Day 4: "I am pleased to notify you..."

A few days ago, Sunday at 9:00 A.M. to be exact (I'm keeping record), I received an email from none other than the official chairman of the Patriot's Pen essay competition I submitted an essay to earlier this past month. When I got the email, I was nervous, worried, and mostly afraid about what it would say, not really being sure of much at the moment. I knew my essay had been selected to compete in the Department level of the competition, but I really had no clue what had gone on exactly.

I started reading the introduction of the email that shows when it's in the inbox, when I read: "Camila, I am please to notify you that..." and the rest trailed off. At that second my heart skipped a beat and I just about died on the inside. I knew it had to be good news because why would you send someone an email starting with "pleased to notify," when all you really wanted to do was tell the poor person that their essay wasn't chosen and that therefore, was not a very good essay? I opened the email and read the whole thing through and soon discovered exactly what this was about. Apparently, my essay had been sent to Puerto Rico to compete on the Department level and it won! I was so exited when I read this that I was about to drop dead when I read the rest of the sentence. Since it won on the department level, it's being sent to compete in the National level! I just had to scream at that second, and I did. It was so exciting to see how far my essay had gone.

I am just so proud of how far I've gotten! I know that the chances of winning are slight but I just feel so blessed and honored that I could make it this far.

Day 4: Flooded

It was a normal Sunday night; Dad was watching the football game, Mom was watching a movie in the master bedroom, and Miranda and I were playing a game in the computer room. Miranda left the room for a second to go to the kitchen to get some water and my mom was apparently on her way back from the kitchen, when they both stopped in the middle of the hallway and gasped. I heard some splashing so I sort of figured that someone had spilled a glass of water on the floor, but as I waled out of the room to see what was going on, I realized that there was a puddle that extended all through the hallway, into the room Miranda and I share, and started to move into the room we had been in. Immediately, Mom called for Dad to check it out.

As soon as he got to the lake that was our hallway, he started grabbing towels to start absorbing the water. He then checked where the water was coming from, and it was coming from the bathroom, but with our luck, it wasn't coming from the faucet. It was literally overflowing from the toilet. Disgusting, right? Luckily, the water was just clean water that was supposed to replace the flushed water in the bowl but to be honest, it smelled really putrid, but it's not like there was waste floating around the room, otherwise I probably would be in like a hotel room while my parents try to sanitize the house with bleach and chemicals of that sort.

The only way we could stop the leak was to turn the water in the bathroom completely off. That's when we started ti check out what had been unlucky enough to be on the floor during the flooding. As we assessed our room, Miranda found that most of the stuff on the floor was hers. Her poor stuffed monkey, Tom, ironically manufactured out of recycled towels, was the first victim. Half engulfed by the questionable water, the poor guy would have to be bleached and washed multiple times. Later Miranda discovered that all the things she had hidden under her bed where now soaked with toilet water and were no longer fit to have in a living environment.

Though Miranda was devastated by the loss of her precious Tom, and Dad was really angry that we would have to get all the water out ourselves, I couldn't help but laugh harder than I have since winter break started. This was no doubt the funniest, grossest, and most exciting thing that had happened to me in long, long time. Miranda must have had the same realization soon after because she started laughing so hard she almost peed right on the spot.

So anyways, we spent a good two hours wringing out towels, and sweeping water out of the house. It was gross, yet fun at the same time. Last night we didn't sleep in our room though, we slept on the sofa-bed instead, considering our room was pretty nasty. So today we broke out the Clorox bleach, the Lysol disinfecting spray, and the multi-surface Windex to clean up the affected areas, which was followed by a delightful trip to the mall.

Day 2: Teeth Whitening

For the longest time, I've been dying to get my teeth whitened. I've begged, pleaded, beseeched my parents, but never have the succumbed so my tantrums and fits. However, when I got my braces of, a little over a month ago, my mom finally agreed to letting me get my teeth whitened. I thought it would be so much easier than it actually turned out to be though. So when we get there, the assistants put this sort of plastic brace all in my mouth to prevent my lips from touching my teeth during the procedure. I look pretty retarded in it too like I have some sort of disorder that doesn't allow me to close my mouth or speak like any normal person.The dentist puts this foamy sort of stuff on my gum line so that the bleach chemical they're about to put on my teeth doesn't damage the gums by accidentally burning it with acid. Sounds fun, right?



