Friday Morning, 9:00 AM, In Gil's Room |
GilI must have been hitting the snooze alarm for at least three hours, which seems unlikely, but the clock says it's 11:00, and the alarm was set for 8:00. Lindsay and Ted must have carried me to bed, because I can't remember anything past those few disjointed minutes in the back of the El Camino. I do remember being very drunk, and then very sick, but not much from there. Yeah, my jeans sitting, neatly folded, on the floor by my bed. Lindsay must have been here. I stumble out of my room into the hall. There's a note on my door from my mom, saying that she had taken the El Camino and I should take the Metro to school. I cursed under my breath. I've already missed the first three periods, and now I have to take the fucking Metro.Twenty minutes later I stand on the platform of the Medical Center Metro stop, waiting for the train. The interior of the station is an incredibly intimidating space. The huge concrete vault looms above you like the ribcage of a giant whale. I put on my headphones, lay down on one of the stone benches and stared up at the ribs, letting the lightspeed guitar and cynical lyrics of the Dead Kennedies wash over me. The red box in my back pocket starts digging into my butt, so I stick it in my backpack. It was handy to have around and being able to make free phone calls was useful, but sometimes it could be a real pain in the ass. After a couple of minutes I get fed up with waiting for the train, so I decide to make Ted's life a bit more interesting and call him up. The previous year this would have near impossible, and would have involved impersonating one of his parents, but now we had our system. Getting the system set up had taken months of planning, and a few very tense hour in the school late one night, but it was well worth the trouble. A couple of years ago they got fed up with having to set all of the clocks independently, so they invested in a fancy new wireless clock system which they could use to set all of the clocks simultaneously. It took a fair amount of time and trouble, but with the help of Fritz and the moral support of Ted, who was still pretty much a newbie at the time, rigged up the school payphone with an interesting extra function. It listened for a tone I added to my red box, and when it heard it, told all of the clocks to start running backwards. This was supposed to tip Ted off to the fact that I was trying to call, and he would go wait by the pay phone.
Follow Gil |
Leisl |
Fritz |
Ted |
Lindsay |