Disappointment

Kate Roy was convinced that women’s sporting wear was a premier example of poor engineering. In her mind she was picturing the bad engineering hall of fame--right after the Tacoma Narrows Bridge exhibit there was a picture of the women’s section at Nike. Kate was finishing up mile two and was convinced that the elastic band of her sports bra was effectively forcing the air out of her lungs.  This was not to be blamed on the fact that Kate hadn’t been running in three months, nor was she acknowledging that she was a little more testy than normal. This wasn’t her usual three-mile run.

Kate was planning on running until her shoes disintigrated, or until it started raining dramatically allowing her to stand in it looking disabused-- whatever came first. Kate had been passed up once again for Vermillion, the elite mixed choir at Rutherford HS.  That didn’t bother her so much, other than general disillusionment, but the serrated edge to her disappointment was induced by the name “Lauren Lance” on the roster completely devoid of any Katherine Roy’s . 

Lauren Lance… seriously. Lauren Lance had joined choir Junior year, sure that she was Mariah Carey incarnate… that is had Mariah Carey not already been embodied as Mariah Carey. Kate had waded through years of unstimulating middle school and freshman choirs, paying her dues before finally being allowed to audition and get in to the upperclass Concert Chorale. Lauren was admitted into Concert Chorale by a providential scheduling conflict with IB Chemistry which was only offered during the same hour as Women’s Chorus. And after a year of sitting next to the usurper, Kate was ready to have her dominance re-asserted. She had run up to the choir door with everyone else to see the results. She tried hard to conceal that she was in fact checking the Vermillion list twice, but each time the name Lauren Lance seemed illuminated like an Edison Factory while Kate shared a barrel fire with Nikola Tesla.

As she was running by Harrison’s Memorial and Mortuary she couldn’t help but be a little distracted and unsettled by the crop of blank headstones that lined the sidewalk.  Is that really good business? Might as well write “Your Name Here ” “Here lie your aspirations” “Hope” “Justice” “Do Not Disturb”“Elvis is not here- Paul is.”  When she started making puns out of names she realized that she was plagiarizing the Haunted Mansion and remembered that she was supposed to be ruminating on the injustice of the world.

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Julian shuddered at her planner. While she habitually went to bed a half hour after midnight and woke up around 5, when she wrote it down suddenly  getting only four and half hours of sleep seemed to be cause for concern.  I’ll work on Calculus the hour between school and state practice…. And four hours to finish up the economics project?

“Hey Julian, we’re doing scenes 14 through 20 today right?” Sophie stopped to ask Julian as she passed her in the hall.

“Oh crap.” Julian had forgotten Les Mis practice.  “Yeah, 14 through 20.” I guess I’m not sleeping tonight. 

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