Happy Friday Pippsqueaks~! LAST CHANCE! TICKETS ARE STILL AVAILABLE!!! See me live at the #ZHMusicFestival this Saturday! Click this affiliate link for a 50% discount, sponsored by Parfum La Pipp!
By the time I click on the affiliate link after school, the last-minute concert tickets for Pipp’s show are sold out. The 15 extra tickets, each $400 ($200 with the discount), sold out in just two minutes. Anyway, there’s no way I could’ve gotten permission from Mrs. Cloverleaf to leave the school grounds for the weekend for such a trivial purpose. I don’t know what I was thinking.
I don’t see Pipp for much of the day. The last time I see her is out in the school yard, from 100 yards away, when she’s being escorted across the lawn by a middle-aged lady in a pantsuit, holding an umbrella over Pipp’s head to keep the rain out of her immaculate hair. I see her taken into a limo and driven away. I presume it’s her agent taking her to the concert this weekend.
Pipp isn’t smiling at all.
It’s storming tonight. Legit storming. Like in those horror films: trees swaying, lighting flashing, fat raindrops hitting the windows. Add the Gothic-style hallways of the historic student dorms, and you’ve got a whole movie series going. I was picking up bottle caps for Sustainability Club’s bottle cap drive. We have bins all over campus to promote proper bottle cap recycling—the plastic in bottle caps are not always properly recycled, and they end up becoming landfill waste.
So, I come back from collecting the caps, I’m totally exhausted, my clothes soaking wet from the rain, so I hop into the shower. I towel off, change into my pajamas, close the curtains, and sit down at my desk.
I’ve almost forgotten about Pipp. Except I still can’t get her new song out of my head.
No. Focus. Okay. Chemistry.
Review Packet.
Name: Glowin’ up, kinda—
Wait. That’s not my name.
The thunder outside goes CRACKLE BOOM!
Name: Glowin’ up, kinda— Hitch Trailblazer
Section: C
Whoever came up with the bright idea of having a test on a Monday ought to have their light bulb unplugged. Really.
Review Question 1: Balance the following redox equat—
CRACKLE BOOM!
Wait.
Now there’s something stuck in my teeth. It’s those baked sardines from the cafeteria. (It tastes way better than it sounds. And smells, for that matter.) I pull open my pocket mirror to take a look.
Cilantro.
I bend a paperclip to a point and pick it out. I close my mouth.
CRACKLE BOOM!
Now, imagine my surprise when I tilt the mirror up a little, and I see a total stranger staring at me, with a wide toothy smile, standing right behind my chair.
I swivel my chair around.
“HI, NEW FRIEND! MY NAME’S IZZY!” the stranger yells. The wispy hair on my face twitches from her breath.
At that instant, CRACKLE BOOM!
I scream.
“AAAAH!” She’s so close, I can smell her breath! It just smells like breath mint, but still!
“Oh, I mean, HI OLD FRIEND! Well, I guess Sunny’s birthday comes before yours, so…HI MEDIUM FRIEND!”
“AAAH!” I wrap my arms around myself, even though I’m fully clothed.
“What’s wrong?”
“AAAAAH!” I bunch my legs up on the seat of the chair.
“Are you not a medium friend? Maybe you’re medium-new.”
“AAAAAH!”
“…is this a shouting closet or something? ‘Cause I CAN DO SHOUTING TOO!!!”
I finally regain one ounce of my composure. “Who…who ARE you!? WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY ROOM!?”
“Oh, didn’t you hear me the first time!? Maybe you need to get a hearing aid or something. Well, erm…I’M IZZY MOONBOW!!!”
I cover her mouth. “I heard you the first time. Please don’t shout again.”
“Oh, okey dokey. I’m Izzy, Sunny’s roommate. And you’re Hitch, right?! Nice to meetcha!” The curls in her hair bounce as she tilts her head to other side.
Wow, nice to meet you. Thanks for giving me a heart attack. Well, not that I’m actually scared or anything. “Wh…what’re you doing in my room?” At least she remembered the rule about leaving the door open.
“Well, I thought you were in Sunny’s room but then I was like, hey I’m in Sunny’s room too! And she’s not there and you weren’t there, so I guess you weren’t in Sunny’s room and Sunny wasn’t in Sunny’s room, so you just had to be in your room!”
“I…erm…” As she slowly steps towards me, I instinctually turn my chair with my back facing the desk. As if she’s inching closer to steal state secrets from me.
She stops midstep. “What’s wrong? You confused on your chemistry homework?”
“Wait, how do you know I need help on chemistry?”
“Cause of your sparkle, duuuuh! Ask a silly question! It looks so dull and tired. You’ve been studying too long. Work smart, don’t work hard!”
Sparkle? I stare at the hair on my arms. Did Izzy get glitter on me or something? I’ve only met her two minutes ago, but I feel like she would do something like that.
