Status: Active. (Based on the novel by Laurie Halse Anderson.)
Twisted
Thirty-One
After school, I took the city bus downtown to the county courthouse to meet with Mr. Benson, my probation officer. He was a big guy, ex-Marine plus sixty pounds, gray in his buzz cut, thick glasses, and a mile that reminded me of a hungry possum.
The waiting room was the size and temperature of a meat locker and was lit by blinding fluorescent lights. There was a bored secretary at one end and a coffeepot that looked like it had last been used in the late 1980’s. Old copies of Highlights magazine and Good Housekeeping were piled on a metal table in the corner.
I sat.
How did I end up with hardcore stuff like a judge, trial, and probation officer? Look up the laws about property damage.
---
It’s a good thing they never found out what I really wanted to do. Spray-painting the school was Plan B.
The Foul Deed: Plan A involved a bomb, an entertaining smoke bomb that would have forced them to close school on a beautiful spring day. It seemed like a surefire way to become a hero.
Then I found myself dreaming about a real bomb. About blowing up the building. But don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t going to hurt anybody. I planned on using a timer so that at three o’clock in the morning the entire building would explode into small, standardized pieces.
I just wanted to make a statement.
After a week of planning, I started having nightmares about explosions and timers that went bad. All that broken glass was bound to hurt someone. The fire might spread from treetop to treetop until it hit the neighborhoods around the school, then the stores on Grand Boulevard, and then the Denver Mall would go up in flames and the police would corner me and there’d be a tense standoff with their weapons drawn, and as I raised my hands over my head, one of them would think I was reaching for a weapon, and then they’d blast away.
I’d be the next dead girl on CNN for sure.
By deciding to spray-paint a few harmless slogans, I actually saved hundreds of lives and countless millions in damages. But when they arrested me, I realized that people might not understand if I explained that part. I never told anyone. I thought about it from time to time, but I never told.
---
The secretary looked up from her nails when Mr. Benson’s door opened. A woman my mom’s age hurried out.
I followed Mr. Benson inside and took my chair. He shuffled papers on his desk and smiled his hundreds of big teeth at me. He told me that he’d had a great report from Mr. Pirelli and another nice one from Joe, the head custodian at school.
I nodded.
“How are your classes going?”
“Great,” I said.
“How’s your dad?”
“Why, did he call you?”
“No, it’s just that people like your father want to send their kids to summer camp, not to a probation officer. I wanted to make sure things were okay.”
“He’s fine,” I said. “He just works a lot.”
“Well, give him my best.” He scribbled something on a piece of paper. “That’s that. Work hard at school, keep your nose clean, and come back in a month.”
---
Again with the clean-nose thing. Authority figures had a pathological fear of boogers, that’s how I saw it.
---
The waiting room was the size and temperature of a meat locker and was lit by blinding fluorescent lights. There was a bored secretary at one end and a coffeepot that looked like it had last been used in the late 1980’s. Old copies of Highlights magazine and Good Housekeeping were piled on a metal table in the corner.
I sat.
How did I end up with hardcore stuff like a judge, trial, and probation officer? Look up the laws about property damage.
---
It’s a good thing they never found out what I really wanted to do. Spray-painting the school was Plan B.
The Foul Deed: Plan A involved a bomb, an entertaining smoke bomb that would have forced them to close school on a beautiful spring day. It seemed like a surefire way to become a hero.
Then I found myself dreaming about a real bomb. About blowing up the building. But don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t going to hurt anybody. I planned on using a timer so that at three o’clock in the morning the entire building would explode into small, standardized pieces.
I just wanted to make a statement.
After a week of planning, I started having nightmares about explosions and timers that went bad. All that broken glass was bound to hurt someone. The fire might spread from treetop to treetop until it hit the neighborhoods around the school, then the stores on Grand Boulevard, and then the Denver Mall would go up in flames and the police would corner me and there’d be a tense standoff with their weapons drawn, and as I raised my hands over my head, one of them would think I was reaching for a weapon, and then they’d blast away.
I’d be the next dead girl on CNN for sure.
By deciding to spray-paint a few harmless slogans, I actually saved hundreds of lives and countless millions in damages. But when they arrested me, I realized that people might not understand if I explained that part. I never told anyone. I thought about it from time to time, but I never told.
---
The secretary looked up from her nails when Mr. Benson’s door opened. A woman my mom’s age hurried out.
I followed Mr. Benson inside and took my chair. He shuffled papers on his desk and smiled his hundreds of big teeth at me. He told me that he’d had a great report from Mr. Pirelli and another nice one from Joe, the head custodian at school.
I nodded.
“How are your classes going?”
“Great,” I said.
“How’s your dad?”
“Why, did he call you?”
“No, it’s just that people like your father want to send their kids to summer camp, not to a probation officer. I wanted to make sure things were okay.”
“He’s fine,” I said. “He just works a lot.”
“Well, give him my best.” He scribbled something on a piece of paper. “That’s that. Work hard at school, keep your nose clean, and come back in a month.”
---
Again with the clean-nose thing. Authority figures had a pathological fear of boogers, that’s how I saw it.
---
♠ ♠ ♠
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