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Tuesday, 01 July 2008

Keeping the site real. I don't know how flowers got here. Please ignore.
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Friday, 19 January 2007

Welcome to Austin Wrote Red

Don't be confused: I have not become so egotistical that I believe I require TWO Xanga sites in order to comprehensively accommodate my life. No, dear readers. No quantity of Xanga sites could accomplish that feat. This site is more of a cathartic expression for me than anything else. I needed someplace to put the things I write so that I can see if I'm getting better, if I'm growing, and (most importantly) if I'm actually writing anything. If I go for more than two weeks without updating, then I know to have somebody kick me in the butt and get me moving again.

And if anybody feels like reading any of the stuff that I'm writing, then here it is.

Let me share with you a bit of my writing philosophy first - I'll probably do it again later, but I need to get it down so that I can watch as it changes as well. My goal in writing - my goal in everything - is to please and delight my Lord, Jesus Christ. I am in a lifelong pursuit of His applause, and He is my One Audience. If no one but He ever reads my work, and it pleases Him, I have accomplished everything I intended. Inherent in that pursuit for God's approval is my desire to help others be awakened through literature to see reality - to change people's perspectives, to inspire, to give life and passion to people's lives.

That's it in a paragraph. What a wonderfully concise compression. The real thing is two pages long, but you don't want to read that - it'll give you a reader rash. Very uncomfortable.

In contrast to many writers today, I believe that the author of anything has a responsibility to the reader to avoid filling their minds with crap. This causes me to have certain standards, boundary lines - for while I do want to show reality as it is, I force myself to do it in a way that will not stumble or harm most of my readers. So I walk a fine line: I may choose in some of my writing to address issues that are uncomfortable, yet real: Murder, sexuality, hatred, lust, rape, perversion, racism. I promise that I will maintain utmost responsibility while writing these things – I will never write you a sex scene. It is my responsibility to let the reader *see* lust without arousing lust in the reader. It is possible to create a picture of reality, use the language of the day, without corrupting the reader. I also choose not to use words that speakers of the English language have deemed curses. I do this because of God’s injunction to keep our minds and our mouths pure, so although people really do curse in real life, I can find ways to write it in without subjecting readers to foul language.

But please remember this: Some of the things I write, imply, or cause my characters to think will NOT BE TRUE. One of the things I hate most is when a Christian author makes everything cut and dry, right and wrong, true and untrue – when they separate the characters into good and evil and saved and unsaved and everything the Christian person thinks is true and everything the non-Christian person thinks in untrue. Life is confusion and no one gets everything right. It is my responsibility to make the reader think, not to tell them what is true. The only truth is in the Bible, and if one of my characters, even the most upright and God-fearing believes or does something that the Bible does not support, then that character is WRONG – AND I MAY HAVE DONE IT ON PURPOSE.

In conclusion, please don’t be too hard on my writing – most of these are exercises that I’ve had to write for class, or things I’ve done for my own pleasure. They are by no means supposed to be a representation of my best – it’s just scribbling. Enjoy.
I've put up a few of my drafts in here spanning from my Junior year in highschool to last semester - not very many of them, but some. I've also categorized all my stories in the TAGS box on the left - by style, by character, by realm. You can also choose ALL and browse every one of my stories by title. MUSINGS are the ones that don't contain stories - they might be things like this, explaining something, or they might just be my thoughts on some aspect of writing.

1. Write to discover.
2. There is no greater discovery than love.
3. All love comes from the Creator.
4. Write what you will.
- Ted Dekker, Showdown.
Sins of the Fleche

Ah, my final for Professor Naumoff, Intermediate Creative Writing. He really liked it, said it was quite excellent, and that made me very, very happy, because he was difficult to please. He also said he had no idea what had happened. I haven't had the opportunity to clean it up, make everything clearer, but the way I've got it now satisfies me. I'll probably come back to it, but I like it now. Making everything cut and dry is boring. Make the reader work for it a little - it'll make them feel intelligent when they figure it out.
I had to present it the very same day as the absolute best writer in the class was presenting hers - the student that Naumoff just worshipped. And for good reason, she was amazing. Normally I wouldn't want to present mine on the same day because it would make mine look so terrible, but at the end of class, he said we'd both done very, very well, and just being put in the same catagory as her excellence made me happy.
This was the first thing I've done that was supposed to be disturbing.

PLEASE TAKE NOTE:
This Story contains Mature elements that may not be suitable for all readers, addressing issues of Drug Use and Rape. As in all my stories, I follow strict Biblical rules of conduct and responsibility in dealing with mature issues, however - Reader discression is advised.

