9.02

It seems the book is labeling chapters based on the day it takes place, which is actually somewhat different and I must admit, it’s rare for books to concern themselves with exactly when something takes place. Let’s just hope this doesn’t work out the ragepossums in practice.

Anyway, so, he’s dreaming of falling and someone’s calling him as she falls and he wants to catch her but can’t and then somehow he’s pawing through the mud that somehow appeared despite it taking place in the air and there still being no ground at the moment, and somehow doing that lets the tips of their fingers touch and there’s green sparks that may or may not be a metaphor and he wakes. It’s clarified slightly that apparently it was a dream about falling through black holes made of mud and here I thought it was just the dream thing where one thing becomes another without it making sense but no, apparently he was dreaming of a very deep sinkhole or something

I was safe in my room, in our ancient house, in the same creaking mahogany bed where six generations of Wates had probably slept before me, where people didn’t fall through black holes made of mud, and nothing ever actually happened.

Well, except the Civil War and also all that slavery beforehand, and then presumably some lynchings afterward and maybe a touch of riots at the very end.

I mean, you said your ancestor fought in that and then just now you said it was a former plantation. Stuff happened. A great deal of it happened.

He explains he’s been having the dream for a while.

I had never seen her face, or I couldn’t remember it. All I knew was that I had the same sick feeling inside every time I lost her. She slipped through my fingers, and my stomach dropped right out of me

So yeah, your standard important dream.

My earphones were still around my neck, and when I glanced down at my iPod, I saw a song I didn’t recognize.
Sixteen Moons.
What was that? I clicked on it. The melody was haunting. I couldn’t place the voice, but I felt like I’d heard it before.
Sixteen moons, sixteen years
Sixteen of your deepest fears
Sixteen times you dreamed my tears
Falling, falling through the years…

Magic songs, though, that just makes me roll my eyes. Dreams aren’t that well understood, so you want to throw magic at it, okay. Ipods are. Songs can’t appear by magic. Unless the reveal is that not-Edward, during one of her nighttime stalker stares in his room, put the song there, I’m displeased by this.

My sheets felt like they were full of sand, but I knew better. It was dirt. And my fingernails were caked with black mud, just like the last time I had the dream.

Uh.

You know, this is reminding me of fanfic. Not specifically fanfic, exactly, but those prophesy stories and stuff by newbie authors. So first they have the Super Important Dream and they like the idea so much they want to throw in more, and they come up with Super Important Ipod Song Look You Guys Something Impossible Is Up and Literal Dirt From The Dream Oh My God. It’s sort of cute.

But this is theoretically written by an adult who theoretically edited this and then theoretically at least one other adult read it over before publication, so why does it read like newbie suefic?

Anyway, our protagonist, who’s gone on about how bored he is and how nothing ever ever happens…goes to scrub away the evidence.

If I didn’t think about it, it wasn’t happening. That was my approach to most things the past few months.

WHY? You are bored as fuck. You literally have nothing better to do than investigate this. The dream alone should be enough to get you canvassing the library for ghost stories or whatever just because what else do you have to do?

And you, author, what the fuck? Why does everyone love the idea of a protagonist who sits around ignoring the mysteries rather than investigating them?

But not when it came to her.

You damn well are. She’s the dream. If you’re ignoring all the freaky supernatural stuff about the dream, you’re not actually that hung up on her, because if you were, you’d be trying to figure out the rest of the dream to figure out what’s going on with her presence.

Downstairs of his family’s ancestral mansion, his housekeeper who’s like his grandmother has made him a delicious artery-clogging breakfast served on old china plates. Also, he’s sixteen but already over six feet tall. I’m sure absolutely none of these facts will do so much as slow the endless whining about how hard it is being him.

It has not yet confirmed that she’s black, but with all the stuff about how she thinks of him as family and she’s totally in charge of the household and she don’t talk proper and then when she’s in a bad mood religion and superstition all mixed up, like it can only be in the South. When Amma went dark, it was just better to stay out of her way. Just like it was better to leave her charms on the windowsills and the dolls she made in the drawers where she put them. I’m pretty sure she is. Hoping that superstitious voodoo servant woman is for once not, but I don’t think we’ll be lucky.

Anyway his friend Link shows up in his crappy car, and more about how the main character wants to escape but he’s trapped there. His friend’s plan is to be part of a famous band, and because this whiner never stops whining, he goes on about how jealous he is that his friend knows what he wants to do, even though it’s obviously a plan that’ll lead to him being stuck in the place, while all the main character’s got as a plan for leaving is college anywhere else, ie, an actual solution. But we’re supposed to pity him for some reason because he hasn’t decided on his whole life yet woe is him.

