Join the Genre Chicks for High School, Hypnotherapy, a cup of Red Rose tea, and a discussion of Alex Robinson's time-traveling graphic novel To Cool To Be Forgotten. (Back in the day, that would be spelled "2 Cool 2B 4gotten" and squeezed in between "Have a great summer!" and "LYLAS." )

What are some of the silly sentiments you remember from your high school yearbook?

Also -- please let me know if you have any issues with the production quality of this podcast. We're constantly trying to improve -- but I'm at the point now where I think I'm hearing problems where there are none. Do me a favor and tell me it's all in my head, willya? Thanks!


Genre Chicks: Kitti McConnell, Janet Lee, Alethea Kontis, and Lillie Rainey

I had a migraine on Friday. Bad. In hindsight, I suppose I should have expected one -- it had been slowly barreling its way northwest for a while now, and its name was Fay. Stress, sleep, hormones, and barometric pressure are all the [mostly] unavoidable migraine factors. I had four aces. The universe had a straight flush.

I also had a short story deadline for this workshop I'm doing in Portland in a couple of weeks. So I took the day off, turned the air conditioner down, and sat propped up in bed typing in the dark. It was slow going. I took breaks to nap and eat. Needing the story done and printed and in the mail kept me hammering away at it.

Right on the verge of passing out, I finished. I went for a 20-minute walk on the treadmill and took a shower, hoping to perk myself up, but wanting nothing more than to pass out. Dizzy and probably not in the best frame of mind, I read the story over once, and then proceeded to print out three copies in manuscript format. It took forty minutes. I felt every blessed one.

I threw on an old pair of jeans and a stained t-shirt, slipped on my flip-flops, and was ready and waiting the second the last sheet printed. I knew a truck left the main post office at 6pm. It was 5:05. I wrote the address on a post-it note, grabbed my sunglasses, and left the house. The heat hit me like a fist. I took shallow breaths.

When I got to the post-office, the parking lot was pretty empty. I ran inside, grabbed a Priority Mail envelope, and scribbled the address on it. I pulled the strip off and sealed it three seconds before the clerk invited me to step forward. I had my credit card out and ready. It was 5:25. Perfect.

"Is this anything fragile, liquid, or perishable?" the clerk asked.

Like she hadn't just seen me shove 100 paper-clipped pages inside. But I knew she had to ask. "No."

"Do you need any insurance, delivery confirmation, or--?"

"No." God, my head hurt.

"Do you need any stamps, packing supplies--?"

"Nope." It even kind of hurt to talk. I wiggled my credit card, anxious to complete the never-ending transaction.

The clerk gave me a wry smile. "I have a question you will answer 'yes' to," she said chipperly.

Any other day, I would have been in the mood. Hell, any other day, I would have said the same thing. I used to do stuff like this to grumpy customers when I worked at the bookstore, just because I could. And it never hurt anyone to smile. I raised my eyebrows. Her grin got huge, and her eyes twinkled.

"May I see your ID?" she asked. The woman behind me in line chuckled. Yeah. Wasn't she clever?

Now, I have this small pet peeve about cashiers who ask to see my ID when I'm purchasing an item that's less than $5.00. If someone wants a bottle of water/pack of gum/Priority Mail sent badly enough to STEAL MY CREDIT CARD for it, then they're welcome to it. Seriously. Chances are, I would have given them the five bucks in the first place had they asked for it. Most credit card machines don't even ask for your signature if the transaction is under $25.00. It doesn't take but a few brain cells to figure out that all this "asking for ID" nonsense is just a power trip. A few more brain cells, and I would have had my own chuckle.

Unfortunately, my brain cells were otherwise occupied trying to keep me vertical. I flipped open my wallet with all the effortless grace of Fox Mulder, and the clerk made a big show of comparing the credit card to my driver's license. The TSA give less thorough examinations. And as she handed the wallet back to me she said, "I liked the book."

I honestly had no idea what she was talking about. "What book?"

"The Sherrilyn Kenyon one."

I froze. "Oh my GOD, you MUST be kidding."

