Introducing!
Nora
Listen to me very carefully. The joke will pay off in the end, I promise. The theme of our junior prom was Melody of the Heart.
Cassidy suggested it because, you know, melody has something to do with dancing (duh, genius) and the heart is all about love. Amanda thought it was brilliant. Elena pretended to swoon and clutched her chest. Hector looked up from his phone and said whatever the fuck, he didn’t care.
Then everyone at the conference table looked at Lyndsey, my vice-president, my boyfriend, and waited for him to speak. They knew he would be president next year. He and I had been switching off every year since 5th grade. He would be the power broker. He would be the giver of class-skipping perks.
“What do you think, Lyn?” Elena asked him in her freakish, baby doll voice.
“I think it can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. Good work everybody…”
The vote was meaningless.
It had already been decided. Whatever Lyn wants.
Melody of the Heart.
What a fucking joke…
Lyndsey
My girlfriend Nora was a stunner, I mean, just an amazing beauty. She had all the best parts of all the hottest stars. Ariana Grande’s hair. Her body was a tight little mix of Shakira and Demi Lovato. She had Taylor Swift’s juicy red lips and she danced like Camila Cabello.
And I got to parade her around in front of the human garbage.
I won.
I always won.
Ginny
I spent the best years of my life in a coma. And it only took three weeks.
My name is Ginny, and I am a super-genius, queen-brain, goddess of the G.P.A. My friend Nora lobbied for the school to go to a 10-point scale so I could challenge myself. Killed it.
What do I look like? No one has ever called me Skinny Ginny. Ever. I have a boot cut and I wear a giant, fuzzy pink sweater that reads Scientists do it in the Quantum Tunnel. My teeth are my obsession. Flossing is meditative.
And I can read minds. I know you want me to get back to the coma. See? Okay. Here goes.
I built a time machine. And before you get all indignant and start screaming bullshit, no way, nerd girl, it’s impossible, eat another cake, I want you to answer my questions honestly.
What do you know about Tachyonic Antitelephones?
I’m waiting.
The EPR Paradox? Bohm’s Interpetation? Quantum Tunneling?
I’m waiting.
The Chronology Protection Conjecture? Tipler Cylinders?
I didn’t think so.
Unless you’re name is Lorentz, Bohm, Hawking, Einstein or Tolman, I respectfully suggest you shut the fuck up about things you don’t know. I built a time machine. It put me in a coma and I went back in time.
Deal with it, bitches.
Harrison
My creepy Unabomber sister put herself in a coma on Easter Sunday. She probably complained herself to sleep.
It wasn’t a total loss.
I thanked her for canceling church. But then my parents put me on hospital duty. Stay with your sister and talk to her they said. She didn’t like talking to me when she was awake. What was I gonna talk about? How much I loved John Cale’s first two solo albums?
But I did as I was told because allowance and soon a car and fuck you, Ohio.
The nurses were nice enough. They gave me green jello and bread rolls soaked in what tasted like industrial butter. And they didn’t care that I played my music. One of them said it was sweet to play my sister’s favorite music.
She hated my music. To tell the truth.
So I played it all day.
When I was about to crank up the Velvet’s first album, Nora the plastic princess, super-bitch, eater of baby men came by the hospital to see Ginny. I was basically invisible to her, but she was still polite in that here’s a dollar, you homeless turd, crawl back in your hole, kind of way.
“Hello, Harrison,” she said as she pulled a plastic chair up to Ginny’s bed.
“Nora.”
She took Ginny’s hand. “How is she doing?”
“She’s resting.”
“Funny.”
“Okay, those machines making the noises say she’s still alive. How’s that?”
“Asshole.”
“Whatever, bitch…”
I pressed play and the droning dirge of Venus In Furs filled the room. Nora looked at me like Hitler was growing out of my chest, like I was eating baby kittens like potato chips, like I was pissing in a hotel ice machine. I loved it.
“I know it’s not your girlfriend Justin Bieber, but still, Nora, it’s got a lovely melody…”