Sins of the Flèche

by Seth Austin

Fall, 2006

            Allison was the last to walk off the bus, banana pillow, laptop case and backpack awkwardly hanging from her shoulders so that she had to step sideways to get out into the sodden morning. The Philadelphia wind, still trying to blow-dry its citizens out after a night of crazed downpour, pulled at her pillow and Alli lost it to the sidewalk, watched it grow ripe and brown with patches of wet. Alli scowled and left the pillow where it was, put her backpack and laptop down beside it, and went to get her weapons bag from under the bus. She was one of sixty UNC varsity fencers who’d ridden eight and a half hours through the night and the rain to bout at Temple University, the only one of sixty who hadn’t felt like watching The Boondocks until two in the morning, the only one of sixty who hadn’t been able to sleep long after Huey and Riley had finished their caustic social commentary, and the only one of sixty who would be raped tonight.

            Alli crawled in and grabbed her bag out from the corner of the compartment, her blades inside rattled as she dragged it across the corrugated aluminum. This was the Temple Open, the real kickoff to the sport’s NCAA year, but right now, she felt like kicking off the year by crawling up into a little ball in the bus’s storage compartment and sleeping for twelve hours – even with a damp brown pillow. It would match her mangled brown hair and she could be a brown banana hobo. But the team was trudging across the street already, and the bus driver with the crusty mustache was leaning against the compartment door, watching her as she crawled out.

            “You leave anything on the bus?” the driver asked, locking the compartment, turning the key hard and tight. “Need to go back in ‘n check or anything?” His mustache was even more grimy up close, and Allison grabbed up her bags and pillow. The team had crossed the street and the crosswalk light had already cycled to red. She told him no, no she didn’t need to go back onto the bus for any reason at all, thank you, and shifting her bags from one shoulder to the other, waited for that light to flick back to white. After a few seconds, she looked back at the mustache and decided she could make it across now – there weren’t that many drivers out this early in the morning. She scuttled across, bags swinging, dancing back a step in the middle when she realized the cars had been coming faster than she’d thought.

*                      *                      *

            Four hundred fencers in a gym, all packaged in three layers of protective equipment, knee length socks, knickers and metallic mesh had the gym hatefully hot. Twenty fencing strips crisscrossed the gym. It was the women foilist’s turn and weapons were clicking against one another all around the room. Alli plugged her body cord into the reel by herself – no one from her squad was spotting her. She didn’t need them to, of course. A fencer who had a serious chance at placing in the top five at Nationals could clip a cord to her jacket by herself. She reminded herself, as she’d reminded her squad when they’d elected Rachel captain, that she was fencing for herself this year. Two years as squad captain was enough for her anyway. She tapped the foil against her foot, and the left light on the score box lit up yellow.

            This was her third bout – she’d won the first two handily, the first against a Penn State second-string hopeful who couldn’t hold her parries, the other a fat freshman from Boston College who was just too apathetic to defend her entire target area. So far she hadn’t had to do anything more difficult than a straight attack to the shoulder. Maybe this bout would have something more for her. She grabbed her mask and walked to her en garde line.

            The girl plugging into the other end of the strip was either seriously butch or just simply not a girl. She was a head taller than Alli and had no breasts, but her jacket strained against tight shoulders and her forearms were nasty strong, graceless and powerful. She must be really sensitive about the way she looked - she already had her mask on. Alli hoped she wouldn’t take it off for the salute so the director would give her a yellow card. Her legs were made for fencing, good calves and lean thighs – and was that a hair poking out through the sock? Alli wondered what kind of reaction she’d get from the fencer if she sent a few attacks to the crotch.

            In all seriousness, though, if this was a guy, the director wouldn’t have even allowed him on the strip. This was a separate-gender competition, no guy could get away with fencing in a women’s foil pool. The director wasn’t even looking at the other fencer, he was pretending to give a red card to the clipboard girl at the table for flirtatious conduct, so apparently there was no concern. Still, Alli decided to aim for low target areas, just for fun.

            The director tested their weapons and called them to their lines. Alli saluted the other fencer with her blade, a quick noncommittal thing, tossed a second to the director, who wasn’t even watching as the other fencer lifted her mask and saluted…

            He, and he was a he, had an Adam’s apple. Alli could see it, lodged there in his throat beneath a jaw, lips, nose and brow that were irreconcilably male, thrusting out, daring her to notice and say something and catch him in a lie. He saluted like a man, he walked like a man, and the director didn’t even say anything. Were they kidding? Was this guy a fencing transvestite, claiming womanhood without bothering to show even the most basic trappings of femininity?   Couldn’t he at least have put on a chest protector, worn makeup, shaved his legs? Maybe he’d had a sex change or was some kind of hermaphrodite – that was the only reason she could think of that he might legitimately be participating in a woman’s match. Alli flicked her foil to a low line – she intended to find out. He finished his salute, it was overdramatic, but he never lost contact with her eyes. He replaced his mask.

            “Fencers ready…” called the director. “Fence!”

