Tamie got in and Warren got in and Bly got in. “Housing forms are due at the end of the month,” Tamie told me. “You’d better call. I can’t believe they didn’t take you.”

So I skipped rehearsal and went home, and I called. “We don’t want you to get all your eggs in one basket,” chirped the dean.

My eggs are rotting and I sold the chicken a long time ago. Stupid inflation, nothing’s the same value it used to be.

“If I could give my place to someone, it’d be you,” said Katie, who declined acceptance. I believed her; it’s a shame things don’t work that way.

“Don’t be offensive,” said Medusa. “And don’t be immature. This is the real world.”

I’ve done everything I can and there’s nothing else to be done, to quote the maternal unit once more. And I really don’t want to live with that for the next several months, but... Heh. It’s a little ironic that hesitant, overcautious Ivy actually managed to overestimate herself. Four years of quality education, twelve years of making an effort in the hope something would come of it, hours of tedious tests it would have been so much easier to sleep through, etc. Something went wrong and all that idiocy. I might as well have not made any effort at all. I don’t want to have to stay at home another year; I never counted on that, not once. I figured I’d end up going to college like any normal IBer, that I had enough of a mind to carry me at least that far. I should have applied to places with lower standards, I know, I know. But instead, silly me, I applied where I actually wanted to go. And I’ll go through the rest of the year, still making an effort, even though I have a strange feeling it won’t matter a bit. My hope, to be dramatic, has run out, and I’m opting for realism. Something, at some point, or several points, went wrong; that’s all there is to it. And dell and hamnation, I want to talk to Jessie. I won’t, naturally; I’d regret it immediately and no good would come of it, but in spite of everything, the girl was the only person I could ever guiltlessly contact who actually sort of understood how my mind worked, which is something I have yet to decipher myself. Damn her. Damn me. Life sucks and so on and so forth. I’m off to pop in a Manson CD and write depressing poetry in the rain, possibly while watching Legally Blonde.

All right, I’m not really. I do have some intelligence, mind you, despite popular belief. But there’s really precious little to do at this point. “Wait and hope,” a wise man once said (after it finally occurred to him that making people’s lives miserable was not the way to go, and he hopped onto a nice big boat to start anew elsewhere, using his considerable knowledge and wealth for worthier purposes… I think I want a nice big boat, to say nothing of the other factors…). Took him long enough, at any rate. Eddie had a bit of a one-track mind, he did.

But I digress.

Right. From what?

I wonder what they saw in my essays.

Ouch. Better not to wonder, methinks. A true motto of merit, that.

Very well then, I won’t be immature and I won’t be offensive and I won’t look any farther ahead than the next assignment’s due date, for whatever good that’ll do. Of all the stupid mistakes… Heavens, if this is the real world, I don’t want to be in it. Because I am the only thing that matters in the whole bloody universe and if absolutely everyone and everything doesn’t cater to my every whim, I’m liable to stamp my feet and throw things. And the little Gorgon is ordering me offline with all the imperiousness of an irate fifteen-year-old. (“I don’t care if you just got on. I need you to get off. Now!”) Perfect.

One o’ them days, maybe? If so, I sincerely hope it’s just one day and nothing drastic. ’Twould be most inconvenient.

Whinging complete. Thank you.

Adieu.