Get Happy by Mary Amato Page B

the dribble of lukewarm water coming from the water fountain seems less contaminated, the babble of voices cascading down the hallway seems less damaging to the brain.
    During my classes, my teachers contributed to my well-being by doing lots of PowerPoints. Everybody knows that as soon as the lights go off and the projector turns on, nobody pays attention. I love a dark classroom and the drone of a teacher’s voice. I spent the week hunched over my songwriting journal cleverly disguised as an academic notebook, letting new song ideas spring forth and looking up every now and then to make it seem as if I were engrossed in the properties of quadratic equations or the endoplasmic reticulum of cells.
    On Friday of that week, Hayes Martinelli texted during school, asking if Fin and I had any interest in taking the El into Chicago and hanging out downtown with him.
    I ducked into the doorway of an empty classroom to avoid the passing stampede and stared at the text for so long my phone actually went black.
    I was about to call Finnegan when he beat me to it. Hayes had texted both of us.
    “Do you think he invited Cassie?” I asked. “I mean, is this like a Get Happy bonding thing?”
    “I don’t know,” Fin said.
    “Find out.”
    “You find out.”
    I texted Hayes back. Cool idea. Is Cassie coming?
    His answer: No. She said she has a dance class.
    A maddening answer. I would have much preferred:
No. I didn’t invite her.
But I actually agreed to go and we both texted yes to Hayes.
    I would have gone and had a great time, but then the universe served up the squid.
    In bio, we were ending the semester with a unit on dissection, and that afternoon, we were greeted by the pungent smell of formaldehyde, and trays on our tables bearing dead brown squids. Immediate hysterical gagging and laughing all around. I was fine with it at first. I had no problem slicing into the flesh with a razor-sharp scalpel, pinning open the creature, and locating the heart, stomach, intestines, ink sac, and other miscellaneous organs.
    But then while we were washing up, Ms. Feinstein walked over to her computer and projected the Shedd Aquarium Web site on the SmartScreen and gushed about their free lecture series and showed us the Shedd’s schedule of events. There it was: Keanu Choy, winnerof the Loire Award for Marine Research, was giving a talk in conjunction with a special seahorse exhibit on Saturday, April 15.
    My teacher went on to show us her own photos that she’d taken scuba diving in Florida over winter break. Several other people jumped in with tales of their scuba experiences, and I felt as if I’d been sucked into the Bermuda Triangle. Suddenly, everyone in Illinois was into scuba diving. It made me want to eject my lunch from the anterior cavity, otherwise known as my stomach.
    Ms. Feinstein caught me on the way out. “Sometimes, kids get hit after they’re all done dissecting,” she said, obviously thinking my distress was due to being grossed out by the squid. “Splash some water on your face and you’ll be fine.”
    That’s how life works. You don’t hear much about scuba diving until you don’t
want
to hear about scuba diving and then it’s everywhere.
    As soon as we were dismissed for the day, I sat on the bench outside the school’s front entrance and called Fin. It was cold again; even though the sun was shining, the bench was a giant ice cube. He answered on the third buzz.
    “Fin, I can’t go to Chicago.”
    “You have to. Hayes is meeting me at my locker and we’re going to come find you. Where are you?”
    “I can’t go. Feinstein mentioned Keanu Choy in class and the whole thing made me sick.”
    “What did she say?”
    “He’s doing a free lecture, and the Shedd is so wonderful, and everything is beautiful under the sea, blah, blah, blee. I’m holding down my vomit.”
    Background voices and locker slams were all I heard in the phone.
    “Fin, did you hear what I just said?”
    His breath came out