Lunch period. Half of the day done, but half still left. A day like this the glass was always half-empty to me. "Get lost," I told the kid with the locker underneath mine. A junior. Short and scrawny. He ducked out of my way and scurried off. Sometimes I felt bad for making him change lockers with me three years ago, but I had never regretted it. Especially not today, one of these bleak uneventful late October days, with nothing to look forward in a nearby future except Halloween maybe, if you were that kind of person who liked to wear costumes. I was not that kind of person.
A weight on my back as I disposed my books into my locker. "Mattie!" Kat heaved herself up, her voice piercing in my ear. I bent her hands of my shoulders. "Are you trying to make me deaf?"
She jumped giddily to my side instead, now I noticed that Mel was bouncing around with her too, her hair swishing around her. Kat, loud and eccentric with a love for anything European, and Mel, not so loud, not so eccentric, and in love with well anything romantic. The pair had been free with purchase, when I started dating their best friend. Who by now was just my best friend.
"What's up?" I asked them, since clearly there was something going on.
"Did you hear that there's a new student in our year arriving today?" I shook my head.
"New blood," Kat purred.
"Fresh meat," Mel filled in, and they both growled high-pitched like newborn puppies.
"Enough with the carnivore metaphors please." To even think of blood and meat and eating in the same context made me feel somewhat sick. I grabbed my gov class stuff, closed my locker. "Think of it more like vampire metaphors, like we're not eating animals, we're biting people. A certain person," Kat said as we started walking, and they both giggled like it was insanely funny. This vampire craze I would never understand.
We made our way through the inside-turned outside hallway. The architect of the school had decided that natural light should guide all the bright-eyed students, with glass lined hallways and all classrooms in the middle with windows to the hallway. Which meant it was searingly hot in the summer, freezing in the winter, and bleak as hell in between. And people either fell asleep from lack of daylight or spent their time during lessons looking for people passing by. Probably not the intention.
Trish greeted us with a smile and bent down pulling out a stack of photos from her locker. She had a lower one, but then she was only five feet, the top of her head barely reaching my shoulder, so it wasn't as annoying for her as it had been for me.
"I developed the ones from the other week, I really like this one of you, all bedhead and cheekbones and mystery," she said, handing me a picture. I took it from her carefully, so she wouldn't nag me for smudging it. Me sitting on Trish's couch looking moody.
"I don't know, I look a bit uncomfortable." A bit was the nice thing to say, I looked like I would rather die than have my picture taken. Trish shook her head. "Not to me."
I looked closer. It was me on the picture alright, with my average eyes and average mouth and too big nose. The photo was black and white, so my hair color, (dark brown) and eye color (light gray) were lacking. Not much of a loss. "And doesn't like my nose look weird?"
"You're an ungrateful model Matt!" She snatched the picture from my hands. "You look perfectly fine, you know you're cute, there's no reason to act all coy about it!"
"I'm not acting coy," I protested, but Trish just gave me a 'bitch please' look, and started to look around for the one person she didn't want to meet, but inevitably met every day. Adam. Her recent ex and my other best friend. Yeah, maybe it was no wonder Kat was calling out for fresh blood. We were sort of an incestuous group.
"Hey Trish, did you hear there's a new student in our year?" Kat repeated the question, and I started to suspect I was going to hear it a lot today.
"Sweet!" Trish face lit up but darkened as quickly as she looked to my side. By the icy look on her face I could guess who was standing next to me.
"Hey," I nodded, as Adam joined our little group with a toss of his black bangs and an equally icy glance at Trish. Since they broke up our group of friends had literary turned to Antarctica whenever they were both around. I wasn't the best at dealing with it, or any kind of conflict really, but Kat, always straight-forward, decided to ignore the frost.
"Hey Adam, did you hear there's a new student in our year?" This was what late October did to people. How amazing did they think this new student were? Would there be only sunshine and rainbows from now on?
"No I didn't." Adam glanced at Trish again, and you could literary hear the air crackling, freezing over. "Hope it's a girl."
Trish snorted. "I hope it's a guy."
"I hope she's fucking hot." This was the level their conversation had stooped to three weeks ago.
"Yeah, well I hope he's superhot and smart, since my last boyfriend weren't!" Adam just smirked and Trish kinda awesomely stomped her foot and rolled her eyes with frustration like a proper drama queen. Having my two best friends being in an unstable relationship really wasn't something I'd foreseen when they started dating, because then they'd been IN LOVE. Now not so much.