So after that they put on the bleaching agent and make me put on these orange safety goggles as to shield my eyes from the powerful laser light they are about to point directly onto my teeth in order to activate the chemical that'll bleach my teeth. So they make you sit there for 20 minutes at a time not allowed to move or anything and it is really, really uncomfortable. Finally, when you're actually done, your teeth hurt like crazy because after being under the laser for so long your teeth get really sensitive. It's so worth it though...my smile looks great!

Day 1 of Winter Break

Not much has been really going on over here. I slept until about noon, so I already missed like half of the entire day. Doesn't really matter though, I'm not planning on doing anything important today anyways. After being up for a while I decided to eat some carrot bread for "breakfast" though I was only a couple hours away from lunch. That's when Miranda and I started fighting like we do every morning. So I'm getting out the carrot bread as Miranda dives for the banana bread with chocolate chips, this was only annoying because Miranda already ate all the Christmas cookies that came in the little baked goods basket the Sherry's give us every year. Mr. Sherry makes the best cookies ever, and I mean ever, but this year I didn't get any, courtesy of Miranda. I ate all the almonds though, so I guess we're sort of even.

Anyways, the banana bread is the best bread in the whole thing, not saying that I don't like the carrot bread because it's pretty awesome too, but I already knew that Miranda would finish the entire loaf before lunch in a couple hours. So I may have added a couple insults so that she would leave the kitchen and lock herself in another room so that I could hide the bread for when she came back, but the glitch it, she's a bit sensitive to my comments, so goes ahead and calls Mom about how I'm being mean to her and whatever. Of course, now I have to talk to her about how she doesn't like name calling and that I need to leave Miranda alone. I don't really mind though because I've already won and Miranda isn't allowed to have more than two pieces.

So after that whole ordeal I've just been in my room reading my book: Crunch Time, by Mariah Fredricks, who wrote a New York Times bestseller, The True Meaning of Cleavage, which despite it's provocative title and promiscuous cover, is a book about some really good friends apparently. I'm reading the other book though, Crunch Time, which is about 5 high school student who are taking the SAT's and one cheats so they have to find out who it was. I really like the book and I'm more than half way done, so hopefully I'll be done with it tomorrow.

Sally Hayes Monologue

I’m Sally Hayes, and I met Holden a few years ago. Our mothers are members at the same Fifth Avenue Club and when they met each other and became pretty good friends and ever since then, I’ve known Holden.

Actually, I went out to the theater just a couple nights ago. He called me up one day, it had been a while since I heard from him, since he goes to Pencey and I go to Woodruff. Last I heard, he was at Pencey, but he’s gotten kicked out of several schools, so I wasn’t so sure, but that’s typical Holden.

Anyways, he called me and invited me to go to this matinee. I could’ve gone out with any of these…5…no 6, other guys who are just grand. I felt kind of bad for him and I hadn’t seen him in a while so I thought I would go, I mean he’s not a bad guy so I figured why not?. He told me specifically to show up at 2:00 but I was about ten minutes late, I’m always running a bit late, he didn’t seem to really mind though, he was just sitting in the lobby, waiting for me.

I was only late because I was putting on my makeup and deciding what I should wear. In the end I just threw on a black coat and put on a beret outfit. It wasn’t a truly exceptional outfit, not one of the nicer ones, but still he made this face at me when I was coming down the stairs to greet him, like he was gonna start drooling or something; not that people don’t usually stare at me (it happens quite often).

Anyhow, He told me he had just bought two tickets to a play with the Lunts in them, and I just adore the Lunts. We went into the play and every time I glanced at him he looked either totally lost in thought or watching with a disgusted look on his face. I think he was even relieved when the play ended. That made me feel like he was really not enjoying the date, which has never really happened to me, so that was weird. And also, how could he not like the Lunts? They’re only the best actors of the century! I’ve been to about a thousand of their productions with my parents.

