversation. He and Owen both seem to do that a lot.

So I went back to UTexas, fiddled around with the questions, and arrived at a section where there was quite a number of bizarre diagrams that made no sense at all. Frustrated, I checked back to see if anyone else was online to provide useful class information, and I saw Dino again.

"Dino," I said. "You are very elusive. Anyway, what did you guys do in calc today?"

"Where were you?" Or, in Dino-speak, "where werw=e u?" (I find it amusing that he actually noticed his mistake, attempted to hit backspace, missed backspace, and decided to go on regardless.)

"Home," I said. "Sick."

To my surprise, Dino made a frowning face and said, "Feel better."

"Thanks," I said, grasping with this new, nice side of Dino as he reassured me that we didn't go over anything new in calc (yay, because I had thought Mrs. James would go crazy due to our unexpected "break") and told me to let him know if I needed help. Wow.

And this time, Tea, he did say something along the lines of goodbye before he left, so I think there's either still hope, or he's really picked up a "Easy Steps to Being Nicer" book somewhere in lieu of the "Compliments for Dummies" we suggested he get.

I went back to my physics problems, finished all of them except the ones with the weird diagrams, and spent the rest of night watching Youtube videos recommended by Gretchen and Stella (after I found my headphones), and deciding that vocal trance is really nice, and I feel kind of sad I had never explored this genre further before.

The next morning (well, this morning, really), I received an email from my physics teacher (too lazy to search up his nickname) telling us that he's sending over the diagrams for the eight-part question that I had trouble with yesterday. So the weird diagram problem wasn't just me!

On the not-so-bright side, UTexas is officially under maintenance right now, so I don't feel motivated enough to do any of the questions.

So I'm Lazy and I've Got Lots of Work...

Therefore, I find it perfectly logically (acceptable or not is up to you to decide) to replace actual content with copied and pasted things. Such as my half-finished story for a writing contest on this forum thing. It's a story about... romance, and albeit my very limited knowledge into this field, I decided to give it a try.

And also, I asked Dino whether entropy was reversible and if he had any large lasers at his house. His answer to the first question was, "On the planetary scale, of course it's not possible." And his answer to the second question was, "Is this a serious question?" To which I replied, "Yes, it is."

And he said no.

Alas, my grand scheme to go back in time so I would have more time to write my research paper, and, in general, other homework assignments as well, will thus be slightly delayed. Not by much, though. I'm sure Vincent always has a way.

If he can solve cryptic crosswords, then he can do anything.

(Click here for the short story that inspired part of my questions.)

And, there is my story, or, the first part of it, as I have written it.

I love you, maybe.

Dedicated to my favorites: Dray, Allison, Prescott, and *name crossed out due to relevance to reality*

Heaven has always hated me. I am not lying. Every time something good happens, Heaven always takes it away from me. Every time I want to cry, Heaven makes sure only the brightest sunshine falls on my head.

I want to make this perfect for you, because you only get one chance at it, you know? No rewind button. No undo key combo. We all have only this once chance, and I want to make it worthy of you. But Heaven hates me, and I can't call forth the rain I want.

So this will have to do.

Forgive me.

When I first looked into your eyes, I thought you had the bluest eyes I had ever seen.

You were a foreigner. Blue eyes, blond hair, pale skin, all that cliché. The older kids told the younger ones that you were a monster out to get them at night. A vampire. A ghost, perhaps. They said the bluer your eyes, the greater the number of lives you had taken. I remember the first time we met, down by the bus station between Lily Road and North Avenue. I had missed my ride again, the fourth time that week, and my mother refused to pay for a caddy anymore. So I trudged to a stop in front of the orange metal pole that marked the bus station from the street, and waited.

You were already there, your clothes perfectly groomed and so out of place. Your face was so pale it made us look dirty. You smiled at me, out of habit more than out of friendliness. I smiled back, just as uncomfortable with the situation as you were.

I said hello, in an heavily accented English that I was sure you were laughing at on the inside.