She wasn't. We went on to chat about Sherri, and she asked me how the Acheron signing at the Parthenon went. I told her that after they kicked us out, we signed books on the steps until one o'clock in the morning. She told me about all the "pseudo-writers" who come in from time to time to send a manuscript one place or another. She told me about another children's author who had never heard of The Giving Tree. I told her about how the book had been banned in several school systems, and why. And because there were still people behind me, I broke off our lovely conversation and excused myself. She invited me to come back soon. I said I would. And then I went straight home and called my mother.

I got recognized by a perfect stranger at the post office. ME. In my ratty jeans and ancient t-shirt and flip-flops and big, dark sunglasses. Like I was Nicole Kidman or something. I may as well have been...that's just Nashville. Look, ma, I'm a celebrity! Holy craoinoli.

I just hope to god my envelope got on that last truck.

Sherrilyn Kenyon Dark-Hunter Fans, UNITE!

Dragon*Con Parade Info
Where: Marriott Hotel water fountain
When: Saturday, 9am
What do I wear?: Goth Gear, sunglasses, comfortable shoes! (Wings and horns optional)

Come one, come all, come kick some Daimon ass!

(okay, and if you're just friends of mine you better be walking with us too. All warm bodies accepted.)

Barring any other unforseen changes, here is my schedule for Dragon*Con:

Saturday

10:00 am -- Parade (walking with Sherrilyn Kenyon's Vampire Brigade)

2:30 pm -- Autographing

4:00pm -- Panel: Sherrilyn Kenyon: Year of Acheron...and Beyond
Description: An hour with best-selling author Sherrilyn Kenyon, author of the "Dark-Hunter" series.
Length: 1 Hour
Moderator / MC for panel

Sunday

5:30pm -- Reading (w/ Eric James Stone)

Monday

2:30 pm -- Panel: What's Next for Romance?
Description: Industry professionals talk about the current trends in the romance genre and where they expect the field to go next.
Length: 1 Hour

I'll also have some signings scheduled in the Exhibitor's Hall -- be sure to check Sherrilyn Kenyon's Big Fat Booth for details.

For ONE WEEK ONLY, select Apex Publications books are only $10, including Beauty & Dynamite! If you've been holding off, now's the time to buy your very own copy!

Other Apex books on sale:

Unwelcome Bodies
The Next Fix
HebrewPunk
Aegri Somnia
Gratia Placenti
Orgy of Souls
Mama's Boy and Other Dark Tales

Make Alexander Hamilton proud. Spend ten bucks and buy a book!

It's an amazing feeling. You know, that feeling you get when you discover a new author. You put down the brilliant novel you've just finished, completely enraptured, and you hope this person has a ton of backlist that you can go straight to the nearest B&N and fill your shopping cart with. You can't get enough of them. You're obsessed. And it feels GOOD.

I get that feeling too. I fall in love with authors and wonder why on earth I didn't know about them before. Only, I do it in person.

Sure, I had heard of John Scalzi and David Louis Edelman. I've got all their books. Haven't read a word. (This is a hazard of my profession I've come to accept.) Doselle Young's name I didn't recognize, despite having been the DC Comics buyer for five years. In the space of an hour (a dinner with Young and Edelman; a reading with Scalzi), I had three enormous crushes. What can I say? There's just something about talented artists. Tell me I'm beautiful and make me laugh, and I'm yours forever.

I'm in the middle of Zoe's Tale right now and loving it. I'm going to hunt down my copy of Infoquake just as soon as I finish. Books have become more than just books for me anymore; they're visiting with dear friends whom I miss tremendously and wish to know better.

Conventions are like that too -- even an exhausting five days is not enough to see all of your best friends and give them each the time and attention they deserve. Thankfully, years of attending Dragon*Con have prepared me to be overwhelmed, and not be disappointed that I can't do EVERYTHING. Each day I chose two or three people to hunt down. I ran into Sean Williams while Eddie and I were checking into the hotel, did a quick Australian time zone calculation, and immediately sent him off to bed. I didn't see George Mann, Christian Dunn, or Mark Newton until Thursday morning, by which time everyone knew them as "Lee's Brits." On Friday, I managed to snag one quick picture with Sharon Shinn, and one gignormous hug from Jeff Carlson. I also squeezed in an all-too-brief appearance at the Codex Writers breakfast to put faces with names I had known for so long. Saturday, we crashed the Baen party long enough to blow kisses at Toni Weisskopf.

