Alabaster Pride

Chapter I

We have this pretty assistant cook who lives with us. She’s short, like a lot of people we have here, but she’s round and pudgy, with breasts that are bigger than me! Pretty much anything is bigger than me anyway, so it’s okay.

Her name is Jezebel. My parents don’t seem to allow ordinary names to come into our house, so I’m constantly surrounded by people with big, long, strange, unpronounceable names. Try being a toddler in my house; is it any wonder I want to die?

Jezebel only helps my dad cook, my mom can’t cook at all, it’s as if the motherly homemaker genes completely passed her. She said it’s because future world leaders shouldn’t have to cook their own meals.

Mom plans global domination.

She certainly is big enough to crush entire armies on her own, and she has her legions of loyal fans to back her up. All she has to do is say, “Hey I’ll run for president,” and half the country will be running to the ballots, breaking the percentage record of voters in America. I think teens will commit mass suicide because they‘re too young to vote.

Maybe I can do it with them and be lost in the statistics.

That wouldn’t work, I’m seventeen now, by the time they vote to elect a new president I’ll be a voter. Damn, there goes that plot.

I’ll think of another one though, that’s another thing I inherited from my mom, my ability to think and strategize. It helps me in P.E. when everyone targets me, the small girl.

Dad is looking messy, as usual, and Mom looks like a warrior back from battle, funny how Dad can look like a slob in the morning and Mom like she just came back from some big campaign, the war kind, not the promotion kind like political or commercial stuffs. Sometimes I hate how some words have so many different meanings. It’s worse with signs though, because if I mess one word up suddenly I’ve said a whole different word. And some of the most insulting words are so similar to every day words.

Dad is cooking as usual

Dad does his scrambled eggs weird. First he separates the yolk from the whites, and then he cooks the whites, like ten eggs worth. Finally he takes all the yolks, stirs them up really nice, and pours it over the whites in the pan so that the orange stuff gets all over everything and every single bite is exactly the same. No eating scrambled eggs and getting a mouthful of egg whites and only a little yolk. It’s all even.

I think it’s silly, mostly because I don’t like scrambled eggs; I like them done like pancakes and on a nice slice of sparsely buttered bread. Real butter, not that fake butter crap, I don’t care how many times they profess its taste, I still don’t like it. I usually have a nice small breakfast, it’s the only small thing I have.

Jezebel is putting our meal on the counter of the kitchen. We don’t eat in the dining room during breakfast. We eat it here, with some of the servants. Ah yes, servants, because my mother is a dominating force who must control people, not because we need them. Some of them live here, some only come once or twice a week.

Jezebel lives here, she’s a recovering drug addict who Mom pays way too highly for helping Dad cook. She’s not even good at it; she just has a cool name and can follow orders well. Jezebel’s mother died of the same cancer my mom had, she was an associate of my father’s. So, obviously, both my parents adore her.

I like her too. She doesn’t talk to me all that much, and she can sign fairly well, she also has this really cool snake the size of a fire hose. Apparently it slithered into her rundown apartment three years ago and ate her hamster. She named it Guinea Pig and kept it ever since. It’s got wicked sharp teeth and it doesn’t like her very much. She said if I can find a hamster with the same coloring as her old one (she gave me a photo) she’ll give me the Pig.

She said that two years ago. I’m still looking.

-

Jezebel always packs me a meal for school, what we call my ‘munch lunch.’ It’s what I eat before and after lunch, because I’m always hungry. I’ll have a small breakfast because if I eat too much after waking up I’ll get sick, but an hour after breakfast I’ll be reaching into my bag for some crackers or something.

The doorbell rings and everyone jumps. It supposed to be really loud so I can hear it; my hearing comes and goes like a maniacal alarm clock that sets its own time. Can you imagine that? An alarm clock that chooses when it wants to wake you up, there would be pandemonium! I so want one now. I think I’ll make it maybe for my Dad’s birthday.

Clarion came into the kitchen leading my friend Jose, who always comes over just before school starts and knows well that we’re in the kitchen, where the kitchen is, and how to get there, but Clarion leads her in anyway because that’s her job, leading visitors to my parents or me. She takes her job seriously, way too seriously, with an old-fashioned butler suit and a stoic face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile or laugh. She’s taller than my Dad, and she keeps her hair smoothed back. I think she should play basketball but she doesn’t have that kind of passion. She’s fifty something but she doesn’t have any real wrinkles, Jezebel says she gets Botox, me and Jose think it’s because she never has any reaction to anything.

Mom and Dad smile at her in a way that says they don’t really like/know her but they tolerate her presence because she’s my friend. It’s not that they disapprove, she’s just so ordinary. Jose looks so average it’s almost sad. Straight short brown hair, regular shaped brown eyes, peachy skin that tans in the sun if she stays out too long, and she’s about five foot something. Meaning she’s way taller than me, but hey my parents are gods so I’m used to being towered over.

