Nuclear Family
In Which School Really Sucks [and Middle Names are Discovered]
“Dad? How exactly do I explain to the internet community that no, I am not the new, secretive member of MCR, but yes, I was the one who tripped and fell into hallelujah-youngandloaded’s lap, conveniently mashing my face into his chest, and accidentally kicking the guy who was sitting next to him in the balls?”
“Get up! Helena! Get up!”
“ArghhhwaarghhMMMOOnnnGGGN.” I said.
“Helena, you’re gonna be late for school!”
“Merg?!” I sat bolt upright and almost hit my father in the face with a dramatic hair flick. “School?”
Gerard rolled his eyes. “Yes, school. Didn’t I tell you last night?”
“No,” I deadpanned. “Last night you were crouched over a sketchbook with a cup of coffee until about 2am.”
“Uh, the day before that?”
“The day before we spent the morning chanting ‘Weekend pancake report! Weekend pancake report!’”
“Oh. Uhm. Sorry. You’re going to school today.”
This time, I was the one to roll my eyes. “You promised mom that you would be a responsible adult slash role model.”
“I am a responsible adult slash role model. I think. Uh, not trying to alarm you or anything, but we’re supposed to be at your school in approximately…ten minutes ago.”
*
“Helena Way?”
The secretary wore a very snazzy jacket and had bleached blond hair piled up in an impressive stack upon her head. Every time she shook Gerard’s hand or exerted any effort in movement it wobbled precariously, and I couldn’t help but keep an eye on it in case it turned out to be an elaborate wig that would topple all over the paperwork that was spread out on the desk.
I raised my hand. “Yep!” I chirped in response, popping the p. [Don’t blame me for being so cheerful at this godforsaken hour. I had had two cups of coffee on the way and the caffeine had deluded my brain into thinking that I was vaguely normal. Gerard, however, was a completely different story. He was still running high on last night’s beverages and his eye was beginning to twitch at random intervals.]
“That’s a lovely name,” beamed the secretary, whose name badge read Marge. I grinned at her.
“Thanks. My mom picked it for me. It used to be my great-grandma’s. I think.” I turned to my father. “Was it?” [What the fuck was one meant to do when someone complimented their name?]
“I wanted to name her Mellon-Collie, like the Smashing Pumpkins album? But my mom threatened to disown me and then her mother piped up along with grandma and we decided on Helena instead. There are two songs with that name. I wrote one. It’s pretty rad. So that’s why it’s her middle name instead.” By this time, Marge’s eyebrows had gravitated into her hairline.
“You never told me that!” I said in what sounded like an extraordinarily sarcastic tone but was, in fact, very unsarcastic.
“Well, they say you learn something new every day!” My father replied in the same cheerful tone. His eye twitched and he supressed a yawn. Marge looked from one of us to the other with a slightly concerned look on her face. She pursed her lips and nodded briskly twice, before handing me a pencil and some sort of quiz thing about my general interests to fill out.
Within ten minutes, I had somehow been recruited to the symphonic band, two different choirs, some sort of debating team, and the cheerleading club/team/thingy. [All I did was say that I did ballet and BAM. It was too early in the morning for this type of shitfuckery.]
By this hour, it was lunchtime. I mentally prepared myself for a scene that would come right out of Mean Girls while my father high-tailed it out of the school in fear of being recognised by the typical group of emos that resided at every American highschool [at least according to everything I had seen and read.]
The cafeteria was exactly as bad as I expected it to be. Made even worse was how Marge walked in with me, and announced to the whole place that I existed, was new, was from Australia, and was also the daughter of a certain esteemed musician.
Fuck you Marge. I believed in you, and you betrayed me. Fuck you.
From the back of the silent room, a singled voice piped up.
“If you’re from Australia, then why are you Asian?”
“Oh my god, you can’t just ask people why they’re Asian,” someone else yelled.
Marge bailed as soon as a full-frontal argument about my nationality erupted within the cafeteria. Resigned, I made my way over to the counter.
“Sorry hun,” drawled the Midwestern woman. “We’ve only got milk, cereal, and juice left. The milk expired roughly two weeks ago so I would suggest you go with the cereal and the juice.” I made a mental note to bring lunch from home next time.
Unconventional lunch in hand, I was faced with the decision of where I could sit, or, rather, where I would be allowed to sit. The only free seat, however, was next to a bunch of beefy guys in varsity jackets who looked like they could accidentally breathe too hard and squash me like I squashed that spider in the shower on my first night in the Way household. [There were British battle cries courtesy of Tory and pomegranate shampoo courtesy of my father's exotic taste in hair products involved.]