The other fun thing at cons is running into friends you've known for years...over and over again in a crowd of thousands. It only reinforces that cosmic sense that fate would have thrown us together anyway, had we not figured it out ourselves. So I didn't mind finding myself constantly haunted by David Coe, Stephen Segal, Ken Scholes, Diana Rowland, Matt Rotundo, Eric James Stone, and Jay Lake. I did, however, mind the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad blisters I acquired Friday morning.

Friday was just One of Those Days. The blisters were a bad way to start it out. Yes, I've done enough cons to know better than trying to break in cute new shoes, and if they hadn't been a brand I've never had a problem with (RocketDogs) I would never have attempted it. I signed a few books at the Codex breeze-by and crashed David Coe's breakfast with his editor Jim Frenkel, but by the time I made it back to the dealer's room, the skin had already rubbed off one foot and my lunch date got cancelled. I missed running into both Jeff and Sharon at their Kaffeklatches while I went back to the hotel to change my shoes, which made me mad. Eddie and I bought lunch for Mary Robinette Kowal, but had to shuffle her off to a signing without actually spending any time with her. I was in pain and overtired, which only made it worse. Mary had explained why we weren't sleeping well at the higher altitude, but knowing didn't make it easier.

The masquerade was a treat, and the Pyr party and the smelly Tor party and the Weird Tales party and every other party Nick Mamatas dragged me to were fun, and I met tons of great people, and I wore the cute dress and different cute shoes, but every step reminded me how stupid and tired I was. I kept telling myself that it was only one day, that it's only ever one day every time one of Those Days happens, and that tomorrow is always better. Always. Every time. Without fail. This was no exception.

Only, the Saturday of WorldCon was one of those amazingly wonderfully perfect days that I wish I could put in a bottle and treasure forever. Despite the excruciating pain I slept, actual SLEEP, and after a fortifying breakfast, I hobbled to the CVS to buy flip flops and band-aids. Afterwards, I skipped down the streets of the pedestrian mall, giddy with rest and the ability to walk again.

And what with one thing or another, the Hugos happened. I met up with the Codex crew (a.k.a. The Mary Robinette Kowal Cheering Section) and we set up a deathmatch between Jeremy Lewis's rat and Lawrence Schoen's buffalito. We took pictures of Mary and Ken entering the theatre, Mary more radiant in her gold dress than the Columbia Pictures lady. We fidgeted patiently through the pre-Hugo awards, and the lovely memorial presentation (tough when faced with just how many Greats passed on last year), and finally it was time for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. We sat on the edges of our seats when Jay Lake sauntered on stage. I'm sure Jay said something poignant and funny, but the blood was too loud in my ears. And I know, I KNOW Mary had up until that point forbidden anything that might jinx her chances, but I quietly, subtly, crossed my fingers anyway.

When Jay read her name out loud, the crowd went wild. We flew to our feet. I welled up with tears and screamed like a banshee; Lawrence and Matt started a "MA-RY! MA-RY!" chant. But I heard other voices beyond ours, other people in that crowd who loved Mary just as much as we did. David Coe put it best later: it was just so refreshing to see someone new, someone good, someone who deserved such an award actually get it. Apparently, it's a rarer event than one might think.

Not that I don't think any of the other nominees didn't deserve the Award as well: Joe Abercrombie, Jon Armstrong, David Anthony Durham, Scott Lynch, and my new best friend David Louis Edelman are all fine, upstanding gentlemen. But seeing Mary up there, MY Mary, OUR Mary...it was like watching my sister win an Academy Award. My heart still fills to bursting when I think about her in that tiara.

