January

I hear that familiar buzzing sound. It's coming from the edge of my bed, near the wall. zhsssssss zhsssssss. Without turning around, I reach back and feel around my bedspread and grab my cellphone by its antenae. I flip it open and notice its you who's called.

"Hi, " I say.

"What's goin' on?" you ask. You sound distracted. Maybe you're chewing.

"Nothing..., " I say. "just...reading, you know, the usual school stuff. Not much going on here, just the same old, same old." I stare numbly around my room. Look at the same walls, same desk, same chair. I lean back.

"hm..." you say, "that's nice."

"Yeah, I'm just trying to do some schoolwork but hey, I'm glad you called cuz I wasn't getting anywhere with it. Its just so tedius, you know? Sometimes I wonder what the hell I'm doing. I can't stand it."

"I hear you." You say. "We should get, you know, one of those cheap tickets on Spiritair. Skip town for a while...they have these great tickets to the Bahamas or Dominican Republic or something."

"Sounds like a plan," I say. "Except what would I do about this damn reading?"

"Take it with you," you suggest, "you could, like, read it on the plane or something."

"Ha." I say. I am sick of talking about these Spiritair tickets. We always talk about going somewhere exotic for a hundred bucks. Tickets offered at the wrong times, when its so busy with school you feel sick...and I mean sick, sick: physiologically, emotionally, spiritually. Not your fault. Couldn't sleep...listening to aweful political hacks on the radio. Sick so you can't emagine getting out of bed in the morning, and I mean for hours, and then when you do, you drink a coffee, than another. You used to load up on the suger, but that made you nuts, so now its just the coffee. You do some reading, write a paper on some PC crap that's all the same, another damn Powerpoint presentation. Those things suck. As soon as a professor loads of of those suckers against the whiteboard, you can just about forget having any sort of excitement about the class--its all been reduced to bullets, bullets and cheesy pictures downloaded off the internet--and you start counting slides on the handouts...only 42 more to go, hang in there...

"...you still there?," you query.

"Sorry, I was just thinking...dunno...I've been a bit spacy lately. Probably the weather."

"Ya, me too," you say, "It's disgusting outside...anyway, I called cuz I am going to Walgreens, at maybe 2 o'clock. Did you wanna come?"

"Sure," I say, "I needed some nail polish remover."

"Great, I'll beep outside in around ten," you say.

"call my cell if I don't come outside right away," I say.

"see ya."

"bye."

I snap my phone shut, throw it back on my bed. I pull away from my books and go over to my mirror. Start putting some lipstick on.