The World Vs Richard Young

Along with approximately ninety percent of her depressing Death Valley high school classmates and about the same percentage of emotional American teenagers across the country, Danica spent most of her time thinking about death and new ways of being antisocial. This particular morning as she pulled up her left knee high black-and-white striped sock and reached for her black converse high tops she was thinking about the only two living beings she actually socialized with face to face: an old mutt she had named Rip which she had received as a hopeless Christmas present from her parents in an attempt to get her out of this ‘goth’ phase and a cute (though she would never admit it was) squirrel which sat perched upon a tombstone she had bought off the internet with her name inscribed on it every morning to listen to her grumble “good morning” to it, before scurrying off to tend to regular squirrel business, such as running into traffic. Her walk to school included passing by such stores as “Death Valley Coffee Co.”, “Death Valley Florist Shoppe”, and one of many Death Valley graveyards. All this death constantly surrounding her, yet she had the unfortunate luck of never getting to experience any of it. She shrugged her Eek! The cat backpack up further over her shoulder and thought about making a blog to post her poetry on. The thought tickled her in such a way that people may be able to see her ‘pink’ pigments shine through her angel-food makeup and she quickly whipped out a small mirror and cover-up to ensure her pasty white skin remained that way. Hardly holding in the excitement to stroke her ego a little, she pulled what used to be a tinkerbell notebook (she had torn the cover off just after the seventh grade) out of her backpack to read her favourite:

Death.

As I enter

The forsaken world,

All around me lies

Lies.

Take me away, River

Of souls

Take me away,

To a place no one knows

She was especially proud of the rhyme in the closing line and thought about the blog some more, which resulted in another flick of the wrist to reopen her mirror.

                She stopped two steps short of the door to the school, sighed heavily allowing her slouch to achieve the new perfect posture, and put on the gloomiest expression she could muster up.  She reached for the door as it was kicked open from the other side by Josh, a tenth grade jock with too much energy for eight fifty am. She fell back but managed to keep her footing and just stared at the door that seemed to be on a teeter totter. Josh exploded with an extremely heart-felt “oh shit, I’m sorry dude.” And continued on his merry way, talking to his ‘bro’ about a field goal made last night by Death Valley’s own Ryan McAllen of the Denver Broncos. Danica patted her eyebrow with her two most prominent fingers as blood began to drip from her nose, the eyebrow was cut, although not severely. She leaned backward to achieve a few drops of blood to spatter onto her white uniform and smiled at her cleverness when it came to non-conformity. After she decided she looked just disgusting enough she reached into her backpack to retrieve the tissue paper her mom always packed ‘just in case’ she ever needed to blow her nose in public. Yeah right, As if she would ever let anyone see her do such an embarrassing thing. She tore a piece off and stuck it to her eyebrow, and rolled the rest of it into her nostril to assist in stopping the bleed, that’s when the pain sank in. It is only at these moments that this sort of teenager ever contemplates not dying, for fear of any pain associated with it whatsoever (also probably the leading reason why pills are so hot right now for teen suicide). She winced and grimaced and wished it all to go away, but there was no quick fix. As any over-reacting teenage girl would, she firmly believed her nose had been broken and she would be disfigured for life. She contemplated whether or not it would be worth it to just skip school and hang out in her garage with the door half open and the car on for half an hour as a statement. But, deciding that walking back was too big a hassle she decided to enter the building, go to the washroom, turn on all the taps, and head to class. Yeah, that ought to show ‘em.  Her homeroom erupted with even more silence than usual as she entered the room, everyone avoiding eye contact, but sitting close enough to each other to symbolize who was cool in their books. Four goth kids that she never bothered learning the names of sat in the back corner clearly saving an unconformist chair for her, next to them sat two emo-cases who were sharing an iPod’s white earbuds and clearly listening to some ‘retro’ band that really ‘meant something’ such as Yellowcard, and next to them was three girls texting on their phones; Ashley, Mallory, and Still-thinks-pig-tails-are-cool girl. Danica and Ashley went way back, but it was the same sad case as every ‘way back’ relationship goes when high school hits. Danica wasn’t fretting it though, she figured they could totally have a ‘getting back together by getting shitfaced together in freshman year’ night when they were done high school. In front of all of these crews sat a bunch of sparkling ‘vampires’ in single horizontal file, they all were acting as if they could smell into the blood of the person sitting in front of them, who each were people Danica had no interest in whatsoever. The rest of the class Danica even cared less about so didn’t even acknowledge their presence.  She slumped down on her saved seat and waited for the roll call to be over, oh GOD did she hate having to say ‘here’ when Danica Brister was called out, seriously they were all 16 year-old kids, (practically adults) why on earth do they still have to be treated like children and raise their hands to let their teacher know that yes, they had shown up to school like a big girl. Oh well, she had one thing to look forward to today, they were doing the cliché dissection of a frog in biology, yes, a real dead animal; needless to say she was pumped. She quickly checked the mirror to see if it had shown.

                School was a bust, due to some loser’s overly-politically-correct mom, they didn’t get to dissect anything, but instead watch a video of the half-life of some disgusting amoeba under some random scientist’s microscope, not to mention no one seemed to acknowledge the dried blood stains on her white button-up, not even the nosey vampires. She felt like she was living a half-life herself and felt like yelling at homeless people. She was really getting good at this whole being an awful person thing. She decided to stop at the Death Valley Coffee Shop and grab a medium roast. She scoffed at having to stand behind two people in line, who she eavesdropped on and learned that someone had gotten hit by a train today, yet unfortunately for Danica, miraculously survived. She got her coffee, and knowing that everyone sitting in the shop was staring at her, took it black (for effect) and went to sit in the most dimly lit corner.  She removed a Kurt Vonnegut novel from her backpack which she overheard someone say had a lot of needless killing in it and placed it upside and opened as if she was half done reading it. She then took out her sketch/poetry book and being thinking about things that rhymed nicely with intestines. She took a sip of her coffee and closed her eyes tightly as the bitterness hit her, she hated the taste but felt like she couldn’t sweeten it without ruining her image and everyone would think she was a poser. She wasn’t. She was the real deal. Danica Brister: the crazed loner depressed individualist.

As I crawl into bed

And hope never to awaken

All that comes is tears

And a black sheep

Close eyes

Darkness fades.