It is the first day of school.
Solon, Ohio,
America.
2009.



Jennifer is wearing her new unisex button-up shirt from American Apparel, and feeling highly aware of this fact as she walks into school. She is 30 minutes early and feels confused about what to do. She walks up to a school friend named Ziggy and asks him how his summer was.

“Good,” he says, “just worked, hung around, got drunk, you know...”

Jennifer makes unintended eye contact with him and to avoid the continuation of this, transfers her gaze to slightly beyond him, resulting in eye contact with another school friend named Erika. Erika doesn’t know Ziggy, but she has seen him around before. Ziggy wants to stick his penis inside of Erika, and has masturbated to the thought of her performing various sexual acts on him at least 4 times since their freshman year of high school together.

“Hiya!” Erika exclaims a bit too excitedly as she approaches Jennifer, out of, what Jennifer assumes to be, obligation or lack of another person to talk to. Ericka walks – prances, with ‘spunk in her step’ and awkwardly lingers at their side, presumably waiting her turn to enter the conversation.

“How ‘bout you? What’d you do this summer?” Ziggy asks Jennifer, unaware of Erika’s prescence.

Jennifer feels highly confused and vaguely aware of her new shirt. What did she do this summer? She thinks of possible responses and how they will be perceived. She thinks about saying things like, “I traveled a lot,” or “I spent a lot of time working on this novel I’ve been writing.” She thinks about telling the truth, which was, “I blogged, and read, and ate, and watched movies and stuff.”

“Nothing much,” she says lamely, “you know, just hung around..”

“Yeah..” says Ziggy.

“What’s up?!” exclaims Ericka.

Jennifer looks at her feet and kind of shuffles them. She becomes painfully aware of her hands and shoves them into her pockets. She keeps her gaze transfixed on her feet, but for some reason cannot stop consciously proccessing the whereabouts of her hands. She hears someone close by say the words “bitch nigga.” She looks at Erika and doesn’t know what to do. She excuses herself by mumbling that she has to go to the bathroom. She smiles slightly and says “see ya around.”

Jennifer walks in the general direction of the bathroom and feels better.