Hello, I Dislike You Intensely. Have a Nice Day.

(I've given up on the salutation. It's very annoying.)

"Come on, sway a little!" cries the choral director at a line of apathetic kids. "Hands on each other's shoulders and sway! Put some spirit into it!" The kids on stage reluctantly raise their arms, placing them gingerly on their companions' shoulders, and work out a half-hearted, barely coordinated sway. Meanwhile, they drone out choruses of hope and avocadoes.

Ah, that good ol' musical-theater spirit.

Remind me again why I got myself into this.

Oh, yeah. I didn't. It was all Alex. Again.

Okay, obviously I did get out of that tree. Fortunately for me, I only had to stay glued to my flimsy little branch for about half an hour before nature called for the gatekeeper and the gatekeeper called for another monitor to stand in for her. I made, if I do say so myself, a daring escape from my arboreal prison to the parking lot in the downtime provided by the changing of the guard. And perfect timing too - the second I made it back to the main building, the bell rang for 2nd period.

Dance was very Dance-like. Tech was very Tech-like. I believe I have succeeded in Operation Give Assigned Computer Virus Via Seedy Chat Room, because when I sat down at my computer he said, "Oh, that one's getting repaired. Use Tyler's computer, he's not here today." Or maybe it was just wishful thinking.

I saw Alex again in Geometry; I forgot he was in that class. We were doing partner work today with the person who sat behind us since there was an uneven number of rows, and guess who sits behind me? Yeah, exactly. So we were scooting our desks together, and the first thing he says to me is, "I didn't see you in English."

I said, "I know, huh. I didn't see me either. Actually, I ditched."

He said, "Very amusing."

Just as he was finishing this statement, I realized what I'd just admitted to him. Why did I tell him that?

Still reeling somewhat from what I'd let slip, I said half-heartedly, "It is amusing," and got to work on a page of proofs.

It was the last period of the day, so when the bell finally rang, I started stuffing my papers into my backpack, fully intent on getting out of there. Alex, who had been relatively quiet during the period, said to me then, "You really ditched, didn't you?"

I debated on whether or not to confirm it - if I said yes, I would be giving him something, letting him in on the fact that yes, Dani wasn't always the stellar student everyone made her out to be. Allowing him something to hold on me. If I said no and made some random excuse up, it would be the end of it. And yet, I strangely wanted to say yes. I wanted for him to have something of me, something widely unknown. Something small and glowing with a sharp scent, exchanged between hands in the back row of the auditorium while everyone else was watching the show.

So I said, "Why not? I was sick of being the model student. It gets so old."

"I knew it," he said. "Somehow, I just knew it."

"Have a nice day, Alex," I said, leaving. He followed me. I exited the building; he was still following me.

"Don't you usually go the other way?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Then why are you still following me?"

"I was thinking about - asking you something?"

"What?"

He looked at me sort of weird, then said, "Never mind."

I walked away, and he stayed where he was. Soon, however, I heard footsteps behind me again. Agitated, I turned around. "What is it now?"

"Actually, Dani - " he started, then stopped. I suddenly did not want to hear what he had to say at all. I just had this feeling about it, it wasn't something I would be able to live with. The auditorium was off to my left, its door propped open, embellished with such signs as "Cheerleading Sign-Ups", "Football Sign-Ups", and "Play Sign-Ups".

"Oh! Play sign-ups!" I said suddenly, perhaps a bit too theatrically. "I completely forgot about those!"

"You're going to be in the play?" Alex asked.

"'Course I am," I replied nonchalantly. I went into the lobby of the auditorium. It was packed with people. At one end of the hall was a wide table with a garish orange table skirt (one of the school colors, the other was white), from which hung a banner advertising football sign-ups. At the other end of the hall was a similar table adorned in a similar manner, except for cheerleading. There was no sign of the play sign-up table. My head swung left to right, dumbfounded, before I noticed a third table in the far corner. It was an old scratched-up, pen-graffiti-ed library table, from the edge of which hung a sheet of lined paper. The lined paper, turned out, featured the words 'Play Sign-Up' scribbled in pencil. I went up to the table. Behind it sat a zitty kid with his nose buried in a manga.