"At least Matt's gotten himself the perfect girlfriend," Kat said and reached up to pinch my cheek. "Aaw, look he's blushing!" I swatted away her hand. "I'm not!" And I wasn't, I never did.
"I think it's so cute you two, very Romeo and Juliet," Mel said sweetly, just to mention her all-time favorite couple seemed to make her happy.
"It's unnatural, that's what it is," Adam muttered and shot me a dark look. Adam had like four ways of looking at people, dark, semi-dark, mildly impressed and happy drunk. Lately I've seen more and more of the dark kind.
"I hope it's someone cute," Mel said dreamily, back to what was apparently the topic of the day. "I'm getting tired of stalking Kyle Rosen." Kyle Rosen was the enigmatic editor of the school newspaper, and despite Mel's best efforts in throwing long glances after him in the hallway for two years, he probably didn't even know her name. Let alone that he was the Romeo to her Juliet.
"I think everyone's tired of you stalking Kyle Rosen, not just-" Kat started but stopped midsentence to talk to Leonora, a girl from her soccer team, and disappeared in the crowd. We had moved past the ugly-as-hell wall painting that marked the end of D-hallway, and it was almost getting difficult to move without stepping on someone. Adam took the opportunity to complain some more about me dating one of the choirgirls, and I tried to keep myself from rolling my eyes, having heard it about a hundred times the last two months.
Finally making it there, the cafeteria was swarming as usual. No matter how many times they adjusted the schedule it always seemed like the whole school had lunch at the same time. The cafeteria was sort of color coordinated. I sat with the somewhat more dark-clad, unnatural color-haired people at the tables in the corner. Not by the windows, and not with the best view of the people coming and leaving, but I guess as a marginalized clique you had to suffer. Adam slumped down on one chair, and stretched out his leg over another. For as long as I'd known him he'd always needed two chairs, one to actually sit on, and one to put up his feet or leg or arm on. It was like he needed this extra space for all left-over energy he seemed to carrying around all the time.
We were all getting seated as Kat came rushing back, and made room for herself between Trish and Mel.
"Hey all my single ladies, now I got the details," she clapped her hands a little with excitement. So it was a guy then. Whatever. She made a little huddle, and I listened with one ear as she described him to the girls.
"Ok, so his name's Allen Thomas, and his dad is some kind of CEO in some IT-company or something like that, whatever, the important thing is he's like disgustingly rich. Like maybe even richer than Morgan Fellows. Leonora said that according to a guy in the track and field, his shoes cost like 300 dollars."
Trish whistled. "Imagine the gifts you'd get from such a boyfriend!"
Kat's and Mel's eyes glazed over a little as they tried to beat one another in mentioning desirable gifts, among those I picked up: Tiffany jewelry, Converse in all colors possible, one of those computers that fit into your pocket, trips to L A, Paris, Tokyo...
I stopped listening and looked at Adam knowingly. "And they say love's all that matters."
Adam rolled his eyes and rattled his second chair a little. "If he's so fancy schmancy why would he come here, O. D's like ten miles away." Oakland Parks was a private school for the maybe talented but certainly privileged. Formally known as Parks, to separate it from our high school, it had been morbidly nick-named after a tragic incident. The incident was hushed down of course, but at our school the new name had stuck. "Expelled," Kat mouthed. Even for us who'd seen more than most of the principal's office, the word had a solemn air to it. After all, none of us had gotten kicked out. Yet. Adam perked up though. "That sounds way more promising, now Matt's become such a fucking bore," he looked darkly at me again before continuing. "And I spent the whole night last Saturday watching My super sweet sixteen." Due to all his leftover energy, Adam was a bit of an insomniac and watched all sorts of strange/stupid shows during the night. Now it was his turn to look dreamy, no doubt imagining wild parties MTV style with live bands and girls in gold bikinis driving cars into a champagne-filled pools or worse.
