deck out

[Cicada]

GH High junior, soon-to-be senior Alana Peña-Huntsman’s license picture was a gross Skrillex-cut furby. Bright side: if a cop ever pulled her over they’d be more inclined to let her off the hook after all the unrestrained laughing and shit.

She was driving over to Grace’s. School was on the way so she figured she could take care of some business since this was the hour the seniors were supposed to get back. Or, fuck, was she late already? Dash read 2:20 in the afternoon. She slowed, checked. Bunch of cars taking up parking spots, old folk wandering about and forming some big circle- blocking the main drop off, incidentally, that she was supposed to go through. Bus hadn’t arrived yet, then. She cut the long way around the parking lot. Abandoned Mom’s Subaru with a reluctant flip and tug of the keys. The sound of the AC yeeting out was sad with an exclamation point- the moment the driver’s side door opened Alana was already feeling the boob sweat stains. She started beelining the nearest strip of shade, keeping her eyes peeled for the buses.

That gross incel Demetri had stolen her deck.

Okay, so formally she had lent it to him. But only for, like, a day. A day, by most definitions, was some amount of time smaller than a week!

So, she wasn’t actually peeved. Demetri in general wasn’t actually as bad as the rumors, honestly. He mumbled a lot, occasionally stared, he supposedly racked up gambling debts, but as Magic Club’s leader Alana had never felt the need to warn him of anything. Or maybe she was just being permissive? The edgelord Massey jokes occasionally did get a bit too on the nose. But like, Alana hadn’t taken the job to be a hardass type. Alana had always been generous with her cards- she had more of them at home than she knew what to do with, she was kind of a loser, low key? She’d been voted in because everyone liked her, and she guessed her geniality could even win over the greasiest of kids.

Not much of a boon? But what the fuck, she’d take it? Sure.

Her real intent was to generally schmooze with the seniors who’d gone on the trip. For like, just a minute. She’d take her deck back as an afterthought- like, if Demetri wanted it she’d let him have it. Monowhite wasn’t her style anyways.

She’d wanted to formally say goodbye, to thank them for being awesome club mates. Camilla and Stepney, and yeah sure, even Demetri to be honest. The club was more young blood than not, now that she thought about it. Their senior kids were for that reason kind of special, so she wanted to take the time to send them off the correct way. Sappy but like, lol. Embarrassed or not they’d appreciate the sentiment. She’d impose on them until they had to appreciate the sentiment, to be more specific.

Got her thinking. Just a year left for her in GH High! Pretty sweet deal in terms of out-of-state bullshit- biological Dad lived up in Maryland, and UMD was definitely in reach.

She was almost like, less concerned about that than her more self-indulgent future planning. Example: what the fuck was she going to do with her club next year. Specifically, a more involved senior sendoff. She had this whole soundtracked comedy movie trailer concept in her head- everyone pitched in some cash and they as a club would AirBnB some spot on the beach. She’d visited a spot near Myrtle called Murrells Inlet, about two years ago with Mom. She’d Googled two bedroom homes for about a hundred a night. Maybe like, unrealistic to expect a bunch of eighteen year olds would be treated seriously, but Alana was sure she’d figure out something. She just thought it’d be great- a weekend of beach sun, fish fries, and everyone meming like fuck with the big brain techs.

She settled on one of the benches in front of the front doors, annoying a couple of kid’s moms nearby who were agitatedly talking about… who even knew, whose husband had a mistress or some shit, not like she was paying attention. She was really just thinking about it, while she had this moment to herself to idle. She just wanted to do something with the club next year, like. Something lit but without tryharding too much that she’d come off wrong.

Because, face it. Truth of the matter was: who the fuck still did senior trips?

Wasn’t even a hot take. Alana probably could have done a survey and gotten most of the school to agree with her- even the seniors. The ones going were mostly like, weird kids probably. Okay, to be fair. She knew like half the football team and all the cheerleaders and shit were going, she recognized the names. The senior trip was legit.

The thing was, Alana had been pretty damn surprised when the newspaper in… January, she guessed? Had announced on its Facebook page that the admins had green lit a senior trip for that years batch. What was this supposed to be? Was Blink-182 about to come out with their new and hotly anticipated follow-up album? Was Gwen Stefani still part of fucking No Doubt? Alana had sworn she’d woken up like two decades in the past and had expected to stumble downstairs into her Mom’s fiddling with her Jnco jeans or whatever shit had been the fashion disaster trend way back when.

Senior trips were lame. Mainstream and vanilla.

And the most obvious strike against them, oh goddamn did Alana have an entire rant prepped and projected on the teleprompter.

Were the admins actively trying to get people killed? And she wasn’t even opening her ears for the statistics bullshit excuses- lightning didn’t strike twice her ass, it had struck six times already! Alana didn’t know about, like, fucking Bayes, she didn’t do any actuary shit, she wasn’t out here betting on horse races or anything, but she was pretty damn ready to stake her savings account on things going wrong when it came to the SOTF terrorists! She’d be high rolling in Vegas by the end of the night and the terrorists would be sending a complimentary champagne to her room- penthouse, with a view of the strip.

