The Aislin Chronicles

Part XLIV

A/n: So, I kind of made a little error about Ireland… It doesn't really snow there that often… let's pretend it does for Aislin's sake. Haha. My bad. But I totally picked the perfect place for Aislin to be from because I loved Cork! And not one but TWO buses we passed had Cork listed as number 47 on their bus route. Coincidence, I think not. Oh, and yes, I kissed the stupid Blarney stone.

12-2-03

3:50 PM

It's only Tuesday and already I've had quite a strange week. I'm not yet certain whether I should be excited or scared, but for now I suppose I find this whole ordeal rather amusing. It is a nice little break from having to think about school.

It all started on Monday morning, when I decided to hit the snooze bar one, or two, or three times too many. Regardless of how many times it truly was (sadly, I think three), I was running ridiculously late. I did socks and shoes and breakfast in the car, no joke. I practically ran to my locker, determined to not be late for class, and was racing to transfer the right books into my backpack because I can't get to my locker before math second hour. The warning bell rang, and if I wanted to make it to choir I knew I would have to run. I was not about to go all the way to choir, be late, have to walk all the way back up to the office, and then go all the way back to choir. No no no. I didn't even bother to zip my bag.

Meanwhile, just before I shut my locker I saw a folded piece of paper sitting on the top shelf with my name scribbled on it, so I grabbed it as quickly as I could and made off in a dead sprint. I didn't think about the note much—someone must have slipped it through those random slits in the locker door onto the top shelf—until I actually got into the classroom, which was no less that two seconds after I tripped through the door. Finally I relaxed a little, threw my bag down and go to my seat while Mr. English fiddled with sheet music around the piano with some other students. I thought that the messy writing of my name on the note would belong to Ian, but when I gave the note a good look it definitely was not Ian's usual script. It wasn't Jess's, Kathleen's, Fini's, Krissy's, or Dee's, either. I didn't know who else would write me a note, so I just unfolded it and began reading. And journal, prepare yourself, because as weird as my life is, this is absolutely the strangest thing that has happened yet.

Dear Aislin,

Oh how my heart flutters at the sound of your name! Your smile is like a burst of sunshine on my cloudy day. I want to run my fingers through your golden tresses, and watch as your hair flows more swiftly down your back than the river Shannon. You are more beautiful than the rolling green hills of Ireland from which you hail. How I wish you would be mine forever!

Your Secret Admirer

So I was thinking then, what the hell? The first thing that came to mind was that Dee was playing one of her tricks on me, because she is that weird and crazy. I mean, come on! 'I want to run my fingers through your golden tresses?' Who could actually write crap like that?

"Dee, this is weird joke," I told her, somewhat interrupting the conversation between she, Jess, and Adam. I managed to grab the attentions of Lisa and Krissy in front of me as well.

"What joke?"

Playing dumb, I see how it is. "Come on, I know it was you." I held the letter up and gave her a look, waiting for her to confess.

"What are you talking about? What is that?"

"The little love note." As if she didn't know.

"Love note?" Jess exclaimed, grabbing it from my hand. She started reading it and burst out laughing. "'Oh how my heart flutters at the sound of your name?' This is hilarious!"

Dee was cracking up. "Ais, I swear I didn't write that."

"Fine, then who did?" We all looked around at each other, but no one said anything. I thought that one of them would take credit for the hilarity, but when no one did, I started to wonder if maybe it wasn't a prank after all. I mean, there were still a few suspects that I'd wanted to interrogate, but what if someone had really written me a love letter? It totally creeped me out. Also, I knew that it was definitely not from Ian. I've peer edited some of his essays, and there's no way he suddenly got this oddly poetic in a matter of weeks. I didn't tell him about it in second hour.

Instead, I took it home for some handwriting analysis. I figured Mom or Dad could help me determine whether it was someone's real handwriting or disguised handwriting. Mom seemed kind of tired so I didn't want to bother her, and waited for Dad to get home.

"Hey, Dad? Is there a way to tell if someone's disguising their handwriting?"

"Sure, you look for the size, space between letters, pen pressure…"

"Like what?"

He paused. "What is this about?"

"Someone wrote me a weird note, and I want to know if one of my friends is playing a trick on me."

"Can I see it?"

Oh God. I hadn't actually planned on showing it to him. "Um…" I thought about it a little, and, well, I did really want his insight. "Okay." I slid it out of my pocket and handed it to him. He squinted at my name on the top for a second before unfolding it. I braced myself for his unfortunate laughter, but when it didn't come, I noticed he was more into the look of the words rather than their meaning.

"Well, I don't see any inconsistencies," he started, taking a few more seconds to inspect it. "This is definitely someone's natural handwriting."