After the Hugos, I found myself in a packed elevator and managed to catch the eye of Sean Williams, who, you'll remember, I saw for five seconds when checking into the hotel and then NEVER SAW AGAIN for three days. Conventions are like that. I had only two more minutes to catch up with him between the lift and the door to his party, and that was it. I was pretty sure I wouldn't see him again, and I was kind of depressed about that. But I had Nick, and my Brits, and Jetse de Vries, who bought me a nifty raspberry drink at the Hyatt bar.

And when the Aussies wandered into the lobby and made an enclave with the Magical Words brigade, my boys didn't mind when I ditched them. Leave it to David Coe to come unwittingly to my rescue...and to offer me one of his precious Tim Tams to boot. There was much laughing and origami and pink drinks (apparently I need to place my order with an Australian next time I'm at a bar, because Jonathan Strahan knew EXACTLY what Sean was talking about when he asked for a "pink drink", and I only ever receive blank stares with that one). I thankfully remembered to take out my camera at that point -- check out my website or Facebook for pictures (that I posted a lot more promptly than this con report).

When the bar closed a bunch of us walked to a diner and kept on going. It was the last night, and we all just didn't want it to end. I'm not sure how many times I ended up hugging Sean that night -- when two people live 16-and-a-half time zones away from one another, no number is too much. I cuddled back onto the broken couch with George and Mark (decked out in his Abercrombie finery). "Everything okay?" Nick asked me. Oh, yes, I smiled. Everything was just fine. It was a lovely convention.

Now, somehow, I need to find a way to get to Montreal next year...

Yes, folks, here it is -- the official Beauty & Dynamite Book Trailer. It's not much, but it's mine, and I love it.

Kudos to Stephanie Rinehart for piecing this together before and after her finals this year, and to my beautiful friend Fontaine, whose voice still gives me goosebumps after all these years.

This month, Ingram Genre Chick Alethea Kontis finds herself the victim of Side Show ringleader (and longtime friend) Edmund R. Schubert, editor of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. I...

I honestly don't know what else to say. I've been waiting for an interview like this for four years. Enjoy! Read the interview here.

Casey and I stepped down from the stage, blushing like mad. Erik was nowhere to be seen. What the heck? "Maybe nobody heard that," I wishfully thought aloud.

"Oh, yes they did," said Matt. Damn.

Turns out, Erik wasn't even in the room when Casey made our scandalous announcement. Maybe he was in the bathroom or in the main hallway admiring the infamous rocket...either way, someone had to go and tell him what happened. Millions of minutes later, he walked back into the room. I noticed when he did--I always noticed when he did. Like riding a bike.

He slowly made his way over to our side of the dance floor, and Jim Scott intercepted him. Leave it to Jim: he was not going to let this evening end without an encounter between the three of us. I jabbed Casey in the side again and pointedly looked behind her to where he was standing. Time to face the music.

Erik met us with a smile, and put his arms around both of us with casual ease. "Twenty years," he said, "and this is the first I'm hearing about this? You were the smart kids."

I'm not sure if he meant that we had been dumb for keeping it a secret all this time, or if he was pointing out how impossible a match between our two strata would have been. Casey must have had the same dilemma -- she admitted to me later that she almost responded, "But you were the beautiful kid!" Instead, I answered with, "Oh, come on. It's not like it was much of a secret."

We confessed about the notes and the codes, this great and secret show we had put on for years with him as the unwitting hero. Margo joined in at that point too. When we put it into words the whole fiasco became a hilarious story of schoolgirl smitteness, and I hope if anything that he was flattered by the attention.

We proceeded to catch each other up on our lives since then, undoubtedly the longest conversation any of us had ever had with Erik in the whole of our young lives. Thanks to Casey's mother's diligent examination of the social section of the paper, we knew that he had married another girl we had gone to school with: Amy Sunshine, the dentist's daughter. (I swear to god. If I wrote this in fiction, you'd never believe me.) Erik and Amy have three children now--I told him to please buy AlphaOops and send me a copy so that I could inscribe it to them. Casey assured him that when it was time for them to choose a college to go to, she'd be happy to put in a good word for them at Winthrop. It was a lovely ten or fifteen minutes, and when we said our goodbyes we exchanged big hugs and cheek kisses.

