FicWad

"There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us."

When it came to analyzing quotes, I was on the ball; those wisdom quotes were no comparison to my incomprehensible "intellect." Shakespeare? No problem. Plato? Piece of cake. Joseph Conrad? Of course. Thoreau? Elegant, but simple. Yet this Sophocles quote -- I didn't know whether it was just a malfunction that day or if he actually did create a metaphorical aneurysm for me -- really had halted my gears to a halt. I had been stuck writing this last minute "popsay (Get it? Pop... essay... Popsay!)" for English Language that had only allowed me to transfer absolutely nothing for my credential hands. I had "talent," as Mr. Early called it, more so because I was an assertive student who was "truly prepared for college." Was I actually ready, I'm not that positive I was just about ready to move to my dorm on campus to my dream university quite yet; my roots were too deep and I don't think the shovel was thick enough to sever the foundation I was so comforted by. If I had to say much for my dismemberment of my soul to grasp onto an entirely new town, I wasn't so fond of the concept. Being in such a comfort zone for so long, well, you come to acknowledge the greater image we paint so vividly in our hearts that to taint it with another landscape is sheer terror. Or maybe it was just me; I guess I secretly did not want to believe that within a year I would be a senior in high school, striving for boundless limits of my future, and that after that... I'd be halting my gears to a stop somewhere outside of Los Angeles. And it really seemed to freak me out.

High School Musical was a load of bullshit and I knew that I wasn't the only one who seen right through that entire "when we reach, we can fly" idiocracy they feed to the seven-year-old girls who have no idea what it means to want to kiss Zac Efron as hard as their thirteen-year-old sister gushes to her friends behind secret doors. Truth was it, we weren't all in this together; every man fended for himself and I had never felt such sweeter words seep into my mindset than Social Darwinism or what it seemed to evoke in me. Nobody was going to sit there and analyze a Sophocles quote alongside me, nor were they even going to give me the benefit of the doubt and explain it thoroughly of what process I had to transition over to when it came to the very end of my high school career. Maybe I was slightly cynical at the fact that I really didn't have any idea what I was going to do after high school -- other than go to a four-year school because that was always something I took pride in when I stood on the podium at assemblies for a "perfect GPA average." I was never much of a boastful individual, so I couldn't go into aspiring for fame. I liked to pretend I enjoyed sleep; sorry Harvard, you won't throw the Bell grading system on me. I wasn't stupid so I knew that it was only a matter of timelessness and procrastination that would pressure me into realizing that I had to find a field that I could use my intelligence for, to be passionate about... even if it means that I really wouldn't go to a university in the end. Honestly though, I sucked at making decisions when it came to my personal state of affairs -- being an outspoken individual, I really liked the idea of being invisible from my lack of responsibility for my own self. I am a ticking time bomb, a paradox, a lighted shadow; and I was hoping that, somehow, I could find someone that would be in it together with me... but even Rebecca couldn't help me there, either.

I, technically, had a week left of school and I wasn't ready to leave my humble abode of school for the summer because it meant too many extra negotiations to accept the idea that this was finally my last year in my paradise of solidarity. Why would I want to leave? I live in a world of imagination and pure creativity -- where I can act and be as free as I could never fathom and still remain invisible to the rest of the world, where I have no obligations to stay tied down to the people that are so eager to become another faceless soul dwelling within the crowd, where I am just a soul and nothing can ever hold me down from the things I yearn to feel in life. I wanted to feel such an distorted plague of emotions that I had never accomplished before in my life, but all I ever wanted was to just be left alone to enjoy the beauty of solitude. I liked the idea of doing something for others, but the idea of being involved in a large crowd seemed to generally freak me out. It was odd that large population crowds seemed to make me want to breathe into a brown paper bag because it was just ironic. Ironic enough that I could recite lines from Urinetown onstage and I was completely comfortable. I think I had always been more of a paradox; I always seemed to just act as a hypocrite for myself since I could never stick true to one stereotype. Looking back onto it, it was more of a flaw than anything else -- to be so shy around large crowds of people. Maybe it was for the mere justification that when I was onstage, people hid behind disguises; we fooled the audiences and that was our strut that we had come to adorn ourselves in and lavish at the fact that we were so shamelessly loved for playing these false roles. As part of the Thespian Troupe 3995, I lived to hide behind a character because it left more invisibility to what was truly hidden behind the faces we painted onto our images. But when I was forced to be me... well, I don't think I liked it just as much. To talk in front of a crowd, someone has to be... genuine. And whether I was so comfy in my discreet nature or whether I was merely shy, I just wanted to be invisible -- I couldn't ask for much more.

We were called the "Tits" on campus only because several old intelligent Thespians decided that Thespian Troupe sounded like a double t sound, which meant that we were the boobs. Yeah... I was totally a mammary gland and I knew it was all about being suave for being in drama for so long. There was fifteen of us in the troupe and we had all formed nicknames for one another for what seemed to protrude the most about one another from presentations or just how we simply seemed to categorize our very own characteristics. I wound up with the brilliant nickname of Rosy because when I was onstage, I would flush to a bright shade -- or even dark shade, which only relied on the severity of my nerves -- of red, which looked like rouge. They were very creative, I know. The only person that seemed to call me anything else had been Mr. Copley, he had learned to call me Bee because nobody had ever really dug deep enough to know that my first name wasn't even Lynette. It just seemed plausible that it would be easier to go by throughout elementary school because nobody could ever really figure out what my first name had ever meant. The only people that knew my true birth certificate legal name, other than the two individuals who branded me with it, were my siblings, Rebecca, and Mr. Copley. Nobody had ever really questioned the nicknames that I seemed to earn throughout my past eleven years in the educational system, I'd just smile and comply, "Oh yeah, it really started back in grade school with so-and-so doing this...." and nothing ever got further. I guess I couldn't really argue that everyone either called me Lynette or Rosy, but somehow, Mr. Copley knew otherwise; we always knew things between us was a little more far-fetched than the rest of the students. Somehow, for him, I stuck out the most when I was the one who blended in so much more prominently.