"Maybe he was expelled because somebody died!" Trish gasped, always the one with a vivid imagination. Mel instantly looked dreamy again, probably with a new tragic Romeo and Juliet scenario in her head. "It's just a rumor," Kat added but it was too late, as Trish and Mel started piecing together some sappy backstory, complete with a twin sister dying from cancer or something like it. In the middle of an especially emotional hospital scene Leonora stopped by our table, and knocked on Kat's shoulder. "Sorry for getting your hopes up Kat, he's probably taller than you, but not so cute and apparently like super religious. He should be here soon though, with no other than William Bradford and his posse of course, so you can decide for yourself. See you later." She made an apologetic face, waved to the rest of us, and went back to her part of the cafeteria, her braids dancing against her shoulders.
The girls slumped low in their chairs in their row. "Well, that's one to many, he would have had to be very cute if you're were going to put up with the God thing, and Will Bradford and the choir girls, no offense Matt, but Lisa is really the nicest of those," Kat evaluated the situation, twisting her short blond hair around her fingers. She looked a little bit disappointed. Kat had broken up with her most recent boyfriend in April, and as a senior in Oakland High, there was really very little fresh blood to be found. Even Adam looked more sullen than usual, the second chair scraping against the floor. "C'mon, I was kinda already planning my super super sweet eighteenth!"
Also Mel was silent, but maybe not for the same reason. I had suspected for a while that maybe Mel was a bit bored with Kat's and Trish's antics. Looking at her, with her auburn hair without colorful extensions she usually wore, a printed t-shirt and knitted cardigan, she actually looked like she could belong with the choir girls. Maybe she even wanted to. Like she could hear my thoughts, Mel flipped her shiny auburn hair in true choir girl fashion and continued to look over her shoulder, towards the entrance.
"Is that him maybe?" she said. Kat got on her toes and Mel and Trish followed. I could hear the sea of voices in the background calming down, dying out, just to return whispering loader and loader. Rich brat or not, I didn't envy the guy, that was for sure.
"Don't, it's embarrassing!" I pulled Trish's hand, urging her to sit down again, but with no success. I resorted to hiding my face behind my palm, and Adam did the same.
"What are you hiding from?" Ryan asked as he and girlfriend Luciana sat down next to us, always together as usual.
"Just trying to separate ourselves from the fan girls over there," Adam muttered, just as all the newly appointed fan girls sat down again. Kat and Trish both shook their heads. "Nah, not very interesting. Looks like your average Christian geek, I mean even Will's cuter," Kat stated. "Not worth the God thing," Trish agreed. Adam visibly relaxed. We were both sitting with our backs to the windows, and with the girls' reassurance there was no need to look.
This was our little group. Me, Adam, Trish, Ryan, Kat and Mel. With the addition of the occasional boyfriends and girlfriends, when we weren't stupidly dating each other. This was the people to eat with, to hang out with, to get drunk with and argue with. To rely on. To have fun with too, but to me that wasn't really what friendship was measured by. Some had other friends, Kat's from the soccer team, Trish's from the photo club, Ryan's among the band geeks not as cool as him. Adam from the retakers and potential drop outs that sat even further from the windows, almost hidden in the dark behind the fridges. But this was the core. And for me the only ones. Except Luciana naturally.
As usual Trish tried hard to make me exchange one of my sandwiches for hers, this time by claiming that turkey wasn't meat. "It's still an animal," I somewhat unnecessarily pointed out between bites.
"Yeah, but it's a really ugly one, not like a fuzzy baby chicken or a piglet or something cute like that. And I have a huge craving for olives, like, I need it you know, like maybe I'm pregnant. Pretty please Matt," she begged, eyeing the other half of my sandwich hungrily.
"Ask your baby daddy to buy some for you then," I smiled and Adam scowled and flicked me off.
"I think he's cute, the new one," Mel suddenly piped up," Very nice hair." She had kept on looking between me and Adam, and now he turned looking towards the long table by the windows where I knew the choirgirls including Lisa would be sitting. He grinned smugly as he turned back.
"Well you would think, you're a redhead yourself," Kat remarked sourly.
Ryan turned too as had half the cafeteria sitting in this direction done by now. "Ah, now I get it. The new guy. Is that him, the one sitting next to Lisa?"
"He's sitting next to Lisa, what?" I turned searching after Lisa's light brown hair, and pink cardigan and found her next to a grey sweater, a pale neck and a mess of bright red hair. Right he was.
"You should start saving up for that Tiffany ring now dude, since that's apparently what really counts," Adam muttered. I got up and Trish shot me a warning look. "Matt, don't be all possessive!"
