Struck by Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal (7 page)

“Where’s Mr. Gifford?” I asked.

“You just missed him,” Ms. Hastings said. “He has an appointment with his urologist.”

Both our eyes widened.

“I mean,
dentist
,” she said, and blushed.

“When is he supposed to be back?” I asked desperately.

“He’ll be back tomorrow.”

“This is an emergency. My future is on the line,” I told her.

She looked at me, a little afraid. “Well, you might still catch him before he leaves. He could be in the parking lot—”

Before she could finish, I was out the door.

I raced to the faculty parking lot. At first I didn’t see him anywhere and my heart dropped into my stomach. Then suddenly, up ahead, I saw movement. I had mistaken him for a tree.

“Principal Gifford!” I called out.

He stopped and glanced over his shoulder. He started walking faster to his car when he realized it was me.

“Principal Gifford! I have to talk to you!” I called out, and ran after him. “I know you can see me!”

“I’m tired. What is it, Mr. Phillips?” he said with a heavy sigh. “I already told you I can’t make the English teachers pass out the
Chronicle
or any biased publications.”

“I have absolutely no inquiries or requests about the
Chronicle
,” I said, catching up with him. “I want to start a school literary magazine.”

He started chuckling under his breath.

“Why are you laughing?” I asked.

“Tell you what,” he said. “You can start your literary magazine. You can start a hunting magazine for all I care. But don’t ask me for funding. The school is broke.”

I hadn’t even thought about that yet. I usually just raid the teachers’ room when no one is looking for the extra paper needed to print the
Chronicle
for journalism, but this would require much more than that, especially if I wanted to make an impression with Northwestern. I may actually have to go to
Kinko’s
.

I would also need some kind of advertising, some kind of press release to let the school know this was happening.…

“Great,” I said. “I’d also like to announce it at the assembly tomorrow.” I thought that’d be a good start.

He began to shake his head.

“It’d take three seconds!” I said.

“Fine,” Gifford grunted. “For my own amusement if nothing else.”

“Cool. Thank you,” I said, and bowed awkwardly. I’m really not good at this whole “being thankful” thing.

I was beyond excited to let the journalism team know.

“Good news, guys,” I told them in class. “On top of the
Chronicle
and the Writers’ Club, I’m also starting a school
literary magazine
! Awesome, right?”

The silence was deafening. They looked at me like I had just told them I had leprosy.

“Whoa,” Dwayne said. “You really like embarrassment.”

“And I thought
I
was a masochist,” Vicki mumbled.

“America is most beautiful,” Emilio declared.

“Thanks, I’m very excited,” I said. “It’ll give the other people in school a chance to showcase their literary work. So, if any of you have something non-journalistic to submit, you know where to find me.”

“Can I submit my short stories about savage children living on an island without any adults?” Malerie asked enthusiastically.

“No, Malerie,” I said. “Because that’s
Lord of the Flies
.”

She slumped in her seat, and my spirits slumped with her. That’s the moment I realized I was drowning in denial. This was going to be difficult.

On my drive home, in between the thoughts of doubt, I brainstormed how I was going to ask my mother for the money to start the magazine (only a couple hundred bucks, nothing too serious). I considered hiding her pills and then selling them back to her, but our house is too small to hide anything. I decided asking the
genuine
way might be my only option.

When I got home I was taken aback by what I saw. Everything was
clean
. All the counters were wiped off, the carpets were vacuumed, and the pile of dirty dishes had disappeared from the sink.

To my even bigger surprise,
Mom
was cleaned up as well. She appeared to have showered and put on real clothes for a change.

Of course, she was wasted and half passed out on the couch, so I knew I was in the correct house, but she had put herself together before that.

“Mom, what happened in here?” I asked her. “Did the city health regulators finally come or something?”

“Your father was here,” she said sadly. “We’re officially divorced now. Apparently a couple of years ago I forgot to mail back the divorce papers. He brought me new ones to sign.”

“What?!” I said, having difficultly processing the information.