If I could have gone back in time and told my twelve-year-old self that in twenty years I'd share deep dark secrets and then get kissed on the cheek by Erik Younginer, I would have fainted. Dead away. Even after he left us there on the dance floor, Casey and I were giggling like mad.

Josh was not so amused. "Seeing you and Margo and Casey simpering over Erik Younginer just now...wow. That was possibly the saddest thing I've ever seen." He frowned. "You never simpered over me."

I punched him on the arm. "I haven't spent the last two days straight with Erik Younginer either. His loss. So shut up."

None of us wanted to leave. We had been invited to an afterparty at another friend's house, but we knew that Casey and Todd wouldn't be joining us. Chris started making his way toward the door, and Casey and Todd admitted that it was time to pull the plug. I still hadn't talked to everyone in the room, but it didn't matter. The whole night, the whole day, the whole weekend had been like a movie already. A movie that was about to end with the perfect scene.

Arm in arm with Josh, just as we were all walking back across the dance floor to leave, the band started to play "At Last." My breath caught, and I turned to see Todd spin Casey around and sweep her up in his arms for one last dance. My heart was tight in my chest, so full of love that I thought it might burst. "At Last" was their song, the song they had played at their wedding, their first dance as husband and wife and their last dance that night. I stopped to snap a quick picture and then ran to catch back up to Josh. I will cherish that moment for the rest of my days, my hand in the crook of Josh's elbow, walking out the door, looking back over my shoulder at two of my very best friends dancing to their song. The director could have yelled "Cut!" and rolled the credits right then.

And then there's that bonus scene...the one after the credits have finished, the one that only the most dedicated film watcher will still be hanging around in the theatre to see while the ushers pick up cups and wrappers and sweep up popcorn around him. Josh and I caught up with Chris in the lobby, and as we waited for the rest of our party to congregate, I looked out the window and gasped. "Oh, Josh! We forgot!"

Josh's eyes went wide; he swore, turned, and dashed headlong back into the ballroom. I was hot on his heels. He waited patiently beside the stage for the song to end, and then grabbed the microphone from the guitar player.

"Chris McCormick," he said in a deep voice, "Chris McCormick. Please meet your party at the rocket."

---THE END---


Casey, Erik, & Alethea



Their first dance...and the last song.

The directions to the place where our 15-year reunion was being held were a street address, along with the words "across from the rocket." Deep in the bowels of downtown Columbia, past the industrial middle of nowhere, lie the fairgrounds. Smack in the middle of those fairgrounds is a garishly painted rocket, the landmark to beat all landmarks. Upon arriving at the fair, parents go one way and kids go another, with explicit instructions to "meet at 4pm back at the rocket." Throughout the sweltering day, between bites of your elephant ear, you'd hear the announcements over the PA: "John Smith. John Smith. Please meet your party at the rocket." So when Brad's invitation said "the rocket," we all knew what that meant.

Margo went to pick up Matt at the airport; she called me afterward and ordered us directly to her mother's house in West Columbia. It was as good a place to meet as any, since it was just across the bridge from downtown and only a few miles from said infamous rocket. As an added bonus, Margo ended the conversation with, "We can't walk in there alone. We need a posse." I completely agreed with her. Josh and I tossed our party clothes in the car, drove over, and changed at Margo's mom's house. Her not-so-little sister was there to provide babysitting service for Mia. We were all set. We were all gorgeous. It was finally time.

Casey called while we were en route and confessed that she couldn't wait to go to the bathroom, so she and Todd were heading inside the building. Matt and Margo were one block away when they realized they had forgotten to go to the bank (there was a cash bar). So our posse once again ended up being just me and Josh, arm-in-arm, trying to find the right door to the building.

