• The following links are links to prior chapters of this selection:

    Part 1 Prologue

    Part1 Ch. 1

    Part 1 Ch. 2

    Part 1 Ch. 3






    It was on the next day, on Saturday, that Mary came over to my house. Going over to her house was one thing. Having her come over to mine was quite another. My mom would see me with her, and things could get...nasty.

    "I don't get it," my mom said. "She looked like a sweet little girl when I saw her. Why are you treating her so coldly?"

    "This, coming from the person who is sending me to boot camp next week after the project," I muttered. Then I turned to her, and proclaimed loudly, "Look, why is not your business. Just keep out of my life." I ran upstairs, and burst into my room, flopping myself down on my bed. Mary was coming over...and there was nothing I could do about it.

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    Mary came at around 3:00 p.m., and my mom greeted her heartily at the door. I, of course, did not, being that I was upstairs, staring at the ceiling. Footsteps came, and before I knew it, Mary was inside my room. It was enough she had to invade my life. Now she had to invade my room.

    "So...uh...let's get started!" she said, and with such exuberance that I wanted to strangle her. She sat down, opened her back pack, and well she was doing so, she said, "So, uh..." Suddenly, from downstairs, I heard mom shout,

    "Is everything fine in there?" I opened my mouth to yell "shut up!" but Mary instead replied,

    "Yes, everything's fine." I rolled my eyes, trying to make as vivid as I could, but either Mary ignored it or didn't see. She dumped down her stuff from her back pack on the floor, saying,

    "Well, we'd best start cracking. We still got to type, and..." As she said that, a pink little bedazzled note book fell on the floor, along with the rest of the stuff spilling from her back pack. I got off the bed, and picked it up. It looked like a diary, being sealed by a strap snapped to it.

    "What is this?" I said, dropping it onto the floor. "Certainly it's not school related." She quickly snatched it, and said with a nervous smile,

    "Th-that's my diary. Personal." She stuffed it into her back pack, and quickly changed the subject.

    "Let's get working. How much do you have done?" I shrugged, and replied,

    "About a paragraph." She laughed, and said,

    "What were you doing in those two hours?" I twirled a note book around, and said without looking at her,

    "Thinking. I didn't remember much from the lesson." She looked concerned, and then confused, she asked,

    "Why didn't you use my science book?" I shrugged again, and said,

    "I didn't want to." That answer didn't seem to satisfy her, and she then asked again,

    "Why?" Again, I shrugged, and said,

    "Look, let's get to work." She bit her lip, as she always seems to do when she's holding something back, and then said,

    "Yes. Let's."

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    For three hours I toiled, and as far as I was concerned, my report was perfect. Here it is:

    The heart is important to the human body. Without it, we would die. It pumps blood. It has a right vatrium and and three other things I forgot a left atrium and a left ventricle and a right ventricle. The blood it pumps has oxygen. Also, hearts aren't shaped like Valentine hearts. They look more abstract, like any organ in the human body. By the way, the heart is an organ. And it's a muscle organ. It beats about 2.5 billions beats a life time.

    It's right vatrium is in the upper chamber. It recieves blood from the upper body. It comes through this thing called the Superior Vena Cava. I don't know why they named it that. I think it sounds pretty dumb.

    The left atrium gets new oxygen blood stuff from the lungs. And...     I suppose I'd better stop before my story about my life turns into a science lesson. But anyway, deffinitely going to ace this thing.

    By the time Mary left (thank God she did) I got three additional pages done. Mary, though, had finished her whole rough draft, and as she walked out the door with a perky expression as she said "bye" to me, I wanted to shout something back like "yeah, and good riddance", but I glanced over at my mom, who was standing over me, watching my every move.

    "Well?" she said. "Did you get your work done?" I started to walk back upstairs to my room, as I replied,

    "Most of it." But she wasn't done, and she asked,

    "That girl...is she your...friend? Now, at least?" I stopped mid way up, looked at my mom, and said darkly,

    "No." And the conversation was over, as I returned to my room to stare at the ceiling.

    "I don't care what anyone else thinks of that girl," I thought quietly out loud. "I stil--I still hate her."