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Jackie B

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Mariko and the Thousand Cranes [Jan. 9th, 2009|08:05 pm]
Mariko, moon-faced and soft-eyed, sat at the table next to mine at lunch. Her favourite food combination was french fries and gravy, and she always looked sort of sad and lethargic. So much so, in fact, that I was about to do a bit a research to see if there was anything I could do to help her.

But the day that I chose to start listening a little closer to her conversations, she was uncharacteristically alert and happy. "You guys," she said to her table after twenty minutes of smiling silence, "I'm gonna fold a thousand paper cranes."

Their spirited conversation about whatever-the-hell screeched to a halt.

"Why?"

"Why not?!" she said through a screen of spastic giggles.

They accepted this answer and resumed, and I decided to investigate a bit. Not because I was concerned, but because I was intrigued. She was in a few of my classes, so it wasn't too difficult. She started folding them in History, taking her time to make perfect, crisp, deliberate folds. People asked her why she was doing it and she'd give a different answer every time. I took note: "It's really fun," I was getting really bored and kind of lonely," "What else is there to do?" I noticed that she was becoming more and more outgoing, more honest with her feelings, and more happy. In fact, I never saw her unhappy after she started folding those cranes. It seemed like she had turned her outlook around.

She struck up a conversation with me in the lunch line one day after she noticed that I had picked up some french fries with gravy. I asked about the cranes, to see what she would tell me. "Oh! My grandma was telling me about this Japanese legend and it seemed like a neat thing to do."

That was a new one!

"That's pretty cool! What was the legend?"

"Well, whoever can fold a thousand cranes gets a wish. I don't know what I want to wish for, but folding them is a lot of fun!" She paused, and for a moment--just a moment--her smile flicked away. "I'm sorry if this is weird, but do you want to sit with me?"

I really did, but I had previous engagements. "Oh, I promised my friends I'd help them with some research... Maybe tomorrow!"

"Aww." She seemed really disappointed. "Well, that's all right. Maybe tomorrow!" she echoed. "See you 'round, Jackie!"

"See you 'round!"

While we were talking about research, I watched Mariko throw her hands into the air out of the corner of my eye. "I did it!" she said, victoriously, a pile of cranes surrounding her. Nobody seemed to be very excited. Most of the people at her table let out one of those sarcastic "Oh-kaaaaaay"s so quintessential to the American teenager's vocabulary. I really wanted to speak up and congratulate her, and to this day I'm not really sure why I didn't. I don't know what Mariko's reaction to the indifference was. She sat just a few feet away, but the bustle of cafeteria had drowned it before it could even reach me.

The next day, she wasn't in school. Nobody seemed to notice.

The day after that, we got the news that her parents had found her dead in her room after noticing that she wasn't at the dinner table. At the funeral I heard them say that the body was found to have been cold for nearly twenty-four hours at the time that they found it. Her own parents didn't notice.

Everybody from school was there. I hoped that it wasn't just because the funeral was held during school hours, that they really did care, but I don't know. Walking up to the tiny capsule of her cremated remains, I wondered what had become of the cranes. I said a short prayer, "God bless you, Mariko," although I don't know why--I'm agnostic at my most sanguine, she was traditionally buddhist--then I walked out to go back to school.

Just as I arrived, I noticed a janitor with a giant garbage bag opening a locker with a key. One thousand cranes spilled out onto the floor and he sighed. "What a waste."

I walked up beside him. "It was a waste, wasn't it? She was so young." A tear welled in my eye and I wiped it away. I don't know why I was talking to him about it; I guess I needed somebody to console me. People grieve in strange ways.

"You're damn right it was a waste! This was probably school paper! We only have a limited supply of it, you know. It doesn't grow on trees." And he swept the cranes into the garbage bag. There was nothing else inside the locker.

"Whoa, wait!"

"What?"

"Can I have that bag? I'd like to recycle them, I mean."

He shrugged. I took the bag and looked inside. The way the light shown upon them, all understated and gray, it made me miserable. I had planned to go back to class, but instead I just went home, dragging the bag behind me.

That night, I took out a crane and studied it. I wondered how they were made, so I unfolded it and studied the creases. At one point, I flipped the paper, and saw this message staring back at me:
私は友人のために祈ります。

Curious, I unfolded another.
私は友人のために祈ります。

And another...
私は友人のために祈ります。

And another.
私は友人のために祈ります。


All written in lovely, deliberate, looping Japanese.

