There are some assignments that should probably be forgotten about forever.

“These letters were addressed to… urm….” Our principal, Mr. Ratburn, just like the guy from Arthur, stands in front of us and tries to unwrap the bundle of letters from Japan that were sent five years ago, only to have been received last week. “Um… well, I’m assuming just about everybody in here who was in Ms. Kaiser’s seventh grade Japanese class.”

The biggest regret of my junior high years.

“So…,” he finally pops the rubber band and reads the names off, landing on mine, “Rainie Kipling.” When I stand up to get my things, I can’t help but feel like there are eyes on my back, judging the hell out of me. One word has come to personify my existence: slut.

Or, as it’s sometimes pronounced, “Suh-lutt.”

“Suh-lutt,” someone hisses when I stand up. See?

I get my letter from Yoko Something-Or-Other, I’ve forgotten by now, and sit down behind my only friend left, Jackie Menopausal. That’s not her last name, but it fits for about four days of the month.

“Okay,” Mr. Ratburn says once he’s done, “I’ll just take these on to the next room.” Our teacher gets back up and tries to start teaching again while Mr. Ratburn heads to find the other letter recipients that weren’t in this class. Rather than listen to Ms. Levine, though, I stare at the back of Jackie’s head, mind totally blank, with my fingers running over the letter lazily.

Dear Rainie,

That sounds exciting. What’s his name? I hope he’s nice, like you are. I like a boy, too. His name is –

“Heads up!”

I look up just in time for the football to peg me, two centimeters from my eye.

“You retard!”

I pick up a rock and throw it as hard as I can at my neighbor, Alex, also known as the biggest nine-year old ever. He laughs and dodges the rock while Jackie rolls her eyes beside me.

“Nice try, Sunshine,” he jogs over to pick up the ball and mock us; example – he calls me Sunshine because he thinks I’m too “Rainy.”

“Shut up, Tiger.”

Any boy whose middle name is Tiger has no business poking fun at anybody else’s name.

“Rawr,” Alex growls and grabs his package like the oaf he is before going back to his friends, who are all parked in his garage, smoking and giggling, probably very high right now.

“How do you deal with him?” Jackie asks as we go up the walk to my house; next door, Alex’s friends are making catcalls.

“Easy. I ignore him.”

I shut the door behind her and we trudge upstairs.

Maybe if my dad hadn’t died six years ago, our house would be normal; maybe. That said, I highly doubt it. My mom is a fortune teller and my dad had been an exotic dancer. When Dad was around, our house was covered in satin pillows and lots of dark red. Nowadays it’s more or less the same, but stinks of ethnic perfumes and light fabrics have replaced any real curtains. My mother is a naturalist, obsessed with eating vegetarian food and not wearing bras; God knows Dad hated them. Her best friend is Alex’s mom, Bethany D’Agostino, an adult film actress, and Dad’s best friend used to be Duane D’Agostino, a retired actor in many adult films; now he works as a director.

Alex always brags about his dad’s old stage name, Double Dosin’ Duane, amongst others.

“Did you guys write letters to Japan?” I ask Jackie as we drop our things on my bedroom floor.

“Us? No. We wrote letters to kids in Germany.” Jackie pretends to gag before murmuring, “‘Hi, my name is Jackie Mitchstein, I have a large nose and a big butt.’”

“Did they write back?”

“No. My penpal wrote one of my other classmates because they didn’t like me, so Helen got two penpals and poor ol’ Jacqueline was stuck writing letters to the former school janitor, who retired because of his hemorrhoids and needed some form of social interaction.”

We laugh and start our homework, listening to Britney Spears on my brother’s old radio that he left behind before leaving with his boyfriend to New York.

While I’m making up answers for a Physics problem, I think about my extended family; some of my uncles are astrophysicists… if I’d been born into their families, then they’d help me with my homework. Instead I’m living here with my eccentric mother, and my father’s ashes, which are kept in a hot pink vase downstairs next to his favorite thong from when he was alive.