"Yeah, Matt if she wanted to date a guy like that, she'd have many cuter ones to choose from already," Kat added, and I really didn't want to know that list.
"No, you go and be possessive, the chicks say they hate it, but really they love it. You go scare him off now, and then you won't have trouble later." Adam stated, earning him a very dirty look from Trish.
"Matt, seriously, don't listen to him, he's ridiculous!" Kat insisted.
"They're leaving," Ryan said, cutting the discussion short. I shrugged and slinged my bag over my shoulder. Sure Adam was being ridiculous, but in a way he was right. Better safe than sorry. Granted, there was little left of whatever bad boy reputation I'd had a couple of years ago, but with people like the choir girls and the prayer group, I'd learned, a little went a very long way.
I didn't even have to look for them, they were standing right outside the cafeteria, in a way both blocking the exit and showing themselves off I guess. Most of them, including Lisa, listening to Will Bradford himself, talking about some game. I walked up to her and she smiled when she noticed me. I kissed her cheek, brushed my hand over her hair. She pulled down my hood, as she tended to do whenever we were near her friends.
The girls all sang in the choir, established sometime in the 70's as an opposite to the feminist groups, or so Trish had told me. The guys, often referred to as the Will Bradford posse, or the Brady bunch, didn't do any singing of course, they just looked at the girls doing it. It was the opposite of what Trish called the macho rock world, but for some reason she didn't seemed pleased with this version either. They were ranked somewhere below the jocks and the cheerleaders, like a pg-rated version, and with Will, Christian blogger, star athlete and social genius, now being a single senior there was a lot of girls trying out for the choir, and consequently a lot of guys wanting to see the concerts. I wasn't one of them, but with dating one of the choir girls came some obligations.
I stole a glance at the newcomer. Looking like any of the other Bradford's, wearing jeans and a polo shirt and a sweater and complacent smile on his face. His features all angles, a narrow nose, a thin mouth, a slightly pointy chin. Plain as a sheet of paper. The hair made him stand out though, untamed and curly and even brighter up close. I could see Lenora was right, he was tall, maybe even as tall as me, but with all that hair, it was hard to guess. He was gangly, but not as skinny as me, and looked a lot more like the kind of person who spends their time inside studying, than outside playing football. Total geek. Kat's description had been very accurate.
"..And then he drops it, in front of everyone!" Will finished the story, and the people around him laughed. I had no desire in becoming like Will Bradford, but sometimes I couldn't help wondering how it would be to be like to be him, to be liked by almost everyone, successful in almost everything I did, waking up every morning with my hair perfectly ruffled, not flat on one side and sticking out on the other.
I stole another glance at the new kid, laughing with the others, already seamlessly fitting in. Well if you had the money and were down with Jesus, being a geek, and a ginger geek to that, apparently didn't matter. Maybe not even when it came to girls. Lisa's best friend Claire wasted no time, being a single lady, and one for which the Christian thing probably was the best part. She pulled Lisa with her, heading for the other side of the circle as it started to disintegrate, Will turning to best friend Ethan, people turning to find someone else to listen to. I pulled my hood over my head again, and followed them, standing silently next to Lisa as they talked, focusing on looking like the resident hoodlum. Next to them, it didn't require very hard work. They were so polite. They were all 'Nice to meet you' and 'Hope you're getting settled in' and 'wow, that's so interesting'. New kid just kept on nodding and smiling which softened his features and ruined the symmetry of his face. He had a small dimple high up in the left cheek which he lacked in the right. The choir girls would probably find it charming.
His eyes flickered to me. It had arrived. The moment to intimidate. To stare him down. And then his eyes met mine and I just couldn't because bluest eyes ever. I looked away quickly, fixing my gaze on the rows and rows of steel gray lockers instead. Nobody noticed my failure of course. Claire kept on talking this light light talk that the choir girls excelled at. Conversation so weightless you blinked and then you'd forgotten it. And Lisa didn't seem too interested in the newcomer anyways. "Will you meet me at Brandon McCall's party Thursday?" She leaned against me and slipped her hand into mine and it still felt odd having someone wanting to hold your hand in the hallway. Odd but nice. "We're all going, would be nice if you came."
