Read Online Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Adriana Trigiani
Tags: Fiction, General, Juvenile Fiction, Children's Books - Young Adult Fiction, Social Issues, Interpersonal relations, Children: Young Adult (Gr. 7-9), Children's 12-Up - Fiction - General, Girls & Women, Ghosts, Friendship, School & Education, Indiana, Schools, New Experience, Adolescence, Social Issues - Adolescence, Social Issues - Friendship, Boarding Schools, Production and direction, Video recordings, Video recordings - Production and direction, Dating (Customs), Social Issues - New Experience, Self-reliance
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work, but it could be pretty great,” I admit.
“Could you work with Mr. Robinson in computer science? He helped install the computer tech system in the theater.”
“Sure. Whatever works,” I tell her.
When I get back to our quad, there’s a bowl of cold microwave popcorn waiting for me on my desk. Marisol is asleep already. Suzanne and Romy are doing their homework by the small, bright beams of their desk lamps so as not to disturb Marisol.
I tiptoe to my desk and pull out my laptop.
“Sorry the popcorn is cold,” Romy whispers.
“No problem,” I tell her.
I IM Andrew.
Me: You up?
AB: Yep.
Me: Just got dragged into the Founder’s Day—shoot me now—planning committee. I’m doing sets for the play. They didn’t know anything about blue screen.
AB: No way.
Me: Yeah.
AB: Do you have the new program for it?
Me: There’s a new one?
AB: Yeah. We used it on our fall production of All My Sons at LaGuardia .
Me: No way.
AB: You want it?
Me: Absolutely. I can already see this thing is gonna eat up, like, my entire life. The old program takes forever. I don’t havetime to program each individual scene.
AB: This will help. You download the images, and this actually sorts and stores them per your instructions. Then you just do an assembly on a DVD and you’re done.
Me: That will save me hours!
AB: Okay. Will send.
Me: You rock.
AB: I know.
I sign off my computer, so tired that I think I may skip pajamas and BR (beauty routine). But I think of Mrs. Doughty and her false teeth, and how I’d like to grow old with my own choppers, and the only way for that to happen is to take care of them, so I grab my toiletry kit and head to the bathroom. Nothing like the idea of dentures to get me to brush, rinse, and floss before bedtime. First, though, I wash my face with Cetaphil. I dry it carefully, remembering that my mom told me if you scrub your face too hard it tears the fibers underneath, which leads to premature saggage, which I have to start thinking about when I’m thirty. But my mom says good habits can’t start too early. My mom knows everything about skin maintenance, even though she totally skips steps when it comes to her hair.
I look in the mirror. I think my bangs grew a littletoday. If I really yank, when they’re wet I can almost get them to go behind my ears (almost). I really want them to be that long by the time we go to the dance at Drab Dull. That would be great.
I brush my teeth and think about Andrew and how, no matter what it is or when I call him, no matter what I need, he is there. I don’t think any of my new friends here have someone like Andrew back home. They have friends, but not friends like him. I’m very lucky.
Caitlin used to tell me that there are no accidents in life—that people come into your circle because you have something to learn from them. I think about Suzanne who has definitely helped me be very cool about boys. Romy has encouraged me to be as athletic as is possible with my limited talents in that arena. And Marisol has been good for everything else—I can tell her anything and she never acts shocked or judge-y.
Even if I crash and burn academically here, and socially at Drab Dull, I do have the support of my roommates. This is not a small thing for someone like me who spent the first part of the semester wishing I was anywhere but here. I’m beginning to understand that there is only now, and even though now isn’t perfect, and South Bend isn’t Brooklyn, that of all the billions of places I could be, this is what I’ve got right now. I’vemade three good friends, and hopefully I’ve become one for them too, and maybe that’s what my mother meant when she said she never forgot her year at PA. Maybe it was the friendships that got her through—and is the part that she will always remember.
FIVE
FOUNDER’S DAY IS A MUCH BIGGER DEAL THAN I EVER thought it would be. It’s more like Founder’s Week. The rehearsals, filming the
“Could you work with Mr. Robinson in computer science? He helped install the computer tech system in the theater.”
“Sure. Whatever works,” I tell her.
When I get back to our quad, there’s a bowl of cold microwave popcorn waiting for me on my desk. Marisol is asleep already. Suzanne and Romy are doing their homework by the small, bright beams of their desk lamps so as not to disturb Marisol.
I tiptoe to my desk and pull out my laptop.
“Sorry the popcorn is cold,” Romy whispers.
“No problem,” I tell her.
I IM Andrew.
Me: You up?
AB: Yep.
Me: Just got dragged into the Founder’s Day—shoot me now—planning committee. I’m doing sets for the play. They didn’t know anything about blue screen.
AB: No way.
Me: Yeah.
AB: Do you have the new program for it?
Me: There’s a new one?
AB: Yeah. We used it on our fall production of All My Sons at LaGuardia .
Me: No way.
AB: You want it?
Me: Absolutely. I can already see this thing is gonna eat up, like, my entire life. The old program takes forever. I don’t havetime to program each individual scene.
AB: This will help. You download the images, and this actually sorts and stores them per your instructions. Then you just do an assembly on a DVD and you’re done.
Me: That will save me hours!
AB: Okay. Will send.
Me: You rock.
AB: I know.
I sign off my computer, so tired that I think I may skip pajamas and BR (beauty routine). But I think of Mrs. Doughty and her false teeth, and how I’d like to grow old with my own choppers, and the only way for that to happen is to take care of them, so I grab my toiletry kit and head to the bathroom. Nothing like the idea of dentures to get me to brush, rinse, and floss before bedtime. First, though, I wash my face with Cetaphil. I dry it carefully, remembering that my mom told me if you scrub your face too hard it tears the fibers underneath, which leads to premature saggage, which I have to start thinking about when I’m thirty. But my mom says good habits can’t start too early. My mom knows everything about skin maintenance, even though she totally skips steps when it comes to her hair.
I look in the mirror. I think my bangs grew a littletoday. If I really yank, when they’re wet I can almost get them to go behind my ears (almost). I really want them to be that long by the time we go to the dance at Drab Dull. That would be great.
I brush my teeth and think about Andrew and how, no matter what it is or when I call him, no matter what I need, he is there. I don’t think any of my new friends here have someone like Andrew back home. They have friends, but not friends like him. I’m very lucky.
Caitlin used to tell me that there are no accidents in life—that people come into your circle because you have something to learn from them. I think about Suzanne who has definitely helped me be very cool about boys. Romy has encouraged me to be as athletic as is possible with my limited talents in that arena. And Marisol has been good for everything else—I can tell her anything and she never acts shocked or judge-y.
Even if I crash and burn academically here, and socially at Drab Dull, I do have the support of my roommates. This is not a small thing for someone like me who spent the first part of the semester wishing I was anywhere but here. I’m beginning to understand that there is only now, and even though now isn’t perfect, and South Bend isn’t Brooklyn, that of all the billions of places I could be, this is what I’ve got right now. I’vemade three good friends, and hopefully I’ve become one for them too, and maybe that’s what my mother meant when she said she never forgot her year at PA. Maybe it was the friendships that got her through—and is the part that she will always remember.
FIVE
FOUNDER’S DAY IS A MUCH BIGGER DEAL THAN I EVER thought it would be. It’s more like Founder’s Week. The rehearsals, filming the
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