Just as I managed to sidle in within view of what I assumed to be the jocks, the bell rang shrilly and everyone scraped their chairs back, producing what could possibly be one of the most horrific sounds in all of human history [next to the noise that escaped from my old maths teacher after my school had a bean frittata day]. Within seconds, the whole cafeteria had been evacuated and I mentally cursed whatever force dictated my life while holding a box of stale cereal and juice packed full of artificial goodness.
It took me ten minutes to navigate the suspiciously empty hallways to my maths classroom. When I arrived, I instantly wished that I had bailed instead and took off towards home as a short man glared at me from behind spectacles.
“You are late!” he trumpeted, slamming his fist down on the table and making the flower vase in the corner rattle. [What sort of school even has a flower vase in the corner?] I flinched as the dudebro’s spit flecked my face and fought the urge to run away screaming.
“Sorry sir?” I offered as I cringed from his beady little eyes and evil looking beard that was surely containing traces of last night’s dinner. “I’m new?” I threw my books up in between us like a shield before he released a fresh volley of saliva. Someone snickered in the back row and I turned to glare at them. Unfortunately, the previously aforementioned action lowered my defences and the right side of my face was showered as the teacher commanded me to take a seat, shut up, and start taking notes.
Utterly confused by the teacher’s writing [seriously, it was even worse than mine], I was hustled along into French with the rest of the class as soon as the bell rang. The French teacher was even shorter than the maths teacher. She had an impeccable helmet of chestnut brown hair and an even more impeccable suit on, complete with pencil skirt and kitten heels.
“Sank you class,” she intoned, drawing out the ‘s’. I hurriedly took a seat next to a bored looking girl who was chewing gum and her friend, who was staring viciously at the back of who I assumed to be the head cheerleader’s blonde head.
“I see we have ze new student wiz us today,” she continued on. “’Eleena Way?” She squinted her eyes and scoured the rows of students until they rested upon me. “Ah, oui, I am Madame Collins. Velcome to Frensh class. I hope you enjoy.” Satisfied at my vague nodding, Madame Collins turned her back on the rows and promptly launched into a barrage of French. Not understanding anything, I zoned out and ended up awkwardly staring at a girl two seats to the right in the row in front of me. She grinned at me in amusement, revealing bucked teeth as I flailed my arms around in the universal gesture of ‘oh shit sorry I didn’t mean to be such a creep’.
Unfortunately [like everything else in my tragic life], Madame Collins took this as an invitation to choose me to answer her question [which I had no idea about].
“Ah, oui, ‘Eleena! Please share your Frensh metaphor?”
I panicked. I honestly panicked because a) The girl certainly didn’t seem to understand what I was trying to express with my ridiculous arm movements b) What the fuck is a French metaphor c) Oh god she was really pretty and giggling at me d) I’m so embarrassed right now e) Oh no word vomit.
“I, uh, sorry Madame, I was, uh doing my stretches because, uh, I, choked on some, uh, rice, last night and, uh, I pulled…a…muscle. Yeah. In my back. It’s very serious. My father had to call the ambulance. Yes. I pulled a muscle. Because…rice.” I did a weird twisty motion to try to show her where I had allegedly pulled the muscle and ended up swatting the boy next to me in the face, who turned around and started spewing a sentence punctuated with a ratio of 1 swearword to every single non-swearword.
Madame Collins was horrified at the warzone that the middle row had become. I was horrified of how I had made a complete and utter idiot of myself.
“Don’t fuckin’ go lookin’ at my girl you fuckin’ emo fag!” the dudebro was yelling. [Already? Not even a full day in school and the insults have been hurled? I thought this type of shit only happened in cliché movies?]
“Uh…what?” I asked intelligently as the dudebro’s bad breath blasted me.
There was an exasperated sigh from in front of us. “Ryan, shut the fuck up, okay? I’m not ‘your girl’ any more. Hell, I don’t even know what I ever saw in you. So lay off the new kid, and go cry me a river of your filthy tears.”
“Oh, snap,” someone said quietly in the back.
“You tell him, Mattie!” someone else said not so quietly. By this point, the class was out of control and Madame Collins began stomping her foot in exasperation.
“CLASS!” she screeched, throwing her papers down. “Franchement! Vill you all be silent, or must I give ze disrupters detention?!”
Needless to say, I ended up sweeping the classrooms until 5:30.
*
Of course, my day just went from worse to totally catastrophic.