“Stupid me, I thought he just wanted to see how we were,” she said, but I wasn’t paying attention to her. “What’s your problem?” she asked.

“All this time I’ve complained about coming from a broken home, when in reality, I was just a part of a dysfunctional family,” I said disappointedly.

“Don’t worry,” Mom said. “You’re still a bastard.”

I shrugged. I suppose she was right.

I can’t believe it took a visit from my father to get my mother to act like a real human being. Clearly she’s in a mood; I’ll ask her for money after dinner.

10/10 after dinner

I may have just experienced the most abnormal dinner in the history of the Phillips house.

Normally dinner between Mom and me goes something like this: I make a joke about the food, Mom tells me I’m rude and becoming my father, I make a joke about her hygiene, Mom tells me she’s doing the best with what life has given her, I ask her if life is the one hiding her shampoo, and then we do dishes.

Perfectly normal, right? Well, tonight’s dinner didn’t follow that format at all.

It started when Mom randomly exclaimed, “You need to be on antidepressants!”

I looked up at her cautiously from my corn. Even though I was the only other person in the room, I wasn’t sure she was talking to me.

“No way. You’re medicated enough for both of us,” I told her.

“Aren’t you depressed?” she asked me.

“Currently, while having this conversation? Yeah,”
I said. “Everyone gets depressed—it’s an emotion. People turn to pills before they turn to their problems these days.”

“Sometimes pills are the only solution,” Mom said, trying to validate herself.

“You’re depressing me right now. Are you saying if I take a pill you’ll disappear?” I asked.

“That was uncalled for!” Mom sent a dirty look across the table.

“And so are most prescription drugs!” I said. “We’re living in a medicated society. We start drugging kids with ADD, which they
all have
, and it doesn’t stop until death.”

“
You
were on ADD medication as a kid and you turned out somewhat decent.”

“No, I wasn’t.” I knew she had to be mistaken; I have absolutely no memory of ever taking anything growing up, even vitamins.

“I hid it in your food.”

I almost choked, hearing this confession. She was kidding, right?

“I thought I was just really calm and mature for my age,” I said.

“Nope, you were drugged,” Mom said nonchalantly. “When your father and I began our divorce you started asking so many questions we found it easier to roofie you than to answer you.”

I almost choked again even though I didn’t have any food in my mouth. It must have been true; Mom forgot how to joke after Dad left.

All those early years of judging my peers for playing tag on the playground, for digging up worms and eating them, for coloring outside the lines in coloring books—it was all medically induced, not because I was superior to them.

“Well, it isn’t dinner unless some form of my childhood foundation is shattered,” I said.

I figured at that point I really had nothing else to lose. What could possibly shake up dinner more than discovering you were drugged your entire childhood? So I asked for the money.

“I need money,” I blurted out.

“I give you an allowance,” Mom shot back at me quickly.

“I need more money, like three hundred dollars,” I
said, and continued before she could interject. “I want to start a literary magazine at school and need money to print the first hundred copies or so.”

“No,” Mom said. She didn’t even pause for a beat to consider.

“Oh, come on!” I said. “I know you’re rolling in it. Grandpa died and left us everything.”

“Wrong,” Mom said, and made a game-show-like buzzing sound. “He left me everything and you his car.”

“What about my college fund?” I asked.

“Key word
college
!” Mom said. She wasn’t going to budge.

I really wanted to run outside at that moment and scream,
WHY IS EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD AGAINST ME?! I JUST WANT TO GO TO COLLEGE, I’M NOT TRYING TO GO TO THE FRIGGIN’ MOON!
But I remained seated.

I must get my stubbornness from Mom. The only way to deal with people like us is to play a game of give-and-take; I had to negotiate with her.

“Okay,” I said, my stomach tightening from what
I was about to propose. “If I start taking antidepressants, will you give me the money I need to start my literary magazine?”

She looked up at me, silently contemplating the offer.

“Deal,” she said. “Now pass me the salt.”

Has anyone else ever made a deal with their mother to take prescription drugs in exchange for cash? This was my first time. Although, rest assured, if
Nurse Ratched
thinks I’m actually going to be taking the happy pills, she’s sadly mistaken.

