Another Brick in the Wall Part 4
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llie is out for the day, never down for the count. She plays two brass instruments. She has some double conflict. Her life is about dualities. Double bookings. Band camp the same week as Girl Scouts jamboree. Soccer captain and field hockey goalie, teams in which games occur on same days. She carries on this life of two Allies’ in the body of one.
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rendan needs assistance with math, choir, cats. He’s a strangely underdeveloped boy. Defensive, broods, afraid to fail already at eight. Scared of the dark, scared to tell his au pair that he’s wet the bed. Again. Wants help, doesn’t know how to ask. Just won’t.
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hastity is running late. She’s forgotten to plug in her hot rollers. She has family struggles, thrown objects, shouts, threats. In which the bathroom is her only room of escape. In which she wants to sit in a hot tub, soak the problems down the drain. Let the chlorine make it all go away. Make her all clean, a virgin again.
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eclan has some issues, and he’ll be the first to say so. I’m trouble, he brags, arms crossed, on the first day of class. Other kids sense a bully when he smashes the dodgeball hardest in gym class, body-checks boys against their lockers (oops!) for fun. Hides his daily bruises from home with mom’s cover stick.
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velyn skips school and sits among the sycamores. He counts the clouds that pass, resembling lightening bolts. Seven. Imagines Wonder Woman’s beige tights, his toes witch. She crouches, says “hop on.” He levers onto her back, smells her raven hair as they ascend, past the treetops, past the clouds, into the beyond.
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ranny will go home with just about anybody. She’s easy, a yes girl. Has no idea hat being contrary even is. She leaps into complex waters, no holes barred. She is ne mood, one tone: on. Her mother worries that like her, Franny is manic. Thinks her wn medication might help. Franny guffaws oh mom, negotiates a neighborly game of ick the can.
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lenavon is a fussbudget. His socks must match his cravat. Sundays, he loves to make oufflÊs, mastering New York Times crosswords. He adores challenging riddles, elishes favorite author, Proust. When his teacher says who? Glenavon’s smug brow drips with disdain.
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arriett harbors secrets. She won’t share her favorite food, doesn’t admit her secret crush. She’s quiet, sullen, ignores the popular posse. They have their own secrets and Harriet prefers multiplication and division. When Harriet wearies of people, she climbs into the baby sheep’s straw bed. Whispers daily secrets to her.
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shwar is goofy, twists names into dirty rhymes. Hides in his treehouse, he looks at dad’s xxx magazines. Knows every swear word in the book. Doesn’t think filthy talk stays at home. He tries to make dad laugh. Thinks dad’s girlfriend is nasty, moving in so soon after his mom split. Won’t even look at her.
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umana is jukebox crazy over Michael Jackson. She loves to dance to his music, jumping, sliding, repeating again and again until she drives her entire house wonky. She knows it’s nuts, because of his, well, story. Jumana can’t help herself. She pretends she’s Blanket,blurts during science, “don’t stop till you get enough
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urt loves Krispy Kreme doughnuts with Coke Zero. He dunks the entire orb, slurping it up. He adores the sugary fizzy combo, the burn as he chugs a dozen down the gullet. He dreams of owning a franchise. He plunks every penny into his piggybank. Wants to start each day by sticking his finger into the freshly filled doughnut hole.
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eontyne likes to sit soaking in the rain and watch puddles form. She admires natural disasters, studies floods, obsesses with hurricanes, tries to guess the next one’s name, tracks what island it could hit. Recently she lay in a quarry for hours, floating, twitching, like a water bug. Willing more rain. Willing a watery world wonderland.
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ilton dictates weekly tax figures into his Dad’s tape-recorder, then records lower numbers in the legers. He’ll be a lawyer too, join the family business. Cook those books like a good son. He’ll get that Audi for his 16tth. Acquires a split-level roost in the city, inherits the Easthampton weekender. Manages two of everything, one in shadows.
