Whipped from tithing to tithing

Who would have thought the downtown would have so much trash in it. We've spent the past two days after school cleaning up the park across from the city hall, then cleaning up Zenobia's and Zapata's cigarette butts. The principal didn't tell us that we'd have hecklers going by us in scooters or with walkers. "Take that, you filthy teenagers!" was the gist of what most of them said, although one old man thought we were a band of Sicilian furies ("Preserve me, oh Lord," was what he said while he crossed himself. Zenia liked him best). Zapata kept taking time outs, claiming that John Fluevogs just weren't made for manual labour.
"I admire you for sticking with the classic, if somewhat dated, Doc Martens look, Zandra," Zapata said. Zahava and Zainab, who were in full candy-goth gear, were ready to drop, too, after a half hour. On day one, Duncan came by with coffee for all of us. He wore his kilt, and volunteered to help.
"God no, not in that outfit. What did you kill to make it smell like that," Zenia said to him. Duncan ignored her and helped me clean up behind the statue of Queen Victoria near the war memorial.
Pretty much the same thing happened today: we cleaned, we were called unspeakable teenagers. Jeremy came by while Zenobia was on a smoke break. He claimed Dirne was around somewhere in disguise, but at least he helped clean up trash. I think he found Dirne, since he wandered off at one point. A suspiciously large amount of the litter consisted of flyers for Arne's shows at the Valhalla. Duncan came by when we were finishing up, and walked me home. "You're lucky," he said, "the principal's got the dungeons and dragons guys all cleaning up the town dump."