I excused myself from dinner shortly after that. Call me crazy, but I lost my appetite after discovering the woman who prepared the meal in front of me used to drug my food

Good God! Why does my life have to be a Robert Ludlum novel?!

All right, let’s see where I’m at with all of this literary magazine shit: Permission from the principal?
Check!
Funding for the project?
Check!
Peer participation?
Jesus Christ, how the hell am I going to manage that?

10/11

The ASSembly was today. That’s not a typo, I say “ASSembly” because it brings out the ASS in everyone who attends. Even the janitors act like baboons, and half of them have crippling arthritis.

It was held, like it always is, in the auditorium. It’s really hard for me to generate school spirit in a room I know is used for Alcoholics Anonymous every Monday night and Senior Pilates on the weekends.

The student council sits onstage during the assemblies, like royalty overlooking their serfdom. I’m not hard to spot up there. Just look for the guy who’s staring up at the ceiling with eyes the size of tennis balls and not moving whatsoever; that’s me.

Coach Colin Walker was the first person to speak to the hopping pubescent crowd.

“When I look around this room I am reminded of when I was a captain of the Clover High football team,” Colin said. “It was the first time Clover High had been the number one undefeated team in the county!”

The room went apeshit. I was too busy staring at
a ceiling panel with a peculiar stain on it. Was that an air-conditioning leak or rat piss?

“And now, as your coach, I’m proud to say I’ve kept that title for Clover!” Colin said, and got a standing ovation.

One student was in tears and shouted, “I love you, Coach Colin!”

Big frigging deal! There are only three high schools in the county and one of them is for young fugitives.

“Tomorrow night at our homecoming game, let’s show Lincoln High what Clover is all about!” Colin said, and raised a fist high in the air. I was unaware he was in the Black Panthers. “Let’s pull a John Wilkes Booth on Lincoln High!”

The eruption that followed was insanely loud. I’m surprised it didn’t knock down all the rat-piss-stained ceiling panels. Coach Colin leaped off the stage, ran through the crowd giving high fives, and left the auditorium.

I don’t mean to offend anyone by saying this, but while I was watching Coach Colin speak in front of the school, I couldn’t help but be reminded of those old
videos on the History Channel of Hitler encouraging the Nazis.

They’re both politically placed brainwashers, they’re both encouraging the destruction of a neighbor, and I hate both of their guts.

Speaking of things I hate, Remy was next at the podium. They had three phone books placed aside for her to stand on so she could reach the microphone.

“Hey, guys!” Remy squeaked into the mic. She actually got a generous round of applause. Maybe my announcement wouldn’t be so bad after all. “So I have some good news and bad news. There was a little mis-communication with this year’s Clover High yearbook.”

I sat up in my seat. You know I live for this shit.

“It’s going to be titled
The Glover High School Yearbook
, thanks to the bad handwriting of a freshman girl whose name I won’t say but rhymes with
Dally Dester-field
, so you have her to thank,” Remy said. She made evil eyes at Sally Chesterfield, who shivered in the front row.

The last time I saw Sally she weighed an easy two hundred pounds, but the petrified girl I was looking at
now couldn’t have been more than ninety. It must have been a rough week.

“But the good news is, I was able to knock off ten dollars from the price!” Remy happily announced. “So they’ll be sixty dollars each, not seventy. All preorders are still final.”

She was done, and it was my turn. I had one shot at inspiring the people of my school to submit to my literary magazine. One chance to further cement my future…

“Hello, future farmers and inmates!” I said into the mic. “I’m Carson Phillips from the
Clover High Chronicle
, and I’m here with some very exciting news! This year for the first time ever, Clover High will release its first
literary magazine
!”

I clapped after the announcement. I was alone.

“Now, I know most of you can’t read, let alone write,” I continued. “But for all the secret writers out there, please submit any original work into the box outside the journalism classroom and it will be published. Poems, essays, short stories…hit lists, anything!”