Dragging the harbour

It's rained all week, so much so you'd hardly know you were in Ontario in November. I've spent most of the past week in the library after school, and all the radiator there seems to do is spread the smell of wet wool uniforms. I'm seriously reconsidering my dislike of cotton.
Zenobia's been sick since Tuesday, so I've been doing most of the tutoring myself this week. Jeremy Jones came over with the pile of things his regular teachers are having him do to make up for his in-school suspension. For some reason, Zapata was tailing him.
Jeremy pulled some poetry out of the pile. "I missed this unit-- are we even supposed to be doing this in Grade 10?" He handed me a sheet.
"Keats, the Grecian urn...it's more like Grade 11 stuff, actually, with the frozen spots of time thing and all that." Jeremy looked more interested.
"Frozen time?"
"Yes, like the paintings on the urn. They're all frozen moments in time, never changing, which Keats both loves and kind of fears. These figures never age, but they never get to finish what the painter started. But then, they're only representations, and not real anyway." Jeremy took notes. "I don't think that's really what your teacher wants--she's not very bright and she hates poetry anyway."
"No, it's personal, sort of. So these pictures stop time, but not really? Like, if your public face stopped growing, you wouldn't actually stop?" This was getting a bit strange. Zapata's boyfriend turned up in the library at this time.
"Jeremy, you can't turn back time, even if you're Cher."
"So April's safe?"
"April? Safe from what?" I asked. Jeremy started to explain. "But doesn't that just mean that her crazy mother who puts that stuff on the internet just won't admit that April's getting older and less cute? Only her internet image won't change--she could move out and marry Arne, or do something equally insane, and that crap on that webpage wouldn't change. Hell, she could become prime minister and she's still be in that stupid pink hoodie for everyone to see."
"I've got to tell April," he said, and started to leave. Zapata came over and started talking about what sounded at first like plumbing supplies, but then sounded like she wanted to remind me that I hadn't seen Duncan much since Saturday since he had been studying math and panicking about the end of the month.

The widening gyre

I really, really hate Arne right now. He almost made me fail my G2 test. I was using the brakes harder than I should have, the examiner said.
I should have noticed something was wrong when Duncan and April and I got to the Three Kronen and the karaoke equipment was just sitting in a pile near the cigarette machine. I asked Ivar where Arne was and he said he didn't know, but to check upstairs first. I left Duncan and April to set up the karaoke and went up to Arne's apartment.
Wilco must have had a week off, since the place was a mess, and Arne was passed out on the floor with a copy of Canadian Magic Week and two empty bottles of Absolut raspberry vodka. "Damn," I said, and Arne blinked a bit then passed out even further. I ran downstairs to find Ivar, and ran into a microphone. Duncan had set up the system, and wanted me to sing something.
"I don't sing," I said.
"C'mon, hardly anyone's here, and I picked an easy one for you--'These Boots are Made for Walking.'" April was out in the bar setting the song catalogues, request notes, and pencils out.
"All right, just this once," I said, and Duncan typed in the song. Then his jaw dropped and he started muttering. Then I saw why-- "Muskrat Love? What the hell?" Then the music started, and the little words rolled across the screen, although the first line of the song wasn't "Duncan, I'm going to kill you." I tried to sing, but I can't, so I ended up doing what Zapata and Zenobia was always the best thing to do in situations like this: go hardcore. Finally the song ended, and I went over to the bar to hide. Ivar was there, though.
"Please don't sing anymore," he said. "That was the most violent cover of a Captain and Tennille song I've ever heard." I promised him I wouldn't sing anymore, and went back to the machine. Duncan was hosting and running the machine, so I took over the programming. I think I was starting to realize the test was the next day, and I began to get worried. I had to take it in my father's car, for one thing, since my mother and the Honda would be at the hospital. I hardly ever drove the Saab, and my father tended to panic every time I hit the brakes when he took me driving. Then I wondered why Duncan always invited April to things like this with me. Maybe he really wanted to be with her, rather than me, or even Eva. I started to think about that, and the next thing I knew I was setting up "Afternoon Delight" for them to do as a duet. Once I got that in the machine, I started to worry about the G2 test again. Why did Arne have to flake out over Canadian Magic Week this Friday? Why did I have to run a karaoke night full of drunks doing Swedish hockey songs? I think I must have said something aloud about all this, since Duncan looked at me in a panic. I ran out of the bar then. He followed me, but he went up to Arne's apartment. I was walking home, or in the direction of home.
I went by Jeremy Jones' house, and the light was on in the living room and I could see him sitting in an uncomfortable chair. I rang the bell and he answered. Jeremy's a good listener, and I asked him what he would do in the whole karaoke/bad song situation. He seemed pretty surprised that any karaoke music collection would have "Muskrat Love" in it. Then I checked on my cellphone to see if Duncan had posted anything about this on a blog. He had, and he even got the names wrong. I asked Jeremy if I could borrow his cellphone to text Duncan so he wouldn't know it was from my phone. There were simply too many bad animal references going around, and I told him so and that it was over. Then Jeremy got sort of confused since Zapata told him something about a test to be a male goth or something. He looked fine to me, but I think Zapata was stringing him along or something, especially since she's having some boyfriend problems at the moment. I said goodbye to Jeremy and went home.
I couldn't sleep very well thinking about the test and realizing that I had just broken up with Duncan over something idiotic again. "Stupid, stupid," I muttered. I had to do something about it in the morning after my test.
At least I passed the test. Afterwords, I dropped my father off at home and told him I had to look for someone. He had his fake baseball league fake World Series to prepare for tonight anyway, so he was all right with that. I pulled out of the driveway before Charles Wallace could get near the car.
Duncan wasn't home, and I guessed Arne had something to do with it. It was getting to afternoon, so I guessed Arne would be at his favourite place for brunch. I got a good parking spot at the IKEA and found him in the cafeteria with Duncan. I apologized to Duncan a lot and told him how the driving test had been worrying me.
"I passed, though, and I've got the car outside, and we can go out for food if you like," I told him. He looked happy to leave his ligonberry waffles with Arne. We went to Tim Hortons and had lunch and I apologized more.

