I can’t help it. It’s like a bell going off in my head. It’s a good bell though, like an alarm

going off at 4:30am reminding you to ride your bike over to GameNation so you get a good

spot on the sidewalk in front of the store to set up your tent for the store opening at 10:00am

because the first 50 buyers get a free memory upgrade and unlimited XBOX360-Live use for a

whole month—and you weren’t sleep anyway because you were so excited so the bell going

off meant that you were totally ready for it and you leapt out of bed as soon as you heard it and

you win. Yeah. It’s an excitement thing I guess. It’s not an annoying bell, like the one that let’s

you know every time that “you’ve successfully plugged in your external hard drive”—

See? It always pops up at the right time—

Jeez. OK, maybe I’ll just try to start telling you the story now. It’s a good one, I

promise. And I’m not just saying that because I’m in it. I’m saying that because there’s a lot of

action and violence in this story. There’s crime and corruption, sex and scandal, you name it.

But it’s also a family story. It’s a story you could read to your kids before they go to bed at

night, assuming that they’re over seventeen… So that was my attempt at humor but I wasn’t

trying to be funny. Just in case you were wondering, this story is definitely not a comedy.

Comedies are for pussies. Good stories shouldn’t make you laugh; laughter is for cowards.

Laughter is for people who don’t want to see the world for what it is.

…

I’m kidding, I’m kidding. You can laugh if you want to. I don’t take anything too

seriously. In fact, I love laughing. But, I do think it has its own time and place. I found that out

the hard way. Like this semester, I went to this candlelight vigill for this girl who had been

missing from our university for a couple months. Everyone was really wierded out by the

whole thing, but I couldn’t see what the big deal was. Here was a girl, who almost no one

knew, whose parents were disturbingly opportunistic (I got the weird feeling they saw her

disappearance as mitigation of this interminable burden), and who didn’t really care too much

for school or fitting in; and yet, gathered out of the blue were all these teary-eyed students and

teachers in front of this elaborate display of photos, poems, and cards for a girl no one had a

clue about. Anyway, one girl (I think SGA president or some bullshit) stepped over to the

flimsy little lectern the administration set up next to a portrait of the missing girl, and when

she spoke into the mic, fighting back the tears and sloshing around the spit and mucus in her

throat and mouth that come with crying, the first thing she said was “It’s so hard.”

I couldn’t take it. This was no bell. This was an all-out detonation from the pit of my

diaphragm. I laughed so hard that I lost my breath. Despite the hundreds of faces staring at me

in disgust and confusion, she tried to continue her eulogy; but even she eventually gave up. By

the time I caught my breath, it was so quiet in that field you could hear people’s thoughts.

By the way, I’m telling the story now. I didn’t make a formal declaration that I was

doing it but I thought I’d let you know now so you won’t be thinking about things that don’t

matter. Oh yeah, the missing girl from the vigil is in my dorm room. She’s been in there for

about three and a half months now. Her name is Soibhan and she’s from Texas. But we’ll get

to that later.

So anyway, I decided to walk away from that mortifying situation at the vigil and I

went to the gym to work out. (I’m taking 18 hours this semester so I don’t have time to buff up

as much as I want to, but I do make it a habit of hitting the weights whenever I need to relieve

stress either from a situation or from a person. So, the gym is like therapy.) I’m mostly trying

to tone and improve on my definition—doing the beach workout. I’m 5’7, 125 pounds, and

pretty bony, but one thing I’ve got going for me is that I don’t have any fat on me. So, when I

go to the gym I make sure I roll up my sleeves so my muscles pop out for the ladies while I do

my arm curls. Hopefully I’ll be moving up to the fifteen-pound weights pretty soon, but I don’t

want to overdo it. Anyway, when it came time for me to do my abs, I headed over to the cardio

section. There was this really hot girl doing some kind of ass lift on the big blue ball (I’m sure

there’s a technical term for this thing, but I don’t know what it is and I don’t care because I

never use it. Although, it might have helped initiate some small talk if I had known what it was

called. Noted.) She had on a pink Under Armor sports bra and really tight black workout

spandex. Her boobs were absolutely massive. They were the kind of boobs you’d think were

fake, so you’d wait to see how they moved when she switched positions and you’d stare extra

hard to see if you could make out any silicon imprints or abnormal stretch-marks. Luckily, she

had to readjust herself when she stood up. So, not only did I get a sweet three-second cleavage

shot but I also got a chance to evaluate the swing, motion, and surface of both boobs. By my

calculations, she was all-natural.

