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Vanessa’s boyfriend, a jock named Jeff, thinks it’s her time of the month Her best friend and number one acolyte, Cynthia, asks her if souess the real reason They certainly won’t think she’s been taken over by the devil If anything, they’re suspicious that the devil’s taken a day off

I knoould be foolish of e her I could run off this afternoon and sign her up to volunteer in a soup kitchen, but I’m sure when she arrived there tomorrow, she’d only make fun of the homeless people’s clothes, and the quality of the soup The best I could probably do would be to get Vanessa into a co position that someone could blackmail her about (Did you all see the video of Vanessa Martinez walking through the hallway in her thong underwear, singing songs froirls’ room and flushed her own head in a toilet?) But that would be stooping to her level, and I’ainst her would cause at least a little of it to fall back inside e her I si to ood You can see why it’s so much easier for them to be bad

I want to tell Rhiannon all about it Because when so happens, she’s the person I want to tell The most basic indicator of love

I have to resort to eet tired of relying on words They are full ofto her is not the sa back fro her voice I have always been grateful for technology, but now it feels as if there’s a little hitch of separation woven into any digital interaction I want to be there, and this scarestaken away, now that I see the greater comfort of presence

Nathan also emails me, as I kneould

You can’t leave now I have more questions

I don’t have the heart to tell hi way to think about the world There will always be more questions Every answer leads to more questions

The only way to survive is to let soo

Day 6018

The next day I ae, and I am only forty-five minutes away from Rhiannon She emails me and says she’ll be able to leave school at lunch

I, however, a to have a harder tie’s e and his two brothers stay at home with them each and every day The room that in most homes would be called the rec rooe’s family The parents have even set up three desks for them, which seem to have been left over from a one-room schoolhouse at the turn of the last century