Adam Selzer by How to Get Suspended, Influence People

In the dreams, she was following me around with that pissed-off look on her face, haunting me as punishment for laughing at her. Eventually I forced myself to get out of bed, looked out the window, and tried to see if I could find the house where the painting was. I know it’s stupid, but I was very relieved when I didn’t see it.
    So, feeling a little less frightened, I got back into bed and fell asleep. Not just half asleep, but really asleep.
    The dreams were better that way. One of them was about Anna.

There’s this feeling I always get on Saturday afternoons, sitting around in the living room, watching the dust blow around in the sunlight that beams in through the blinds. Like there’s nothing going on, and I ought to be bored, but I’m just not, and things are only going to get better over the next day or so. Like being excited and bored at the same time. I don’t think there’s a word for it. At least, not in English. Maybe they have one in Japanese.
    After I woke up I watched TV for as long as I could stand it, which, on Saturday afternoon, wasn’t all that long. There wasn’t much on besides golf tournaments, and I think you have to be in a coma to watch golf on television. You might just as well watch people knitting. Actually, if people used those knitting needles as swords in between working on pot holders, knitting might be a good thing to see on TV. A little violence can go a long way; imagine how much more fun figure skating could be if they had two figure skaters duking it out on the ice. Combat figure skating. I’d watch that.
    Still, bad TV or not, I never did venture out of the house, not for the whole weekend. Since the first two weeks of school were over, the unofficial grace period had passed and teachers would be giving homework right and left. I knew I had to relax while I still had the chance.
    By eight-thirty on Monday, it was quite apparent that everyone else knew that the year had started in earnest, too. When the principal went on the intercom to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, I noticed that a bunch of people were saying joke pledges, like “one nation, under pants, in the vestibule, with silky see-through garters for all.”
    That was just the start. By the end of homeroom, it was clear that the whole “well-behaved” facade was over. Jerks were throwing paper around and thinking it was the funniest damn thing ever. Kids were having contests to see who could say “penis” the loudest without getting caught by the teacher. Danny Nelson was going around with a clipboard, collecting money and laying two-to-one odds that Nick Malley and Jenny Levin would be broken up by the end of the week. Classes were loud and obnoxious, and the general attitude was not one of maturity. As much as all the jerks in class drove me crazy from time to time, it was good to know they hadn’t all gone soft.
    I had this guy named Coach Wilkins for history. Now, it was a strict rule of mine never to trust a man who insisted on being called “Coach,” but at least Wilkins knew his stuff, and he really got into his history lectures. Watching him teach was like watching a preacher on one of those Christian Big Hair channels. He’d get all excited, shouting and waving his hands around and even jumping up and down when the mood struck him. I wasn’t sure what exactly he coached.
    “People in the 1830s believed that it was America’s destiny to expand all the way to the Pacific Ocean!” he shouted. “Can anyone tell me what the name of this concept was?”
    “Manifest Destiny,” someone muttered.
    “Manifest Destiny!” he roared, raising his fist in the air like he was imitating either the Statue of Liberty or Malcolm X. “Expand America’s territory all the way to the Pacific Ocean!” He pounded his fist hard on his desk for each of the last few words; he did that so often that it was a miracle his desk hadn’t cracked. I suppose we were lucky that he wasn’t teaching in some sort of