The bus was 20 minutes late. Hell, all three buses that were supposed to have appeared within those 20 minutes were late. I ended up beginning to walk. The buses ended up appearing as soon as I began to walk. In quick succession. I watched my way home as well as my hopes for the future vanish around the corner with the buses.
Shoving the door open and charging through, I bumped into Lindsey and Gerard. My knees gave out and I fell to the ground.
Now, let’s pause for a moment. When I said I bumped into Lindsey and Gerard, I mean, I bumped into them. At the same time. Because they were desperately connected to each other at the lips as if one was trying to give the other life-saving CPR.
“Oh, no,” I groaned, covering my eyes. “Oh, no. Gross. Ew. Gross gross gross. Dad, when you said you would be seeing Lindsey off for tour, I didn’t think that you meant you would be-” I peeked out from between my fingers, before doing a double take [if that was possible], instantly forgetting what I was going to say before. “Dad, is that Gabe Saporta? What the fuck is Gabe Saporta doing in our house? Is he wearing an apron? Oh my goodness.”
Gabe Saporta was indeed wearing an apron and standing in our kitchen. I was more confused than I had been when the maths teacher had asked me about the dilation of a cubic function. Seriously, what were the chances of this actually happening to me? My life was definitely becoming a bad fanfiction. I briefly wondered if someone out there was dictating my life, cackling madly as they shoved in one unrelated character after another. I was so doomed.
“Helena, don’t you remember what I said before I left?”
“You mean, what you said just before you bailed on me after dumping me into the cafeteria? No. Or, as Justin Bieber said, ‘Guess what? I don’t recall.’. Oh, great. Now I’m babbling in a bitchy manner. Someone stop me before I make an ass of myself like I did in French class. Please.”
Gerard rolled his eyes. “I’ll be spending some time with Lindsey before she goes on tour. So I found you a babysitter.” Seeing that I was trying to make the connections between a babysitter and what it had to do with the lead singer of Cobra Starship dressed up like a kitchen maid, he motioned towards Gabe and then to me. “Babysitter? Yeah? You feel?”
“Oh.” I said. “Oh. No. Oh, no, no, no.”
“Get up! Helena! Get up!”
“ArghhhwaarghhMMMOOnnnGGGN.” I said.
“Helena, you’re gonna be late for school!”
“Merg?!” I sat bolt upright and almost hit my father in the face with a dramatic hair flick. “School?”
Gerard rolled his eyes. “Yes, school. Didn’t I tell you last night?”
“No,” I deadpanned. “Last night you were crouched over a sketchbook with a cup of coffee until about 2am.”
“Uh, the day before that?”
“The day before we spent the morning chanting ‘Weekend pancake report! Weekend pancake report!’”
“Oh. Uhm. Sorry. You’re going to school today.”
This time, I was the one to roll my eyes. “You promised mom that you would be a responsible adult slash role model.”
“I am a responsible adult slash role model. I think. Uh, not trying to alarm you or anything, but we’re supposed to be at your school in approximately…ten minutes ago.”
*
“Helena Way?”
The secretary wore a very snazzy jacket and had bleached blond hair piled up in an impressive stack upon her head. Every time she shook Gerard’s hand or exerted any effort in movement it wobbled precariously, and I couldn’t help but keep an eye on it in case it turned out to be an elaborate wig that would topple all over the paperwork that was spread out on the desk.
I raised my hand. “Yep!” I chirped in response, popping the p. [Don’t blame me for being so cheerful at this godforsaken hour. I had had two cups of coffee on the way and the caffeine had deluded my brain into thinking that I was vaguely normal. Gerard, however, was a completely different story. He was still running high on last night’s beverages and his eye was beginning to twitch at random intervals.]
“That’s a lovely name,” beamed the secretary, whose name badge read Marge. I grinned at her.
“Thanks. My mom picked it for me. It used to be my great-grandma’s. I think.” I turned to my father. “Was it?” [What the fuck was one meant to do when someone complimented their name?]
“I wanted to name her Mellon-Collie, like the Smashing Pumpkins album? But my mom threatened to disown me and then her mother piped up along with grandma and we decided on Helena instead. There are two songs with that name. I wrote one. It’s pretty rad. So that’s why it’s her middle name instead.” By this time, Marge’s eyebrows had gravitated into her hairline.
“You never told me that!” I said in what sounded like an extraordinarily sarcastic tone but was, in fact, very unsarcastic.
“Well, they say you learn something new every day!” My father replied in the same cheerful tone. His eye twitched and he supressed a yawn. Marge looked from one of us to the other with a slightly concerned look on her face. She pursed her lips and nodded briskly twice, before handing me a pencil and some sort of quiz thing about my general interests to fill out.
