It was a Thursday. Thursdays, I decided, were
generally overrated. Thursdays meant night school-
boo, thumbs down. Thursdays usually meant one more day
until the weekend, though this was an exception.
Thursday meant that I'd have a car starting the next
day, and the last twenty-four hours are always the
hardest to sit through. I stifled a yawn halfway into
Prime Minister Brian Casey's revision of the Student
Parliament Constitution and checked my watch.
3:22, it read. Inwardly, my brain was doing a happy
dance. "Brian, I've got to run," I excused myself. "My
mom's been waiting for five minutes." Freedom! chanted
the inner voice I claimed didn't exist. Stupid gummy
worms.
It had been a long, difficult Thursday. I'd had to
live through a long, boring algebra class. Algebra
class, all things considered, is pretty much the bane
of my existence. Spare had been amusing. Mr. Bially,
the Biology teacher with a mental age of about five,
had "confiscated" someone's fart machine and planted
it in the school newspaper office- directly under the
seat on the couch on which it is my habit to sit. Sam,
Brandon and I had eventually figured out where that
weird noise was coming from when I'd got up and walked
across the room and the farting sound hadn't moved.
Then Mr. Bially had appeared at the door with the
window, maniacally waving the remote control. Hilarity
ensued.
Naturally, we decided to play the same trick on
Christy; it just wouldn't have been right to waste
such an opportunity. To save batteries, the device
under my bum was switched off, to be discreetly turned
back on by Brandon when Christy returned. There's no
pun there, so stop looking.
The first time the loud ripping sound made an
appearance, Christy's face was priceless. She looked
so scandalized that I would have given the use of my
left arm for the next two months just to have a
photograph. Anyway, the three of us (Sam, Brandon and
I) were laughing so hard that I'm not even sure if she
heard the next three or four farts. It almost didn't
matter. She accused us all of the dirty deed: "Did
that just come from Kaitlynn?"; "Brandon, you
disgusting pig!"; "Sam, you're just saying that to
cover up." The funny thing is that I don't think
anyone denied it. Then Christy ran out into the
hallway and talked to Mr. Bially: "Kaitlynn just
ripped a huge fart!" By this point, I think I was on
the floor from laughing so hard. There were tears in
my eyes; that much is for sure. When we finally showed
Christy the fart machine… well, there aren't words.
Later, we wrapped Brandon up with masking tape and
took a picture. [Minds out of the gutter.] Good times.

Lunch had been uneventful, but as per usual third
period held some amusement. Whoever said calculus
shouldn't be phun has never had Mr. Ditomasso for a
teacher. At the very beginning of class, the reliable
Ditomasso started to rip on Evie for eating a type of
candy called "Nerds."

Ditomasso: What're you eating?
Evie: They're called Nerds, sir.
Ditomasso: What's a nerd?
Kaitlynn [Buckwheat]: Evie.

Anyway, so began the rare phenomenon known as "rip on
Evie day." It doesn't usually last for too long,
because we've got more ammunition for making fun of
Stan than anyone should be allowed to have. (Radius of
vertex; E.O.P.; stop making fun of me; I know you're
talking about me; do we have to do the homework?; shut
up, Stan [Sparky].) We ripped on Ludwik [Spanky], too,
because he volunteered, but most of them had to do
with the fact that he fell off his bike and broke his
arm, which really is only funny a couple of times. The
homework was so easy we decided not to answer most of
the questions. Ludwik wrote, "No!" beside a few of
them. I added aloud, "MAKE ME A SANDWICH!" Rude people
stared. I'll shut up about calculus now, though,
because most of Mr. Ditomasso's jokes are too terrible
to be repeated. I will say that there was an episode
with a calculus song that included "low-D-hi" and
"hi-D-low" as well as something about a squared
denominator. I am now mentally scarred.