And that's when I realized I had nothing calculated in my brain for Sophocles. Damn.

One week left and I would have to reemerge into the year with knowledge to accept the fact that I had to let go of my comfortable lifestyle for something greater than I could understand. Things like that always left an edge on me, not that I wasn't already rough enough around the edges from the lack of grating my parents pushed onto me as a child. Admittedly, I wanted to end my high school career to build my own path... but I had no idea which route I would land upon to find myself carving a foundation for my own being. Was I to be in the advertisement business to follow my mother's footsteps or to be a genuine daddy's girl and try to establish my sanity in the bartering acts for guilty? Maybe I could make my own deadlines as a freelance journalist, or be some great theater enthusiast working on her own screen play in hopes that someone might endorse my swan song. Could I just be some regular schmuck working as an announcer, or would I fall far from the prime goal and be something so egotistical that I would surrender my hopes for fallacies? I knew I wanted to be something for my own accord, but I just had no idea what would fall under the category of "Solidarity and Happiness Seeker" jointed together as a job occupation. Not only did the job not exist, but neither did the phrase to about ninety-eight percent of the human race. This one week of my eleventh grade year and I was acting more frantic than an actual senior who was about to get shipped off to college. The idea made me want to commit several acts which had to remain disclosed, simply for discretion of peeping eyes and wandering ears. I was stuck in this phase where I had to try and force myself to make some eager decision, when in reality, I should have just focused on the present. While other students were living in the present of trying to maintain finals and juggle their premature summer jobs on hands, my focus had been strictly on how worried I needed to be over college applications. Partying it up? With plenty of extra blessings of intoxicating myself through a monotone of printed college papers on my direction. As Rebecca groaned from a hang over, I sat there with a warm cloth in hand, and plenty of printed examples of the letters I had to conjure for my brief moment of working into the next generation.

I had no idea that it was difficult to be a regular teenager. As everyone marched to their own banter of melodies, I soaked myself in apathy to coat myself within a shield of invisibility. My eyes may have stood out vibrantly, but I hid them well. Naturally, I hadn't known any better on how to make myself into a proper teenager... truth was, I was never properly raised to act like one. Authority had never ruled my life like the friends I had made during my pre-mature years, more from the notion that my parents were so booked with their own clients that their children came after their line of work. Guilty clients paid my father three hundred bucks an hour, and while they paid, we did not; as for that, we suffered by taking the backseat. My mother, the walking paradox that she had become, was so entwined with her propaganda campaigns that our endorsements would be the last mark on her list at the end of the day. While my parents worked their fingers raw on their mark-of-the-century laptops, us, as children, were created into these walking, talking, breathing unadulterated machines. Was that even a proper word for us? Unadulterated? Whatever, it clicked and it was the first thing that I could clearly place my speed of light synapses upon. We sprouted, and while some of us remained under the radar, others grew and matured so that our parents at least, momentarily, recognized our well-being on our own. It wasn't that they were genuinely overswamped stressed-a-holics, but neither were they this evenly balanced platter of satisfaction. It could have been where I received my stress level, because I could handle pressure far too easy for someone that had taken on far too many deeds at once. That, also, was the Darwinism downfall that I had flawed in retaliation. I, myself, was far from a balance.

"I know you're an overachiever and all, Mubbie, but I would have rather dragged my overly sick ass into work, than lug here with an essay to do a week before school ends." Rebecca had burst into my so suddenly, I had lost track of the time. Holy crap, I had been sitting in the clouds for three hours, not even acknowledging that every continuous thought had led one right into another, and had been the end of a shift that I could have been paid a decent seventy bucks for. "You look like you just seen a ghost."
"No, I look like I just seen what time it was after a long daydreaming session. Did you have fun trying to excel at word association today with Ralph?" I tucked my feet underneath the warmth of my thighs, clinging tightly to the over sized sleeves of my sweater. It may have been nine at night on a Saturday night in June in Los Angeles, but when you get the flu... oh boy, I really get it good. "I, fortunately, sat here and reminisced on all the times I got you through hang overs."
"Right, right; the good old days where you actually HAD time to have a social life, huh? Where being the boobage was not a big controversy for you, USC hadn't impaired your sanity, and Halo 3 had only been all talk, little action." Rebecca smirked at me while all I could do was let out a cheap whimper of how she teased me for my "shamantics." It hadn't been my fault, necessarily; I just, luck had it, that I would be too tomboy crazed to actually party at a random stranger's home until three in the morning. "It's cool though, Mubs. You can't feel guilty for who you are, it's just... your socially inept self."
"You make me sound like a leper, Becca. I'm a tomboy, not a lesion stained psycho." I threw a pillow towards her head as I gasped from the sudden epiphany I had received at the whim of the pillow clanking right back at my own head.

And there had been the spark; and it sat there, consciously dwelling at the back of my mind. I owed Becca for her genius... for once.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/N: Wow; oops, my apologies for making this so late! I doubt anyone even reads this much more from how I seemed to abandon my post. This chapter's a bit shaky, I know; I'm trying to portray how much of an "all over the board" kind of classic gal Lynette has been. Hopefully the third chapter might start enacting more dialogue as she tries to go back for her last week of school as a Junior, and hooray, will spend the summer working, and hopefully bumping into stranger faces that might help her move along to her awkward and final year of high school. We'll just have to wait and see, but.. until next time, adios cadets!