June 25th.
Today the new Nonpoint CD comes out.
She told me this between sipping from her soda and writing an answer on her due-in-five-minutes homework. She wasn't doing any other work, just writing down numbers. I honestly don't know if they're answers or not.
We're going into town to pick it up.
She tells me this after writing 69 1/3 next to the space for answer 13. Her handwriting so neat. Precise. Her can sounds empty when she puts it down next.
"Damn" she says, throwing it over her shoulder into the trash can. Straight in it goes. Precise.
No, I won't get you another.
"Damn" she says again.
The bell starts the slow migration to class and she leaves me with these final words.
Remeber to be at the front of the school at 4:15.

I've been on the phone long enough for them to trace the number. Thank you.
But I really am a Rockstar in need of a hitman.
The Gap doesn't provide that kind of service.
Well then I'm sorry for wasting their time. Just watch out.
I hand up the phone and she laughs, then sips on the straw protruding from the big gulp cup. Her lips wrapping around the straw seductively and scarily at the same time.
"Since when is Pipedreams a sucess?"
Since I've run out of prank call material.
We walk to the local record store and dance through the automatic doors. Ignore the hostile stares from the clerks; we do.
The rows of the CD store remind me of the rows of a cemetary. Grouped by genre, grouped by class.
Up the middle row she walks, running her pale hands over the groups of CDs. They rattle back as her hand leaves them, each returning to their predetermined positions.
Buoys on a wave. CDs on a rack.
Mindsets of the masses.

She's behind me, tapping her pencil to a drum beat that only she can hear.
Four fast beats. Two slow. Two fast beats.
She's been at it for an hour without taking a break. Tamo can be like this everyonce in awhile. Redundant doesn't even begin to describe it.
Ten minutes ago Susan raised her hand.
"Someone," putting all the emphasis and facial expression on that one word, "is tapping her pencil and it's disrupting my learning enviroment."
We have rules in this class.
No proper nouns. Susan couldn't say Tami's name, so she used the next best thing.
"Well that's a problem now isn't it?" The teacher is afraid of confrontation. "WIll that somebody stop disrupting the learning enviroment?"
"Sure". Tami says aloud
She kept tapping her pencil.
Here I am, trying to memorize the capitals of all the European countries, and I'm stuck with this beat in my head.
Four fast beats. Two slow beats. FOur fast beats.
Damn you Tami.
I start to write to that rythm.
Damn me.

She stops infront of a bin. New it said. In big, obtrusive letters. Some cleark had spent time to cut them out of red cardboard and sprinkle glitter on it.
We've done this before. Now it's my turn to shine.
I walk up to the clerk at the counter.
"Do you have that Backstreet Boys cd?"
The clerk raises her eyebrows in surprise.
"Um, yea... which one?"
God I hate this.
"I don't know the name, but it has this one song on it."
"Which song?"
"I don't really know the name."
"Well, can you sing it?"
"Uh, no, I'm kind of shy."
"Oh."
I really, really hate this.
"Say, i have an idea, do you watch MTV?"
"Sometimes."
"Have you seen any of their videos?"
"Yea, sadly."
"Well, I'm a good dancer and I know their routine for this song I'm thinking of. Here, see if this helps."
Times like these I wonder what could be worse.
Before she can protest I'm off. I start off by stepping forward with my right leg, then I spin. This is the hard part. Because, right now, my outstreched hand is suppsed to hit the nearby display rack of CDs and knock a few past the security panels, setting them off.
It works beautifully, two CDs fly past the paens and a third skids after them. Instantly the music that was playing is drowned by the screach of the alarm.
I start to apologize and bend over to pick them up, but Tami comes and grabs my arm.
"Come on you dumbass, they don't have the CD" she says, pulling me to the door. "Sorry." she says to the clerk.
This means that somewhere on Tami's person is the CD she was after. It going past the security panels without being untagged wont set them off because they're already going off.
God, I hate this.