"Sure," I answered too lightly, unfocused. Still a bit dazed by the discovery that someone actually could have such incredibly blue eyes. Like the sky one of those clear summer afternoons, when the air is so high you feel like you can reach up and touch the universe or something. I had a thing for blue eyes. I found them fascinating. One of Adam's girlfriends, before him dating Trish, had those clear blue eyes, which I couldn't help looking at. All the time. She thought I was creepy. I thought she was somewhat stupid, but she did have amazing eyes.
"No we have English in C." Claire bit her lip suddenly anxious. No more hair flipping. Trouble had appeared in paradise when neither she nor Lisa seemed to be in his next class and most of the Bradford posse had like the good students they were, obediently left for next period. Because the bell would ring soon, and how terrible if someone were to be late for class.
"I'll text Will so someone can guide you..." She started fiddling with her bag and its 20 compartments.
"But Matt can show him! Don't you have Gov with Ms. Colway?" Lisa turned to me. I nodded. I should have listened more intently, but now it was hard to lie of the bat on that one.
"Great, all good then!" She exclaimed, and squeezed my hand. Wait, did that mean I had to show him? Fucking great. I wringed my hand free from Lisa's too encouraging grip.
Claire flipped her hair farewell, and Lisa leaned close to me, standing on her tiptoes.
"Be nice," she whispered in my ear. Then she pecked my cheek and blushed, as she always did and just like that they were off. I watched their backs as they left, the soft sway of Lisa's hair as she leaned in to whisper something in Claire's ear. Be nice. How nice was it to leave me in the hallway with a guy I hadn't spoken two words to? When the bell hadn't rung? Was that really what Jesus would have done?
"So..." the new kid said turning to me, grabbing on to the shoulder strap of his bag. Then there was nothing. Just the awkward embarrassing silence between people that doesn't have a fuck to say to each other. Paralyzing. I unconsciously searched my jeans pocket for something I knew wouldn't be there. I'd stopped smoking some months ago, but moments like this? Felt like it was two hours ago.
I felt him eyeing me curiously, and it wasn't hard figuring out why. In my all black attire I didn't exactly look like the Bradford's. I probably looked like the perfect opposite, and he was actually kinda staring at me. At my pierced lip. At the badges on my bag. At the hearts on the sleeve of my hoodie made with permanent pink fluorescent marker by Trish one boring day. Shouldn't people like him know it was rude to stare? A sharp 'what?' threatening to slip out. Be nice. Well at least I was trying.
"I like Velvet Underground," he finally said hesitantly, referring to the t-shirt that I wore. I tried not to gnash my teeth at the whole situation.
"You like what? You heard like one song once?" I asked harshly. It was a lot easier to be intimidating without Lisa around. Not sure it was working, he contemplated like I actually had asked him a question, but still held on to the shoulder strap for dear life. "I like the self-titled one, I think. The one with Nico, I don't know, I'm not very fond of her voice," he said cautiously, and then grew silent again looking like he was contemplating some more. Strange. Also, he had a very strange accent.
"Maybe," I muttered apprehensively. Not that I didn't agree with him, but there was no need for him to know that.
"But Sunday Morning is still great of course," he added thoughtfully.
"Yeah, of course." I nodded. Just like one of the greatest songs all time. There was a split second when we smiled at each other in understanding, a tiny fragment of the reality that was that we didn't have anything in common. I quickly looked over at the lockers again, but new kid didn't seem to get it, still smiling in the corner of my eye. "I didn't quite catch you name?"
"Matt. Actually it's Matthew," I said for some reason, like I seriously cared.
"Right, I'm terrible with names. Especially today, I feel like I've met a thousand people already. Matthew, I'll remember that." Well he wouldn't have to. I kinda liked the dry, soft way he said my name though, and the fact that he actually said it, not just the short version, that too many times sounded like a sheep baahing. I actually kinda hated it when people called me Matt.
"It's Allen, by the way," he added. I repressed the urge to roll my eyes. Like I didn't know. Like the whole school didn't know. Like if I called my grandma she'd probably know that some billionaire had moved here and for inexplicable reasons left his son in the loving care of Oakland High. Also inexplicable, why was I still standing here?
"This way." I tossed my head, and he followed me into the mass of people parting and merging again like flocks of fish in the sea. The bell rang sharply for a couple of seconds.
