I approximate time. Timestamps will be vague.
Friday Morning
Joe K. asks me if I want to hang out after school. I don’t really care. He says I should text him, but tells me he left his phone in his car and I can only text him after school. Okay.
I usually play guitar in 107 with Mr. Ikezi after school. I don’t want today. Actually, I planned on not going today. I brought my acoustic instead of my electric with the intention of finding a quiet spot to play guitar to myself in.
7th period, Library Teacher Assistant
I pick a pen that hadn’t been chewed on from the container. I sign in with it, look around, and then pocket the pen.
There weren’t any deliveries to make today. She made me dust books today. I hate dusting books.
Cesar Chavez and Ray Charles sat as equals on the shelf.
I get a text from Nick H. “ikezi wants to know if youre jamming today”
“no”
I put my phone back in my pocket and resume dusting.
This one book had particularly dark pages. I wiped it. The pages stayed dark, and I realized it wasn’t dust. It was just black coloring, like how other books had gold or something.
The top of the shelf is ultra-dusty. I yell in no particular direction:
“The top of the shelf is pretty dust, do you want me to clean it off?”
“Yeah go ahead, no one’s touched it in a long time.”
I clean it, and end up regretting it.
Friday After School
I walk into the band room, and I hear someone walk in after me a few moments later. I turned to see who it was, and then [Oh crap!] quickly turned back realizing it was a girl that I had been meaning to talk to. Actually, I had been thinking about talking to her during 7th period. When I turned back, I said hi (which was kind of stupid because I was facing away from her). She said hi, too. We said “hi” at the same time, and I felt really silly. I wondered if she heard me say hi. Suffice to say, I did not end up talking to her. Maybe next week.
I remove myself from the band room, continue to wander, run into Joe.
“Hey.”
“Hey, so do you want to hang out?”
“Sure.”

At this point I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s Friday, and I’m a senior in high school with nothing to do. Of course, I go with him.
Sometime Around Six-ish
We eat at Burger King after we drop his sister off at physical therapy. His sister, a freshman, has a man-voice.
We go to his house.
Joe poops. He took a Gameboy with him, so he’d be in there for a while. I steal his laptop for a while and go onto Facebook.
I call Viraj. We talk for a bit.
Later
He starts playing around on his drumset, and I pick up his electric guitar off his wall and we play music for a while. It was okay.

We planned to hang out tonight with a few other friends. Joe called some girls so it wouldn’t be so much of a sausage-fest.
Oh yea, I should tell my mom I’m at Joe’s.
Joe’s parents have me over for dinner. They (his parents) are devout Catholics or something religious, so we eat fish this Friday. Joe’s mom prays before the meal. I know I’ll never get used to that.
I help clean up the table with Joe’s mom. Joe’s dad comes back out.
“Where’d you go? Everyone was eating. You disappeared.”
He grabs a piece of cake. “I’m here now.”
“Everyone was eating.”
“I was inside.”
“You disappeared.”
Eats more cake. “I reappeared.”
Joe’s mom gives up.
After Dinner
Nick comes over to Joe’s house. We figure out what to do, and then we do it.
Viraj also comes over later.
Next Morning
I swore I fell asleep on the couch. I’m disoriented and I’ve got a small headache.
Something is warming my feet. Abby. Joe’s dog.
Something is warming my back. Joe. Joe is sleeping next to me. I don’t remember coming into this room. Maybe someone carried me. I’m not very heavy. Where are Nick and Viraj?
I’m the first one to wake up. I’m very proud of myself. I go out and see Nick sleeping on the couch that I was supposed to be sleeping on. Viraj remained asleep on the recliner that he was using yesterday.
I pour myself a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal.
Joe’s dad comes out to make himself breakfast. I have to say “hi” enthusiastically so as to hide my disorientation. I’ve got morning frog-voice. Maybe I’m just paranoid, because Joe’s dad doesn’t notice or just isn’t suspicious.
I play Joe’s Gameboy while waiting for everyone else to wake up, totally disregarding the fact that Joe took a shit with this same device.
Everyone else wakes up. I don’t want to go home. Viraj goes home.
Joe has to go to a rugby game. I go to Nick’s house. Nick hasn’t had his full year yet, so he technically isn’t supposed to drive people around. He drops me off a little outside of his neighborhood so that it appears he drove home alone. We planned that. We’re pretty cunning. And paranoid.
Nick’s dad is playing Bingo with Ronnie, Nick’s youngest sister.
Nick takes a shower. I play Battlefield: Bad Company on his computer. We try to figure out what we’re doing today. Nick has to go to family lunch and family dinner, so I make my own plans. I was going to hang out with Aisling today.
Aisling doesn’t call or text back, so I end up accompanying Nick out to lunch.
Lunchtime, Saturday
I ordered a mixed seafood plate. Nick orders a custom pizza. Nick’s younger sister orders a Veggie pizza and Nick’s youngest sister orders a Hawaiian. Nick’s dad has a salad. It was strange watching a large, grown man who probably weighed more than Nick and my weight summed together, eat a salad.
Ronnie at one point asked about the Taj Mahal. “Daddy, was the Taj Mahal handmade by the king?”
“No, it wasn’t handmade.”
Amy, Nick’s younger sister said, “It was made by a bunch of slaves, so technically it was handmade.” She was such a strange girl. I wondered if her vegan phase was over.
