Excerpt:

Another Day, Another Documentary

Jeff yawned so wide his jaw cracked, and he winced and rubbed at his cheek.
The seat next to him scraped back loudly on its hind feet before a body sat in it, sending the front legs slamming back to the hard tiled floor.
“Tired?”
The chirpy, perky tone of voice made Jeff feel like ripping the heads off of small woodland creatures.
“Good God, Lin, decaff, for my sake if not yours.”
The girl’s merry laugh mocked him.
“I will drink decaff when you will drink regular.”
“Ugh.” The disgusted sound was a kneejerk reaction to the idea of drinking coffee, and it made Lin laugh again. “You know how bad that stuff is for you? It sucks the calcium right out of your bones. Do you want—“
“Yes, I do want osteoporosis,” she interrupted, so familiar with the discussion – discussion, not argument, really, honest – that she knew what was coming. “It will make old age more interesting. Better than you. You’re gonna be looking around when your ninety, wondering why you’re dying when you’re in perfect health. I’ll know why my body’s going to shits.”
Jeffrey grunted and shifted his notebook a quarter inch to the left, so that equal desk space was left on either side of it. This meant that the silver chrome mechanical pencil had to be moved in the opposite direction a sixteenth of an inch to compensate for the adjustment and return the desk to symmetry.
“And here we see the domesticated breed of human adapting to his temporary habitat. His body posture suggests extreme exhaustion, possibly from strenuous nocturnal activity, perhaps in pursuit of a suitable mate…”
“Fer chrissakes, get that out of my face,” Jeff grumped, pushing the palm sized digital cam corder out of his line of vision as he tried to see the notes the instructor was transcribing on the board in chalk.
“Suddenly, he spots us and attacks, feeling his personal environment threatened. This specimen of the species shows signs of abnormal possessiveness and territorial tendencies, possibly as a result of a highly repressed adolescence in his unnaturally domesticated world, exposed to less than his fair share of social interaction. This may have stunted his interpersonal growth, causing…”
“Stunted? Did you just call me stunted?” Jeffrey sat up straight in his chair, his broad shoulders coming up to nose level on Lin. She tipped the camera up to compensate for the difference, the little red recorder light staring at him robotically.
“… causing an unusual apathy towards others of his kind. This could, perhaps, be evidenced further by his current and past failure in passing on his genes…”
“It’s not failure if you haven’t been interested and therefore haven’t tried because you’re too young to be trying to pass on genes in the first place, and have no desire to pollute the earth with more “human specimens”.”
Lin shifted her finger and switched the record function off, then lowered the camera and straightened up. She smiled beatifically. “Good morning.”
Jeff rolled his eyes and slouched back down in his chair, giving up once again. He couldn’t argue with a madman. “Good morning, Lin. How goes the documentary? Film any more old ladies in their natural habitat of knitting in rocking chairs today?”
“Not quite. Mrs. Flinley and Mrs. Carry went for a walk today, and nearly got plowed down by car driving, earth destroying, apathetic scum pigs.”
“How dare those jackasses drive to work in the morning,” I agreed drolly.
“Exactly.” Lin nodded once and turned back to her desk to flip open the little side door on the camera and replay what she’d filmed so far. She tilted it to show me the clip of Mrs. Carry – or maybe Mrs. Flinley, I didn’t know the difference – nearly across a street when a shiny red sports car of some kind came nosing out of his street and went around her, cutting through the opposite side of the road to do so. It was rather dumb, and rude, but only to be expected in a college district.
Lin continued reviewing her footage, but asked “What’s today?”
“Friday, thank God.”
“Amen. But no, what’s the class about?”
“Art History? The history of art? Lots of dead, stuffy religious people who couldn’t draw an anatomically correct Jesus if he slapped them on the forehead and shouted “Be heeled”?”
Lin gave me a Look, snapping the window shut on her camera. “If you’re going to be a kill joy prick all day, I’m going to sit by Catherine.” She made a move to brace her hands on the desk and get up, but I reached out quickly to stop her with a hand on her arm.
“Nah, come on, don’t be like that. I’m just tired. Stayed up late…” telling a kickass moral story to a little girl who’s mother should be heavily medicated, and her daughter in child services rather than the care of a few apathetic maids and tutors? “studying this crap.” I slapped the notebook on my desk with the back of my hand. “We have a quiz today. Let me guess: you didn’t study?”
“You know I never study. It disturbs my chi.”
“It disturbs your social activities.”
She made a motion to get up again and I held up both hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry. Want to run through the chapter with me before class? It may not help you, but I only understand this stuff when it’s been repeated to me twenty times.”
Lin picked up my notebook casually and flipped through it. I pulled my art history book out of my bag and flipped to the right chapter. By the time I found it, she had a pen out and was drawing a cartoon on the cardboard backing of the notebook. I gave up trying to get her to study with me and started skimming through the chapter.
When the teacher stopped writing on the board and started lecturing, I reached out to take my notebook back. Lin had drawn a caricature of me laying over my desk, drooling, with a stack of papers labeled A+ under my hand.
“You’re way too worried about stuff,” she commented in a voice only just low enough not to be heard by the teacher, but still too loud.
“I pay too much not to worry about it,” I whispered back under my breath.
“Why don’t you get a job?”
I didn’t answer. It was a can of worms I didn’t want to get in to, not right now. Maybe not ever.
I nodded my head toward the teacher without looking at Lin, telling her to pay attention and stop interrogating me. She clicked her pen a couple of times, then grabbed my arm and pulled it onto her desk. The professor saw and cast a baleful look at us but didn’t say anything. I flushed scarlet.
Lin wrote after school, big tree, commons on my arm, then released me and propped her chin on her hand angrily and stared at the professor like she was really paying attention.
Shit. I’m so going to get it.