He does at least try to follow up the magic ipod song.

“Did you upload a weird song onto my iPod last night?”
“What song? What do you think a this one?” Link turned up his latest demo track.
“I think it needs work. Like all your other songs.” It was the same thing I said every day, more or less.

Which is almost a decent explanation for him being so chill about a magic ipod song, except – wouldn’t it be really obvious it’s not one of Link’s songs? Even if Link is normally super secretive about what he’s working on until it’s done, which there’s no sign of, the production values should be totally different.

Now, if Link liked music in general and was always listening to all sorts of weird stuff, this would work, but the conversation as we’re presented is that Link is into his own songs in particular.

Anyway, the magic ipod song has vanished.

I knew I hadn’t imagined it because it was still stuck in my head.

That really doesn’t prove anything.

Other interesting ipod speculation could be that something’s gone wrong with the ipod – if he’d bought it used, which seems fitting considering the quality of his friend’s car and his own complete carlessness, then he might think it was a song the previous owner had that was deleted and somehow was temporarily undeleted. So something’s wrong with the storage.

But instead, a scary black car drives by.

For a second, the sounds of the road and the rain and Link dissolved into silence, and it was like everything was moving in slow motion. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the car. It was just a feeling, not anything I could describe. And then it slid past us, turning the other way.

Also he doesn’t recognize it which is totally impossible because he knows all cars in town and no one could possibly just be driving through the place, not exaggerating he seriously says that. And it looks like a hearse. Dammit, so it is vampires.

Eight streets. That’s how far we had to go to get from Cotton Bend to Jackson High. Turns out I could relive my entire life, going up and down eight streets, and eight streets were just enough to put a strange black hearse out of your mind.

There’s no explanation for why he decides to relive his life like this, of course, it’s just a lead-in to him talking about how the local Stop and Shop is where all the kids shoplift and hang out but oh no your parents might come in to buy groceries while you’re trying to be cool! And the local truant officer is there and he sees them being late (?) but today he just waves them on.

You know, for a kid who bitches about absofuckinglutely everything in his town, he’s strangely mum about their having them most obsessive truant officers in existence. I don’t even know if there’s truant officers where I live. Maybe? If they’re around doing stuff, it’s watching out for kids running around in the middle of the day, not chasing down kids on their way into school. Plus they’re old enough to drop out, so why harass them?

His teachers are just as insane, giving them detention for being late. and saying their parents will know:

Your mamma is goin’ to have a few choice words for you, Mr. Lincoln. And don’t you look so smug, Mr. Wate. Amma’s gonna tan your hide.”

Amma was right there as he got in the car, and from there they went directly to the school. If she had an opinion about them being late, she’d have been pushing him out the door, not pushing more toast into his mouth.

Instead of this, we’re treated to him explaining that did we know everything is super boring and everyone knows everything about everyone, even though (spoiler alert) it’s all super boring stuff?

My mom used to say Carlton Eaton, the postmaster, read any letter that looked half-interesting. He didn’t even bother to seal them back up anymore.

Then it’s not “my mom says”, it’s objectively proven and known to everyone.

Also, really, what sort of small town is this that has no dark secrets? I already brought up the lynchings. Then there’s your rapes, your murders, your child abuse, your crazy relatives locked up in attics… They shouldn’t need to wait for the vampires to get here before there’s problems.

In Gatlin, the first day of school never really changes. The teachers, who all knew you from church, decided if you were stupid or smart by the time you were in kindergarten. I was smart because my parents were professors. Link was stupid, because he crunched up the pages of the Good Book during Scripture Chase, and threw up once during the Christmas pageant. Because I was smart, I got good grades on my papers; because Link was stupid, he got bad ones. I guess nobody bothered to read them. Sometimes I wrote random stuff in the middle of my essays, just to see if my teachers would say anything. No one ever did.
…
Mr. Lee was one of the few teachers who actually hated me. Last year, on a dare from Link, I had written a paper called “The War of Southern Aggression,” and Mr. Lee had given me a D. Guess the teachers actually did read the papers sometimes, after all.

Then it’s not that no one ever read your papers. And if you really thought that in the first place, you’d have gone from hiding random stuff in the middle to just typing ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES ETHAN A DULL BOY.

I’ve graded papers, and my cousin is teaching in a town that makes this one look cosmopolitan. If the rest of the class is turning in shitty enough essays and you see one kid wrote a perfectly good one but there’s a bit of nonsense in the middle, it’s hard to figure out how exactly you’re supposed to grade that. Do you really bump an A essay to B because of what looks like a computer error, when the rest of the class can’t spell three letter words or remember there’s supposed to be periods and capitals?