Who had decided this was worth it? What kid had woken up someday and thought, ‘oh, Washington fucking DC, city of monuments to things we forgot about on our history tests, this is worth my possible death.’ How long was the bus trip? The terrorists probably could have just held the entire version on the bus itself, they certainly would have had the time and the agitated restless idiots struggling against their moral failings of not having enough leg room. She was like, almost sure that the conspiracy theorists might have actually been onto something with this one, for once. Had President Canon ever been seen in the same room as Danya? Hmm??

No, no, this was parently dumb and the reason for that was that nobody had asked for it. Nobody at all- it was, like, someone tweet it out, the GH High administration had looked into the tea leaves one fine random ass winter vacay day and had been struck by inspiration from on high. ‘What if… kids get on a bus… and go halfway across the country… and then come back a week later.’ Showstopping. Certainly a novel and original thought that produced value for society!

And the worst part of it was, she’d obviously been born in the wrong year! To think, if Mom and bio-Dad had held off even just half a year on the honeymoon Alana might have been blessed with the right and privilege to get the Insta in front of Lincoln for a couple of likes, then, get this, she would then have died on an island millions of miles away. It was like, so upsetting that opportunities in society were so limited like this, truly the sort of oppression inherent to the capitalist system. To think, her childhood dream of being cut down at the age of eighteen would never be granted, while an entire busful of losers got all-expenses-paid. The surprise of a lifetime, a very short lifetime, to be more particular and accurate.

Man, she was bored right now, wasn’t she.

She was just snrking on all this, anyhow. Mom had told her to cut it with the morbid humor, but it was like, literally every kid born after Y2K wanted to self-immolate and die the moment they put two A’s in a row on the scantron. It was just their thing as a generation. Their youthful battlecry echoed: Mooooom. You don’t understaaaaand!

Alana didn’t really think any of what she was shitting out was true. Were school trips a waste of money, aesthetically dubious, security nightmares? Yes times three, but it wasn’t like people were actually going to die. Alana actually did get how the math worked- lightning did not strike twice.

Probably, like, some class was going to get abducted, at some point in the next few years. And she’d feel all gross joking about it then, but until then she was way more concerned about a school shooter than she was about her classmates not returning from DC. Until the day came she’d be wishing she’d ended up on an island with a collar around her neck every time she forgot her homework in the wrong bag. And everybody thought that exact same way. Even- especially- all the kids on that bus. They’d be rolling up on the curbside any minute now, high fiving and tough guy fistbumping over their successful survival and assuring each other they’d have definitely escaped the island they hadn’t ended up on with nothing but a bottle rocket and an improbable knowledge of aerodynamics.

Actually, that sounded like the precise sort of thing Demetri would literally be doing as he stepped off the bus. She had that much exposure to his sense of humor- a bit unfortunately, for herself.

She pulled out her phone. Grace had texted her- Alana replied that she was still OTW.

2:25 now. Had Alana gotten the bus time wrong? She didn’t want to wait here anymore than, like, five or ten more minutes. She decided to cut the Sotf parodies in her head- the ones where she, the senior Alana Huntsman, made out like a bandit as G069 and bloggers around the world prefaced content titles involving her with the ‘nice’. Back to planning Magic Club’s big senior bonanza. She was pretty sure she’d bring it up as early as, like, first meeting of next year.

She glanced through the front door. Someone who was clearly a student between his youthful face and his fashion- go Predators, she guessed- was talking to Mrs. Hoffman. She hadn’t thought they’d tap the drama teacher as part of the welcome committee. Alana had been considering taking drama as an elective next year, on the off-chance that getting over her little bit of stage fright would help with her future ambitions. Her future ambitions of being an undecided major for at least two gloriously wasted years.

Maybe she should go over, join the conversation while she was-

….

Was, uh. Was Mrs. Hoffman crying? Or like, her eyes were kinda bleary and tired like that. Alana recognized that stress-broken face anywhere, she wasn’t immune to it herself.

And the dude, he kinda looked…

Alana glanced around at the crowd. The mumbling, the restless anxiety. Seemed kinda different now. Some different vibe, energy. Less vague irritation, more concern, as if something had suddenly happened to all their-

…

No way. Couldn’t be. Alana was just reading everything wrong with the atmosphere- Mrs. Hoffman and this kid were having an upset moment over something personal, some classroom drama. The adults were just bored and impatient, the buses were late, this was easily explainable.

…

And, like, now those kids had definitely gotten their money’s worth in mileage, if it was actually true?

No… No no, suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore.

It was only funny if Alana didn’t suddenly feel a pit in her stomach, like she wanted to take everything and all of it back. This is why old people hated the millenials.

Okay that one had been a little funny. She'd been able to smile a bit, but one look at the nearest adult's face suddenly, poignantly wiped that infant grin clean off her chin.

The asphalt streets around GH High hummed heat mirages, quiet for lack of traffic.

((Meanwhile Concluded))