thoughts from a car 2.0

Every time I start up this computer, it shows the “Brother Control Center” popup but I always read it as “Birth Control Center” and think of Planned Parenthood and swear once again that I’ll never get pregnant.

All of my battery settings are on SAVE ME but I still only have 1 hour 34 minutes left for a five hour trip. Please fuck me.

The background is from Max.

This car is only peaceful because we are about forty-five minutes into the trip, which isn’t long enough for McGhee and Marshall to kill each other or my dad to need coffee or my mom to yell. There is Christmas music playing on the radio and Marshall is begging to play on the iPad and all car trips are almost exactly the same.

McGhee got her Battle of the Books list and it is almost exactly the same as mine was.

“The fountain book? with the fountains? Did you have that one?” yes

“Small Steps the Year I Got Polio?” yes if you want my copy you can have it i stole it from the library

how did you accomplish that asks my mom

they had like ninety something copies so i told them i returned it and that it was in there somewhere and they never really bothered to look, they just cleared my fine

She is going through her test grades from the past week. “Science? 25/25. Common Core Questions? 9/9.” She’ll have a hard time in high school when she needs to start studying.

Some senior whose sister is in my grade got a full lacrosse scholarship and Ned Vizzini committed suicide and I am not surprised about either.

“What is my average score?”

100.

“That’s right!”

I have heard nothing from Max all day today, and when he called in the morning I called back within 15 seconds and it rung once before he didn’t pick up (it always rings five times always), and this afternoon I called and he called back but when I picked it up it was just a dial tone and I don’t know what I did wrong.

April is back now finally and I am crossing all my fingers and most of my toes that she’s the reason why he won’t pick up his phone because then he’ll be happy and it will be okay.

If I end up dating her I don’t know how long it would last because I am so hopelessly obsessive over people I date. I’d always try to talk to Isaac when that was a thing and Max is the center of my world (although that could be in part because he is part of me). She would probably be so scared and it would end very fast.

She is so beautiful and she has the voice of an angel and all I know about her mind is that it is not completely regular but I want to get to know it and I want to be able to talk to her and know her and hold her.

It won’t work the way that Max and I worked because she and I are at the same school and other people can tell us things about the other but with me and Max it was learning everything for the first time and realizing very quickly yes, this is the person i’m meant to be with, this will be a thing, this will, this will, this will

I still remember the first time I realized that I was falling in love.

He is all of a sudden very much in trouble and so is April and everything has gone to shit.

The only friend her and I have in common is Peter and is that even enough?

India is one of the most interesting people in my grade. She is like Super Catholic Level 9000 and has a coop of chickens in her backyard and lives right on the golf course in a sprawling Victorian house that looks like a palace and her little sister is very sweet.

In sixth grade her and Matilda and Talia and Sydney Territo and I were all really good friends. Her basement was very odd. We made an antibullying project called That Is Not Respect that involved falling off fences and hiding in trash cans, and I played the horse and the mushroom in her English end-of-year project.

In seventh grade, she and Sydney decided they were too cool for me and Matilda, and Talia (who didn’t like me to begin with) was caught in the middle of staying with Matilda or them, and she chose them for a long time. That was the year India started sending me death threats.

In eighth grade, India didn’t care about me at all but Sydney and I were gym buddies and me and her and Mariella all followed each other on Tumblr and gossiped.

This year, I see none of them.

Give my computer to Fallon.

Give my computer to Fallon.

How is she going to take this?
How is anyone?

If he legally died today he would legally die as Anastasia and that is not alright.

Who the fuck is Anastasia even definitely not him.

I cannot see how anyone would ever think that to be his name it does not fit him at all and he’s not a girl what even.

“We only have 301 more hours until the kids go back to school.” –my lovely father

We have only just entered New York State and we’ve been in the car for 1.5 hours.

I am going to use up my remaining battery talking to him. There’s no point in blogging.