Insert Foot

Chapter One

The shock breaks my disease

And I can breathe

--Falls On Me, Fuel

Adrian’s POV

I have to stop drawing demented pixies in my spare time. My mom found my sketchbook open to a rather suspect drawing and lately she’s been eyeing me suspiciously. Like I’m going to go after her with a pickaxe.

As if. Not that lately it hasn’t crossed my mind (she’s obviously going through “the change”), but I’m not one to often follow my urges. My friends call me “repressed” but I would term myself “smart”. “Smart” people are the ones who learn how to talk their way out of a gunfight without whipping out their own piece and getting riddled with bullet holes (okay, so I just watched Pulp Fiction. Whatever, Jules rocks).

What I love about my demented pixies are the facial expressions. So far I’ve named them Perturbed, Agitated, Mildly Interested, and Disgusted. They are not happy demented pixies, I have to give my mom that.

I looked up from the notebook paper I was doodling practice sketches on as a sheet of paper landed on my desk in Honors English 11.

“Okay, class. New assignment. It’s a doozie but I think it’ll be pretty fun. I’m going to assign you partners…”

A groan from the class. Ms Hugh smiled as if she enjoyed our pain. If she puts me in a group with Tamika again, I may kill myself. If ever there was a ball-and-chain of English partners, it was Tamika. She spent the entire time we had had to work in class on our last project to stick her head in her backpack and talk on her cell phone. Yeah, Tamika, very inconspicuous. I’m sure the teacher has no idea why you suddenly shout a muffled “Oh NO he DIDn’t” followed me a “nu-UH” and a “Hell naw! I’ll give that n—r a piece of my mind. He needs to get his ass in gear. You see the way I deal with Tony? Girl, dat’s how you need to deal with Tyrese” and lastly “bitch, I will fuck you up”.

Ah Tamika. The girl of many moods and perhaps the proud owner of a personality complex.

Whatever.

“I’ll read your names once. I will not repeat them so listen up,” Ms Hugh said, clicking the projector off and leaning against it as she inspected her clipboard through her bifocals. I’ve got to admit, those are some hot glasses. I wish my mom would let me trade in my black-rimmed ones for something leopard-print.

“Kimberly Oswald and Harold Helmut.”

I had to snicker as Kimberly turned around, her lip curled in horror as she trained her wide blue eyes on the hulking mess that is Harold Helmut. He was hunched down in his chair, his hairy legs propped up by the desk in front of him as he read a book that looked suspiciously like “Star Wars: Labyrinth of Evil”. Earlier that morning he had assured us that it was the latest novel.

He grinned dreamily as he waved at her. She spun around so quickly that she was a blur, looking straight down at her desk as her mouth opened and shut like a gaping fish with much to say and no larynx.

“Catherine Demry and Sierra Donovan.”

The friends nodded at each other in the way of thugs, which is funny because Cate had chosen today to wear her “Boys are smelly, throw rocks at them” t-shirt. They’d probably be building a fort out of pillows and taping up a sign excluding boys from enjoying the luxurious defensive structure.

“Adrian Masterson and Elliot Cole.”

Oh, damn.

I had stopped breathing, and I had a sudden urge to crumple up my pixie.

I ventured a glance to precisely where he sat, and, thankfully, there was not an expression of disgust equaling Kimberly’s. He simply nodded at me.

Alright, partner. Smokestack signal received, it seemed to say.

She went through the rest of the names and then smiled at us again. Her and her stupid leopard-print glasses and her stupid curly hair that looks like she ran through a river full of…speedy turtles and…what the hell am I saying? I don’t even know.

“This assignment has three parts. The first part has to do with AIM. I trust that everyone here has AIM?”

Everyone nodded. Of course. How the hell else would we talk? Like poor Tamika, mired in 2004 with her little flippy cell phone? I think not.

“Good. Every day, you are to have one AIM conversation with your partner and you will print them out and they will be part of your grade. One of you will start a story, then the other one will pick it up, and you will switch back and forth five times before completing it. Using proper grammar.”

Groan.

“For part two, you will probably have to meet up at the library once or twice for the next few weeks. I want you to use classic literature to form a ‘found’ poem.”

I really want to flick my eraser at her. I need chocolate.

“For part three, you will keep a diary of this project. Each partner is to have one, and you cannot share. I may collect them, I may not. This is to aid in your writing. Some of you need a lot of help. And guys, I know keeping a diary makes you gay, but just suck it up.”

Elliot snickered.

Oh God Elliot Cole!

Breathe.

3/8/05

04PunchMonkey (Elliot): Hello?

ILoveLamp87 (Me): Um, hey.

04PunchMonkey: Is this Adrian?

