Not just a diary

“Okay everybody you can start now!” and the whole class rose.
The girls pretended to not notice me at first, a typical preppy sort of thing. They went over to our kitchen and started getting out some things.
Chelsea started to organize, “Okay, who wants to set the table?”
“I’ll do it!” the pig-tailed girl cried.
“Okay. Jessica you get the ingredients today?”
The girl with blond hair to her butt smiled, “Okay!” and shed turned to go to the desk at the front of the room to get them.
“Who wants dish duty?!”
The girl who I had been looking at smiled a cute little smile, “Not me!” The way she said that made me jump. She had a British accent! But it wasn’t deep British, it was very light, yet still noticeable. “We do have a new person you know…”
Chelsea had been pretending not to notice me but I saw in her eyes that she knew I was there. Now she looked over at me.
“Oh yea,” she smiled and came over to me along with my girl and the pig tailed girl. This is what preppies do. They pretend to ignore you and then when they get up the courage, they mess around with you in groups.
Chelsea smiled and tried to act cute, “What’s your name?”
My head nodded up and I spoke with confidence, “Jessin.”
“Oh okay cool. Where are you from?”
The real answer for that was supposed to be ‘Australia’, “LA. I got here Thurs-die.”
I had always said ‘day’ as ‘die’. She made a start of a giggle at my accent, and smiled. That was getting old.
The pig-tailed girl spoke, “Okay well this is Chelsea, and I’m Tracey.”
Before I could get the name of my girl, Jessica called from the counter, “Hey can somebody help me get all this?”
“Sure,” my girl offered and was off.
I watched her go for a second.
“Okay I think we’re going to give you dish duty today, okay, cool. Now lets start!”
I gave Tracey a look like ‘ahh man, pleeease anything but that!’ and she giggled. I really didn’t mind.
After that we began to make our cookies. Hanson told us not to eat the batter but of course once her back was turned we dug right in and added extra sugar. They giggled and laughed as they licked their fingers and giggled and laughed even more when I licked mine. At that I looked over at Chelsea and said, “You have got flower on your nose.”
“Omigod, I do?!” She began to put her hand up to wipe it off.
The other girls burst into laughter.
“Oh, no I don’t!” she said.
I snickered, only for show, and she nudged me in the ribs.
“ ‘ay don’t be gettin’ violent on me here…”
Just then Hanson had looked over at us.
“Kitchen three you need to stop horsing around or points will be taken off! And Mr. Allaniel, put your hair back and tuck in your shirt!”
The girls laughed at me and continued licking what was left off their fingers.
“Your last name is Allaniel?” Tracey asked.
“Yeah…”
“Is that Australian or something?”
“I’m not Australian what are you talking about??”
She looked up at me with that kid like look of awe.
“I’m just kidding! I know I speak like an Aussie.”
They laughed.
“Well I think the way you talk is so cute!” Chelsea enlightened.
I sighed in an exaggerated way, “Greeaat… now I’m ‘cute’…”
Tracey was setting the table now, “Don’t worry Jessin that’s a good thing!”
“Oh okay I feel better now.”
Mrs. Hanson’s voice boomed out at me again, “Mr. Allaniel didn’t I tell you to tuck in your shirt and put your hair back?!”
I quickly rolled under my shirt before coming from behind the counter where she could see me, “What the hell! Me hair isn’t that long!”
“You will do as you are told Mr. Allaniel!” I wished she would stop calling me that.
“Yea, yea, yea…” I mumbled and grabbed a rubber band out of the jar. As I was walking back and trying to tie my hair up at the same time I discovered something.
“By crike I can tie it!”
The girls laughed. And it was a true shock to me… time had gone by so fast since I had gotten off the street in Australia.
“I need a haircut…”
Hanson’s voice sprang out again like a smashed cat, “By now you should be done!”
We went back to joking around a little more, and the front of my hair wasn’t long enough to go back so it started to curl into my lips.
Finally my girl spoke, “Hey, shouldn’t our cookies be quite done by now?”
A look of panic circled around each of our faces.
“Shit.”
We opened the oven and immediately a cloud of smoke puffed out of it.
The girls jumped back and screamed. Luckily Hanson was dealing with a spilt milk mess and hadn’t noticed the cloud of smoke yet. About half the class did though.
“Take it out! Take it out!” screamed Chelsea.
“Jessica you get it!” screamed Tracey.
I shushed them and laughed inside myself about the whole situation, not wanting to get into trouble today. I grabbed the oven mitt things, grabbed the cookie tray and through it on the stove. It burned my hands even through the mitts.
I shook my hand off and the girls were panicking amongst themselves behind me while I turned off the stove and fanned away as much of the smoke as I could. It wasn’t very thick smoke but it was still a smelly faint cloud.
I shook my hands and clinched my teeth, “Shit, shit, shit…”
“Omigod, Omigod…”
“What are we going to do?!”
I looked over at my girl and saw that she was not panicking with the others, but rather laughing to herself. That made me smile and laugh myself and we just cracked up looking at each other.
The sight of our cookies was just as hilarious, and that got all the girls to laugh. Hanson still hadn’t noticed.
Tracey got us together, “Quick everybody lets just stick ‘em on the plate and sit down before she comes!”
Trying not to burst into laughter we did so and sat around the table. We each had a few lumps of black gooey cat-poop looking cookies in front of us.
We looked around at each other, (them mostly looking at me) and at the pathetic excuses for cookies. There was silence for a while.
“I dare you to eat one…”
“No, Tracey, you first!”
“Eww… this is soo disgusting…”
My girl spoke again, “Okay how about we all try them at once?”
“All right I’m up for that.” Said Tracey.
“I’m game if you all are,” said Jessica.
Chelsea sighed… “umm… Okay…”
“All rot let’s go…” I said.
Tracey counted, “One… Two…. Three!”
We all looked at each other, a cookie still about an inch away from our mouths.
“Okay lets try this again… One… two… Three!”
After a few sure glances we all stuffed it.
After a few sure glances we all spit them out in our napkins.
After a few more sure glances we all chugged the rest of our milk and were grossed out.
“Oh man, what will we do?!” Chelsea was panicking again.
“Uhh… stick them all in me pocket.” I said and opened my pocket. Chelsea and my girl who were sitting on either side of me quickly dumped them in, then the other two. Luckily my baggy pants had very large pockets. Tracey also enlightened everybody that I had a hole in my pants where the cookie tray had burned through all the way to my boxers…which I didn’t really care about since sagging was the thing anyway.
We all did the dishes that day. We were trying to be silent, but we couldn’t help chuckling every few seconds. I tried not to make any eye contact because that would’ve surely put me over the edge of cracking up all over again. Home Economics was going to be very amusing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 19th, 2002 at 12:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.