"Great," I sighed, sinking into the chair next to him. Then there was somebody out there who wrote me a love note. Unless… Unless! Dee or somebody had gotten someone else to write the note for her, and stick it in my locker. It sounded kind of weird, but it was possible. I needed hope that it was still a prank.

"Wait a second," Dad said, looking at the note. I thought he had made a big discovery or something, but alas. No. "Someone wrote you a love note?" That stupid smirk appeared on his face and was rapidly growing into a laugh.

"It's not funny."

Yet he kept laughing. "He wants to run his fingers through your 'golden tresses.'"

I gave up, and snatched the note from his hands, which was pretty easy because he was laughing so hard his muscles couldn't fight me. Jerk. I knew I shouldn't have shown him.

I spent the rest of the evening on instant messenger with Jess and Kathleen, trying to get them to help me find someone to admit to the joke, but we couldn't get anything. I started to get wigged out that an anonymous someone had a crush on me—not just a crush, but a creepy crush—and to make matters worse my own parents wouldn't stop making fun of me. When I went down to dinner, Dad was on the verge of busting out laughing every time he looked at me, and even Sydney said, "So I hear you're more beautiful than the rolling green hills of Ireland from which you hail."

"Dad, you told Mom?" I complained.

"Come on, Aislin, it's funny! Don't be so angry, let's see that burst of sunshine."

I didn't talk to them through the rest of dinner, I was so mad.

Today, though, I started to see things a little differently, particularly when I decided to show it to Ian, because I had briefly wondered if he had gotten someone else to write it for him? Yeah, I thought it was unlikely too, but it's a nice fantasy, no?

Anyway, he sits a row behind me, one person to the right, so it wasn't easy to complete our conversation. Especially with Mrs. Schlesinger being so quiet when she teaches. I actually couldn't wait to get our worksheets so we could start "working together."

I have a decent angle towards him if I sit sideways in my chair, which works fine because I'm on the far left of the room and it looks like I'm just trying to see the board better. When I was pretty sure Mrs. Schlesinger wasn't looking, I carefully slid the note towards Ian on his table. He gave me a look when it had my name at the top, so I mouthed at him to read it. He pulled his eyes back to the board, and slipped the note under the table where he unfolded it.

He took turns glancing back and forth between the board and the note, and the look on his face told me exactly what he wanted to say: what the hell is this?

That's when I decided to toy with him.

He leaned towards me, whispering with the slightest sound, "Who wrote this?"

I shrugged at him. "Isn't it romantic?" I whispered back, plastering on a look of admiration for the writer of the love note.

Then he smiled, and chuckled silently. "It's funny." I thought he had beaten my at me little game, which made me mad, but I tried not to let him know it. It was at lunch when I realized that he really hadn't. I was the winner.

Adam came up to me and Jess and Kathleen as we walked out from lunch. He was a little sweaty because the guys tend to play basketball in the gym after they're done eating. "Dude," he said, "Ian's so pissed that someone wrote you that love note."

"What?"

"Yeah, he doesn't want any competition."

"For what?"

"For you!" they all seemed to shout at me.

So, basically, by my telling him that I thought the note was romantic, it made him jealous! Haha! I don't even care who wrote it now, I have a secret admirer, and a not so secret admirer, and the not so secret one is jealous.

Clearly we know which one I want. (It's still creepy that someone randomly wants to touch my hair. Someone I don't know.) And I'll certainly try to let him know it's him by going to his basketball game on Thursday and dancing with him at the Activity Night on Friday. But for now, it's fun to flaunt the note in front of his face. Aww. My Ian's jealous.

12-4-03

3:42 PM

Have I mentioned recently that I hate Lauren Putnam? Because I really, truly, despise her. For all this time I've done my best to ignore her in Spanish, but today I've just about had enough. I can't look at her without wanting to shove her to the ground and kick her. The sound of her voice makes me want to throw up. Usually she just brags about this, that, and the other thing, occasionally she says something about some boy, or once in awhile about Ian—but only when she's in the mood to provoke me. And today she was.

Right now she thinks she all that and a bag of chips because she helps out the trainer with the boys' basketball teams. She thinks the guys are all in love with her because she gives them their water. Well, they bloody aren't!

I was trying soooo hard to focus on our worksheet with conjugating some irregular verb, but the way she talks so loudly I couldn't escape having to listen to her. "And when I winked at the boy on the other team, he tripped and fell down, and Ian scored a lay-up." And he tripped and fell down and kissed my ass! Oh, that was me mimicking Lauren, by the way. "Later I helped Jake and Tony when—"

SNAP!