I dug to the bottom of the bag and unfolded just one more. This one was different.
I wish for a friend.
(私は友人のために祈ります。)
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Mark and Buddi [Jun. 11th, 2008|08:11 pm]
Mark and I have been neighbours since I was born. He's nineteen years old, and about six feet, ten inches tall. He was born in Lebanon, adopted by the Adrians shortly after he turned one. Apparently he's very sweet, and girls tend to walk all over him. He's not smart, but he's not stupid, either. I've never really gotten to know him too well. He's always been just a little too much older than me for me to have gone to school with him, and it certainly doesn't help that he's almost painfully shy.

Buddi, though, was another story.

Buddi was, quite frankly, the most beautiful person I've ever seen. She was a bit on the short side, so pale as to look like a porcelain doll. Her alabaster face was dotted with freckles so perfectly placed that they made me believe in a god. Her hair and eyes were the same colour: brown, flecked with gold. She was reckless, and often got herself into more trouble then she could handle. She wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but she was a perfect complement to Mark. She was sociable and had more love than she knew what to do with, a lethal combination that made Mark come out of his shell somewhat. She died of Carbon Monoxide poisoning not too long ago. A part of him died with her.

I went to the funeral and he delivered the eulogy. What I remember most is that he kept calling her by her full name: Charlize. Nobody would have ever called her that when she was alive. It threw a fleece blanket of depression onto an already gloomy day. I couldn't handle it after that. I was in a room with what used to be a perfectly flawed girl, everybody crying, her parents regretting not buying that CO detector a few months back, people trying to console them by declaring that her death was "probably virtually painless". And then on top of it all, there was her boyfriend, sobbing wildly, rambling about a girl who didn't exist anymore using a name that wasn't hers. But I suppose the corpse wasn't hers, either. Not anymore. Perhaps the corpse was Charlize. Buddi was a free spirit. Charlize only tied her down.
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Her kind of people [Mar. 7th, 2008|06:11 pm]
I carry a tape recorder with me everywhere I go. It's the kind that records onto tiny little tapes that are impossible to find and way too expensive, so I have to tape over them a lot. Yesterday I was listening through a really old one to see if there was anything that I wanted to save, and suddenly, amidst hours of eavesdropped conversations about relationship non-issues and troublesome tales of procrastination, I heard that voice. There was nothing I could do but cry. It was Annette, and I could almost see the words falling out of her mouth; hitting the ground with a dull thud, like water from a spigot.

"God! Look at them, Jackie," the voice said.

"At what?" I didn't really sound very interested.

"The leaves! They all get shaken from their trees and suddenly they're in a free-fall. It seems like they should be scared. They know that they're going to hit the ground, and that the wind is probably going to blow them far away from their trees, but they dance all the way down. They don't care when or where they land; they're just celebrating the fact that they're free. They're like people, Jackie. They're like my kind of people."


I didn't really know a whole lot about Annette when she was alive. I think it might have just been because I wasn't listening.
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Annette [Mar. 6th, 2008|03:21 pm]
I don't really like to think about Annette too much, but she's been on my mind a lot, lately. It's difficult to describe her. She was a big girl, but in the honest sense: the sense that implies a large frame rather than a weight problem. She wasn't stupid or dull, but I never really found her to be clever or interesting, either. On a good day I might call her charming, but more than anything, she was just puzzling. Nobody knew much about Annette, and I think that was the reason everybody saw fit to make things up about her. Every school has that girl; the one who supposedly did such-and-such with so-and-so (in the middle of class!), or who regularly blanks blank (my friend knows this guy who saw her!). Annette was that girl. She had been that girl for years, and that was all she'd ever been.

I should have wanted to help her more than I did. She approached our table at lunch one day and asked if she could join us. I had to let her. She joined in on the plans that we carried out to help people around the school. I don't think I'll ever meet another person who cares as much about people as Annette did. She enjoyed what she was doing and I thought I'd done enough for her. It was a pretty stupid thing to think; I'm not proud of it. All she really wanted was a friend, and I failed her.

Annette was hit and killed by a truck a while ago. Everybody knows that. What they don't know is that it was my fault. She loved me, Annette did. She kissed me at homecoming and I flipped my lid. She was so distraught that she ran home, not even thinking to look before she crossed the street.

At the time, I was really creeped out by the whole thing. Now I think I realise that she wasn't really in love with me. I was the only person who had showed her any kindness and she misinterpreted her feelings about the friendship as being romantic. That has to be what happened. I wish I could say something poignant about her life, but there's nothing poignant about it. It was just one tragedy after another. Her father was absent, her mother didn't care, and her only friend wasn't a friend at all.

I'm sorry, Annette. You deserved better.
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A new friend [Aug. 7th, 2007|07:27 pm]
I met somebody yesterday in my Driver's Training class. She sixteen years old, has bright blue eyes, freckles, and blonde hair that she dyes black. Her voice is crackling and perpetually sad. She walked in the door after I did, a sweet and nervous smile on her face. That's the only time so far that I've seen her smile. Her name means princess, but life has been anything but easy for her.

