The Nineteen-Story Tomb

"I want summer," moans Lindsay, upstairs, downstairs, on the floor, under the lights turned out, dressed and shivering. We can almost sleep on blue mats over institutional cement.

Seventeen says stay slim, slices of cake no bigger than your Sidekick. (Did you know you're going to die?) Beth and I are sitting over residential cement, basement rug, tearing through the pages, flipping the LP to hear "Rebel Rebel". I'm never going to be Seventeen.

If they have no brain, let them eat fake. I don't know what these chemicals are, but I paint them into my eyes. I demand nuclear freebies, empty calories, and easy things not to do.


I bought shorts and found myself with nothing to write this time last year, too. I want to lie in my friends' beds 'til the sun shines on slingbacks and bicycles.