The Works of Nick Hayden

So, okay, sometimes I’m such a girl.

I’m been under a lot of stress lately and I just wanted to do something new, something different, something unique, startling…and so I decided to do something to my hair. Sick, huh?

This morning I stopped by Curl Up and Dye — not a bad place, considering how I’ve been feeling — and spent an hour looking over all the hair styles in their magazines. You know, if my hair would actually look like the pictures, I’d be happy. But whatever I do, it’ll last for a day, and the next morning I’ll look more wretched then ever. Like that parable, where the one demon leaves, but brings back seven more the next day.

I know I don’t want to cut it too short. There’s no need to focus the attention on my round face.

The weird thing is, though, I’m trying to imagine how I would look with hair covering half my face when someone calls my name. When I look up, I see who’s calling me, but I can’t figure out who she is. But she obviously knows me.

“Hey, Britney. Hey, it’s me, Beth. Remember, from middle school? How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in ages!”

You have to understand. I did have a few close friends before I went off to boarding school. Beth wasn’t one of them. I mean, I went to her house a few times, mostly for birthday parties, and I might have helped her with her math a few times, but we hardly knew each other.

“Yeah, I’m doing fine.”

And she begins to grill me. Where have I been? What have I been doing? Any boyfriend? I mean, it’s like she’s been waiting to see me for months. I do a crappy job answering, using monosyllables whenever possible. I should have asked her some questions, too, but I couldn’t think of anything at the time.

“So, what do you want done to your hair?”

I close the magazine and shrug. “I don’t know. Something.” I lean forward and look sidelong at my flat hair.

She walks behind my seat and begins to pull my hair into strands like she’s going to braid it, but she seems just to be playing with it. “If you want, I’ll do it for you. I don’t have any times open today, but tomorrow afternoon’s open.”

“You work here?” Dumb question.

“I took cosmetology last two years. Got my license in the spring.” She let go of my hair and walked behind the counter. “How about two o’clock tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

The door opened, and Beth greeted the old lady who entered and said she was ready for her. She waved me bye.

I don’t know. It’s just…weird, to be so friendly. They must teach them that at cosemtology school.

If anyone reads this blog, I must sound like a lunatic. I’m not saying what I wrote yesterday wasn’t true, but I’m not a nutcase. Really.

You know, I’ve always reacted strongly to events. I’ve always ranted. But normally it’s all just noise and bluster because I’m scared or alone. Sure, I’d get upset and frustrated at people. But I liked them, too, and I had good times.

But I’m different now, somehow. When I was younger, I wasn’t this angry. (Can you believe it? I’m not even 19, and I’m already saying “When I was younger.”) I don’t like being this angry. But I’m not going to pretend the anger’s not there. Most days, I’m fine, but it simmers just beneath the surface, and sometimes, like yesterday, I just can’t stand it anymore and I say awful, crazy things.

This morning I woke up and I wasn’t angry at all. I was just sad and empty. I sorta apologized to mom for how I’ve been this week — not in person, in a note. I can’t manage much more right now.

I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’ll probably still move out. I need a change, and college wasn’t it. Heidi and I had planned to be roommates. I just couldn’t go afterwards. I just couldn’t.

I don’t want to talk about my week. My life’s a mess. Maybe my mom’s right, maybe I’m screwed up. Maybe I’m can’t get over what happened. I can’t even talk about it here, and, really, who’s reading this? No one I’ll ever see. 

So here it goes. I’m just going to put it out there. You already think I’m crazy, I know you do. I’ll tell you what happened. 

All those times when I talked about her, I mean’t Heidi. But you don’t know Heidi, do you? And you never will.

I don’t make friends easily. I almost never make friends my own age, because they’re immature, spoiled, greedy, horrible people. But I liked Heidi. They say you’re lucky if you get one really good friend in this life, and if you’re freakin’ amazing, you might get two. Well, Heidi was mine. There goes the rest of my life.

And it’s stupid, Hallmark movie sob story stupid. She gets killed in a car accident. No drunk driver, no idiot teenage antics, just a freak accident. Everyone else lives, almost without a scratch, and, ta-da!, a funeral with a shameless sun shining on us like no one cared.

And you know what people do? They tell me they’re sorry the same way they tell little Jimmy that his goldfish is in the Golden Pond Above. Or worse, they tell me she’s in a better place. What the crap? What about me? I want her here. Go on, tell me I’m a selfish witch. I don’t care. My school was filled with arrogant snot-face infants whose creed of faith was, “Well, what I think is…” and whose idea of kindness was pointing out every flaw. And I was one of them. I know it. I’m not fooling myself. But Heidi never was.

So why didn’t I die in that accident?

And here I am, wasting my days, pretending I’m going to be a writer, growing fatter by the week, lonely and too proud to tell anyone.