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yla is big for her age, a plus size gal. Sometimes that works to her advantage, like when she towers over the pretty girls, glares at them when they giggle behind palms. And sometimes it just makes her want to devour the courtyard, the teachers, the aides, the lunchladies and their Hostess fruit pies. Well, all except that chocolate one that gives her diarrhea.
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ctavia swims everyday, so much that her hair turns subtly orange every mid-July. She likes the feel of a pool, the kick, kick, flutterkick of her feet and arc of her arms. She imagines herself a fish, one of those pretty ___ fish she saw in Hanumau Bay snorkeling. When she won’t come out of the pool, her mother’s threats sound like glub, glub, glub.
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helps wants to win this year’s science fair. And not the schools’, the state! He dreams of going to the White House with his green energy project, designed with a future run by child prodigies. Like him. He’s special. Special classes, vegan nutrition. We don’t call it gifted anymore, he explains to the mothers in line at the co-op. Smiles like a weasel.
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uenby hates school. Throws up at the mention of schoolwork. It’s all jumbled, she complains. At her parent- teacher conferences, she refuses to talk. Doodles, stares at the slats in the ceiling. Counts the cubicles, over and over. She is held at detention. When not devising a plan to waylay China, she alternates between playing beer pong and Timberman on her IPhone.
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oss likes to watch skater videos while his mom works at Sears. He convinces girls to French kiss, and tells friends what to lift from the local corner stores. He makes fun of others when they won’t inhale, talks about sex and smoke and graphics as if he is made of them. When he threatens a teacher for making a fellow classmate feel stupid, the class cheers as he is lead by the collar to the office.
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alamasina thinks her Curious George needs his ass beat. Maybe it’s because her sister has told her so many times she asks too many questions. Maybe it’s because her teacher told her she’s too old to hide Curious George in her sari. Maybe it’s because she has an insatiable appetite for Indian food: samosas, Chuckle, chapatis. That curry taunts her during mathematic pop quizzes.
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hurston wears a chapeau every day. It matches his scarf and belt. He is quiet and methodical, likes to sit in the front seat on the bus, in class, at the school pep rallies. He figures that way he won’t see how many fellow students are not matching. Ill-fitting shirts make him want to scream. And do not mention the gym teacher, Mr. Phelps’ pit stains on his sweatshirt.
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rsula was infuriated when she developed a sudden allergic reaction to radishes. She is particularly fond of root vegetables, and any item that comes out of the ground. She started to stockpile extra containers of honey jars in her closet. She knew her mother might kill her, but then again, who wouldn’t?
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arick does not know forward from backward. Cannot tell left from right. Can’t distinguish up from down. Is always chosen last for softball despite his knack for batting home runs. He memorized the entire Periodic Table of Elements backwards. He can seldom locate his very own possessions.
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ei enjoys complicated crossword puzzles, likes to use words like clade or insouciance. Squints when she is frustrated, usually because of her father’s frequent gas. She thinks he is rudimentary, and instead daydreams of brilliance: helicoptering from their rooftop to school. Wants to be a paratrooper in secret militia. Scale walls too imaginable to ascend.
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enia wants to get better; as a student, and as a daughter. She doesn’t know what it means: adopted. Just wants to get better. Better. Better. Wants to be called Ksenia. Or Yulia. Wonders why, if adopted, she can’t become any name? Just like America. Better name. Better grades. Better parents.
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ves likes clove cigarettes, and his clothes reek of them. Puff. Puff. Doesn’t want to get caught at school, or he might get cut from soccer. His parents say keep it at home, like the wine, but he craves them on the bus, and at lunch, and during Health filmstrips about various STDs. In the dark classroom he fingers the fag in his pocket, rubbing it like a genie.
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andra will never live up to her name- defender of Mankind. She is constantly in motion, can’t sit still for a second. But she loves to draw, and decides she will become an animator. Her first flip books are published widely, and she becomes a child prodigy in digital media. Her initial show is at the Getty Museum, attended by her entire class.
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