“Oh yeah, I also heard about your little camping trip from Sunny, and I really wanna go! I grew up in the Bridlewood Forest, you know! My grandpa Alphabittle still lives there, and his house is so cool! Maybe I can take you all there! We can do…ooh, we can do arts and crafts, have a tea party…”
Just what we need, a non-stop chatterbox on the 5-hour bus ride. I just hope she hasn’t signed up…
“I already signed up! It’s $200, right? Here ya go!”
She’s supposed to hand it to Ms. Gaia, the faculty sponsor for the Club. But I take the money anyway. That way I can make sure Ms. Gaia doesn’t get it.
Kidding. I’d never do something dishonest like that, especially as club president. “Erm, maybe I should…”
“Ooh, ooh, are you auditioning for Wallflower Blush for the Forgotten Friendship Musical? I finally got promoted to head of costumes & makeup for the school play, and I’ve been designing Wallflower’s costume for the finale scene, and I think it matches your luminescence so well!”
I look at the dress that Izzy pulls out of her bag. It’s the most frilly, girly dress I’ve ever seen. Two sequins away from being a bridal gown. Like I’m not emasculated enough by going to this school. “Izzy, I know I told Pipp that I was thinking of auditioning this year, but I doubt I’m gonna audition for a girl part.”
She smirks. “Oh, you never know, Hitch…” she lowers her voice, and leans in. That breath mint again. Cinnamon flavored. I think I’m allergic to cinnamon, though, cause I’m about to have another heart attack.
“I once did a makeover for my brother y’know,” she says, speaking out of one half of her mouth. “Eyeliner, mascara, blush, lipstick, the whole nine yards, and he LOVED it. And I think deep inside, you know you’ll love it too. She taps my chest with her slim finger. Your ‘sparkle’ right now tells me so.”
And just when I think my heart’s about to explode, a nurse clad in white comes to rescue me.
No, really. The school nurse appears at my dorm room door, and she knocks on the door frame. “Hi Isabella! Mrs. Cloverleaf said you were in here. Time to take your medication, honey.”
Izzy walks over to the tray the nurse is holding. “Oh, yay!” She picks up the plastic dish with two white pills in it, and swallows it with a glass of water. “Mmm! Delicious!”
The nurse smiles, but otherwise seems apathetic to Izzy’s chronic cheerfulness. “Have a good night, Isabella. Hitch.” She turns and nods to me politely.
“Good night, Nurse Redheart!” Izzy gives a big wave. A minute later, she pokes her head out of the window like a cartoon character, to check if she’s gone.
Izzy stretches to yawn. “Nurse Redheart’s a real nice lady, but between you and me buddy, that nurse’s uniform of hers is creating an unhealthy power dynamic. Green luminescence people are always vulnerable to that.”
“Luminescence?” I ask.
“Yeah, everyone’s got a special luminescence about them. Like, you, Hitch, have a blue luminescence, with a really pretty vanilla white around the edges. Sunny’s got an lavender luminescence, with the colors shimmering like a non-burning flame. And Pipp has an aquamarine luminescence with a dim rainbow fringe, obviously because—”
“Wait, what ‘luminescence’?”
“Your luminescence. You know, like…the special color you see round every person…” She pauses. “You mean…you…you don’t see it?”
“No, I—”
She pouts a little. “I’m sorry, Hitch.” She leans close to me and gives a hug. The sharp edges of her plastic DIY friendship bracelets dig into my skin.
She’s genuinely sad for me. Yes, I’m so unlucky. I’m so unlucky I don’t have hallucinations of random colors and I’m not so mentally deranged that I’m unaware of my own illness.
I close my eyes. Waiting for her to rip my guts out in a psychotic fit.
She pulls back from the hug suddenly. “Erm…no offense, Hitch, but your breath kinda smells like rotten sardines.” She pulls out a small plastic bag from her backpack. The exact same size of plastic bag that you see in those drug deal scenes in TV cop shows. “Wanna breath mint?”
She pops one in her mouth as well. So there I am. Popping breath mints from a drug baggie with a lunatic named Izzy. Not what I was expecting for a Friday night of chemistry cramming.
“Alright! Nice meeting ya, Hitch! G’night, new friend!”
“Wait, what about my chemistry?” I call her. I might as well get my money’s worth.
“Oh, yeah, when you were balancing your electrons in problem 7, you forgot to multiply by 2 on the right side of your oxidation half reaction.”
I glance back at my desk, and I realize that I had left my chemistry homework open on problem 7. The problem Sunny and I couldn’t figure out. “Wait…how did you even know that was the problem I was struggling on?”
“Oh, you silly! Why do you think I leaned so close to you while you were at your desk?” She gives me a wink, and she skips back to her room.
She…
She…
She…she was reading my paper and checking over my work this whole time!?
She read my mind. Without even being so-called “psychic.”
I don’t if that makes it less scary or even more scary.