My older brother, Jeffery, moved out after high school to live with his boyfriend, also named Jeffery. Judging from the last call we got from them, they’re living in a tiny apartment and finding work together as stagehands on Broadway, assistants in art studios or salesmen at small boutiques. My brother told me that every day on his way to work, he’d see Edward Norton.

“Soooooooooo exciting,” he whined.

My younger sister, Melanie, is leaning in our mother’s direction. She’s vegetarian and a bit on the airy side. While Jeff and I take after our father – dark hair, big blue eyes and thin faces – Melanie looks like Mom. She’s the tallest in the family, has a natural tan, light brown hair and hazel eyes. She’s very thin and is approached by model scouts at least twice a month. We barely look alike; the only similarity that strangers notice is the fact that we’ve both got a mole under one eye. So does Jeff. Dad called it a Kipling thing.

When Jackie and I finish our homework, we change and go downstairs to eat and watch TV. Mom and Melanie are both eating spinach at the dinner table, but I don’t like their cooking and Jackie doesn’t either, so we make chicken nuggets and tater tots to enjoy in front of the television.

“So,” Jackie sets down the bowl of tater tots on the coffee table, beside the plate of nuggets while I get the remote, “are you gonna write Yoko back?”

“I dunno. Maybe. Probably not.”

“Just do it for fun.”

I turn to The Murphy Cawstow Show and start eating while Jackie starts to get excited about this.

“Make it creepy. Like, since you have her address and all, send really creepy pictures and, y’know, cryptic messages.” Jackie holds her hands up dramatically, “‘You will die in three hours.’ Shit like that.”

“That’d be weird.”

“Which is the point.”

I frown at her idea and throw back another chicken nugget while Jackie nods, grinning deviously.

“You would scare her shitless. And you can have a fake name – Suzy McFondles.”

She picks up a pen from the coffee table and runs upstairs to grab the letter from Japan, an envelope and a notebook. Jackie comes back panting but beaming.

“Here,” she opens the pen and writes clearly, “Dear Yoko.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes! C’mon, Rainie, just do it for fun. Look here… ‘I can see you sleeping.’ Anything to contribute?”

“Um… say that I’m hiding under her bed and have seen what she does at night. And say that I masturbate a lot, too.”

Giggling, Jackie writes that down while I concoct more inappropriate ideas. Our letter comes out sounding more like a threat from a sexual predator with a seriously demented imagination.

“You’re evil,” I murmur as Jackie puts our letter in the envelope, turning my attention back to the TV. On The Murphy Cawstow Show some lady is shouting at a man who secretly videotaped them having sex. Maybe I should take my ex on that show and scream at him for telling his friends that I was easy.

My ex boyfriend, simply referred to as Malcolm, had been with me for three years, which ought to count for something, right? Not in his book. I lost my virginity about one year ago, and we broke up six months later when, in his own words, things got ‘awkward.’ His idea of awkward was my idea of contentedness, though. He was entering his first year of college and, quite simply, there was so much pussy that I just wasn’t enough.

My retaliation was a bit overboard, though.

“What’s your address?” Jackie asks. I spit it out absentmindedly.

I scrawled, “Malcolm P. is a freshman and he fucks sixteen year olds and then dumps them” on about twelve bathroom stalls around his campus. I overheard in a conversation between Alex, who goes to the same school as Malcolm, and Melanie’s boyfriend that Malcolm had been all but gang raped because of this.

To get back at me, Malcolm let it slip that we’d had sex in the backseat of his car. My two-faced friends all immediately testified in favor of him, saying that I’d been ‘bragging’ about the experience when, in fact, I’d been complaining about it because I got a bruise from the cup holder.

If it hadn’t been for Melanie and her twenty-year old boyfriend, I would’ve called statutory rape on his ass.

Malcolm also used the word ‘horny’ a lot to describe me when, in fact, my libido isn’t really that high. Besides, sex with Malcolm was more of a chore.

I didn’t really retaliate, but my slip of the tongue involved the unimpressive length of his penis and his short performance time.

“Where are the stamps?” Jackie asks quickly.