One of her friends had just gotten out of juvenile hall, but he violated his probation and had to go back. She received this news on her cellphone yesterday while we were in line to be registered, and the person on the other line told her that she had nothing to be upset about. She blurted a colourful string of words involving a foot and the anus, then calmly protested and hung up. This was far from the first time she's been hurt, and I could tell. There's a certain realness about her that I've never seen in a person before. She doesn't kid herself that the world in general is a good place and that you can always tell the good guys from the bad guys; she knows from experience and she's trying to avoid being hurt again. She doesn't laugh if she doesn't think something is funny and she'll call you out on your mistakes.

We got to the school at the same time today, and when she got out of her car I noticed that part of her stomach was hanging out from under her shirt. I was surprised at first, because other than that, she was very thin. It took me a little longer than it should have to realise that she might have been pregnant. I just don't like to make assumptions, especially assumptions that can't possibly be phrased in a nice way.

It's a shame that so much has happened to her because she's very smart, witty, and even friendly on the few occasions that she lets her guard down. If I had to guess I would say that she's just running with the wrong crowd. I wish I knew her well, so I could tell her that it's not her fault. I hope that everything turns out all right for her.
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Coralie [Aug. 6th, 2007|07:51 am]
Coralie is tall and skinny, but not in a gawky way. She's graceful, elegant, and beautiful. Her favourite meal consists of a bag of Sun Chips with a strawberry milkshake, and her favourite TV show is Arrested Development. She's a wallflower, like me. She is smart, funny, and charming but she rarely lets people see that side of her. She used to be fairly popular, like her brother and for the same reasons. Her handwriting isn't very good, but neither is mine. I would bring up a theory of mine that most intelligent people have awful handwriting, but while Coralie is intelligent, that's not why her handwriting is bad. The summer before fifth grade she went on vacation and came back without her right hand. I will not go into detail about this because it's insensitive. Hands do not come clean off, it's painful and traumatic and Coralie cried when she told me about it. She hasn't told anybody else about what really happened, but it would stop a lot of rumours if she did.

After the accident, a lot of people who used to be her friends avoided her. They made fun of her, wouldn't play with her anymore. That's when the rumours started. They haven't gone away. Some of them are malicious, and most of them are stupid. All of them are false.

At the time I didn't realise why these things were happening, but now I realise that they were little kids coping with tragedy. I don't think that Coralie has. The tormenting stopped a while ago, but she's still awkward and uncomfortable in social situations. She doesn't trust many people. Most of her friends abandoned her in her time of need, why should she trust them? She's missed a lot of socialising, but not much else. Time heals all wounds. She'll be all right.
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Cameron [Aug. 5th, 2007|10:08 am]
Two of my favourite people that I've met so far are named Cameron and Coralie. They're twins and they share my birthday as well as each other's. Both of them have bright blue eyes and dark brown hair. They get along better than any siblings I've ever known. They have a blog in some dark corner of the internet, but it's not very interesting. They realised this, so they abandoned it. I think it only has one post.

Cameron isn't tall, but he isn't short either. He's popular, but because he's a good person, which is how these things should work but it rarely is. His favourite food is pepperoni, and it's the only reason that he likes pizza. Cameron is on the football team but he hasn't played in a single game. He doesn't care, he hates football. His dad, Cameron Senior, made him try out because he is sad and insecure about himself and projects this onto Cameron Junior. The rumour is that he paid the coach to let his son onto the team. I asked Cameron is this was true and he told me that if it was, it suddenly made a lot more sense why he was on the team and Chris Smith wasn't.

Chris Smith was Cameron's best friend all through Elementary school. They sort of drifted apart, but most friends eventually do. Cameron is on good terms with Chris Smith. Chris Smith is not on good terms with Cameron. He's good at football, but not amazing. He goes to all of the games and silently watches with a sort of disdain that's almost kind of funny. Occasionally he'll shoot a look at Cameron and stare at him as if it could bore a hole in his frontal lobe if he did it long enough and with enough hate in his eyes. I sit next to him sometimes and let him vent to me. All of that pent up frustration isn't healthy. I'd like to think that he's gotten over it by now, but he probably hasn't. I think he should tell Cameron how he feels. They could (and probably would) formulate a plot to work in the favour of both of them.
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Ascent and Decline. [Aug. 5th, 2007|09:43 am]
You always hear about people falling in love, but this feels a lot more like sinking to me. I suppose this is because while most people fall in love with one person, I had to go and fall in love with the entire world.
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