Maybe I should quit with this discreet Boo Radley-esque bullshit. Originality is difficult, nearly impossible at times, but hey, my aim is not to be like "To Kill a Mockingbird" or any other novel.
Life was far more serene when there wasn't a vestige of Polly Liss in my mind, I decided toward the end of my sophomore year.
It was around this time that I also decided that I was long overdue for embarking on my destined path as a rebel outcast. That was essentially how Edna and I got to becoming soulmates.
It was a crisp, balmy and blustery year of recklessness and acerbity. I flipped the bureaucratic, elitist maggots the bird and haven't put down that finger since then. I came to the conclusion that grades meant virtually nothing in life and even exemplary marks weren't going to send me in the direction I wanted to go.
Edna and I didn't regret a second of the lunacy, which rapidly became unparalleled, reaching entirely new heights that had us quivering at the advent of the chaos, but quickly it faded away as we found the soft, spongy blanket of satisfaction and adventure to fit us rather snugly. In spite of this, there was always a translucent patch of wool that irked us and prickled our raw backs as if we were tossed into a straightjacket of pins and needles. Naturally, we did our best to claw the stinging away with our bare hands, feverishly wrapping and twisting our arms around like contortionists.
The house kiddie corner to the school was a run-down, shockingly towering shack that had about as much breathing room as a pickle jar. The windows were tinted with a light layer of crumbly filth, and the stoop at the door was similarly caked with dry, chalky lemon-colored chunks that were, to put it bluntly, a nauseating head-scratcher that triggered dry heaves from any poor soul who dared to wobble by. We were convinced they were remnants of an animal's stale, dried up vomit.
The grass in the front and back yards was as long and gnarly as a negligent, scraggly elderly woman's pubic hair. It was a spiraling, swirling, hectic jungle, minus the exotic animals of the Amazon. Tangled vine thickets lined the tall wooden fence that encompassed the sordid, rickety dwelling. Welcome to Splinter City.
The dreary, colorless domicile had virtually no signs of life. You could linger at the front stoop for hours gazing upon the chipped beige window panes and the cracked, askew flowerpots concealed by the gnarly clumps of weeds that shot out of every spot of dirt on the patchy lawn.
Now gaping at the haunted, comatose shanty I felt as if gray clouds were incessantly spiraling overhead as if they were constantly about to burst into rain drops and splatter ominously upon the shack in all its unsettling squalor, accentuated by strikes of lightning and crackles of thunder. I did this on a daily basis on my endless ambling home from Hades' Domain, posing as a sickeningly intimidating yet sensible, brick school building. I never saw any movement within the home's orifices that I obsessively peered into on a daily basis.
Where the fuck am I GOING with this description of a house?
It's solid but doesn't fly with the story.
I was trying to force it in by describing when Jane and her friend Edna would sit on the front stoop of this haunted, vacant house when they would cut class and smoke unfiltered cigarettes and just shoot the shit, then one day Polly would walk by when Jane was just there by herself and some shit would go down. But I don't want to backpedal at all, that would be going backwards in my story, honestly. I'm supposed to be unveiling the path for Jane to find peace and work through her shit...then I'm moving on to her association with this girl, Katherine Rogers, a very pure, seemingly innocent, intensely hypocritical, born-again extremist who much to Jane's dismay, shows up far too much in her life.
Then after Katherine, Bess Badgley, a former friend of Jane's who de-evolved into a mindless, dependent, follower. Then lastly, the tale of Natalie Kowalski, a Polish girl who Jane used to think was the most considerate person on Earth. They were very good friends, also absurdly hypocritical and very envious of Jane, secretly of course. Natalie has very low self-esteem and judges people who smoke and drink yet she has done cocaine, ecstasy, LSD and everything in between. One time, Jane, Edna, Natalie and a gaggle of their friends went to a house party and Edna and Jane were doing pot, hookah and drinking Smirnoff and Jane found a guy to talk to who happened to be very handsome, and they're discussing poetry, and Natalie happened to not know Jane was a lesbian, and then in that instant of impulsive wickedness, she turns all of the friends against Jane and Edna as well, because she is jealous, straight up.
Anyway, what the fuck am I gonna do? The last part I left off at is where Jane suddenly has a fiendish, devilish notion in that she decides to do something to blackmail Polly, given that she sees her fucking one of the staffers, Garrett Bigsby, in the staff room, and is pondering taking a picture with her phone or a video. Then, she realizes she never responded to Edna's text asking her if she found her "StoryBook". Suddenly, Edna comes up behind Jane and scares the living shit out of her. It's actually Edna's idea to execute this method of blackmail...Edna tries to snap a shot of them fucking since Jane is reluctant, then Edna causes a ruckus because she's freaking out because her phone is frozen given that she tried to take a picture of an "orgasmic burrito" when her, Jane and their friends went ouf for Mexican food this past weekend. Then Jane shoves her aside, impatient and says she'll do it, and decides on a video. When she starts filming, however, Polly looks up in horror, like a deer in the headlights then throws a robe on (where the fuck did she get a robe? Jane wonders) and chases the girls down the hall. Edna decides it's not her business and ditches Jane. Jane finds out that Polly told Yen, a staunch conservative and bigot that she's a lesbian, hence why Yen never sticks up for her when Yen returns from lunch to find the girls quarreling in the hallway---Garrett, of course, made a run for it as well. Yen makes a comment about a rainbow bracelet Jane has on, and Jane catches on and asks her what she's implying---and sure enough Polly and her empty-headed sidekick Kimberly told Yen she's a lesbian and Yen was repulsed. Jane doesn't know how she feels about this, and senses Kimberly and Polly are extremely homophobic as well, given they assumed that would be ammunition and tried hard to get Yen to discriminate against her. Hence, the column went to Freddie, and so on and so forth. Jane feels a mixture of emotions---but feels deep down they are very jealous of her because she dares to be different, not just in sexuality. And Jane makes a speech to Yen and Polly that makes it very clear the Chronicle is a twisted, crooked and sick environment but she will not quit or back down. She will see this commitment through. As she is leaving, she makes a comment that a condom is stuck to her shoe. She tosses Polly a tissue as she saunters out of the school as she leaves Yen and Polly's jaws on the floor.
"Oh the things I do to retrieve my private property," Jane thinks to herself. As for the StoryBook, its image evaporates from Jane's mind---suddenly, a cathartic feeling of not caring overwhelms her. If they read it, so be it. She frankly doesn't care what they think. It's all out in the open.
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