You replied in perfect Chinese. "Hello. How are you?"

"I'm fine. How are you?"

The bus came at that moment, and you smiled again, apologetically. We both hurried on the bus, and amidst the crowd, I lost sight of you. But that question had been haunting me ever since I had asked it. How were you that morning? Were you really happy, oblivious to the whispers behind your back?

Had the bus not come that moment, and had you answered, would everything have been different?

I did not see you again until two years later, when we were assigned to the same class at the beginning of high school.

You had changed by then. Your face had a harder edge to it, and your voice deeper. You had a nonchalant aura. But your eyes were still the same blue, if only colder. If I had thought I could drown myself in your eyes before, then now I felt as if I could lock myself in the icy palace you built with your eyes and never want to come out again.

I wanted to say something to you, but you were distracted by a group of boys. They were pointing at you and whispering something in traditional Shanghainese, something even I did not understand, despite living my entire life near Shanghai.

One of the boys spoke in Mandarin. "Wei, you! Sheep-hair! Come over here."

You barely granted them a passing glance before occupying yourself with a silver chain you had. The boy who spoke to you started shouting again.

"Hey, I'm talking to you! Answer me, you bastard!"

I should have gone up to them and told them to leave you alone. I should have reported them to a teacher. I should have said something, anything. In hindsight, I should have done so much.

And maybe had I done something, there would be no more story to tell.

The tutoring thing was more of a fluke than anything else. I had been sitting under the tree in the courtyard, sketching the school, when Ms. Ling walked over and asked me if I was free every Wednesday afternoon.

"I see you here all the time," she explained, "doing nothing at all."

I am doing something. I am drawing. "Of course I'm free. Why? Is there something you need?"

"Well, you see, I have a student who is not quite grasping the curriculum, and I simply don't have the time to help him myself. You're doing fairly well with your grades, so I wanted to ask you a favor."

"You want me to tutor him?"

"Yes, is that possible?"

There were a thousand ways this could go wrong, I wanted to say. A thousand and one. But instead, I said, "What subjects would I be responsible for, and for how long?"

"Chinese, and math. I don't think English is necessary. You will only be helping him with one subject a session, with each session being two hours long. Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, if that works for you? I will tell him about our plans. You two can meet at the school study hall."

"Okay," I said. Had I been more alert, and less upset, perhaps I would have seen the warning signs and bowed out despite my cowardliness.

When I stared into your eyes again, they were still the bluest eyes I had ever seen, but somehow they appeared duller than what I was accustomed to. Was it merely my dreams that catapulted your reality into a form of perfection that was never real? I smiled weakly, the first time I had ever smiled to you since our first encounter, but you did not return the gesture. You saw me in the same way you saw everyone else, defiant, but hopelessly lost.

None of us realized the lost part, however. We just saw your defiance and assumed the rest.

"Hello," I said, trying to fill in the silence.

"Hello. How are you?"

You were polite, too polite. It chilled me more than any harsh words could. I grabbed a chair next to you and sat down. You had your notebook open, on the first page, clean and fresh and so unreal. There was one line of text at the top, scribbled in a flowery font that was evidently not yours.

Be good.

I paid no heed to those words at the time, but perhaps that was the turning point of this story. I had my choices laid out in front of me, two separate roads leading down unforeseeable worlds, and I made a decision. Did I make the right choice? I do not know. But I do know that things could have turned out so differently, and so easily.

Why Not to Start Your Research Paper on the Day Before it's Due.

1. You find yourself needing to write five pages of solid work, of which you barely have one page.

2. You find your fellow classmates needing to write five pages of solid work, of which none of them barely have ten pages combined. In a class of twenty.

3. You find yourself waking up really, really early to finish off said five pages.

4. You find your fellow classmates not waking up really, really early and not finishing off said five pages.

5. You find yourself weeks behind on another blog entry.

6. You find your fellow classmates... wait, you don't know if your fellow classmates have blogs.

Well, now that I know why I should totally not procrastinate on my research paper, and why I should totally plan it out ahead and totally write it long before it's due, will I actually do it?