Brett Serbin met us at the nametag table and handed me my sticker while he looked for "Rowdy Rayner's." Mr. Oberly had given nicknames to everyone that attended his Calculus classes--who'd have ever thought we'd be immortalized that way? I made a beeline for Casey and Todd, and we staked a claim on a table by the stage where the band was playing. (Ironic, of course, that the smart kids would select a place right next to the speaker, and then attempt to yell over it.) Matt and Margo sat down with us and we were soon joined by Jim Scott and his longtime girlfriend Hillary.

Hillary summed it up best: "When I asked Jim if he would be seeing some of his old friends here, he said, 'Not friends. Adversaries.'" It was true. No one in our group challenged us more than we challenged each other. It was always Who could get the best grade on the Chemistry exam, or Who could score the highest on the SATs, or Who was going to sit on the stage at graduation. When all was said and done, I ended up 14th out of that 600, and I would not have been able to sit on stage had Ranjith Vellody's family not swept him away to India. The last time I had seen Jim Scott was on that stage. I had hugged him fiercely and told him how much I hated him. He had tried to say something else in return, but I stopped him before he could get the words out. "No you don't," I said. "You hate me too." He knew what I meant.

I kept an eye on the door and flew out of my seat the minute Chris arrived--my Kit, my fictional brother, and King to my Queen of Thieves. That was it; that made all of us, like the planets and stars in a syzygy I hoped wouldn't be as impossible to reproduce as it seemed. But for now we were all here, in the same room, in the same tine zone, at the same table, and life was good.

I could have stayed at that table the entire three hours, but eventually I put my foot down and forced us to go mingle. There were other people I wanted to see, and I knew they were hiding in that sea of thirtysomething strangers all milling around the bar. Before I could even cross the dance floor I heard, "Allie Kat!" -- another Oberlyism, this one remembered by Eric Warren, our jovial former class president. Eric hugged me and we caught up. He looked great. We all looked great. The beautiful people were still beautiful, and the insecure people were more confident. Fifteen years is not such a bad thing.

I tried to say hi to everyone I passed, and I took lots of pictures. I've done the con circuit so many times I'm prepared for one at a moment's notice: my bag boasts a camera, a brick of business cards, and a stash of pens in case anyone asks for an impromptu signing (no one did). After fifteen years, three hours was not enough. I didn't get to see everyone, and I didn't have nearly enough time with the people I did. I caught up with Richard Trewhella and Mark Hill and Robert Lyday and Heidi Pozick-Catron, and Bridget Metzger, who I just wanted to put in my pocket and take home with me. I saw Tripp Riley, met his beautiful wife, and learned about their two children. I have to say, I was torn between relief and disappointment when I heard that neither of the boys had been dubbed Charles Anderson Riley the Fourth. And then I elbowed Casey in the side.

"Holy crap, look!" I tilted my head to the corner of the room. "Erik Younginer!" Casey craned her head to see him and giggled.

It had always been that way, Casey and I whispering and giggling on one side of the room, and admiring Erik Younginer from afar. He was "that guy," the cute, unobtainable one who had been the object of our affections since the seventh grade. When we passed notes back and forth to each other, we referred to him in secret code as YKW (you know who), so that no one would find us out if they were ever intercepted. Not like it was much of a secret anyway--I would think it'd be kind of hard to ignore a couple of simpering nerds fawning over you. Then again, it seems I have always underestimated the sheer obliviousness of the opposite sex.

"We should go take our picture with him," I suggested. Casey agreed. But we didn't. Twenty years later and we were still chickenshit. How pathetic were we? And then we turned around to see Todd up on stage, singing with the band.

If Todd had gone to Spring Valley High instead of being sequestered wherever he had gone to school in Knoxville before Casey snared him, he would have been one of us. All the proof was right there singing on stage with the band. "Dammit!" said Josh. "If I'd known he was going to do that, I would have gone up there first!" Not to be swayed by a little thing like timing, Josh leapt onstage and joined Todd in "Mustang Sally."

We cheered and hollered and danced like wild things. It couldn't have been more obvious that we were having the time of our lives, and it bubbled over like champagne. After a few songs, the guitarist walked up to me, the rabble rouser in the party dress that seemed to be the center of it all. "I know you can sing," he told me.