Worse, the worst thing about Jose in my parents’ eyes is her name. Jose. So short, so common. For a while Dad called her José in an attempt to ignore her blandness but when she got really ticked they just started calling her by her first and middle name. Jose Lee, Jose Lee Lane, all together it sounds nice, But Jose hates it. The way my parents pronounce it makes it sound like Josly.

Taking a piece of toast Jose smiles with her teeth at my parents, plain old Jose daring to smile at Armistice and Machete, a mortal facing the gods. This is why she’s my friend, because as bland as she is, as completely ordinary and invisible her body and name is, her spirit is just so out there. She’s just incredible.

Nodding to my parents I hop off the velvet cushioned stool I was sitting on, it was quite a hop truly, and walked off with Jose to the door, Clarion trailing after us with her expressionless mask.

When I said most of the people we have working for us are short, I don’t mean dwarfs like me, we don’t have any little people working for us, I wouldn’t allow it. I’d scare them off with my wild, boogieman appearance. I think it’s disgusting how my mom wants me to be ‘comfortable.’ How am I supposed to be comfortable with a tiny woman acting like a maid or something? It would only make me depressed. I like to think dwarfs are better, higher beings looking down on the giants even while they’re looking up at them.

I know they’re normal people, like my parents and the kids as school, with normal jobs and one or two (I won’t allow myself to think of more than two) might have to take a job as a maid or something. But I like to think they’re inventors and lawyers and supermodels. Napoleon was a dwarf wasn’t he? That’s proof, we’re meant to rule the world.

God I have to stop talking to my mother.

Anyway most are probably five foot and shorter. Partly so they don’t tower over me so much, partly because my parents like to do the towering round here.

Clarion is the only other tower allowed in this house, but that’s because she’s like a formidable statue guarding entrance to a city or temple. She’s so big and black and emotionless that she scares most people off, even the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which sucks badly because I like talking to them. Not because I’m into their religion, actually I pretty much hate all religion, but because this big black lady named Bridget likes to talk about all kinds of religions and how similar they are. Why are all really cool black ladies usually big and funny and religious? Maybe religion makes them fat and happy. In that case, considering how many religions she knows, no wonder she’s the biggest, funniest, happiest black lady I’ve ever met.

My parents say she should go on a diet. I think she’s just perfect like that. I don’t think she’d look all that great skinny. It’s like a skinny Santa, it’s just not right. She hears my parents and some other people talking sometimes, but then she just stands up tall, puffs out her big chest, and struts past all big and proud to be big.

Clarion can almost be seen with an amused expression on her face, I can tell when she’s amused or happy or irritated or sad because I’ve known her all my life, when she sees Bridget come stomping down our driveway with the two scared skinny boys behind her. Well one is white, the other is Asian, and they both have spiked hair, like porcupines are sleeping on top of their heads. They usually come here without her because they don’t like to be seen with the big black lady who talks about Greek and Norse Gods and it doesn’t matter if you’re not a Jehovah’s Witness because everything is the same. But Clarion scares them off.

So they come back with Bridget and the first thing out of Clarion’s mouth is. “What are you doing stomping down our yard like some raging bull?”

“All I can do is stomp.” She says back. “I’m a big woman, just like you, but while you got streached out and tall I got all my bigness stuffed into me and squashed down.”

It really is amusing. However, they say the same thing every time so after a while I just ignore it and go say hi, the skinny boys looking down their noses at me, at least I think they do, but then everyone is usually staring down their noses at me. Not on purpose but because I’m so small, it’s hard not to stare down at me.

Clarion opens the door for us and, from some unknown source, produces my book bag with all my stuff that I had left in a stack on my desk in my room. I’ll never know how these people keep my things so ready when I just leave for a few minutes. I think there is some secret servant my parents hired just to keep my things in order.

I’ll bet it’s a dwarf.

-

School is, as anybody else in the world could undoubtedly tell you, its own little hell. Never mind that, not only as a dwarf but also as a woman, I should be grateful to even have the chance to go to school. Shouldn’t there be this private little people school where I’d be with others of my kind?

I’ve gotten into the habit of calling them my kind because I hardly consider these other people really my kind. It’s a regular school, a public school filled with public people who all publicly adore my parents in the most public way possible. This guy whose locker is next to mine actually has a picture of my Mom and Dad’s wedding, kissing, (like some movie scene) on his locker door surrounded by a big heart.

It’s not just teenager fantasies around here, my parents are like the image of true love to them. Big, beautiful, famous people who got together and stayed together for twenty whole years without a single fight or drug addiction or scandal, it’s nauseating, but apparently I’m the only one who thinks that.