            The other fencer flèched immediately off the line, exploding into a running attack that Alli only barely managed to parry as he passed her. Her counterattack wasn’t even close, he was already long past and the director called halt. The other fencer brushed her free hand with his as he walked back to his line, and Alli felt gooseflesh rise all over her neck. His hand had hair. Hairy man-hand hair.

            They set up again, and this time Alli took the offensive, probing the other fencer’s parry areas with a series of quick feints. Her opponent called one of her bluffs and attacked into it, which she’d been hoping for – she enveloped his blade and brought it low for a ‘nads assault. This would hurt. She rammed her foil forward, but he jumped over it, disengaging his blade from hers and flicking her in the back. The green light flashed on the score box. Touché.

            They lined up again. 0-1 to the fencer with the maybe man-parts. Alli’s back stung from the flick. That was a tough point to score, and it left a mark. And he’d gotten out of her man-disabling trap. She gripped her weapon hard.

            Both fencers were more cautious this round. Alli’s blade licked out, tasting the fencer’s circle parry, his low parry, his lateral. She tried out his gullibility by feinting hard to his left shoe, but he didn’t go for it. He began spinning his foil in arrogant figure eights, inviting her to attack, waiting for the chance to riposte.

            So she drove in with a timed advance-lunge, a slow-then-quick bit of footwork that should have thrown off the eye and the rhythm of the other fencer, but he swept his blade up into a beautiful prime parry without even stepping back, caught her foil, and twisted his body to get the touch on her almost in the same motion. The director called halt as the score box sounded, the man-fencer’s mask was touching hers. He licked his lips, it was sensuous, slow, she couldn’t move back.

            “I’m you,” he said, his eyes like an abandoned city, hard and wet and cold.

            “Ugh,” she said, pushing him away. The director gave her a yellow card for that, but she didn’t care. She took off her mask and wiped her lips on her glove and pulled herself together. This next touch was hers. Definitely.

            She lost the next touch to a bad hesitation that made her attack look flimsy and second-guessed. She lost the next when he penetrated her guard with a series of merciless, unabating remises that wore her down and broke straight through her parries. She lost the last stumbling backwards, not even able to parry, trying desperately to retreat from powerful, repeated thrusts that she just couldn’t stop. She fell past the rear limits, scraping her neck on the floor. The director called the bout. The other fencer offered her a hand.

            She considered just reaching up there from the floor for his crotch and squeezing, just to see, just to show to the officials, to say here, man, I’ve got your nuts, just try, just try to lick your lips like that again.

            But as she reached up he took her by the hand and pulled her to her feet. “Salute and shake hands,” the director reminded them, and they did, his hand and face taunting her with their manhood. His fingers lingered on her palm as he let go, and she jerked her hand away. He smiled, mouthed “I’m you,” once again, and turned away.

            She fenced and won her last three bouts in the pool but didn’t see her opponent fence anyone else, didn’t see him at all actually. When she signed her initials to the score sheet at the end, there was only a straight line of V’s next to her name, mostly 5-0, not a single D on the list. She recognized the names of all the other fencers she’d bouted against, maneuvered around the director’s shoulder to ask the clipboard lady about it.

            “I think the scoresheet’s wrong. I lost one of these. To the tall girl?”

            “Lost one?” the clipboard lady said, hands crawling up the director’s mauve power tie. “You cleaned up this pool. Nobody hardly touched you. Sign it and give it back.”

            So Alli signed the sheet and tossed it back on the table. She wasn’t one to give up a good turn when it came. She picked up her green-tinged water bottle and tried to wash down the feeling that her lips were crawling with mold.

*                      *                      *

            This was water bottle nineteen, and it was orange, because nineteen was prime. You couldn’t break it, cut it, dice it or divide it with anything, which was how she liked her water bottles, firm and moist and hard and moldless. She’d just finished her last bracket bout with a satisfying 13-15 loss – she’d taken the thirteen on purpose because it was orange and it was so firm that she couldn’t stand to move past it. She downed the dregs and drops of this bottle and felt her fingers wander to the next, but then she saw it was twenty and twenty was purple like twelve had been, and twelve had tasted of spiders and ice so she pulled away.

            She left the strip, she was done for the evening and the matches were still going on, not a soul on her side of the gym but the creaking old man who cheered for whichever fencer had more colorful socks. The rest were over watching Rachel get into the top eight and she was apparently holding her match down well, considering the cheers of the Carolina side of the strip. Alli peeled off her jacket and chest protector and pulled her warm-ups out of her bag, feeling the heat of four hundred fencers in her lungs and in her diaphragm and in the hollow of her jaw and needing very much to get out of the gym. She felt the despoiled plastic crunch in her hand, looked down, surprised to find it still there. It needed to be in the recycling bin in the corner, across the gym and behind the table. It needed to be in that bin like Alli needed to be out the gym door in the other direction, and since Alli couldn’t be in two places at once, at least not at 8:32 in the evening, which was clearly divisible by fifty-two, she would have to toss it and run.

