• The following links are links to prior chapters in this selection:

    Part 1 Prologue

    Part 1 Ch. 1

    Part 1 Ch. 2






    I looked at Mary with eyes of detest as our science teacher rambled on about the anatomy of the human body.

    "And the bones move-----------the organ-------pumps blood------every---" I lost track of his monologue as I stared at Mary and thought angry thoughts. Really angry thoughts.

    "Tom, do you know?" suddenly rang in my ears. I twisted my head towards the teacher, and asked blankly,

    "What? Do I know...what?" Chuckles of my denseness revirbirrated across the room. I hated it.

    "If you hadn't been admiring Mary over there," the teacher said with a smile, "then you would know." Now laughter was what I heard, and then someone shouted, "Hey, Tom, do we need to know something?"

    "Shut up!" I exclaimed, turning toward the kid who dared to announce that. He realized how serious I was, and kept quiet, though still had a smirk planted on his face. I faced the teacher again, and continued, "I was not admiring her." The teacher's faced seemed more solemn now, as he replied,

    "It was a joke. Nothing more. Now, please, what is the job of the right Atrium?" I shrugged, and replied simply,

    "I don't know." The teacher grinned again, and continued with his sarcastic mood,

    "Of course you don't. Does anyone else?" The whole class raised their hands with confidence, and any normal person would feel like a complete idiot if they were the only ones who didn't know the answer. I didn't. I couldn't care less if I didn't know what 1+1 was. I was just going through the motions. So I shrugged it off, and continued to glare at Mary.

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    It seemed forever for school to end, though for the first time in my life, I didn't want it to. Anything to prolong the innevitable of me going to Mary's house was game for me.

    Mary's mom drove me to her house, and let me tell you, she's not even relatively similar to my mom. She seemed like a grumpy old hag, and made sure never to make direct eye contact with me, or to really say anything to me besides "get in the car" or "make sure you actually work on your project." Not that I really minded. In fact, it was a relief that someone in this world could take a break from sympathizing me and actually speak what was on their mind.

    After an about 20 minute ride, we reached their tiny house, which I would preferably call a shack. It was half the size of our house, and when I looked inside, cludder was everywhere, the walls were cracked, the tiles on the floor were peeled, and the whole house reeked the smell of a pudent dog.

    All in all, I wanted to get out of the cramped house the moment I stepped in there.

    But what was I going to do, run out of the house and to my mom, and complain to her that Mary's house smelled? Let's be real. Mrs. Archibald walked in and slammed the door, stating,

    "The house is slightly...unkempt. Work upstairs in Mary's room as I...clean." I glanced at Mary. She made a groan a defiance, but we trudged on upstairs anyway. To my disbelief, though, Mary's room was far more disorganized than downstairs.

    "She's not cleaning," she moaned. I looked at her, and said,

    "What?" She bit her lip, and continued,

    "She's not cleaning. She's downstairs, chugging down beer bottles. Her 'cleaning' was just her way of saying 'go away so I can do secret things'." Odd. She acted completely different at her house than she did at school. But nevertheless, I stared at her, not saying a word of remorse. She looked away and opened her back pack, stating with a weak smile,

    "I-I'm sorry. I'm not sure why I said that. Let's get to work." She pulled out about 20 sheets of lined paper, and said, "We were assigned to do the circulatory stystem. It has to be 10 pages typed, which is about equal to 20 pages...so I'll give 10 pages to you," she handed me 10 pages, "and I'll work on my half. Now, what do you want to work on?" I stared blankly at the ceiling, and she repeated,

    "What do you want to work on?" I turned to her, and replied smugly,

    "I heard you the first time. I don't know." She flipped through her science book, and said,

    "Well, there's things like the heart, the blood, the--"

    "I know what the circulatory system is," I snapped. "I just didn't know which one I wanted." She looked at me, a face of pity on her, and said,

    "Well, how about you take the heart, and I take the rest?" That was a mighty generous offer, and I replied with a shrug,

    "Whatever. Sure." And it was so, and for the next two hours until my mom came, I scribbled down on my paper the little I heard from the science teacher's lessons. I couldn't recall much, but I most certainly wasn't going to use Mary's science book. So my essay started to look like this:

    The heart is important to the human body. Without it, we would die. It pumps blood. It has a right vatrium and three other things I forgot. The blood it pumps has oxygen. Also, hearts aren't shaped like Valentine hearts. They look more abstract, like any organ in the human body. By the way, the heart is an organ. And...

    I tapped my pencil against the floor, trying to think of something else. I couldn't, and suddenly, the door bell rang from down stairs. Just as Mary said, it wasn't cleaned at all. But I didn't react, and simply started to walk over to my smiling mom.

    "Bye!" Mary exclaimed from the stairs. But I didn't reply, and just got into the car with my mom.

    "So, how'd it go?" my mom asked as we buckled up. I looked at her, and said,

    "Mom, today was the worst day of my life."