Now, is it possible the teacher’s skimming and skipped over it entirely? Yes. But skimming is closer to reading than not reading, and still doesn’t prove that you and your friend are writing the same quality essay.

If the author really wanted to prove the teachers just grade you by opinion, the proper way to express this is to say that he’s swapped essays with his friend and it doesn’t change the grade.

Unfortunately, the same principle didn’t apply to multiple-choice tests.

Furthermore! Teachers do not like stupid children. They tend to take it as a personal affront. If he’s not getting As on the multiple choice tests, they’re not going to want to keep giving him As on his essays. And if his friend is pulling down As on his own multiple choice tests, the teachers should be upping his essay grades in response.

Yes, teachers can be shitty and prejudiced, but it’s not this damn overt.

A little-known fact about me: I read all the time. Books were the one thing that got me out of Gatlin, even if it was only for a little while. I had a map on my wall, and every time I read about a place I wanted to go, I marked it on the map.

Okay, again, the internet, it exists.

And videogames, why doesn’t he play videogames?

Into the Wild got me to Alaska.

Into the Wild is that story of the guy who starved to death in Alaska due to not knowing enough about what he was doing in combination with Alaska being a godforsaken wasteland. I’m not sure if the author doesn’t know more about the book than that it’s popular and about Alaska or if this is supposed to show he’s an idiot.

Also, in Chemistry he’s partnered with this girl he dated last year who dumped him and now hates him, because I guess you can’t pick your chem partners in this school.

It was a never-ending source of amusement for the guys, who kept expecting us to get back together. The thing they didn’t know was, I wasn’t into girls like Emily. She was pretty, but that was it. And looking at her didn’t make up for having to listen to what came out of her mouth.

This is always how it’s put.

And looking at her didn’t make up for having to listen to what came out of her mouth.

I mean, I understand the sentiment about wanting to have someone who shares your interests, but whenever guys express that, it’s always put like this – like the problem is her noisemaking. He’s personally affronted she says things he’s not interested in, because the world should cater to him. If a guy’s interested in football and his ex-girlfriend wasn’t, she says they didn’t have anything to talk about, not that she was sick of having to listen to what came out of his mouth.

And this is particularly nasty when we consider she broke up with him, so his claims of not being interested are pretty hollow.

But who cares about cheerleader bitch, there’s a new girl in their grade!

At any other high school, a new girl in the sophomore class wouldn’t be news. But this was Jackson, and we hadn’t had a new girl in school since third grade

A) A new person is news in any place that doesn’t get a ton of them each year.
B) How the fuck do you not know? You’ve spent two chapters on how no one has anything to do but gossip about all the nothing everyone else is doing. Even if the girl only arrived in town yesterday, the school had to be told she was enrolling, which means at least one person in the building knew there was a new kid, which means that one person should have then told everyone in town.

“Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Wate. I’m sorry to interrupt your conversation, but I’d like to get started if it’s a’right with you boys.” Mr. Lee’s tone was just as sarcastic as last year, and his greasy comb-over and pit stains just as bad. He passed out copies of the same syllabus he had probably been using for ten years. Participating in an actual Civil War reenactment would be required. Of course it would.

You were talking during the first day of his class, and you’re upset the teacher used the hideous power of mild sarcasm on you, and also he’s evil because he’s ugly?

Also, Civil War reenactments require both sides to be present, and generally Union soldiers are desired because there’s way more people there to play Confederates, so if you had any real opinion on the Civil War beyond that only stupid hicks care about it, you could dress up as Union.

Also, the participants often know a great deal about not only the battles but the timeperiod in general, so it’s perfectly appropriate for a history class.

the only thing we got a look at was too much of Charlotte Chase in a jean skirt two sizes too small.

Is there a word for the kind of guy who explains constantly how he’s not into all those other girls, they’re all just vapid sluts?

our next class was ASL, American Sign Language, and it was strictly no talking allowed. No one was good enough at signing to even spell “new girl,” especially since ASL was the one class we had in common with the rest of the Jackson basketball team.

Okay, look. The reason football is stereotyped as being for dumb jocks is because it’s a sport full of head injuries that’s 90% smashing into other people. While a football player can as intelligent as anyone, the fact it’s playable by the recently concussed shows that’s not a requirement.

Sneering at all jocks on principle, especially members of the same team as you…you’re just an asshole.

The how hot is the new girl discussion continues, with his friend wanting to know if she’s as hot as the other hot girl.