You know what my mom said about the chapters I gave her? If only she had hated them! No, no, she liked them, but they made her sad. Why? Because she saw me in the main character. That scared little girl who keeps Jumping through time whenever she makes friends or gets comfortable, the one who’s driven and unhappy and obsessed? Yep, you’ve guessed it.

Fine. She wanted to help me, push me forward, help me let go and move forward.

I’m not letting go. I’m never letting go. At first, I yelled at God a lot. When I was young, he seemed to make sense. Well, God didn’t have much to say, and now I don’t have much to say to him. Because, you know what, I used to think God brought me Heidi just when I needed her, just as all my other friends were leaving and I was left alone. Well, what happened, God? Figured I’d gotten enough? Figured I’d learned something and it was time to move forward? Maybe I should just suck it up and make new friends, that’s life?

Your wish is my command, O Almighty. I’m out of here as soon as I can arrange it. I’ll make my own life, since you took my old one from me. 

Time to Jump again, Britney.

She didn’t like it. She brought her up again. I’m going to find an apartment.

I handed three chapters to my mom last night.

“I wanted you to read the beginning of my book.” It was difficult to hand over the pages. I’d pored over them time and again before that, but I was certain there were still some typos.

She looked genuinely impressed. Or shocked, maybe. I don’t know. “Should I read it now?”

I wanted her to finish them instantly, so that I wouldn’t have to wait; but I wanted to be far away as she read them. I imagined watching in horror as she pulled out a red pen and began to mark up my pristine pages, chuckling to herself.

She’s a high school literature teacher, you know.

So I told her she could read it whenever. She said she’d read it that night before bed. I said, There’s no hurry. She said, But I’m interested to read it. (What a hideous word interesting is.) I said, Whatever.

I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept telling myself that if she didn’t like it, it didn’t matter. I’m my own person. I have a right to decide what to do with  my life. If she makes me get a job, fine, but I’ll just get a cheap apartment, live on Ramen noodles, and write until I prove to her that this is what I’m supposed to do.

I slept in this morning — because I couldn’t fall asleep. Mom had already left for work. I keep trying to distract myself, but I can’t keep still. Maybe I’ll go out for a walk. At least I’ll keep moving.

Maybe I’ll stop in at her school around 3.

I apologize to all those search engine bots that check my site. I’ll try to update regularly. I’m sure you’ve missed my lovely wit.

Actually, I’ve been doing some pen and paper writing. I’ve decided I’m going to prove my mom wrong, so I’m trying to get a couple chapters of my novel finished, edited, and polished.

It’s discouraging to stare at a legal pad, write a sentence, cross out half of it, rewrite the sentence, cross it out again, and so on — for something like eight hours at a time. I have a dictionary and thesaurus on one side, Dr Pepper and pretzels on the other, you know, to keep me occupied when I get lost in thought. I take breaks for meals and bathroom breaks.

I have no idea if what I’m writing is any good. Two days ago I despised it. Yesterday, the words barely elicited a reaction. Today, I find some of my first stuff passable; the new stuff, not so much. How can I devolve as a writer in three days?

I think I’ve got most of the main plot points worked out. It’s a little tricky because it’s a time travel story. It’s about this girl, she’s about nine when the story starts, but she can hurl herself forward in time. But she can’t go back. Something in her is driving her forward, but every time she Jumps, she finds herself alone again. She doesn’t want to be special, she wants to be normal, but there’s something she’s meant to do and she doesn’t know what it is.

You see, there’s this tower, this giant edifice that dominates the town where she lives, and she’s drawn to the tower. No one’s ever been inside. There’s no door, no windows, no entrance, no writing on the walls, nothing. She believes the answer’s in the tower, because all time travelers live near the tower. She’s obsessed with it. Every time she Jumps, it remains stationary, like a silent god eyeing the earth — eyeing her.

If I work hard, I should have two or three good chapters by Monday. I’ll show them to mom then. I’ll keep you updated. You web bots get bored if the site never changes, don’t you?

Labor Day weekend. Yippee. (Can’t you feel the love?)

Actually, it wasn’t too bad. I think I’m just using my sarcasm out of habit.

My dad’s family came over Sunday for a cook-out and Monday dad and I re-stained the deck. I have five cousins, but they’re all younger. I took care of the youngest most of the day. He’s two and a half, and he’s absolutely crazy. I felt like I was an old woman he moved so fast and never needed rest. But you know what? Although I wanted to shake him sometime because he’s so stubborn, I enjoyed playing with him.

See, I don’t like people, but I like kids. I have no deranged notion that kids are somehow innocent — Alex lied easy enough when I asked him if he had eaten my cookie — but even their evil is simple. I’m not sure how to explain it.