IloveLamp87: Um, yeah

Oh yeah, bloody brilliant, Adrian. “Um, sí? I am the one of whom you speak?” Is this a statement or a fucking question? I hate you, Adrian. Die.

04PunchMonkey: Great! So, hey! Great assignment, yeah? What am I supposed to be, a writer or something?

IloveLamp87: Lol, yeah I guess

LOL?? What the FLIP, Adrian? Say something intelligent. Flippin’ IDIOT.

04PunchMonkey: Alright, so, do you want to start the story or should I?

IloveLamp87: You can

04PunchMonkey: Once upon a time there was a man named Chuck who hailed from the land of Pan. He only spoke Panish but was soon going to visit the land of Rance. So, of course, he was going to have to learn how to speak Rench.

IloveLamp87: He spent the next few weeks conversing with garage tools by the names of five-eights, three-fourths and twelve-eighty-thirds before realizing that twelve-eighty-thirds was really an irrational fraction masquerading as a wrench and that the ‘Rench’ of the land of ‘Rance’ was not spelled with a ‘w’. He felt quite silly after that, and bought himself a ten-gallon hat to make himself feel better. The hat company mixed up orders and he received a large orange sombrero instead.

What the hell did I just write?

04PunchMonkey: …Unfortunately, he left the sombrero sitting out and it was subsequently inhabited by a family of lemmings that showed no signs of ill-effects despite being scientifically proven to be extinct. At any rate, soon they really were extinct because they tried to fly the sombrero around the world in eighty days and ended up falling to their deaths somewhere off the shore of Nantucket.

IloveLamp87: Chuck missed his sombrero, but he also missed the peanuts that the lemmings had stolen for in-flight snacks. Therefore, he decided to not journey to the land of Rance and instead go to South Africa, where he had heard peanuts grew from a book by a lady who won a Nobel Prize for literature for writing something a retarded giraffe could have scribbled with its cloven hoof.

At least he’s as weird as I am.

04PunchMonkey: But because he had had difficulty with the ‘stream of consciousness’ method of writing, he ended up somewhere near the Anadian border, a truly unfortunate place to be. He eventually found himself beaten half to death by Dudley Do-Right who only spoke Rench and horribly mangled Merrcan words like “aboot”, and he was driven mad by the clean air and the implausability of such a long border actually being unguarded without an attempted takeover by the Merrcans, who could have used it for nuclear tests.

IloveLamp87: He escaped to Merrca and got work as monument-cleaner at Mt. Rushmore. And so now whenever he is asked, he can proudly say that he is “A Merrcan”.

04PunchMonkey: I see that you saw where I was going with that, ‘ey Addy.

IloveLamp87: Same time tomorrow? (and don’t call me Addy)

04PunchMonkey: Can’t wait (well, beautiful, what do you want me to call you?)

IloveLamp87: Empress?

04PunchMonkey: To here is to obey, gorgeous. You can “press” my “em” any day.

“IloveLamp87” signed off at 7:41:17 PM

March 8th, 2005

7: 48 PM

Oh God! Elliot Cole just called me beautiful!

On the project front, we made a ridiculous story and I think sombreros were mentioned.

Okay, my hands are shaking. I gotta go eat something. Why don’t we keep chocolate in this house anymore??

7: 57 PM

Okay, now I feel really sick. Not much of an improvement, but it will do for now. So, I’ve had the hugest crush on Elliot since we entered 9th grade and I was the little bug-eyed art-freak with a penchant for throwing erasers at people to make myself feel better.

8:01 PM

Sombreros. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

8:07 PM

Oh God, mom thinks something’s wrong with me.

Note to self: When writing HAHAHAHAHA do not sound it out at a high volume level.

Maybe something is wrong with me.

If this were on a computer, I would delete the word ‘maybe’. And perhaps italicize the ‘is’. For stylistic purposes. And to emphasize my point.

8:19 PM

I’ve been thinking about it, and I think my favorite letter is ‘z’.

8:30 PM

I was talking to C.J. online and she says her favorite letter is ‘o’.

8:31 PM

…C.J.’s such a moron.

8:33 PM

Usually I would tell her that straight up instead of skulking around the pages of a spiral-bound notebook that says “Diary” in silver sharpie on the cover, and making cutting observations, but she said she’s going to bring in brownies tomorrow, and she gets in a snit when I point out her shortcomings.

8:35 PM

Like the fact that people don’t like to listen to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” sung in monotone.

Except she said she hadn’t been singing monotone.

9:12 PM

But no one can be that tone deaf.

9: 30 PM

That fucking silver sharpie got all over my hands.

9:31 PM

Who write in silver sharpie, anyway? Fool midgets (coughcough) and English teachers, that’s who.