I guess she thought I worked there or something. It might’ve had something to do

with the fact that I was working out in my bowling-league golf shirt and Dockers (with some

sweet-ass Nike Air Max sneakers), but she asked me if I would help her do her workout by

throwing her the medicine ball while she did sit-ups on the inverted bench. Of course, I

agreed. She straddled the bench like a cowgirl almost, gripping the handle at the tip of the

bench like…I tried to imagine her hand gripping my cock instead of the handle. It was

awesome. Every time she came back up to throw me the ball back her boobs seemed to get

closer and closer to popping out. Damn that Under Armor though, kept them in there pretty

tight.

After about fifteen minutes, my arms got tired. I didn’t want to embarrass myself so I

kept going, in hopes that she would be getting tired soon. Once the sweat from my face was

enough for me to drink, I finally decided to slow down to see if she wanted a break.

“No, don’t stop,” she said.

She let the ball drop down to her side and stopped her exercise for a moment. She had

her pink iPod Shuffle turned up pretty loud so I wasn’t sure if she heard me.

“What did you say?” she asked. Soon, she was sitting up completely and had removed

the tiny white earphones from her ears and let out a series of heavy but paced breaths. She was

staring at me in the same way a student stares at a teacher, eagerly hoping to glean some

information that with the exception of the upcoming evaluation is otherwise useless.

I’m not a liar. People have been making fun of me ever since I can remember for every

reason imaginable. I know I’m not very attractive looking standing next to the super-tanned

know I don’t have the Barry White baritone smooth voice of the black guy from my hall that

seems to be bringing a different girl in his room every night, with my nausea-sounding whine

my loser father passed on to me. But I do know that I am not a liar. I tell the truth, even when

it hurts. And believe me, most of the time it does.

“Uh, umm, that’s what she said?” I finally managed.

Usually at moments like that I just close my eyes, squeeze my face together, and brace

for impact. But the most refreshing thing happened after I admitted what I said. She smiled.

Then after a couple seconds passed, that smile turned into laughter. She didn’t hit me. She

didn’t hit me, and she was laughing. I’ll be honest; I couldn’t tell if she was laughing with me

or at me. I just know it felt like we had a moment, for however brief it was.

I don’t want you to think that this story is about my relationship to that girl in the

walked over to her boyfriend on the other side of the gym where she clearly told him what

happened because she pointed back at me and they both shared a laugh. However, I also don’t

want you to think that my relationship to the girl in the gym doesn’t matter to the story,

because it does. In fact, the girl from the gym, Alexis, has a lot to do with why Soibhan is still in

my dorm room right now. But we’ll get to that later.

After Alexis and her boyfriend left the gym, I decided it was time I make my way home

too, from the back exit. As I turned the corner there was a girl sitting in the hallway up against

the wall writing something in her notepad. She was one of those “Goth kids,” I guess. Actually,

I hate that term. Calling her a “Goth kid” is like someone calling me a nerd. It’s just dumb. She

had short jet-black hair, dark blue eye shadow, pale-as-powder skin (like mine), and all kinds

of chains and piercing all over her body. She had a very pretty face though. And from what I

could see through her coat she had a pretty substantial set of boobs, too.

“There he is,” she said.

“Who?” I asked.

“You,” she replied.

“I’m sorry, have we met before?” I asked. I had no idea who this girl was and was pretty

sure I had never seen her before.

“Sure we have, you’re Fletcher Prosser,” she proclaimed.

“Right, but I still don’t recognize y—”

“I’m Soibhan Malveaux, your dad and my dad work together, you might not

remember but I definitely know you from a couple business trips back when we were little”

she insisted.

“Maybe,” I offered, but I still wasn’t convinced I knew her. I asked her why she was

sitting in the hallway and she said that was where she wrote her poetry. I asked if I could read

some of it and she started to get coy with me. I reached for her notebook a few times and she

pulled it back in fun.

“Give it to me!” I demanded.

(TBC)