Nicole.

At first, I thought she was just another girl. Coincidentally, she had ended up on the same lunch as me, as well as in the same chemistry class and calculus class.

As far as I could tell, she was smart. She also seemed very quiet and reserved. Like me. It was one of the things that drew me to her, I suppose.

There was, of course, the fact that I often saw her looking over at me. Now, I can’t be sure why. Maybe she thought I looked funny in my shirt, or perhaps I had something on my face. Perhaps there was something stuck to my back, or I was hemorrhaging from the neck. I don’t know.

It doesn’t matter. Because, on one day, I saw her looking. Our eyes met, and for a brief second I felt a twinge of emotion in the back of my mind. Then, we both hurriedly looked away, as we grinned sheepishly.

This practice continued for some time, until we were glancing in sync with each other. After this, it developed to a routine where she would look, and then I would look, and vice versa.

For ages, I couldn’t figure out what this meant. Did she like me? Was she actually looking at me of her own accord, or was she looking at me because I was looking at her? I couldn’t be sure.

But, I am fascinated by her. Her smile. The way she laughs at my jokes. Her voice. The way she looks when her hair is down. It is like her face is framed in a wavy, golden halo. She has very white skin. But it isn’t pale as much as it is pure. A very flattering tone.

To be perfectly honest, I think it is safe to say that she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

After glancing through the yearbook, I realized she had been at my school all this time. How had I missed her? Had fate chanced it so that I might walk through the halls and be inconveniently glancing the other way when she walked by? I wouldn’t have been surprised. Or maybe, I was just overlooking her on a regular basis. Who knows?

I’m sure she has a boyfriend. I would be more surprised if she didn’t than if she did. Any guy would be lucky to have her. But I’m too much of an idiot and an outcast to be able to date a girl like Nicole. I make too many nervous mistakes around her.

On Tuesday, I was walking home from school and a car pulled up beside me. In the driver’s seat was Quenby, a popular girl from my school. In the back were a few guys I knew from elementary school, but had since become detached from in all forms of communication. The window rolled down, and Quenby asked if where I lived. I told her. She asked if I wanted a ride.

I declined.

It isn’t that I didn’t like Quenby. She’s a nice girl. I just don’t usually accept charities from people. I will help them if they need it, but I don’t like imposing on others. I go out of my way to stay out of the way of others. That’s just who I am.

But today, I regretted my choice. From the passenger seat of the vehicle, Nicole leaned forward and said, ever so coolly, “Are you sure, we’re going in that direction?”

Instantly, a thousand voices screamed aloud in my head.

“You idiot! You declined already. What will you do now?”
“Oh God, it’s Nicole. What do I do?”
“She looks really pretty right now.”
“Why are they offering me a ride?”
“Did my heart just explode in my chest?”
I felt nervous. What should I say? Should I now agree to the ride after seeing Nicole and make myself emotionally transparent? Or should I decline and have none be the wiser.

I declined again. And they drove off.

I regretted it.

I would have rather made myself transparent. Walking home in the cold, contemplating what would have happened if I had got in the car wasn’t nearly punishment enough for my stupidity.

So, fate decided to torture me the next day, where I overheard Quenby and Nicole discussing dates for semi-formal. It wasn’t surprising to hear Nicole had someone to go with…but until then, I was able to pretend she was available.

But who am I fooling? Not you. Certainly not me. Nicole and I are on two different social levels. She’s divine while I am unclean. Is it possible to change my social standing? It is probably as likely as an untouchable making his or her way to the pinnacle of the caste system.

No. I’m stuck here. And Nicole is up there. And there is no ladder big enough to span the gap between us.

Lately, I’ve felt compelled to watch the new television show, Lost. I find it so incredibly addictive now, when originally it seemed like some sort of Survivor-related mistake. And yet, now, I can’t be drawn away from it. The acting is so good. The script is mind-boggling in its confusion, and yet you feel cemented to the cold surface of your television screen hoping the end of the episode will bring about some insightful tidbit of information.

I’m hurriedly downloading episodes I missed to satisfy my newfound addiction to the show. As soon as they are finished, I will heat them up and inject them into my veins for a quick fix for my withdrawl.

Yes. Withdrawl. Until Lost, television was beginning to suck. And not just a mild suck, like a plunger. But, hugely sucking, like the vacuum of space.

Years ago, I would have been ranting and raving over the exciting premise of the television series, 24. Now, the show is chalk-full of terrible storylines and moronic actors that I just can’t enjoy watching it like I used to. As far as I am concerned, 24 ended promptly after Season 1, and has not continued since.

As for the mention of naked scientists in this title, well, that’s not about television. That’s about my social life. Yes, despite being an overzealous computer nerd, I do have a social life…

Today, I wrote a chemistry test. I’m quite confident about it. Unfortunately, my confidence is all supporting the overwhelming fact of my failure on the test. The term work and the tests we write are so completely unrelated that my mind feels as if it is boiling inside of my head. While writing the test, I look around nervously hoping that no one will see when it explodes with a strange concussive force. The questions all make sense during the term work. Then the test comes, and the questions are so ridiculous:

1. If you have 22.5 mol/L of an unknown acid, what colour of pants was Robert Millikan wearing when he discovered the charge on an electron?

