1000 Paper Cranes

Chapter 18 - 960

Friday morning came before I had the chance to get any sleep. With my nerves and my brain racing, I hadn't been able to sleep at all. The upside was that I had meticulously thought out every detail of our plan for revenge. The downside was that I had a test in calculus and English. I was bound to crash before the day was over.

I came back from the shower to find a message on my phone.

"R we strting 2day?" Jon sent messages like a Neanderthal. It was the textual equivalent of his grunt language.

I'd have to tell him the plan at school. We'd have to wait until the previous night had been all but forgotten before we could act. It would be too obvious an act of retaliation if we acted so soon after Marc's scene at my house.

But with Jon's computer expertise, Robin's office aide privileges, and my perfect record, I could guarantee that Marcus Foster was not going to know what hit him.

As I drove to Joanna's house to pick her up, I wasn't sure I'd be able to hide my glee from her. But, as it turned out, I wouldn't have to. When I knocked on Joanna's door, her mom answered. Her eyes looked concerned, despite the smile she wore.

"I'm sorry, Jordan. Joanna's not feeling well, today."

My hate for Marc just grew hotter as I got back in my car. In the six years Joanna and I had been friends, Joanna had only missed school twice. Once when her grandmother died and once to audition for a big ballet summer program. She had shattered the night before and I wasn't sure there was any amount of vindication that could put her back together.

But I was willing to try.

That day at school was rough. Not only was I exhausted, but I was worried. I was sure I bombed the calculus test and there was no way I could draw any kind of comparison between James Joyce's use of reflections and his characters' developments.

By the end of the day, my energy was spent and, for the first time ever, I wanted to do anything but think. I was grateful to be through folding cranes; I'd used that time to do my thinking. Today, I just wanted to be brainless.

As I got into my car, I heard an advertisement that piqued my interest. I knew what mindless activity I wanted to do. I drove past Jon in the parking lot and rolled down the window.

"Hey, loser!" I called. The word felt weird in my mouth. I'd never called anybody a loser before. "Cancel your plans for tonight. We're going on a road trip. I'll pick you up in a little bit. Invite a girl if you want. I'm bringing Robin."

He looked confused, but agreed. I was kind confused, too, admittedly. I had never been so bossy before. It was both freeing and sickening. Would all people just bend to my will like Jon had?

Thirty minutes later, Robin, Jon and his date—Jewel, or Julie or something—were piled in my car.

"Where are we going?" Robin asked finally, as I turned onto the interstate.

She was as confused as both Jon and his date were.

"Fear Fest." I grinned. Every year the amusement park, Wacky World, was transformed for Halloween into a frightening, macabre kind of place. Fun houses became infested with scary clowns and chainsaw-toting masked murderers. They turned off the lights of the roller coasters after dark, so riders went into loops totally blind.

There was also a corn maze that was allegedly so scary, only ten people had ever made it all the way through. Allegedly.

I had never been; not surprisingly, I wasn't much of a thrill-seeker. But tonight I was willing to try. Tonight I was willing to try anything.

"I've never been," Robin shook her head. "I'm not usually a fan of scary. But I'll give it a try."

"This is the most spontaneous thing I've ever seen you do." Jon smiled, wrapping his arm around his date. "See, Nina, I told you he could be fun."

Nina? I was way off.

Nina just giggled, not the infectious, knowing giggle that Robin had, but the air-headed giggle that all of Jon's girlfriends had. They were always dumb as rocks, hardly able to string words together into sentences, but undeniably hot. I guess Jon was the kind of guy to take a trophy wife.

"Nina, I don't guess we've had many classes together," Robin chose her words delicately.

She didn't want Nina to know just how dumb she was. It's always bad when the stupid ones become self-aware.

"Well, I take cosmetology. I want to be a hairdresser. I really like hair." She giggled then ran her hand through Jon's blonde mop.

Wow, Robin mouthed to me. Neither of us had anything against the people in cosmetology, or against hairdressers. In fact, we both quite liked cosmetologists. If somebody's going to be cutting my hair, I want them to be trained and passionate about what they do. But at Thomas Jefferson High, it was a universal truth that only the dumbest girls signed up for that class. I felt bad for the teachers and worse for the poor folks who were going to get their hair cut from any of our future alumni.

"I don't know how you stand the fumes in the cosmetology lab," Robin tried at small talk. "When the perm warning signs go up, I start looking for gas masks."

"They're not so bad, once you've got used to it." She giggled. "But people say that they stink up every hallway. I never noticed!"

"Did you know that humans can smell a skunk for up to a mile away?" I asked, trying to contribute to the conversation.

"Oh my god, Jordan, who said anything about skunks? First of all, ew. Skunks are disgusting." She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "And second of all, ammonium thioglycolate doesn't smell like a skunk. It's a gift from God for women everywhere."

And there it was. The most well-constructed diatribe I had ever heard from one of Thomas Jefferson High School's beauty school dropouts.

"She really likes hair," Jon strained not to laugh. His eyes sparkled with mischief. He knew as well as I did that she would not get the teasing.

Despite my exhaustion, I felt energized and excited. I was feeding off of everybody else's energy.

I turned the radio up and for the next hour we sang at the top of our lungs. Even me. Horrible and tone-deaf, but I belted like the best of them.

And it was in that moment that I realized that this was life. Driving nowhere, singing, laughing, smiling. Living in the moment, and sharing that moment with other laughing, happy people.