Masques of morality

School grinds on. In English class this week we spent too much time on paragraph structure and the types of conflict in narrative. I annoyed the teacher by doing my conflict chart in half the time she gave us to do it. It's rained all week, so everyone's stayed close to the school during free periods. It was a relief, for once, to sit in the library at the Learning Resources Table Centre for two hours after school.
The rain had stopped by the time I was leaving. I ran into Jeremy Jones near the guidance office. He had been in his in-school suspension.
"How are you doing," I asked him. "The principal's being really stupid blaming you for everything that happened."
"Yeah, it's pretty bad. The only one who doesn't think so is my dad."
"Is that good? Wait, you never see your dad..."
"Yeah, that's about it. He's really proud of me blowing my first gig due to drugs. He sent over a topless dancer to the house yesterday." He pulled a flyer out of his notebook and gave it to me.
"Looks familiar," I said. "Wait, it's Zenia." Jeremy nodded. "Well, that explains a lot. Now I know who the Picton Peeler is."
"What?" I explained that Picton was one of the residences at Mackenzie Bowell, and there were reports for the last month of a first year student who stripped for a party some third year students threw. A few of them took pictures and put them online, and the next thing anyone knew, the guys who took the pictures had strange accidents happen to them.
"Only Zenia could combine stripping and devouring men's entire beings," I said. Jeremy was lucky his mother threw Zenia out. "She didn't actually get into the house, did she?"

Fearful symmetry

I have a job, sort of, and it's Arne's fault. I suppose it could be worse. Last Friday night I helped him do the Three Kronen's first karaoke night ever. Karaoke, for some reason, is fairly novel in Milborough, so the place was packed. I haven't heard so many off-key versions of "King of the Road" in my life. Arne ran the karaoke machine itself, while I passed out request slips, tiny pencils, and the song catalogues. Arne was suprised to see one of his old co-workers from the Valhalla.
"Huskuld!" Arne said.
"Don't call me that."
"Sorry, Howard. How are things?"
"Not great. My trial starts tomorrow, for one thing," Howard said.
"Want to learn how to disappear?" Arne asked him. Howard ignored him and went to pick up a catalogue and a few request slips. Howard was the best singer there all night, and he made 75% of the bar cry when he did "The Green Green Grass of Home." It took Ivar's threats at closing time to get people to stop giving Howard requests to sing.
Afterwords Ivar asked me if I could do this every week. He said he needed someone to keep Arne from doing magic when he was supposed to be hosting karaoke. I agreed: Arne nearly set the amps on fire when he started the hoop trick when he was singing "I Fought the Law." I'm getting hospitality worker underage minimum wage, but it could be worse.
Charles Wallace is getting transferred into a different public school. My parents saw the quizzes he sat through last week, and were really confused about the grades. Charles Wallace explained that the quizzes were supposed to take about six hours each, since his teacher was busy with something at her desk.
"For a week?" my father asked. He was staring at the math quiz, which Charles Wallace got a 40% on, starting with having 1+1=2 marked wrong.
"What exactly have you been doing all term?" my mother asked.
"Instructional films, film board films, filmstrips, DVDs, and the quizzes. That about covers it," Charles Wallace said. My parents then started re-arranging their schedules for the next day so they could both go see the principal. "You might have to take a number," Charles Wallace added.

Shoot out the lights

It's been an awful week. In English class we spent four days trying to figure out if Hamlet was a good person or bad person. I hate my stupid teacher and the way she always makes us look for stupid moral lessons in everything we read. The principal is an idiot, too. First he forces everyone to either participate in or watch the "Gym Jam" for Halloween, then he goes ballistic when one act has technical difficulties. Thanks to stupid rumours, and I'm not sure what else, Jeremy and Becky McGuire now have daily locker searches, and the rest of the school gets random ones. I'd search whoever gave Duncan and the rest of his band the idea to wear whatever it was they wore for the "Gym Jam" (and I'd get whoever came up with the name "Gym Jam," too--it sounds like nightwear for toddlers).
We haven't got much else to do in Milborough, so the gym was full. I talked to Jeremy, when he wasn't busy trying to set up. We both watched Duncan and the band do their one song.
"What are they wearing? They look like the house band on the cruise line of the glammed," I said. Eva managed to have about half the boys in the crowd staring at her chest. Duncan looked silly, and didn't have a mike although he and April both sang backup. Jeremy just shook his head a lot when I asked him questions, until we both just stared at the beer bong waving out of the coffin the band had behind them.
The band was supposed to strike their gear so Becky could set up, but Eva pulled them all backstage. Jeremy was trying to strike their gear, set up Becky's, and set up the sound board by himself. I left him alone and went to the exit doors. It was hopeless trying to talk to Duncan, since Eva had him under constant lead singer surveillance. I went to the washroom and missed the rest. Zapata told me the next day that Becky's band flaked out and the sound was shot, or something.
"Whoever was proctoring the whole thing thought there were drugs behind it, or something. One of the guys in the band that went on before said something about someone being stoned, and it just went from there." Hence the occasional locker searches. I hate this stupid school.
I'm sort of in trouble myself, after our trip to Toronto over the weekend. My parents looked fairly annoyed with me the day after, and they said I kept on talking about rabbits. I have to admit they're getting pretty inventive with punishments. I have to assist Arne at the Three Kronen's first karaoke night tonight. He's threatening to do magic, too.