We get back to Nick’s house, and still no word from Aisling. I play some more Battlefield while Nick attempts to install a new chip into the computer of his car. The chip was supposed to regulate horsepower and other complicated shit more efficiently (stuff that car manufactures don’t want you to know about). $40 well spent, I say. Sometimes I think maybe if everyone was smart enough to mod their cars, we wouldn’t have so much of a fuel crisis.
Aisling finally texts me: “im here”
Evening Madventures with Aisling
She looks tired, but she always looks tired. She’s a stoner. I have no problem with that. It’s a personal choice.
We don’t know where to go at first. Conversation isn’t easy for the first thirty minutes. Aisling C. isn’t someone I hang out with on a daily basis. It was at this point, that I realized that Junior Prom was today. Aisling is a junior. I asked her about it, but kept it short. I knew in the back of my head that she probably wasn’t going because no one asked her. I wondered why. She wasn’t unattractive.
We drive around Los Gatos looking for nice views on high altitudes. She stops at a Starbucks to get something. I know it had mocha in it, but I’m not a Starbucks regular. We go and find more views over the Silicon Valley. She knows some awesome (awesome in the truest sense of the word) spots. I love this.
“What do you wanna do?”
We kept asking each other.
We went to Santa Cruz. She handled 17 like a pro. With one hand, too. I was surprised, because the entire drive down (and back up), I thought I was gonna die.
We drove around, attempted to go the beach, bought candy, and bought a Jimi Hendrix poster. We talk about school, habits, and random things. She said it was ironic that I didn’t smoke because I seemed like such a stoner. She was right. She had a higher GPA than I did, if anything. I guess I just don’t really care about things.
The drive back was scary, and I thought twice about doing this with her again. As wonderful as she is, this driving was getting to me. She said we could probably get back to Los Altos in 20 minutes. Jesus fucking Christ, I’m not in a rush or anything.
Aisling likes to drive fast, and she loves smoking and having fun. She’s fun, but she’s slow. Real slow. She’s a different kind of animal. She’d be real pretty if she dressed better today and maybe didn’t put so much eyeliner on.
9:00ish
We went to see Alice in Wonderland. When we got into the theater, she took me straight to the top. I didn’t really want to sit at the very top/back.
She had a box of chocolate with her. It was the loudest f***ing thing in the world, but it was chocolate, so it was okay.
She was shifting around and explained to me she didn’t like the theater chairs. I said she could lean on me if she wanted. She said maybe. She never did.
The movie ends and I have to figure out how to get home. I call home, and call my sister. No one picks up. I call Nick and go back to his house.
I ask her if she’s doing anything tomorrow. I thought she had work, but she explained to me that by work, she meant being tutored.
She tells me about a guy she used to hang out with. He also liked to drive around. She stopped hanging out with him because he was a dick. I guess I’m her new driving buddy now. It didn’t sound like she was looking for a relationship. I wasn’t either, but a little part of me was a little sad.
Aisling drops me off at Nick’s. I sit in her car for a bit before getting out. I’d do it again. We give each other weak goodbyes. We weren’t looking at each other when we said ‘em.
11:00ish
I drop into Nick’s computer chair. I needed that. I was tired. He asked me how it was. I explained everything. The entire time I was looking for things to stare at while I processed what just happened to me for the last few hours. How the hell did I end up in Santa Cruz? It didn’t seem crazy at the time, but now that I look back… I went to f***ing Santa Cruz…in twenty minutes.
My parents pick me up from Nick’s house later. I don’t talk to them. They ask me about housing applications for college. I pretend to sleep while they scold me for not being a better son.
I go home and sit at my computer despite being tired as shit.
Junior prom parties are probably going on right now.
2:01AM
I decide to go to sleep because I think I feel a blood vessel explode in my right eye. I have issues with sleep. Not real ones, just ones that I create for myself. My right eye tears up a bit.
I go to sleep. I receive a text message from Michael, asking whether or not I was interested in going to his house after he was done with his after-prom party. He lives in Santa Cruz. He’s asking me to brave 17 again.
Michael Whitney is a brilliant pianist that shares extremely similar tastes in music as I do. We also share the same discretion towards drugs. I don’t decline to go.
I’m thinking, “We’re real musicians now.” I feel hardcore getting up at this hour to go to a fellow musician’s house to go to work.
I get out of bed, tell my parents where I might be going, being careful to be extra vague about it, and then go outside.
I collapse onto a cheap folding chair. I drink a coke because it has caffeine, and I eat instant noodles because it was easy to make and I was hungry. I look up at the ceiling and think briefly about my life before I pack up my guitar and things.
I sit at the computer and play a game while I wait for Michael and his older and way taller sister to come pick me up. When I realized his sister would be involved, I made an effort to dress a little nicer. I care less about what I wear around males.
He texts me again and tells me maybe this isn’t the greatest course of action because it’s so late, and prom just happened. Plan aborted. F***ing shit and I packed all of my shit up too.
I stay on my computer until 4:00AM, and then go to sleep again, this time uninterrupted.
11:00AM Next day
I get up and eat and brush my teeth and then eat again. I take a nap at 4:00PM.
8:00PM
When I wake up, it is dark outside. I’m feeling depressed. It is at this point that I really try to lay still and process what’s happened in the last few days. I get up and lean against the wall with the covers still over me. I’m stuck in between somewhere and I don’t know what to feel.