            So she pulled on her warm-up slacks, zipped up her jacket, blue and blue, took up the bottle again and felt for the vectors in the room, the primes and coordinators, and with a flip of the wrist and just the right amount of torque, spun it across the room and into the bin with a smack. Touché!

            And she was out the gym door, foil still in hand, drifting into a Philly night that was spun from the silk of self-liberation, as Philadelphia nights always had been.

*                      *                      *

            Things did not then quickly delay in turning curious as Alli pushed open the door to a hoagie and cheesesteak joint that was all asymmetric angles and tessellated tabletop designs. Her jaw was clenching real tight for some reason and she figured she needed something to help it relax, unwind, stretch out a little. So she ordered a cheesesteak with extra pizza sauce, paid a red and two yellows for it, and sat down with her sandwich and foil at the most interesting tessellation she could find to work out the cramps in her jaw muscles with a cheesetastic Philly classic. A sports game was on that was not fencing.

            “It’s always winter, and never fencing,” she noted.

            She watched the men and women line up unevenly in front of the cashier to order their jaw-relaxants, pay their colors. She thought maybe if she concentrated, she could see what hues their actions were made of. And, in point of fact, she could, which delighted her even more than her sandwich. Here came a man heading to the bathroom, leaving a trail of grey and brown behind him, sparkling motes that lingered in the air for a moment then swept after him like snowfall. There was a woman sipping beer from a mug with a long bendy straw, tapping her foot to some personal music, deep blood colored clouds misting about her toes with each tap. They were the auras of intent and idleness, Alli concluded. She examined her cheesesteak and found it lacking one. Took a bite from it in punishment. It breathed on her neck.

            No, it was a man breathing on her neck, one without an aura just like she was without an aura just like her cheesesteak and her foil was without an aura, this man was without an aura. But she knew who he was. He was the man who’d beaten her in her third bout, just after the only colorless water bottle she’d drunk today.

            The man who was herself. Out of his fencing gear he was even more obviously man than before, face open in a Heath Ledger sort of way, blond hair cut in a careless surfer style. His lips were strips of fornication, she knew it on cue. She slid away, keeping the foil at hand and ready.

            “Dance with me,” he said, offering his hand to her. She raised her eyebrow and her foil.

            “Who are you?” she countered, pushing his hand away with her blade. “International Chrysis? There’s no such thing as fencing in drag.”

            “I don’t say things twice,” he said, smiling, “I never say things twice. Unless I feel like it.” He pushed her blade away, and stood up, offering his hand again. She looked beyond him and saw the cheesesteak maker cutting up his meat in a flurry of sea-green particles, each one spinning around him as he cut, and cut. But this fencer had no traces of color, and that made her stomach cringe. She stood, extended her blade, touched the man-fencer’s throat with a cool point-in-line and held him there. He didn’t move, he winked at her.

            “Excuse me ma’am,” said a man swathed in a shade of dull orange, a man Alli liked as soon as she saw him – the register man who’d given her the sandwich. “Is everything all right?” He looked at her, and only her – mostly her extended foil, but her nonetheless.

            “Thanks. I’ve got this gentleman taken care of.” She nudged forward a little with the blade, tickled that Adam’s apple.

            “This… gentleman?” The cashier followed the foil with his eyes, came to the tip and back, didn’t once look at the fencer whose Adam’s apple was threatened at the end.

            “Does he see me?” asked the fencer. “I’m not sure. What does that mean for you, I wonder?”

            “It means,” Alli said, “that your lips are sex-death. Don’t talk. It makes me see purple.”

            “Ah,” said the cashier, confused. “Sex-death. Right. So, I think you might need to head home, girl. Don’t forget your steak.” He backed away and returned to his register, looking up to see if she was still there, hand hovering over the phone on the counter beside him.

            “We should leave,” said the fencer.

            “I’m not going anywhere with you,” Alli replied, lowering the foil as the cashier’s hand started to twitch closer to the phone receiver.

            “You are can’t help it,” the fencer said, “You go everywhere with you.”

            She was starting to see patterns in things. She could see them in the grain of the wood in the walls, in the pixels on the hanging TV screens. She could see them in the emotions of the people around her, now getting more and more cloying and uncomfortable as they watched her. She could see them in everything but this man in front of her. She needed to leave, this place was getting warm. Her jaw ached. The door was open, she was opening it, and she was going out into the night again. This time the man followed her.