Within ten minutes, I had somehow been recruited to the symphonic band, two different choirs, some sort of debating team, and the cheerleading club/team/thingy. [All I did was say that I did ballet and BAM. It was too early in the morning for this type of shitfuckery.]
By this hour, it was lunchtime. I mentally prepared myself for a scene that would come right out of Mean Girls while my father high-tailed it out of the school in fear of being recognised by the typical group of emos that resided at every American highschool [at least according to everything I had seen and read.]
The cafeteria was exactly as bad as I expected it to be. Made even worse was how Marge walked in with me, and announced to the whole place that I existed, was new, was from Australia, and was also the daughter of a certain esteemed musician.
Fuck you Marge. I believed in you, and you betrayed me. Fuck you.
From the back of the silent room, a singled voice piped up.
“If you’re from Australia, then why are you Asian?”
“Oh my god, you can’t just ask people why they’re Asian,” someone else yelled.
Marge bailed as soon as a full-frontal argument about my nationality erupted within the cafeteria. Resigned, I made my way over to the counter.
“Sorry hun,” drawled the Midwestern woman. “We’ve only got milk, cereal, and juice left. The milk expired roughly two weeks ago so I would suggest you go with the cereal and the juice.” I made a mental note to bring lunch from home next time.
Unconventional lunch in hand, I was faced with the decision of where I could sit, or, rather, where I would be allowed to sit. The only free seat, however, was next to a bunch of beefy guys in varsity jackets who looked like they could accidentally breathe too hard and squash me like I squashed that spider in the shower on my first night in the Way household. [There were British battle cries courtesy of Tory and pomegranate shampoo courtesy of my father's exotic taste in hair products involved.]
Just as I managed to sidle in within view of what I assumed to be the jocks, the bell rang shrilly and everyone scraped their chairs back, producing what could possibly be one of the most horrific sounds in all of human history [next to the noise that escaped from my old maths teacher after my school had a bean frittata day]. Within seconds, the whole cafeteria had been evacuated and I mentally cursed whatever force dictated my life while holding a box of stale cereal and juice packed full of artificial goodness.
It took me ten minutes to navigate the suspiciously empty hallways to my maths classroom. When I arrived, I instantly wished that I had bailed instead and took off towards home as a short man glared at me from behind spectacles.
“You are late!” he trumpeted, slamming his fist down on the table and making the flower vase in the corner rattle. [What sort of school even has a flower vase in the corner?] I flinched as the dudebro’s spit flecked my face and fought the urge to run away screaming.
“Sorry sir?” I offered as I cringed from his beady little eyes and evil looking beard that was surely containing traces of last night’s dinner. “I’m new?” I threw my books up in between us like a shield before he released a fresh volley of saliva. Someone snickered in the back row and I turned to glare at them. Unfortunately, the previously aforementioned action lowered my defences and the right side of my face was showered as the teacher commanded me to take a seat, shut up, and start taking notes.
Utterly confused by the teacher’s writing [seriously, it was even worse than mine], I was hustled along into French with the rest of the class as soon as the bell rang. The French teacher was even shorter than the maths teacher. She had an impeccable helmet of chestnut brown hair and an even more impeccable suit on, complete with pencil skirt and kitten heels.
“Sank you class,” she intoned, drawing out the ‘s’. I hurriedly took a seat next to a bored looking girl who was chewing gum and her friend, who was staring viciously at the back of who I assumed to be the head cheerleader’s blonde head.
“I see we have ze new student wiz us today,” she continued on. “’Eleena Way?” She squinted her eyes and scoured the rows of students until they rested upon me. “Ah, oui, I am Madame Collins. Velcome to Frensh class. I hope you enjoy.” Satisfied at my vague nodding, Madame Collins turned her back on the rows and promptly launched into a barrage of French. Not understanding anything, I zoned out and ended up awkwardly staring at a girl two seats to the right in the row in front of me. She grinned at me in amusement, revealing bucked teeth as I flailed my arms around in the universal gesture of ‘oh shit sorry I didn’t mean to be such a creep’.
Unfortunately [like everything else in my tragic life], Madame Collins took this as an invitation to choose me to answer her question [which I had no idea about].
“Ah, oui, ‘Eleena! Please share your Frensh metaphor?”
I panicked. I honestly panicked because a) The girl certainly didn’t seem to understand what I was trying to express with my ridiculous arm movements b) What the fuck is a French metaphor c) Oh god she was really pretty and giggling at me d) I’m so embarrassed right now e) Oh no word vomit.
