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Chapter Nine: In Loving Memory

Perceval Hartell

I devised some lucrative plan to pick up chicks: I showed up to Pamela Goode’s funeral. And believe me, there were a lot of ladies at this funeral, all wearing pencil skirts and showy black blouses. I offered myself as their shoulder to cry on. Some of them ran into my arms with tears streaming down their cheeks. I usually got about five seconds of holding them before they realized it was me they were seeking comfort from and pulled away.

Eventually, though, I got away with three phone numbers—real or fake, I had yet to tell.

I went over to Rex. I was the only one of his friends who showed up. He had tears in his eyes and he kept his face down as if ashamed of this loss of masculinity.

“Hey, real men don’t cry,” I joked as I approached him.

He looked up with a hard glare piercing through his sorrow. “You, what are you doing here, Perceval?” he asked angrily. “Did someone invite you?”

“Yeah, I lied, one of Pamela’s friends that I am well acquainted with—well acquainted with.”

“Quit talking dirty, you asshole. You’re at a funeral.”

I made a face at the disrespect before I reminded myself that seniors can disrespect juniors all they wanted no matter where they were.

“And seriously, who invited you?”

“I told you: one of your girlfriend’s friends.”

“Which one?” he queried.

“I don’t know her,” I admitted angrily.

“You said you two were well acquainted,” Rex countered.

“You didn’t know what I was talking about? We’re well acquainted in a sense that we don’t have to know each other’s names—if you know what I mean.”

“Quit talking dirty,” he repeated. “Can’t you point this chick out to me?”

I smirked insinuatingly. “Oh, you’re starting to look and get back on the market already, I see.”

“Perceval!” he snapped. “My girlfriend just died. Be a little bit more sensitive . . . if that’s at all possible for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded, still only half serious.

“Where’s the girl that brought you?”

I shrugged. “She left.”

“How convenient,” he remarked.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. She goes to another school. You probably wouldn’t even know her if you saw her.”

He raised an eyebrow. “First of all: I saw everyone come in and I recognized every single face here. Second of all: Pam and I went out for years. I think by now she’s introduced me to all of her friends.”

I looked around. “Lot of fine friends she had,” I remarked.

“Just get out of here, you dick,” Rex ordered me as he turned away.

I sensed from him that I was not welcomed so I mustered my pride and left with those three real or fake phone numbers in my wallet.

*        *        *

Lydia Rousseau

My parents threatened to ground me if I didn’t stop doing homework and go downstairs to watch TV with them.

“Go ahead!” I told them as I filled out the tenth page of a math packet that I was about halfway done with and was due tomorrow. “It’s not like I can have a social life anyway. And if I’m forbidden to hang out with friends that I don’t even have then I will have even more time to do homework. That’s what they’re trying to get you to do.” I was smiling and tossing a stress ball into the air and catching it without looking. “They’re tearing me to pieces. They’re ripping me away from you. They want to break me. If I break and bend to their will, then I will do whatever they say. I’ll be their robot. Don’t you see?” I let the stress ball fall onto the floor. The carpet was littered with my annotations from the science textbook. “Don’t you see? That’s what they want! I’m going to be their robot. You like robots, right? Your little robot daughter—I’ll be your little robot daughter. Won’t that be nice? No? Then why do you send me to that school? If you don’t want a robot, then take me away.”