So back to the Student Parliament meeting- or, rather,
leaving it. I wasn't even in the door before the phone
rang (Brandon; and I'd just seen him five minutes ago
at school, not that I'm complaining). Naturally, his
first comment was, "Your mom drives slow." This isn't
anything new; my mom can be slow at a lot of things.
He said he'd pick me up in a few minutes. The second
he stepped in the door, however…

…The phone rang. It was Jenna, the girl who sold my
parents my car. I ran the phone up to my mom and told
her I was leaving.
Mom: Leaving?
Me: Yes, leaving.
Mom: But I need the car to run errands!
Me: Brandon's here, but not for long. Bye, mom.

Like I said, my mom can be a little slow. It's not
like she couldn't hear me talking to him or anything.
When we were leaving, Alina's mom drove by and asked
where she was… I replied that she had tutoring and
Student Parliament. Mrs. Sobiesiak always gives
Brandon the weirdest looks. Anyway, the general mental
comment was, "It's 3:30… do you know where your
children are?" We'll skip the next couple of parts of
the story, which involve events such as but not
limited to an inadequate car wash, E.C. Row, fake mini
eggs, my mother, and my brother having too many
friends. Alina [Snugglesworth] called, too, and told
me to call her back when Brandon left.
I did. She wasn't home, even though it wasn't that
much later. Nobody seemed to be able to tell me where
she'd gone, either. Ludwik and I hypothesized that
we'd lost her. I was sad.
Luckily, Meaghan showed up at my house to save me
from boredom! For some reason, Mukesh went to Ludwik's
and Meaghan just stopped here. I thought that was
rather silly, all things considered, so we went next
door to play basketball.
However, I suck at basketball, quite a lot in fact,
maybe even more than Mukesh. Eventually I decided to
just sit on the ground and watch, but then Meaghan
joined me, and we were still sitting there when Alina
rode up on her bicycle. Ludwik looked jealous; the
inner voice laughed again. ("Have you ever pushed
someone in a wheelchair over wet concrete and left
them there? Ha ha." It was a TheSpark type moment.)
Sitting there on the Sobiesiaks' driveway, watching
the people go by, we said to ourselves: Aren't we the
cool kids now? Apparently we were, because a little
three-year-old boy approached us to tell us about a
spider he'd found and put in a jar (although the
majority of us heard something about a Spider-man
movie). At around 6:30, approximately one half-hour
(or Indian Time Delay) after Mukesh was supposed to be
home, Ludwik made the comment [to Mukesh]: "I could
bike to your house in five minutes…"
Because I am a cruel, unsubtle person, I said, "No,
you couldn't. Your arm is broken." For some reason
this was funny. I think Meaghan called me Captain
Obvious.
Then everyone forgot about that, because I said
something about Chinese food. Mrs. Sobiesiak said,
"No!" Mrs. Sobiesiak always says no. What she says
doesn't really matter. I went and got take-out and
invited everyone over. I will have leftovers for a
year. Unless we have a picnic tomorrow.
The fortune cookies were quite fun. Some of them had
two fortunes. Here's a sample:

Meaghan's fortunes: You yearn for perfection. Good
things will happen at home.
Alina's fortune: Now is the time to try something
new.
Kaitlynn's comment: Yeah, like not shooting down
every guy you meet.
Mukesh's fortunes: Ignorance never answers a
question. You have a reputation for being
straightforward and honest.
Kaitlynn's fortune: Good news will be brought to you
by mail.
Comment: A couple days late; I got my acceptances
last week!
Ludwik's fortune: Good things are being said about
you.
Meaghan's comment: That's a lie!

Cue laughter; it's always great when guys get ripped
on by their girlfriends. At any rate [thanks,
Ditomasso, still not funny], it was Euchre time.
Ludwik played with Meaghan and Alina as partners, and
they were doing okay until Alina went home to get Star
Wars. Then Mukesh and I had a comeback, but in the end
we lost anyway.
Thirty seconds into the opening scenes of Star Wars:
A New Hope, the phone rang. I answered it.

Me: Hello?
Faint Asian voice: *mumbles*
Me: Umm… anyone there?
Faint Asian voice: *mumbles something about night
school, Brandon, Pete, etc.*
Me: I can't hear a damn word you're saying. Let me
switch phones.