So when we exited the theater I saw this guy, George, he goes to Andover. We got talking for a while and Holden got really annoyed so I figured we’d better go. We went ice skating after that, only for a short while though, I didn’t think Holden was enjoying it much, and then Holden took me for a drink; that’s when things got pretty awkward. We were just chatting, the usual small-talk, like about school and things like that, when all of the sudden he got really worked up about how he hated New York, he said that I was the only reason he was here. Then he mentioned that he wanted to leave, that he would borrow a car take all him money and drive north. He asked me to come with him too, that we could go live in Vermont and that we could live on the money he had and when the money ran out he would get a job and that in the future we could get married, or something. I tried my best to be polite about turning down his offer because really I was quite worried about him and his plans, I mean, we are both practically still children. I can’t even imagine leaving home, and to a place as rural as Vermont? That’s insane!

He was making me feel really uncomfortable about not wanting to go though, I don’t think he even tried to see from my perspective, I wasn’t unhappy about living in New York like he was. He kept yelling about how we should, and asking me why I wouldn’t go. I kept asking him to quiet down and to be quiet, but he continued to scream at me. I got freaked out after that, he went pretty insane. After a while of being screamed at he left me there all alone and I decided to get a cab home, I was pretty upset too, he had been really mean. I really just wanted to forget this ever happened, and go home.

Wondering & Worrying

It was late at night; a cold, snowy night. That’s when I first saw him. On my way home from the late shift I noticed him walking down a small avenue, staggering around in the snow, clad with only a thin jacket in parka-worthy weather. He seemed to be in quite some pain, considering the grimace on his face and the chattering of his teeth.

I approached him gingerly to offer help; he seemed to be ill or dehydrated or something judging by the unruly zigzag motion he was walking in. When I reached him I attempted to show only a calm and reassuring disposition so that he wouldn’t fear the anonymous citizen (me) coming to aid him.

I offered him my help in a clear and concise way, but he simply rebuffed it spontaneously. What I mean is, I didn’t really expect him to refuse, especially in him his condition. Actually he seemed rankled by the offer, so I quickly surmised that he was an irascible person and that I would have to be patient to provide any assistance to him.

Now that I was closer to him, I was able to smell the alcohol on his breath that pervaded the air around him. I conjectured that he was only about 17 years old, but still, he was very drunk. He was in no condition to be wandering around, especially not in the snow. I entreated him to let me help him, but this time, he didn’t even answer me; instead, he looked lost in profound thought and then suddenly, in a tremulous voice, called out to someone named Allie, and began so interminable conversation with him.

From what he said I could tell he was pretty avid about Allie. He said that Allie was an affable boy; one to be emulated and admired. I endeavored to understand him, though I really couldn’t find a way to without the full story about Allie. After a while of babbling, his voice became firm and told Allie that it was imperative that he go get his bike and meet him in front of Bobby Fallon’s house. Soon, he snapped out of the mysterious trance and noticed the puzzled look on my face; that’s when he started explaining about Allie.

He told me about how Allie was his younger brother and about the painful battle with cancer that he encountered. He described to me how excruciatingly painful it was to lose him, and furthermore, how turbulent the path to moving on felt. He described Allie’s baseball mitt and the anthology of poems written on it in green pen. Then he told me about the loss of Allie had instilled anxiety in his mother, and depression in him. When he finished his story, he was left despondent, as though retelling the story had evoked memories of the gruesome death that haunted him and continued to reverberate in his mind.

I tried my best to comfort him, but he pulled away and stared at me like there was something wrong with me. At this point I decided to make a final attempt to help him, but I knew it would take a conscientious effort and a lot of prudency to convince him that it was okay to ask for help if he needed it.

After many explanations, offers, and begging, he still would not succumb to my pleading. I figured that the only thing I could do to provide him safety was through giving him some company, though I felt impelled to do so much more to help him.

I began to wonder though, what if these drunken wanderings were a recurring issue? What exactly was the current situation (that caused him to harm himself) that he couldn’t extricate himself from? Why didn’t he listen to my sage advice?
When the sun rose, the boy was long-gone, but I stayed, wondering, and worrying.