“In the kitchen. The drawer by the microwave,” I add as Jackie runs away.

And so my reputation swirled down the drain. All of my old friends have ditched me, aside from Jackie. I used to be a solid girl with a solid boyfriend, but now girls think I’ve got no morals, and any males see me as tits and a piece of ass.

Talk about a fall from glory.

Jackie comes back, telling me that she’s left the letter on the counter and that I can pick it up in the morning.

Melanie comes in after dinner and leans against me lazily while The Murphy Cawstow Show ends.

“What’s happenin’, sis?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“Oh… well you guys are sending out some mail, right? Put that pile next to the fridge in the mailbox, too – we keep getting the neighbor’s mail.”

“D’Agostino?”

“No, no, down the street. The new mail man – he’s like retarded.”

“Oh.”

“Yep. Well then,” Melanie kisses me on the cheek and taps Jackie before heading upstairs.

Melanie Kipling – tall, tan, thin and oh so sweet.

Somewhere in there, our parents messed up because one of us was born normal.

“Let the sunshine in!”

I roll over, rubbing my eyes, while Jackie does the same beside me.

“What time is it, Mom?” I ask blindly.

“I’m not sure – you know I don’t use a clock.”

“Where’s Mel?”

“She left already.”

I stop rubbing my eyes and jerk up from bed, horrified. I run to the window and open it to see the sun is up, and Alex driving down his own driveway; it’s Thursday and, unless he’s in his dorm and not spending the night at home, he’s habitually tardy for his eight o’clock class, which means it’s probably thirty minutes till, and that means Jackie and I have fifteen minutes to be to our own class.

“Oh no,” I turn around and slap the desk to shake Jackie from her early-morning stupor, “we’re gonna be late!”

And in five minutes we get dressed quickly, running around to get our things and grab a fruit for breakfast off the dinner table. As we sprint from the front door, my mom floats behind and calls as I hit the sidewalk.

“What?” I ask breathlessly.

“The mail! The mail!” She turns back inside; Jackie sucks her teeth impatiently. Mom comes back outside in her flowing nightgown, and I meet her halfway there because she’s moving too slowly.

“Bye, Mom,” I say as she kisses me on the cheek swiftly. I run back to the sidewalk and toss the mail in our mailbox, throwing the flag up, before joining Jackie in a sprint to beat the bell.

“I can’t accept this.”

I am going to murder somebody.

“But – but, sir,” I drop my things and hold out my paper hopefully, “my alarm clock is broken and – and – sir, I need this grade.”

“Well maybe, Miss Rainie,” was he trying to make that rhyme? “You ought to get a new alarm clock.”

“Of course!” I say spinelessly.

“So fix it and bring that in to be graded,” he says sarcastically. Mr. Pensworth – worst person ever. “Until you can wake up on time, I don’t think your work will much matter, Rainie.”

“B-B-But I –” am at a loss for words. What a dickface.

Later I find Jackie outside of the library and go on a cussing tangent for about ten minutes, complaining about how Mr. Pensworth probably prostitutes himself in his spare time. Stuff like that – anything, really, to vent.

“I know, Rainie, I know.”

That’s all she can really say because now I’m just beating a dead horse.

The rest of the day goes by well enough, and aside from the fact that someone calls me a slut in the bathroom (my prompt response is a well-aimed slap) I can bid Jackie goodbye at the end of the day without wanting to scream in anger.

“Call me, alright?” she says, climbing into her mother’s car. I nod and wave as they drive away and I’m stuck walking home alone. I pick up a stick and run it along the fences and trees, totally bored.

“Oh, Raaaaaaaaaaaiiiinieeeeeee!”

Oh, no.

Like I said, Alex’s mom is a porn star. Bethany (her stage name: ‘Breast-Annie’) waves me over while she lies under a lamp on their front lawn. Only Bethany would lie out here, in December, wearing a bikini and snow boots. Alex’s car isn’t in the driveway, so I go to sit beside her.

“What’s going on, Sunshine?” She does this, too.

“Nothing much.”

