Friday, September 28, 2007

Chapter 62: Adrenaline Run

In the social world how long is long enough to wait for someone to come pick you up? In college you only had to wait 10 minutes, if your professor wasn’t there by then you were free to go, at least that was the time limit the students had decided on. Mr. Collins is 15 minutes late and I’m tempted to get in my car and go for a drive so that I don’t have to deal with the idea of him coming late, but I’m not sure if that is kosher. What if it’s supposed to be half an hour and he comes at twenty? Or twenty-five. Every moment I write I get more nervous that he will show up. I should just get in the car, he has a cell phone, we have the same company so he gets free minutes when calling me, he should call and say he’s going to be late. I think today is a good day for a drive.
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I’m a coward. I ran away from home. How ridiculous to be 24 almost 25 years old and to run away from home? This is better than Prom, because with prom I wasn’t allowed to run away. I gave him until 6:22 is that not enough time when he said he’d come at 6?
Did I feel guilty? No sign of him, no phone calls, why should I feel like a jerk?
I drove around in the neighborhood and then decided that was too risky, so I went to another neighborhood and then felt creepy staying in my car on a residential road. I didn’t want to change the cops getting called on me. I felt like I was going to hyperventilate, my fight or flight instinct took me sprinting in the opposite direction and I strangely felt as though I had missed a near death experience. Is that pathetic or what? I started to drive, thinking of places I could go, the park, a college campus, and without thinking I drove straight to my happy place. I had no intention to go there but my feet and hands helped my car to take me there. It’s sick and pathetic that I need this place to calm my nerves. I think it mostly has to do with Baby Face and Poof Daddy. If I could just talk to one of them I think that the butterflies on speed would have slowly died off.
As I walked into the doors and my cell phone started to ring. It was Mr. Collins. I hit the silent button and let it go to voicemail, in the meantime I got a text message from Jellybean saying, “So you have a date tonight?” All the confirmation that I needed that he was at the house. Then I got the voicemail, so I listened to that. He apparently thought he told me 6:30…regardless it was 6:45 and I would have bolted before then if it had originally been 6:30. But then I felt guilty and I tried to think of what excuses I could come up to help ease the rotting pain of guilt in my stomach. Dam it, why do I have to be such a nice person, why do I have to feel guilty…why couldn’t I just say ‘no thanks’ in the first place? So I called Ducky and made plans to go with her to the same party so that I could at least say that I thought he had said 6 and when he didn’t show up by 6:30 I drove to her house to catch a ride. I hung up with her and then Baby Face was walking by, he motioned for me to follow him to the break room, which I did. We got up there and for some reason the whole thing came out. I felt like such an idiotic, who runs away from home to avoid a date? This girl. I forget what happened but Baby Face said, “Oh that reminds me” and he started to make a phone call. I asked him if that was what he was doing, he said ‘yes’ so I told him I would see him later, I didn’t want to sit there while he made a phone call. That would be weird. So then I went over to Ducky’s and we rode to the party. I was glad I was with her instead of Mr. Collins, it was a long drive. When we got there we were welcomed by Mr. Collins, how thrilling. There were about 7 people there and I was upset because you can’t hide from someone with such small numbers.
I tried at first to hide in the background, or to get so engrossed in another conversation that I couldn’t talk to him. But he came up and started to talk to me about my blasted vampire book and then started to tell me about some fantasy book that he really enjoyed. He should be best friends with the Horse Whisperer (I don’t know if I have mentioned him, but I named him a while ago, he is the guy who is similar to Mr. Collins…maybe a little bit weirder and is in love with Ducky…oh and his goal in life is to be an animal whisperer). Then he pulls out his magic tricks, and he even teaches me one. After the party I performed one for Ducky and she said I wasn’t allowed to hang out with him again…no problem. So I sat there watching his magic tricks because it was better than trying to have a conversation with him. Motor Mouth’s sister was there and I was really grateful because it helped to divide his attention. At one point he pulled a seashell out of my ear (not literally you gullible bunch of fools) I just shook my head and told him not to do that anymore…you just can’t trust someone who pulls things out of other people’s ears. Finally Ducky stated that her eyes were getting itchy so she was going to have to leave soon (she’s allergic to cats and before we even got there we had decided that we would use this excuse). So a couple more minutes and she finally told me that we had to leave. I said my goodbyes to everyone and told them I would see them later. Man, I don’t think anyone will know how grateful I am that I was able to develop friendships into the obsessive, ‘we don’t like her to hang out with new people away from us’ stage, so that no one could complain because then I would get angry. I don’t know if that is going to make sense to anyone beside myself, but I’m still grateful.
That’s when we went out to eat and I got to show her my magic trick. I also got to complain about Asshole, even though we had called him to see what restaurants were in the area because we were in his part of town, we didn’t invite him to join us though, I wouldn’t have been able to tolerate him then. I’m just a sad and pathetic individual, who should be careful what she wishes.

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