Well...

No.

I'll probably, at most, just think about it for a very, very long time. And I doubt I'll even think about it for such a long time. Other, more exciting things, are always around.

Like the AMC results.

I talked to Argon, who religiously checks the AMC website and can apparently glean off information that I myself cannot find (a.k.a. the cutoff scores), and he told me that the 12A cutoffs were 88.5. So, if the 12B cutoffs are the same, I have room to make two "oops-I-bubbled-it-wrong-again" mistakes, and exactly two.

The downside to that?

Dino would also make it, what with his guessing not-so-strategy.

I know it sounds mean, but I really do not think Dino deserves to make it to AIME's. But I searched around Google and I've heard that quite a number of people got over 100, so I am not sure about these cutoffs. Also, apparently, many people who take 12B have also taken 12A and take the second one because they didn't do so well on the first one, and are thus more prepared for the second one.

Who knows?

All I can say is, I am 95% confident that Argon was one of the pitifully few who actually did practice problems on the AMC site.

I know for me, personally, I forgot the AMC even existed until the day before, when Nyx conveniently reminded me. But that's just me.

Of course, I'm also really, really excited for Moody's.

Rumor on the street claims this year's topic is going to be about healthcare, namely what is the best way to tackle the healthcare problem while minimizing government (or better known as tax) money, maximizing savings for the average person, and possibly avoiding political attacks.

You know, such things as, "It's socialism, and if this is passed in Congress then I'm going to move to Canada!"

Well, no, you're not. Because, if anything, Canada is much more socialist than the US, even with the addition of a universal healthcare system. Moving to Canada will help your case in no way whatsoever. You might as well say you're moving to China.

Which actually might help, as China's barely starting (if any) a socialist system, and as for now, there isn't even a property tax.

But I digress again.

Regardless of whether the rumor's true, I'll be looking into the healthcare system for the next few days. And if it is true, and some other topic such as when is the best time to end the war in Iraq/Afghanistan or how to end our reliance on foreign oil is not chosen or even how to make sure colleges don't spam your inbox with the same emails, then I'm sure we will be prepared plenty.

Of course, I would also be pleasantly surprised if they asked us to design a work calender to maximize worker productivity, with an emphasis on more breaks. I'm not picky at all.

I will be bringing my calc textbook, my precalc textbook, my algebra textbook, my photocopied version of the geometry textbook, my stat textbook, my dad's weird math textbooks in Chinese, my AP review books, and other assortments of random things. You know, calculators, pencils, graph paper, shiny erasers, and so forth.

I think the fact that I've been writing research papers and US reflections for the past few weeks has greatly hindered my natural tendency to write in lists instead of separate, cohesive thoughts, and thus I am expressing myself excessively in this post.

Oh well. Moody's is coming up, and that means fourteen hours of, as Jimmy nicely put it, "insanity." I do believe this reminds me to also bring nice, soft, cushiony pillows, as our school's chairs are most uncomfortable (although the tables are, according to Tea, better than some other schools' tables). I would not be able to stand another fourteen hours of sitting on the ground with only my coat as a soft thing to buffer the pain. I wouldn't even have Joss as a pillow anymore.

So yeah. Pillows, food, writing utensils, and more food.

What more math could there be?

Oh, being on A team for the math meet, finally, after a two month hiatus. Not that I minded B team too much, but I would have liked a chance to see if I could rank comparably with the other people in our grade, and missing a chunk of points because your score wasn't counted does skew the results somewhat.

However, I find it amazing Tybalt did not do better than me. He had been, after all, beating me in my rounds ever since... he started doing them as well. Maybe he had been distracted. That could explain the slightly lower AMC score as well.

Does that mean, since Bryant also scored worse than last year, that he is also distracted? By what? Or whom?

Oh, such mysteries in this world.