So I did. It wasn't much better on the portable, let
me tell you. I gave the phone to Alina because she
kept asking questions.
As it turns out, Alina asks too many questions.
Later:

Alina: No! I don't want anything you can give me!…
Brandon says something about only wanting to come over
if he gets a Canadian beaver?… What's a pocket rocket?
[Poor Alina.] She just doesn't know when to hang up,
I guess. Even the traditional hand signals weren't
working. Eventually she did. Then we got to talking
about having fun, like hiding behind the fence and
throwing water balloons at Brandon, Chris and Pete.
But I didn't have any balloons. There was also an
egging idea, but egg-covered Brandon is infinitely
less appealing than waterlogged Brandon, and besides,
raw egg is not a good smell to have on you.
Anyway, due to some driving speeds that were probably
illegal, the boys, who were skipping out of night
school again, got to my house pretty quickly. By this
point we'd completely abandoned the watching of Star
Wars because Alina was getting too distracted to play
Euchre. Sometime before this Mukesh had gone home and
I'd taken over one of Ludwik's partners. We weren't
doing too badly, either. We were, however, talking
about how dorky it was for the four of us to be
sitting in my basement, watching Star Wars and playing
Euchre when it wasn't a school night. But hey, there
were worse things we could've been doing.
But back to what I was explaining- the arrival of the
band of miscreants. This was just after the egging
idea had been proposed and rejected. My brother,
because he is a good kid, brought us Sun Chips. I love
them, but was still stuffed from Chinese food.
Everyone else who hadn't had Chinese as well had just
been to the bubble tea place (cue an 'ugh' from
Meaghan and yours truly) so they didn't want anything,
either. I don't blame them; I can't imagine eating
after that. This is about the same time the Euchre
game finished; Alina ended up building a fort around
herself and Chris took over playing for her. However,
after we started speculating about Texas Road, which
has been one of our almost-events for a few weeks now,
someone said something about getting Alina chocolate.
I said, "Mini eggs!" Ultimately, this resulted in no
more [fake] mini eggs, a joke nobody (well, almost
nobody) got about my pocket, semi-hyper Alina and a
game whereby we discovered that she can't aim very
well and should never play darts. She hit the ground a
lot more than she hit Brandon, anyway.
Maybe he wanted revenge, or maybe it was an old idea
brought back to life, but Brandon gave me the idea to
get out the digicam. Several odd but fun pictures
ensued; take your pick of the ones below:

Apparently what he wanted was a picture of Alina's
bum to put on a Jones' pop bottle for a joke. I didn't
get a very good shot, but the one of Ludwik on the
phone with his mother is pretty funny.
    Sadly, the fun was nearing an end. 10:00 was drawing
near, which meant curfew for the young Sobiesiaks,
Meaghan's mom calling her to ask where to pick her up,
and the end of "night school" for Brandon, Chris and
Pete. Sigh. It wasn't even a school night.
    Basically, what happened next was Ludwik and Meaghan
leaving at pretty much the same time, the latter to
allegedly retrieve her bike from next door since her
mom was picking her up at my house. Alina was afraid
to leave. Poor Alina. She doesn't have any single
friends. It wouldn’t be so bad if her mother didn't
constantly point out the fact that I have a boyfriend.
Mrs. Sobiesiak seems to think that when someone has a
boyfriend, they ditch everyone else. Mrs. Sobiesiak is
wrong a lot.
    That's pretty much the end of the excitement. I went
outside with no shoes and Brandon picked me up and
twirled me around until I was very dizzy. Meaghan's
mom showed up and Meaghan and Brandon loaded the bike
into the van and drove away. Chris and Pete made
comments about things that, in theory, I could do with
the Tahoe. Well, not by myself. The Tahoe has dirty
mental connotations now. Let's not go there.
    Aside from one or two more comments from the peanut
gallery (i.e., Chris and Pete), that was about it for
the night. Brandon drove off with them and I sat down
at the computer to type the tale. Sucks, doesn't it? I
always knew Thursdays were bad news…