My freshman year I had the unfortunate fortune of having a top locker. Some people consider that great. I think it sucked, because not only did I have to ask someone to open it for me, I had to ask someone to get and put away my books. I complained, and like magic, because my last name makes magic happen all over the place, I got switched to a bottom locker, a newly painted bottom locker.

With an air freshener.

Magical last name.

Jose doesn’t have a locker next to mine, or anywhere near, but that’s okay, I’ve got a few friends who do. Jose just likes coming to school with me because she gets to mess with my parents. She really enjoys messing with my parents. Like everyone else in this school, she adores them.

As usual my locker is surrounded by people who apparently just heard my parents are Armistice and Machete and think they should make friends with the poor short handicapped girl. Because you know, being on the brink of deafness makes me handicapped.

They have yet to realize I’m a dwarf that bites. Protect your ankles people, I’m a nipper. And I just love shooting down the godly image of my parents in their eyes and whatever poor little helpless girl image they have of me.

“Alabaster!”

Oh god. I know that voice, and how tragic for her that I was born in a bad mood, bad enough to give my mom cancer and punch out of the womb several months early. Jose conveniently sees this as a sign that she should head off in the opposite direction and take the long way to her locker, as our school has two roundabout hallways for lockers specifically for avoiding teachers, or students.

The voice is Ambrosia L. Dyne, the L. is for Lynch, but because everyone but the really dense knows what that means it is forbidden to speak it.

“Hey Lynch.” But, as previously mentioned, I was born in a bad mood.

It sucks being deaf in a non deaf school because I have to actually face people when I talk to them, I read lips better than I sign. Ambrosia was making a pouting face at me, but as she’s president of the largest Machete and Armistice fan club she ignores my ill behavior, as always. Her presence shoos away anyone near my locker, not because she’s foreboding or antisocial or anything, but because she’ll report anyone loitering near me for harassment. Apparently she’s very territorial.

She’s also very pretty, though not that tall. Five-three I’d say. I’m quite good at telling heights, though I usually don’t bother. She is thin, like me, but thick boned. She’s also incredibly blonde, I don’t mean dumb or ditzy, I mean her hair is so bright it’s almost white, with the lightest hints of cinnamon coloring if the sun hits it just right, it’s long and straight and thin, reaching town to her butt. Nothing like my thick mass of darkness.

“How was your weekend? Wasn’t it just great how we got to get Friday off though it wasn’t a holiday?”

We got Friday off because it was Teacher Work Day for the elementary schools and, because the elementary school teachers not only outnumber the high school and middle school teachers but outvote them too, they all decided they’d make it a nice little break for everyone.

Its decisions like this that tick high school teachers off to no end. This year they said they wanted school to start later, where we usually start in late August we started mid September because it was so hot they didn’t want the kids to burn their hands on the monkey bars. Never mind we needed a quarter grade for several things, like collage application for one, and our quarter ended past the deadline for quite a few of those things.

Aren’t K-5 teachers just lovely?

“Yeah, great.” I mutter, opening my locker. “I got to spend three whole days in the company of my parents rather than the normal therapy inducing two.” This explains my abnormally more suicidal attitude.

“Yeah, you’re so lucky.” Because I have two supermodels as parents or because her parents are usually too tired or working to spend time with her? "My parents never have time to spend with me.” Ah, yes, good.

“Maybe if you weren’t so chipper in their time of exhaustion?” Really, happy people are tiring when you’re depressed, thus why I don’t like Ambrosia that much.

“Oh, don’t be like that.” She says and starts off towards class like she’s finished with the conversation. I know I hurt her pretty badly there, but she’ll rebound, she always does. She’s like a spring wound too tightly then set loose. She always bounces back. She’s a bouncer backer.

Or at least I tell myself that. Really I don’t know.

On the other hand, neither do I care.

Class is starting and my teachers try hard, too hard, to not treat me different. So hard, in fact, that they do treat me differently. They’re harder on me than anybody else.

Is it too much to ask to be treated as an equal.

Apparently so.

-

I usually buy a big long sandwich from the foodcourt at the mall, I have an off campus pass for lunch, and Ambrosia has a bike so we usually go get something to eat together, on the agreement that she drives and I pay. It’s the only time she doesn’t talk about how wonderful my parents are and how lucky I am to have them. It’s as if she’s almost tolerable.

I like riding on her motorcycle more than my Uncle’s, as she doesn’t wear leather and so I don’t have this smell stuck in my mouth while I’m eating. She wears this sort of padded suit that she can easily slip in and out of; it’s packed in her bag with her helmet and left in her locker until lunch.

I look like a child riding behind her, my hair flowing like crazy behind me because I can’t fit it all inside the helmet like Ambrosia can. So I wind up heading into subway looking more crazy and wild than usual. I’m just lucky the people know me, otherwise I’d no doubt be asked to leave for scaring away their customers.

“Here, just take it and don’t hurt me!” They would sob as they make my meal.