            She ran from him. She didn’t know if he was real, she didn’t know because people couldn’t see him, and he had no color and no pattern, and everyone had a pattern, had a connection to everything else. The drunken man on the curb had a pattern, his face lit with umber hues of idyllic distain for purpose, almost a part of that curb. She ran past the drunk on the curb, kept following the sidewalk as it took her past breathing brick buildings and the pressed and ironed streets of downtown Philly. Her foil was in her hand, cold and drawn to a tough point, a connection, a lash of alloy she knew she could use to fend off any assault, except one without a pattern.

            She swung a right down an alley, passed a recycling crate and jumped over a small brick median into a little patch of grass. She heard him following her, a splinter of being that revolted against all of the building and bricks around him. She drew up and turned around as he leapt easily into the grass beside her, approached her.

            She lashed out with her blade, but he deflected it with his right hand and kept coming. She lunged, sensing where his eye would be, determined to rip it out of his head with her foil, leave it spinning on the ground, mash it into the grass and give it connection. He turned and the blade went past his head, he grabbed her hand and disarmed her with a twist.

            “You are everything,” he said. “You can’t not be. They can’t see me because I’m you - they’re all you. You know it.” He pulled her in close to him, and she fought back, struggling in his arms. He was strong, his hands burned against her wrists, her shoulders, her back as he reeled her in, forced her to embrace him. Her body screamed that his flesh was other, that his hands were real because can’t you see, someone knocked the blade from your hand, someone put the bruises on your wrist, someone handed you a bottle of water today after your first bout…

            But her mind shone with a power extended and drawn beyond natural human faculty, and this enlightenment screamed joyfully that everything was connected to everyone else, that colors, numbers, tastes were all the same, that the drunk and the curb were meshed in a holy union, that she and this man were the same being, bodies complimentary and perfect together. She saw this clearly, she knew its truth, and so when he began to take off her jacket, she helped him with the zipper when it got stuck halfway down, because his hand and her hand were the same.

As a disturbing anecdote to end this story, that same classmate (the freakin' awesome writer) who was having her story critiqued on the same day as me was asking me about the drug use in this story, the flowing colors, numbers, and images, and I cited the effect of synesthesia - when the senses run together in hallucinatory ways due to drugs like LSD or an inborn condition. She said "Synesthesia? I LOVE that!! That was SOO good!"

<.<    >.>

Also, Professor Naumoff suggested that I do more more background study before writing my stories - specifically, maybe if I want to write a story about LSD, I should have some experience with it first. Oh dear.
What You Don't Know, Depending on How Many Women Are Involved, Could, Very Possibly, Kill You

This was the first short story I had to write in Professor Naumoff's Intermediate Creative Writing class. I know now that I should have picked something, ANYTHING other than a highschool melodrama to write about, but back then I didn't recognize that. Let me tell you about this story.
THIS STORY DID NOT ACTUALLY HAPPEN. NOR ARE THE CHARACTERS A TRUE REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE THEY ARE NAMED AFTER.
This is very important. Ray does not act like Ray. The written character is much less loquacious and charming. He was written that way for fun's benefit. This story was in no way meant to be read by my class - although I called Ray and asked him before he allowed me to use this story.
It is *based* on a true story about Ray and Chelsea. And it really did have something to do with our Prom (Junior-Senior). But I combined Chelsea and Mindy, made her colder and more haughty than either, turned Ashlee into a villainess of circumstance, Caitlin into a vengeful ex, Hollie into a complete vegetable, and myself into an elitist, friendless font of sarcasm. I did this to make it more writeable, not because I hate these people.
Oh, and dancing at Friendship's Jr./Sr.? Yeah freakin' right.
Professor Naumoff's suggestion to me after reading this story was heavy marajuana use.

What You Don’t Know,

Depending on How Many Women Are Involved,

Could, Very Possibly, Kill You

by Seth Austin
Fall, 2006

            No big secret, the sophomore girls definitely ruled our high school. They meant well, but their good intentions felt and functioned like an invasive cavity search. To their credit, they were select with the occasions that they slipped on the latex gloves of gossip. Almost chivalrous, really. Most school’s rumormongers, (the unambitious ones at least), targeted the friendless, the unloved. But our girls, after listening to the very first chapel speaker of the school year, had felt convicted by their machinating ways and made a group decision, huddling down at the altar, to only manipulate the most gregarious of their classmates, and thereby avoid having on their conscience some socially inept classmate’s untimely suicide.

            Thinking back on it, this may be why they never picked on me.

            They tell me I’m they only guy they know that talks like Socrates. I remind them, slowly, in small words, that there was no way that I could sound anything like Socrates, because he spoke Greek. They make the obligatory ‘it’s Greek to me’ pun. I begin to twitch.