“I, uh, sorry Madame, I was, uh doing my stretches because, uh, I, choked on some, uh, rice, last night and, uh, I pulled…a…muscle. Yeah. In my back. It’s very serious. My father had to call the ambulance. Yes. I pulled a muscle. Because…rice.” I did a weird twisty motion to try to show her where I had allegedly pulled the muscle and ended up swatting the boy next to me in the face, who turned around and started spewing a sentence punctuated with a ratio of 1 swearword to every single non-swearword.
Madame Collins was horrified at the warzone that the middle row had become. I was horrified of how I had made a complete and utter idiot of myself.
“Don’t fuckin’ go lookin’ at my girl you fuckin’ emo fag!” the dudebro was yelling. [Already? Not even a full day in school and the insults have been hurled? I thought this type of shit only happened in cliché movies?]
“Uh…what?” I asked intelligently as the dudebro’s bad breath blasted me.
There was an exasperated sigh from in front of us. “Ryan, shut the fuck up, okay? I’m not ‘your girl’ any more. Hell, I don’t even know what I ever saw in you. So lay off the new kid, and go cry me a river of your filthy tears.”
“Oh, snap,” someone said quietly in the back.
“You tell him, Mattie!” someone else said not so quietly. By this point, the class was out of control and Madame Collins began stomping her foot in exasperation.
“CLASS!” she screeched, throwing her papers down. “Franchement! Vill you all be silent, or must I give ze disrupters detention?!”
Needless to say, I ended up sweeping the classrooms until 5:30.
*
Of course, my day just went from worse to totally catastrophic.
The bus was 20 minutes late. Hell, all three buses that were supposed to have appeared within those 20 minutes were late. I ended up beginning to walk. The buses ended up appearing as soon as I began to walk. In quick succession. I watched my way home as well as my hopes for the future vanish around the corner with the buses.
Shoving the door open and charging through, I bumped into Lindsey and Gerard. My knees gave out and I fell to the ground.
Now, let’s pause for a moment. When I said I bumped into Lindsey and Gerard, I mean, I bumped into them. At the same time. Because they were desperately connected to each other at the lips as if one was trying to give the other life-saving CPR.
“Oh, no,” I groaned, covering my eyes. “Oh, no. Gross. Ew. Gross gross gross. Dad, when you said you would be seeing Lindsey off for tour, I didn’t think that you meant you would be-” I peeked out from between my fingers, before doing a double take [if that was possible], instantly forgetting what I was going to say before. “Dad, is that Gabe Saporta? What the fuck is Gabe Saporta doing in our house? Is he wearing an apron? Oh my goodness.”
Gabe Saporta was indeed wearing an apron and standing in our kitchen. I was more confused than I had been when the maths teacher had asked me about the dilation of a cubic function. Seriously, what were the chances of this actually happening to me? My life was definitely becoming a bad fanfiction. I briefly wondered if someone out there was dictating my life, cackling madly as they shoved in one unrelated character after another. I was so doomed.
“Helena, don’t you remember what I said before I left?”
“You mean, what you said just before you bailed on me after dumping me into the cafeteria? No. Or, as Justin Bieber said, ‘Guess what? I don’t recall.’. Oh, great. Now I’m babbling in a bitchy manner. Someone stop me before I make an ass of myself like I did in French class. Please.”
Gerard rolled his eyes. “I’ll be spending some time with Lindsey before she goes on tour. So I found you a babysitter.” Seeing that I was trying to make the connections between a babysitter and what it had to do with the lead singer of Cobra Starship dressed up like a kitchen maid, he motioned towards Gabe and then to me. “Babysitter? Yeah? You feel?”
“Oh.” I said. “Oh. No. Oh, no, no, no.”
Notes
I'M SORRY THIS IS SUCH A LATE UPDATE. I'M THE WORST PERSON EVER.
I'M ALSO VERY SORRY THAT THIS WAS A SHITTY CHAPTER.
I've just been very busy with music and I got a job and found out that Pentatonix bailed on the vocal workshop in the Festival of Voices and I'm also going to Turkey later in the year and my team ALMOST BUT NOT QUITE won the state title in cricket.
Also, my little brother has the saddest crush on Lindsey Stirling. *evil laughter*
I promise that the next chapter will be much more enjoyable and it will feature shenanigans from our beloved Gabe [who I had to stick in because of all the Cobracam videos I have been watching].
Okay. That's it for now.
Signing out,
Coke/Mikey
happy easter now update
4/21/14