Bethany turns to me and pushes up her shades to reveal her heavily lined green eyes. Bethany D’Agostino is about as sexual as a mom can get – her butt is massive and her rack is intimidating. She’s got these big, pouty lips and a very nice nose, with smart, green eyes. When we were younger, Melanie would often compare her flat chest to Bethany’s and cry; that’s probably the only area that Melanie’s lacking in and, physically, the only place I can beat her.

“I’ve got a horrible tan line, if you can’t tell,” Bethany says, untying her bikini and lying the straps down over her bosom. “And these, too,” she adds, noting the two thin lines that wrap around her neck. “Director said it makes me look athletic, but,” she raises her eyebrows at me, “we both know that’s bullshit, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Want to join in on my sun?”

“Um… not now.”

“That’s fair, that’s fair….” I lean back on the beach chair and shut my eyes, thinking about any attractive boy I can imagine because I miss having a boyfriend, which is a hard thing to admit. Sadly, none of the boys at my school are datable. My new reputation warrants unwanted sexual advances and nobody with a penis seems to notice that I have a personality – or a face for that matter.

“You know what Tiger told me this morning?” Bethany asks languidly, shades on.

“No,” I mumble, inwardly laughing at her son’s name, Alexander Tiger D’Agostino.

“That that boy – Martin?”

“Malcolm,” I say automatically.

“Yeah, him… Malcolm has a new girlfriend. Her name’s Gigi. Sounds like a ho to me.”

“Same here,” I say, feeling very empty inside.

“Tiger used to date a girl named Gigi – not the same one, his Gigi was named Regina – and I ain’t gonna lie, you can never be right with someone called Gigi.” I shut my eyes while she continues talking about this Gigi character. Malcolm’s got a new girlfriend? Stupid fuck. I hope she has herpes and AIDS and the clap and –

“… or – hey Big Daddy!”

I open my eyes and see Duane D’Agostino, director to the scandalous stars. He’s really tall and muscular, built like the trunk of a tree. Considering the pornography that I’ve seen, Duane definitely fits the image of a dominant male. His voice is low, and, if he wants, he can use the perfect tone, like a big, luscious fountain of milky chocolate.

Even though he inherited it, I’ve only heard Alex use that voice once, when I was thirteen and he mistakenly called our number to cake with his girlfriend.

“Yeah?” I asked lightly.

“Guess who’s got a hard-on.”

“Oh, God, Alex, ew!”

He ran to his window, half naked, and saw me sitting at my desk, utterly revolted.

“Stupid shit!” he shouted before hanging up.

Back then I thought he was cute, but I was also going crazy for any boy I could land my eyes on and Malcolm had been a mere fantasy.

Thank God people grow up.

“Hi, boo,” Duane comes to kiss his wife; this lasts for about fifteen seconds, which is a long time for a ‘Hi’ kiss, but normal with them, so I busy myself by sitting up. “Hello, Rainie,” Duane says to me next.

“Hi, Mr. D’Agostino,” I say, holding out my hand. We shake (tell me about firm hands – this guy must be breaking down brick walls at work) and he heads inside.

I bid Bethany goodbye and head over to my own house. Melanie and Mom aren’t home yet, so I run upstairs and drop my bags outside of my bathroom before stepping in and staring at my reflection in the mirror.

“Today,” I say to myself, “is Thursday. I am still alive. I still matter.”

And now, I, Rainie Kipling, have survived another day without cracking under the pressure of being emotionally and sexually unfulfilled. I may be seventeen, but God knows it bothers me.

I turn to the side to check if I’ve gotten fat and to make sure my boobs are still bigger than Melanie’s because she always buys padded bras and I can’t tell if they’re growing or if she’s just a very good dresser. My hair is still a bit messy, and the bad layering job I did in the bathroom about a month ago is still very visible (my hair caught fire on Halloween – it’s a long story – so instead of cutting it all off, I just cut the top layer, but it looks like crap); aside from that, I look fine.

I touch my only valuable assets one more time, just to be completely sure that Melanie hasn’t beaten me in that department.

What can I say? I’m into boobmen.