            Regardless, it was about halfway through the spring of our senior year at Friendship Fundamental Baptist Fellowship High School when Ray, my best friend, started going out with Chelsea, who’d been ignoring him very determinedly all semester in the hopes that he would ask her to the Christmas dance. It was just after he’d broken up with Kate Linn - I remember that specifically because he’d come to me asking for something that rhymed with ‘intolerable’ to put into his break-up poem – and he was very much on the rebound. And at first glance, Chelsea, master of the aloof eyebrow, seemed like a really hot choice. Unfortunately, the rest of the sophomore girls thought so too.

            “This is so perfect. Beyond words,” Ashlee kicked back in her chair, finishing off a Garden Sensation salad. I forget now why I was out with them at lunch that day. Ashlee must have distracted me with her scarf. You simply cannot understand the meaning of ‘utterly incompatible’ until you see the color combinations of Ashlee’s scarves. Of course, it’s not like Ashlee wears scarves all the time – only if it’s cold. You wonder why it snows so infrequently in North Carolina? Even the winter is afraid of Ashlee’s scarves.

            There was a hesitant frost on the leaves that day. Generally I hung out with Ray for lunch, but he was at Sonic with Chelsea. I think I’d taken his hint and picnicked in the parking lot (I always paper-bagged it for lunch). The sandwich I was eating was cold and hard, and indistinguishable from the curb I sat on. Ashlee pulled up beside me in her VW Bug, periwinkle and olive green scarf dangling from the open window, and demanded I accompany her to Wendy’s. I don’t remember actually getting in the car, but suddenly there I was in the back seat between Hollie and Kate, dazed by the train wreck of color.

            In any case, I suspect I was invited to lunch with the womenfolk mostly for insider information, and not because they suddenly thought me good table conversation. “I mean,” Ashlee continued, savoring a particularly crisp lettuce leaf, “I did practically set them up, and seriously, they’re going to be a great pair.”

            “Set them up, did you?” I smirked, glancing at Kate, who’d just found that her plastic spoon really could go all the way through the bottom of her styrofoam chili bowl.

            “Say what?” Kate asked Ashlee, chili seeping into the table. “When’d you do that?”

            Ashlee coughed out a bit of lettuce onto her plate. “Uh, right. Well, actually, I was just sort-of there when Ray asked her out to the Caedmon’s Call concert last Saturday. I didn’t really say a whole lot. It was pretty much his idea.” She passed it off with a wave of her wrist and a nervous glance at Kate, who was growling into her chili.

            “You going to eat that nugget?” Hollie asked, blundering into the conversation. She gestured to a piece of chicken on my napkin. I pushed it over to her.

            Kate slumped forward in her chair. “Well, she’d better be the kick in the pants that he needs. I hate to sound like an ex, but he’s really a control-freak. It’d be nice if she can teach him something about women.”

            I’d started doodling on my napkin. “Like exactly what kind of earrings to buy you?”

            “Hey,” Kate retorted, “Isolated incident. Not my fault. If he’d really paid attention to me, he’d know I’m a silver-only girl.”

            “Just saying,” I shrugged, having just penned a neat little haiku about irresponsible epidemiologists.

            “No offense, Kate,” Ashlee said, “but you two weren’t meant for each other anyway. You guys fought as much as you talked. And he and Chelsea just go so well together. He has that chauvinism we love…”

            “You think everyone who holds the door for you is a chauvinist,” I put in.

            “… and she has the whole Pastor’s daughter vibe going for her,” she finished, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with the hem of her scarf. The splotch of ranch dressing may or may not have improved its stylishness. “He’s the class chaplain, she’s the treasurer. He’s on the baseball team, she plays volleyball. They both act. He’s a go-getter, and she’s… someone you have to go get.”

            “Hope she’s not too much for him,” Hollie said, mouth full.

            “Hunh.” Ashlee said. “And I hope they don’t screw it up,”

            Hollie sighed, scattering bits of french fry. “They really are great together.”

            “Right. Great,” Kate said, forehead on table. “Freakin’ spectacular.”

            It was about then that Ashlee and Kate lit into me for specific details on Ray’s love-life. I’d been expecting it, but I was ill-prepared for the true viciousness that women could bring to bear when they really wanted to know something.

            “So,” Kate leaned forward, sleeves soaked in chili. “Has he tried to make out with her yet?”

*                      *                      *

            Later that day, I almost had a chance to sit down with Ray and talk. I had an uneasy suspicion that Ashlee’s interest in Ray and Chelsea’s relationship might be less than benign. It was in the main auditorium after school – we were about to start practice for this year’s school musical: Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. Ray was Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner. Chelsea, a fine actress in her own right, happened to be Yum-Yum, Ko-Ko’s betrothed. And as for me… I was Nankipoo, the aimless and melancholy wandering minstrel. Apropos?

            “Okay,” said Ray, reading his lines from the libretto, “What are you going to do with that rope?”

            “We can practice in a minute,” I said, pushing his script aside. “Unless I’m wrong, you could very shortly be put in a delicate situation.”