"I tried to remember where it was, you know, but it's a lot bigger than my old school, I don't know if I'll ever find my way here." I didn't know what to answer to that, so I tried to place his accent instead. He spoke with softer consonants and a sometimes singing rhythm, but there was something else too. Something else called money. Private schools. Evergreen lawns and beach houses and trust funds. Or maybe it was just me being judgmental about rich people, because honestly, he kinda sounded like he'd grown up on a farm in the middle of nowhere. The way he acted it seemed like it too, as he looked all wide-eyed at the people passing.
"Feels like there's a thousand people here at least everywhere all the time. William told me it was 1200 students here, 1200! That's like ten times the students at my last school," he paused. "Nine times, maybe eight times, well doesn't matter." Would he stop babbling or what? I looked at the feet walking besides mine. Did those shoes really cost 300? Seemed like ordinary sneakers to me.
"I guess I'll get used to it eventually," he added. I glanced over at him not responding, looked down on my own feet. There was a hole in my left shoe I'd never seen before. One step after the other, and I'd be done with this. We were just some seconds away from the classroom and then I would never have to talk to him again. Ever.
I walked down to my usual seat in the back. Allen followed but hesitated by the empty seat beside me. "Can I sit here?" he asked. I shrugged, which he chose to interpret as a yes. Whatever.
During the lesson I stole a glance at him resting his head in his hand, looking out of the window, lost in thought on whatever. Probably on like a thousand friends and a cute-as-a-button girlfriend and a yearbook committee left behind. Not that I cared. Not that I could do anything about it, my experience of dealing with 6 feet ginger preps with post moving trauma was somewhat limited. I didn't even have any experience of dealing with moving at all, having lived in the same city all my life. Which considering the city I guess, was a bit of a trauma all in itself.
Adam texted me. An offer I knew I should refuse. I tried to limit the AWOL's to no more than once a week preferably less, and it would be stupid to take the opportunity already Monday, with four days left that could be a lot darker. A lot more in need of an easy way out. But the whole ordeal with the new kid had for some reason unsettled me. Put me on the edge. Be there, I typed into my phone.
I saw new kid glancing at me toward the end of the lesson and tried to make my escape when the bell rang, but I wasn't quick enough.
"Matthew?" I turned around. The look on my face must have been discouraging, but on new kid it didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever. "Sorry," he smiled. "I think I have to follow you around for a bit longer, if you don't mind? Because I have Spanish in..." He started ranting on again and I did mind. I minded a whole fucking lot. This day was over for me. I wanted to 1. Find Adam, 2. Get the fuck out. I was over being nice as well.
"What. The. Fuck. Ever." I snapped and snatched the schedule from his hands. Looked like I'd finally succeeded with being intimidating, because he didn't say a word as we moved through D-hallway.
His schedule said D 35 for Spanish and arriving there I could see Claire, and two of the other choir girls through the windows already seated. Relief. They'd definitely look after him now. I'd been nice or as nice as I had ability to, now it was over and I was already leaving in my mind. Walking over the parking lot, the playground, the wilderness behind the row of identical grey houses, the forest behind the complex of newly built luxury apartments in the hills. The cold air and branches poking at your arms and the smell of leaves still there if you crushed them in your hand. And even silence. The good kind of silence. But that was not going to happen. That wasn't the escape route I've been given today.
"Well, thanks, it was nice of you to show me around." Allen's voice brought me back to the dust and the dullness of the school hallways. I shrugged. Be nice. I guess I had succeeded with that as well.
"I'll see you around then?" He said it like a question, looking all expectantly at me and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Lisa was a choir girl and part of the Bradford bunch but it should've been clear to him by now that I certainly wasn't. And that I didn't want to be. Maybe in a school with 150 peeps you were all one big happy family, but here? Not so much. Correct answers: No. Never. Not in a million years.
"Yeah, see you," I mumbled, turning to the north entrance. Not the correct answer, but what did it matter. I would never talk to him again.
I climbed in to Adam's car, half of me sitting in Eric's lap as we were at least one to many. But still, a car. Something to escape in, even if it was just to the city center or Ade's basement. Friends with cars simply the best. I covered my cheek with my hood, tried to adjust myself crammed up against the window, no seatbelt. If we're in an accident, I'll die. An automatic thought. I kicked Eric's feet trying to make room for my own. I'll be better tomorrow, it'll be better tomorrow. Another automatic thought, but a learned one. It would be better tomorrow. It had to be.