The thought makes me giggle as the bell above the door jingles and we walk in.

Ambrosia orders Veggie while I go straight for the steak. Meat, oh yeah, lots of meat, on toasted wheat bread. Ambrosia gets hers on toasted wheat too, but hers is piled with so many veggies you couldn’t taste the deliciousness of hot bread. I’ve always loved warm bread, that’s why I like toast so much.

We sit down and talk about class so far. Ambrosia going on about how it was silent reading and some kids were talking so much she couldn’t concentrate. Another thing we have in common, aside from the wheat thing.

I was late to second period therefore I had to do the entire warm up in business math. My math teacher still hates me because I’m not some child prodigy. Apparently, she thought I was like six or something and instead of assuming I was there to visit a sibling, like most teachers do, she thought I was some supper smart kid. What I disappointment I am. Well, dido back to her.

Ambrosia gets along with all her teachers. How typical, she even likes my math teacher, just yet another reason to hate her.

After we eat, Ambrosia’s breath smells like jalapenos now, we head back to school to ignore each other for the remainder of the day until we are forced, yet again, to speak to each other the next morning.

I think she hates me too, but she wants to meet my parents so badly. They would love her. She has a great name. Except for the Lynch part, but I think it’s an awesome middle name. At least it gives me something to annoy her with.

-

Albert is the ugliest kid in school.

And no, I’m not just being mean; seriously he is the ugliest kid in school, he’s so deformed you’d think he was a product of generations of incest.

Actually, he’s the product of a drunkard with a steel baseball bat.

He’s one of those miracle stories, like getting shot in the head several times and living, only to have your face look like the remnants of a thirteen-year-old’s pincushion voodoo doll. His forehead is lumpy and sags, his mouth is so twisted and jagged and his teeth are horribly broken up, his nose is nonexistent, and he is missing an eye and an ear and a half.

Quasi Moto would have picked on him. The way he hobbled down the hallways and into classrooms on his little cane is so pathetic you wish some tragic accident would just happen already and kill him. It’s horrible, I know, but it’s the truth. It hurts people to watch him.

But he has the most gorgeous voice.

Not that boy band pretty-preppy voice, but a deep rich opera voice that makes the drama room resonate with liquidated fangirl squeals.

Albert is currently sitting on the piano, much like those sexy singers in old movies, spitting out some sonnet to whatever crappy tune Batch is banging to.

Batch is a 19 year old special student, his parents raised him to be a piano protégée, only a freak accident, at least I think it’s a freak accident I don’t know the details, left him with more brain damage than a old school zombie victim. He pretty much won’t evolve past the primal status of eight year old boys.

Which makes his relationship with Albert just a little unsettling.

Now the two of them together is such a horrible contrast to begin with, Albert being a scare your bowels into spastic seizures ugly 15-year-old freshman, and Batch being a drop dead from the embarrassment of breathing near him beautiful 19-year-old retard still going for his certificate of completion. But when you start thinking about what they’re doing Saturday nights, and when you see them in the hallways necking you know what they’re doing things Saturday nights, and it creeps like fog.

Because legally, Albert is underage and Batch should not be involved with him.

But intellectually, Albert is the one who should be at fault.

But then, if we did everything based on intellect most of our politicians wouldn’t be considered old enough to drink.

Either way even though it creeps me out, like freaking 1970s horror movie fog, Albert is one of those friends I was talking about, and I guess it’s my duty, still haven’t totally agreed on it yet, to defend their relationship.

Which is kind of why there’s a kid currently taking several hurried hopping steps back clutching his groin.

Because nobody talks that way about my friends, even if the whole situation isn’t altogether what I would approve of…

-

Part of hating Ambrosia means that being around her tends to lead to arguments; big loud let’s throw whatever is in the general vicinity that’s not too heavy to pick up kind of arguments, and everybody in the school turns out to watch, and that’s not an exaggeration, seriously everybody on school grounds will make their way to our location if they so much as hear a whisper about us arguing, but then it’s not that big of a school, maybe a thousand kids, if that.

Anyway, today’s argument theme, yes we have themes for our arguments, is hair styling. Ambrosia made a comment about my hair, said it made me look like some monster from a Japanese horror movie, and suggested we go to a solon. To which I bit her ankle, verbally or course, by telling her to take a flat-iron and shove it up her ass.

“I was just trying to suggest a new look, you can’t just keep roaming around with that mop on your head, it gets everywhere. I mean, if you turn your head too fast the person sitting next to you is suddenly eating black spaghetti.” She has her hands on her hips glaring at me. I’ve, of course, jumped up onto a desk and am now at least a few inches above her. I like looking into the eyes of my enemies without getting neck cramps thank you.

“Well I like my hair the way it is, and if somebody has a problem with black spaghetti they can go somewhere else, like hell.”