I noticed suddenly that I had been clutching my pencil too hard and had snapped it in half. Half the class turned and looked at me before I had processed what had happened. Lauren was staring at me with a little smirk on her face that I wanted to rip off with my bare hands.

She continued her story, staring directly at me. "when their legs cramped up. You know, I don't think there's anybody on the team who I haven't given a massage to. When Ian gets cramps in his calves I'm always the one who massages them away. I get him ice for his ankles, too, and he's always so thankful, sometimes I think he could just kiss me!"

"¡Margarita!" Señora Voss yelled, much to my relief. "Más trabajo, por favor. Hay demasiado hablar."

She gives me one last flash of a fake smile before she spins around and starts to look at her worksheet. I have no doubt that she's lying, but it doesn't make me any less mad that she feeds me this crap. She's so full of herself, and AH! I just hate her.

I was fuming for the rest of class. I couldn't finish my sheet. All I could do was stare at the floor and squeeze my two halves of the pencil. Kathleen leaned over from next to me. "Don't let her get to you. You know that's all she wants to do."

Then the bell rang, and I put my stuff in my backpack and grabbed Jess's arm. "We are going to the game for sure tonight," I told her, then headed off to find Mom to go home.

When I got in the car and shut the door, and let out a yell that I had been holding in all hour. Mom looked at me curiously. "I hate Lauren Putnam!"

She turned the car on and started to drive through the busy parking lot to the street. "What did she do now?" she asked with concern.

"She thinks she's the center of the universe, and she makes crap up about her and Ian and I'm going to snap if she says another word about him." Reflecting back, the words came out so harshly that I can't believe I didn't smash anything whilst speaking. Mom just sighed, knowing that there isn't much one can say to calm my temper. "Ugh, and I've been trying so hard to ignore her!"

I closed my eyes and threw my head back against the seat (when did I turn into such a drama queen?). Mom reached one of her hands over and patted my leg. "I know. And you're going to keep on ignoring her."

"I can't."

"Yes you can."

And that was that. I stared out the window for most of the ride home, but when we pulled into the driveway, I glanced at Mom and noticed that her stomach was nearly pressed up against the steering wheel. I chuckled a little. "You can barely fit in the car."

"I… fit fine." She looked so cute like that, I just had to keep smiling at her. "If I move the seat back any more then I can't reach the foot pedals." Upon this, she looked deeply saddened, but still so very cute and I couldn't help but laugh. Finally she started to laugh too, and made me feel better as we got into the house. I told her that I wanted to go to the basketball game tonight, and that Jess could pick me up. So now I'm trying to finish my Spanish homework, and maybe I'll start my math.

7:27 PM

Oh journal, if I had the patience to write an entire page of Hahahaha's I so would, for that is what is going through my silly little head right now. Why would I hahaha for an entire page, you ask? Because Lauren, you see, is nothing more than a glorified water girl. The team hardly gives her the time of day, and they don't even look at her if she remembers to hand them a cup of water.

But enough about that. I can just party in my head while I tell you about the game itself. Tuesday was their first official game, but it was away and both teams won (there's two teams, the A Team and the B Team). Ian's on the A Team, which is the better team between the two. The B Team lost today but the A Team won, so Ian should be pretty happy tomorrow. He fell and twisted his ankle in like, the second quarter I think. At first I was kind of worried that he had really hurt himself, but then I remembered how boys are such babies about getting hurt. Girls usually don't exaggerate it like boys do. I've seen Kathleen pop right back off the floor or the ground or whatever after literally spraining body parts to keep on playing.

Anyway, Ian was like rolling on the floor and gritting his teeth, and he had to be helped off the floor. The trainer yelled at Lauren to go get some ice, and I watched her run out of the gym towards the training room, but after she got to the hallway she started walking. Walking! Ugh. By the time she got back with it, Ian's ankle was already taped up and he was back in the game. Sigh.

Jess and I had a lot of fun, by the way. She might have had a little too much Mountain Dew, however, and thought it would be funny to start hitting me with the empty bottle. It was kind of funny though, I'll admit. As I write about it, it sounds pretty lame. We must have been, like, super-hyper. Mountain Dew is some heavy stuff.

7:35 PM

Great. I just noticed that both of the dogs are sleeping on my bed. Both of them. At the same time. They better not be slobbering. But I can't kick them out, that's the worst of it. If I try to move Chester he'll think it's play time and he'll bark at me until I play with him. I don't have the energy for that. And if I try to move Donovan he'll just look at me like I'm crazy and go back to sleep.

I might be having a sleepover with the dogs tonight.

Fun stuff.

Maybe they'll follow me if I go downstairs and mention food. It's worth a try.

A/n: Wee, I wrote this one up fast, guys! You should be proud. Please review!