            “What,” Ray insisted, “are you going to do with that rope?”

            I rolled my eyes. “I’m about to terminate an unendurable existence. And if you’re not going to listen to me, it might just be you.”

            “Terminate your existence? Oh, nonsense! What for?” Ray leaned casually against the piano, watching me pace the stage. The other students milled around the room, chatting in groups, waiting for the director. My back was to the door, but I knew Chelsea had come in when Ray’s eyes flicked to the far wall and stuck there, glued. I could hear the swish of her skirt – she made all her own clothes, always in white, and they would have seemed overly sequined on anyone but her. She had a cold glamour. Apparently she had joined a group of her girlfriends, because Ray shrugged a little and lifted the libretto again.

            “Because,” I said, “You are going to marry the girl I adore.” I grabbed the script away. “Blah blah… perform the happy dispatch with this dagger… I appreciate your friendly desire to practice my suicide scene, but listen-”

            “Deck, Turner, Stephens, onstage!” called out Mr. Elston, the choir director, as he pushed through the doors. “I’m late! I’m in a bad mood! Let’s get moving! Start from I Am So Proud!”

            Ray pushed away from the piano and punched me in the arm as he passed. “Elston calls. Later dude.” I rubbed my arm and scowled at him, the distracted fool. I hopped off the stage where Ray and the team were about to start performing and headed for the front pew. Most of the cast were women, and most of them were in my class, so there was a pretty solid mass of girls that I wanted to avoid sitting directly behind me. I flipped through the script.

            My ears perked uncomfortably at the sound of gossip. “…really want to hook him, then you need to…” I hunched down further in my seat. If Ray didn’t want to know what the senior girls were up to, it wasn’t my job to find out for him. He was more than capable of handling this himself. I would just study my script…

            Gah! I could hear them perfectly. Couldn’t they at least have the tact to be furtive with their scheming? “Thanks girls,” Chelsea was saying, after several suggestions that I’ve since tried to scour from my mind. “But I think I’ve got him well in hand.” Chuckles from the knuckleheads. “Appreciate it though.”

            “That was wretched!” Elston was saying from behind the piano. “This is a light operetta, not an interpretive dance exposition! We need women up here! Where are my Three Little Maids!”

            Chelsea stood up. Well, she drifted up. “My cue. See you later guys.” The sequins in her homemade skirt swished as she glided up to the stage. Ray saw her coming and offered her a hand up. She declined, took the stairs. But she did let him sneak a hand to the small of her back when she lined up onstage.

            I don’t remember much of the rest of that practice. I do seem to recall that I gave a smashing rendition of A Wandering Minstrel I, and even added a whole new improvised verse having something to do with french toast and PVC pipe. I’m not sure.

            It wasn’t until the next morning, as the class was gradually wandering into homeroom, that I started to pick up on something strange. Ray and Chels were sitting out in the hall, in a couple of chairs outside the classroom, talking closely. Ray was leaning over, making her laugh. Her laugh was crystalline, like wind chimes. He twined a finger into her loose sleeve. I grabbed my books out of my locker, taking a little extra time to make sure it was locked well.

            When I turned back, they were wearing dumbfounded expressions. I watched as a group of giggling, winking, insinuating girls swept past like a tumbleweed, through the hall and into homeroom. They paused a second in the door to shoot encouraging smooching faces back at Chelsea, then they were gone. Ray looked at Chelsea, who seemed a bit put off. She idly brushed his hand away. Ray shook his head and stood, and, seeing me down the hall, tossed out a peace sign in my direction, then headed into the classroom.

            As soon as he was gone, Hollie appeared at Chelsea’s shoulder. I decided I needed a nice, long drink at a nearby, convenient water fountain.

            “Oh wow,” her eyes bugged out, “did you see how he just left you sitting there like that? I can’t believe he did that. Does he just expect you to follow him?”

            “I don’t think he was…” Chelsea started.

            “Totally think you should talk to him about that. But be nice, okay? You guys are so cute together.”

            “Right.” Chelsea stood up. And thank goodness, because I was getting waterlogged. “Time for class. Let’s go.”

            I wiped my face with the back of my hand and followed them into the classroom.

            I didn’t begin to grow nervous until I heard Ashlee offering, in the interests of peaceful arbitration, to referee any disagreements that might have started in regards to a certain incident that might possibly have happened this morning. Then later, just as we were walking out the door to lunch, I noticed Hollie listing off Chelsea’s favorite flavors of chocolate to an extremely indifferent Ray. And it was really uncomfortable when Tina whispered to them both in English that she would be more than happy to pass any notes that they felt like writing to each other.

            “You guys are like the same people!” Tina whispered. “I can’t believe its taken you this long to get together.”

            Chelsea looked hard at Ray. Ray shrugged.