Where is the connection!?

Perhaps he was wearing blue jeans, or black slacks. Maybe he had just gotten out of bed and wasn’t wearing pants at all? How do I know that he wasn’t in his laboratory, stark naked, trying to catch oil drops between two charged plates? I can’t be sure. But I’ll have to scribble down some incredible lunacy in order to get a good mark. Otherwise, I’ll be sure to receive a swift beating from my teacher, as she tries to convince me that we did cover these concepts, and I’m just an incredibly dense chimpanzee for not understanding.

And of course, I’ll smile and nod. All the while I’ll be thinking of how delightful it would be to show the world what an incompetent clod she is. You can tell she doesn’t understand the material she is teaching. When she defines terms, she includes the term in the definition.

Electron: A small charged electron.

Here. Have a Nobel Prize. It is amazing that this is the standard of education in this country. It makes a slight thrill of nausea run up and down the inner layer of my esophagus, until all of her utter nonsense is excreted from my mouth into some crusted basin.

Too graphic for you? My apologies. But I warned you about coming into the box. I warned you. If all my ramblings are crazy, then please, avoid the man with the hand stamp on your way out.

Today is January 16th.

January 16th is my birthday.

Not a single one of my friends has wished me a birthday, with any form of preceding emotion.

Even if they had phoned my house and said, “Hey, Jordan, have a God awful birthday. I hope you fall into a hole and die!” it would have been sufficient. At least, I would have known they had remembered my birthday. Now, I feel neglected and unloved.

The meter has rolled over. I’m 18 now. An age of voting, and driving, and etc. An age where the world is my oyster provided I have something to crack it open with.

Unfortunately, I am not partial to shellfish.

It is hard to believe that only 7 hours remain in today, and my friends have not even hinted that we will do anything as a group. When Binkle’s birthday rolled in back in July, we had a party with cakes and movies and stuff. For mine, I’ve spent most of the day sitting at my house waiting for my phone to ring, or for my computer to beep incessentally.

Many of you probably find this incredibly stupid. You’re probably sitting at home by your desktops thinking, why doesn’t he just call them up? Well, that’s because I shouldn’t have to. On your birthday, you aren’t supposed to phone people and say, “Hey, I was born today. Have you anything to say to me?”

No. It’s not like that.

I’m not supposed to prompt them. It isn’t my job to hold up cue cards in front of their face, or have the teleprompter on repeat until they get it right. That’s foolishness.

The worst part is, I know they forgot. It’s not that they know and are just avoiding me. They forgot. A few days ago, we were all sitting down to lunch, and Amy asked me, “Jordan, your birthday is coming up, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like…the 21st, or something. Right?”

This is when Binkle chimed in with,

“No. It’s on the 18th.”

Naturally, they were both wrong. My two friends had descended down to the level of apes and were trying, in vain, to create fire from a piece of rubber and a grain of sand. I’m sure that, in no time, they would develop the wheel out of a paper bag.

Since both of them were wrong, and I was too irritated to tell them when my birthday really was, they resorted to a strange and contorted new low. They stole my wallet, because within it was my Driver’s License.

They had to steal from me to know my birthday.

Shameful.

I wasn’t as pissed off at Binkle. I know he’s absent-minded. He can hardly remember his own phone number. But Amy…Amy was different.

Amy was a person I had cared about once, and she had cared about me. Now, we had degraded to the standing where she couldn’t remember my birthday. I remembered hers. Vividly. January 27th, 1988, she was brought into the world. According to her, I was brought into the world on January 21st, 1987. Maybe she doesn’t even know the year. Maybe, in her eyes, I’m a child of the sixties.

It makes me shudder to think of how they could forget my birthday.

Recently, at the request of Dean, I have been playing Resident Evil 2. It is a good game. Ridiculously short (I beat it twice in one day), but gripping nontheless.

Don’t get me wrong. The graphics are terrible. And I find it difficult to believe that all citizens of Raccoon City wear the same attire. But, I guess that’s the way games were before the new millenium rolled around. We certainly were behind on the times.

Soon, I will move on to Resident Evil 3. I am hoping Capcom didn’t cheapen the gameplay. I already know Jill Valentine isn’t garbed in proper Zombie hunting clothes. Apparently, you can battle an army of T-Virus junkies in simply your shortest mini-skirt and a tube top.

Good for her.

My writing is continuing at a sluggish rate. Every chapter trickles like molasses towards completion.

I’m also reading Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle was truly a brilliant writer. If you haven’t read his stuff already, then I suggest you promptly find a copy of The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It is a gripping read.

Anyway, goodbye to one and all for now. I must be off, to finish a chemistry lab. If any of you have knowledge of solutions and solubility, as well as Ksp values, feel free to contact me.

Granite