I have no proof, but it seems to me it’s like this: kids lie, but they know it’s a lie and they lie to get what they want. But it seems to me adults lie, but they come to believe it’s the truth, and they lie not just because they want something, but they’ve convinced themselves that the world is supposed to work that way. Kids are still new to evil; adults thrive in it.

And I feel like I can teach Alex, that he’ll listen and grow and change. He isn’t finished yet. Adults keep all the same bad habits, but they disguise them with such sophistication they seem like virtues.

On Monday, I whined and complained. It was absurdly hot outside, and our deck has all these thin rails going up and down that take forever to paint. I sweated and got oil-based stain all over me. And in the evening we sat in the air-conditioned house and watched The Fastest Indian because my dad loves that movie.

So, really, it was a good weekend. My mom and I didn’t fight. My brother (have I mentioned him?) even hung around part of the weekend instead of hiding inside playing Halo or something.

I’ve been thinking about the weekend a lot. That’s why I haven’t written. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. It’s called Labor Day, and I found that watching Alex and staining the deck were meaningful labor for me. I did something–with a person in the first case; with my hands in the second. Sometimes I think what I really want are kids and manual labor. Isn’t that the simple life? But what 18-year-old wants to skip everything and be a mom? Does that even happen nowadays? Or, as usual, am I just a weirdo?

Mom and I fought again last night.

She doesn’t listen to what I say. I say the same thing every time and she doesn’t understand.

So she, the judge and jury, accuses me. She points her finger at me and says, “So, what are you going to do with yourself, you lazy little girl?”

Of course, those aren’t the exact words, but that’s what the words mean.

And I try to explain, very slowly, that I’m trying to be a writer. I helped out at the Xayyachacks’ with their bed and breakfast. I saved money. I offered to pay rent if that’s what she wanted.

“Oh, oh, oh!” she sputters accusingly. “You’re going to be a writer! You’re going to write the great American novel, is that it? Well, let me see it. Let me read it. Let me feel it between my fingers.” And she gives me this evil smile.

And I try to explain that nothing’s written yet. My writing process is like an iceberg: you can’t see 90% of it.

“You’re deceiving yourself,” she says, softly, like a snake. “You’re hiding because of what happened. You need to go back into the world. Stop isolating yourself. Nothing can change the past, so just forget it. Throw yourself into the mad, frothing chaos of the world. Then you’ll understand.”

I can’t hardly keep from screaming now. She always brings that up. Yes, I’m mad. I’m mad, so mad sometimes I just have to take a deep breath, close my eyes, and get away from everyone. She knows I yelled at God and we’re only now on talking terms again. She knows it all. She knows IT ALL. But that’s not why I stayed home from college. That’s not why I haven’t gotten a job. I’m choosing to do this. I want to do this. I need to do this. And she can’t understand that.

I screamed at her. I said horrible, mean things. I’m not sorry. I know I should be, but I’m not. She hurt me and I’m sick, sick, sick of being hurt.

I want the last six months to disappear.

This week I’ve:

• Beaten Chrono Trigger again. (I love that game.)
• Rearranged my room.
• Eaten too many Oreos. So good with milk.
• Re-read Anne of Green Gables. Haven’t read it in years. Still good. I think I’d look better with red hair.
• Watched the DNC.
• Rented and watched The Painted Veil. Hated the ending.
• Watched MST3K: Manos, the Hands of Fate. It’s not as funny without Heidi.
• Mowed the lawn to get on mom’s good side. Coughed the whole time. It’s that dry here.
• Completed several dozen Sudokus.
• Tried to go clothes shopping. Too painful to detail.
• Sent emails to my old friends from the Story Project.
• Painted my toenails.
• Listened to all of Beethoven’s symphonies.
• Started this blog.

And still, not a page of my story done, the story that’s been forming in my mind all summer.

It’s the curse of the blank page, I tell you.

Well, I’m hungry and I’m sick of pizza pockets.

Not much else going on. Just the usual–you know, a general discontent with the world that sometimes rises to disgust and other times ebbs to apathy.

Mom’s been mostly civil to me. She says she understands. She’s been saying that for weeks, but with that parental pause. You know the one: “Oh, yes, I fully agree you’re a grown woman able to make your own decisions, but…” You’d think she’s understand, since she was the one always reminding me I’m not just a brain, I’m a person. I mean, she married my dad, who barely finished high school because he was goofing off. He’s ten times smarter than anyone else I know. He might not know what a trochee is or who Gilgamesh is, but he’s my dad, you know? He has a special sort of intelligence.

Of course, nominally, he’s on my mom’s side. He has to be. She’s obsessed with this idea that there are other reasons I didn’t go off to school besides I didn’t want to. I mean, sure, I was sorta planning to go up through most of the winter, but I can change my mind, right?

And now she wants me to get a job. I plan to. Give me a little time.

My stomach’s really growling. I’ve got to go. I think I’ll run and get something from Taco Bell.