            That day in Mikado practice, Ray sat on the side of the stage, watching the girls circling around the pews in the auditorium. I came and sat down beside him. He didn’t say anything.

            “Practice?” I asked, but my heart wasn’t in it.

            “Nah,” he said, still watching the girls.

            “Sure.” I was a good sport. And he’d had a rough day. What with at least four instances of every girl in the class vacating the area around Ray and Chels to give them some ‘alone time’, they’d barely spoken to each other all day. Chelsea was in the fourth pew back, examining the spackle on the floor runners.

            Ray gritted his teeth and slid off the stage. I watched him go sit beside Chelsea. He’d managed to sneak an arm around her before Ashlee popped up behind them, wrapped them both in a plum-colored scarf, and as they struggled to get free, asked. “So, have you guys asked each other to the dance yet?”

            They didn’t last long after that.

            They did go to the dance together. But it was agony, every minute. By that point, not only had the senior girls stolen Ray’s thunder on nearly every romantic opportunity imaginable, but they had nitpicked every single gesture he made, every single look. His raised eyebrow was obviously a sign of dissatisfaction, his offering to carry her books was clearly a questioning of her competence. He was controlling, he was overbearing, he wore the wrong cologne. Chelsea had long since stopped talking to him by the day the limousine picked her up. She would look at him, and make little ‘hm’ noises, and vaguely frown whenever he tried to hold her hand, but I never got to hear her laughing like swinging crystals again. I opted out of the limousine trip, borrowed my stepdad’s Mustang instead, and took Sydney, a quiet girl who looked fantastic in pink. Our table was the deadest in the room, and one by one our dates started popping away to the bathroom for increasingly greater lengths of time.

            I noticed Hollie coming toward us, hors d’oeuvre in hand. “Hey Ray,” she winked. “How’re things going?”

            “Just great,” he said, ripping off the corners of his napkin. “Having a good time, thanks.”

            She bit off a piece of cheese cracker, frowned. “Really? ‘Cause, ah… you seem to be sitting here, not having a good time.”

            “Insightful,” I said. “As always.”

            “Well that’s not good,” she said. “Don’t worry.” She finished her cracker and crossed her arms determinedly. “We’ll get this worked out for you.” Ray looked up from his shredded napkin, alarmed. Hollie left with purpose.

            Chelsea came back into the room, poetic in a gown like a swath of snow. She hesitated for a moment, looked over at the table, then decided to examine a decorative vine-lattice instead. I pushed back from the table, heading out to visit the bathroom myself, when I noticed Hollie had gathered Ashlee and Kate in a corner. I mostly noticed them because my eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to Ashlee’s lime-green shawl. Kate too was painfully obvious in razor-sharp red, hair floofed in ridiculous spirals.

            When I returned from the bathroom, I didn’t see them anywhere. Maybe Ray was safe. Now, to survive the rest of the night. I would just have to get Ray to a good, solid afterparty. That might take some doing, of course, since I hadn’t been invited to any, and had no idea who was hosting them. I began looking for potential afterpartiers.

            “Yes Ray,” I heard Ashlee saying, “I absolutely do need your help over here. Get off your butt and come help me move this fichus. The leaves are in the way of the…”

            “Hey Chelsea, how are you?” Kate was squealing in falsetto. “So love the dress. Come here and get some punch…”

            And the two girls, leading their helpless classmates, grabbed hold of Chelsea and Ray and gently pushed them into each other. “Agh!” Ray grunted, stumbling into Chelsea, instinctively catching her. “Sorry – oh, hey Chels.”

            “Hey, what’s the-” she said. “Oh. Hey Ray.”

            “Have some punch!” Hollie cried, popping up from behind the table and placing a drink in each of their hands.

            Chelsea disentangled herself from Ray.

            “I… thank you, not thirsty,” she said, setting it on the table. Ray sipped in silence, stepping back.

            I couldn’t really do anything at this point. I just slipped back to the table and watched. Ashlee was suddenly behind Ray, grabbed the drink from his hand, and guided the two of them out into the dance floor. They resisted, but she set her mouth and moved them – they were too surprised to get away. She draped Chelsea’s arm over Ray’s shoulder, arranged them like a florist, and ordered: “Dance.”

            Ray quirked an eyebrow at Chelsea. She didn’t really answer, just sort of sighed and consented, limply. He led her into a slow dance – the music was lazy and the light was low. Chelsea held Ray’s hand out from her body, rigid as ice. She never got any closer.

            The song finished. Chelsea removed herself from Ray and excused herself, heading for the bathroom once again.

            Kate was smiling in the corner.

            “Well,” I said to Ray after he came back to the table, slumped into the chair. “Stag next time?”

            Ray scowled, got up to get us some punch. I laughed, grabbed a napkin, and started tracing out a few rhymes about cardboard in iambic pentameter.