As if on cue, Savannah—the standard by which all other girls at Jackson were measured—walked into the cafeteria, arm in arm with Ethan-Hating Emily, and we all watched because Savannah was 5’8″ worth of the most perfect legs you’ve ever seen. Emily and Savannah were almost one person, even when they weren’t in their cheerleading uniforms. Blond hair, fake tans, flip-flops, and jean skirts so short they could pass for belts. Savannah was the legs, but Emily was the one all the guys tried to get a look at in her bikini top, at the lake in the summer. They never seemed to have any books, just tiny metallic bags tucked under one arm, with barely enough room for a cell phone, for the few occasions when Emily actually stopped texting.

Right, Ethan, you’re so not like those other boys who are into those other girls (who are fake and also sluts). Also, so you were going out with the second hottest girl in school but she’s not good enough. I notice that just fucking dating one of the less hot girls isn’t an opinion for you. Your year must have fifty or so kids if there’s multiple schedules to go around – assuming 20 kids in a room at a time and history etc being taught for at least two periods means forty right there, and I really think you’d have mentioned it if you guys were enjoying smaller class sizes – if anything, I’d assume you were packed 30+ to a room. If half the kids are female, that means you have a dating pool of twenty before we get into the kids in the years above and below you.

Also, so they have cellphones and endless texting plans, but still no internet? Just fucking get internet.

We then get an extended metaphor about how in cheerleading, Savannah’s the one holding up the base of the pyramid while Emily’s the one on top.

Emily would risk anything to stay on top of that pyramid. Savannah didn’t need to. When Emily got tossed, the pyramid went on fine without her. When Savannah moved an inch, the whole thing came tumbling down.

Yes yes you’re bitter I get it.

The point of the pyramid is to get Emily to the top to do her flip, so no, Savannah is not the one who matters while Emily is a dumb attention whore who doesn’t realize she’s irrelevant.

“So did y’all hear about the new girl?” Savannah sat down on Earl Petty’s lap. Earl was our team captain and Savannah’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. Right now, they were on. He rubbed his hands over her orangey-colored legs, just high enough so you didn’t know where to look.

Oh, book. I just finished reading several hundred pages of men beating women. There is very, very little you could do to make this look bad in comparison. Also, the on again/off again presumably is there to mean that they aren’t in tru wub on their way to having their souls grafted together into some monstrosity but are capable of independent lives, and isn’t that a glorious breath of fresh air after Melanie swooning over Jared beating her face in because all that matters is they’re together again.

Anyway, the evil cheerleading bitches don’t approve of her clothing, which because we keep getting told they’re in slut skirts is presumably conservative, and how pale she is.

You could never be too thin or too tan, as far as Savannah was concerned.

See, if Savannah was criticizing her for being fat and Ethan didn’t care, he’s actually have a goddamn case for his not-like-the-other-boys refrain. But seriously, is the book going to say liking pale girls is now edgy and a sign of how pure your true love is?

Also, she’s some guy’s niece who’s uncool.

Strike Three. She was out. So far out, I couldn’t even picture her anymore. The possibility of my dream girl showing up disappeared before I could even imagine our first date. I was doomed to three more years of Emily Ashers.

She doesn’t deserve having you inflicted on her. While you’re bitching about how judgey they are, you’re saying their judgement wins.

Anyway, the author’s already forgotten what a shock it was and we learn that indeed, the girls at least had heard this gossip before the new girl arrived.

See, this is so easily fixed! The school could be buzzing about the new girl because she’s only been there a few days and no one’s actually seen her yet. But that would get in the way of the two chapters of whining about how bored he is and he might actually show some enthusiasm or interest, so nope, plot hole it is.

That’s the thing I hated most about Gatlin. The way everyone had something to say about everything you said or did or, in this case, wore.

Unlike everywhere else!

I mean, is the book doing this on purpose? Is he supposed to be some stupid asshole who blames everything on it being a small town?

Swish. Ten. I couldn’t miss. Maybe it was just genetics. Maybe it was something else. I hadn’t figured it out, but since my mom died, I had stopped trying. It was a wonder I made it to practice at all.

The distilled essence of mary sue. He’s so awesome about the thing he doesn’t give a shit about and by the way his mom is dead.

Then ~*~*~the girl~*~*~ drives by and the rain comes back in the most torrential downpour ever to exist and he stands there letting it beat against him and soak his hair because

For a few minutes, I had let myself hope. That maybe this year wouldn’t be just like every other year, that something would change. That I would have someone to talk to, someone who really got me.

You’re the fuckhead who decided she wasn’t good enough because the other girls you hate don’t like her clothes.