"How do I sign up for the play?" I asked. He pushed a clipboard toward me. "Sign your name and stuff here. And it's a musical, not a play." He reached into a shoebox by his feet and pulled out a copy of a script. "This is the script. Rehearsals have already started on the stage."

"So, wait," I said. "I don't...audition?" The kid looked at me like I was trying to screw him over.

"Audition?" he said incredulously. "No one auditions for the musical. We're lucky if we even have people wanting to be in it."

"Oh," I said. "It was different where I came from." I filled out the sheet with my name, grade, phone number, e-mail, and any past experience I'd had. I took the script, and went through the doors down into the auditorium. It was here I'd realized Alex wasn't following me anymore. As a matter of fact, I'd had no idea when he'd stopped following me. Probably a long time ago. And I'd gotten myself stuck in a play now. A musical, I reminded myself.

Down on the stage, people were already singing a song. They were actually pretty decent singers, and the song itself was actually pretty catchy. I went up the stairs leading backstage and came through onto the stage. I wasn't sure what to do, so I just sort of stood there in the wings; the choral director looked pretty into what she was doing. When the song ended, and she started critiqueing the rehearsal, one of the girls onstage said, "Hey, I think she wants something" and pointed to me. Eight pairs of eyes simultaneously turned to me and I stuttered, "Um, yeah, I guess I want to, uh, join the play. Musical."

"Marvelous!" the choral director trilled, seeming not to see my awkwardness and social ineptitude at all. "Well, you signed up a bit late, but that's alright. You can just go backstage and get yourself acquainted with the script. We'll finish rehearsing this song and a few more, and then the drama director will come in, and you can join everyone then, okay?" Before I could open my mouth to reply, she interjected a resounding cry of 'Marvelous!' again.

"Oh, yes, and I'm Ms. Greenwood," she said. "These are Caddelyn, Will, Sebastian, Maynard, Joey, Octavian, and Westley." She swept her arm over the line of kids on the stage. "And you are?"

"Er," I said, taking a minute to remember my name. "Dani."

The kids on stage chorused, "Hi, Dani."

"Hi," I said back. My voice cracked. "I'm sorry," I muttered. "I've the voice of a pansy."

Ms. Greenwood laughed; the kids on stage laughed or smiled. "Delightful!" the choral director cried. "Welcome to the family, Dani!"

I couldn't hold back my smile.

So I'm been reading the script, and it's actually pretty strange. The play (musical) was written by a nephew of the guy who founded the school, and he had some type of mental disorder/autistic savant thing going where he didn't know to feed himself but could write songs from nowhere in literally minutes. However, he would usually destroy his work immediately after finishing it. His mother was aware of his ability and was able to snatch a few songs here and there throughout the years to compile it into a collection. Reading over the songs, she realized it formed a sort of story, and inserted some scenes of dialogue to make it more coherent. And lo and behold, Avocados in the Garden of Eden, or, How e.e. cummings Ruined My Life was born.

From what I've read of it, it's about a girl named Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town who falls in love with a guy named Where the Sidewalk Ends. A third guy named A Narrow Fellow in the Grass tries to split them apart because he wants the girl to himself, except somehow they end up time-traveling back to the garden of Eden. And there are lots of avocadoes involved. And random people bursting in throwing pies. And guys dressed up as girls. And girls dressed up as guys dressed up as girls.

And then Narrow Fellow traps Anyone in the Real World (Gasp!), where everyone's name is Bob or Anne. And he traps Sidewalk in a virtual world located inside the pit of an avocado the size of the sun. Except Sidewalk opens a door in the virtual world one day which is a link to the Real World (Gasp!). Narrow Fellow goes into the real world to claim Anyone, but Sidewalk finds the way back into the virtual world with her, burning down the door behind him. Anyone and Sidewalk break through the avocado pit by drinking magical potions, and the avocado itself disintegrates into magical dust that falls on everything, revealing that it was in the Garden of Eden after all. They get married and are deemed a single entity - Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town Knows Where the Sidewalk Ends. And so the story ends.

Ah, never a dull moment in this life. Really, now.