"Not what you play," I answered. It had been an odd set: selections from the 50's and 60's mixed with Nelly and Nora Jones. Nothing at all from the 80's and 90's, which had struck us all as strange, but it didn't matter. All those years in ALERT had taught us to be flexible. Had I been able to think of a song I might have suggested something, which tells you what kind of mood I was in. I haven't sung in front of people since Elementary School.

"Do you have any Patsy Cline?" Casey said chipperly. She had to be kidding, right? It was a PARTY. People were HAPPY. They were DANCING. Now she wanted to sing some sappy downer love song? "How about 'Crazy?'" she suggested.

"You got it," said the guitarist.

Casey gabbed my hand and started pulling me toward the stage. "Come on. Sing with me."

Now, I've lived in Tennessee for almost ten years, and Patsy Cline is in the water along with Elvis and Hank Williams Jr. But put a gun to my head, and even then I would have been hard pressed to remember the words to that song. I had a general idea of how it went, but it's nothing I'd ever sung before. Or ever wanted to. "But I don't know the words," I pleaded. Casey didn't hear me. She was already halfway up to the stage. I ran to catch up with her. I might have never heard that song before, but like hell I was going to let my Best Friend in the Whole Wide World get up there and sing it by herself.

The guitarist flipped to the page in his book that had the words...well, that was some small help. I held on to Casey's left hand, she held the microphone in her right, and we proceeded to sing possibly the worst rendition of Patsy Cline ever performed in the history of the universe. They probably thought we were both stinking drunk, Casey the nursing mother and I the virtual teetotaler. I didn't care. I was having the time of my life.

To our credit, after the bridge I pretty much knew the basics, so (barring a couple of sour notes) we nailed the end of that song. Josh grabbed my camera and snapped a couple of pictures. Chris stood in front of us, swaying back and forth, his beer bottle held high as if it were a lighter. Goober.

During the saxophone solo, Casey started talking into the microphone. The monitors were pretty horrible, so I couldn't understand what she was going on about until I heard, "...and Erik Younginer, we were SO in love with you in the seventh grade..."

My heart jumped into my throat, and my stomach fell into my shoes. There, in front of the entire Class of 1993 (at least, the ones who showed up), my best friend had just outed our biggest, secretest crush of all time. And there was no turning back.

---TO BE CONTINUED---


The Fab Five: Josh, Alethea, Chris, Casey, & Margo

It's one thing to feel like you've known somebody for twenty years, and another to actually have done so. You get to skip over all the preamble, all the "getting to know you" junk, all the "you just had to be there" moments, because they already know you. They were there. They wore the glasses and the braces and they got the bad perms, just like you did. They saw you when you were fat and frumpy and crying in your lunch because you got grounded, or flunked the English essay, or were so overwhelmed with work you didn't know if you were coming or going. They were there for the pimples and the rejections. They bought you candy bars and carnations. They made you mixed tapes when you went away for the summer. They read all your bad fiction and angst-ridden poetry. They went to see you perform in all your plays. They took you to the prom.

Josh and I started laughing at the baggage claim, and I'm not sure we ever stopped talking. The only way one of us got a word in edgewise was when the other stopped for breath at what seemed to be a decent-enough conclusion to the story they were currently imparting. We didn't discuss the mundane stuff, we just did it like we'd been doing it forever. I had made dinner before trekking out to the airport. Josh sang while he did the dishes; I put away the food, and then printed out directions to Casey's house. Turns out that her parents--who were supposed to watch the three-year-old and the newborn--skipped town, so she was only going to be able to attend the reunion if she turned around afterward and drove straight home.

No way was I going to resign myself to three hours of Casey time while being distracted by the rest of the Class of '93. I begged Josh to make a slight detour to Charlotte so we could spend some quality time with Casey and Todd and the kids before heading down to Columbia on Saturday morning. He said yes, so that was our plan. We got up Friday morning, took showers, sang along to the Gin Blossoms when "Found out About You" came on the radio, threw stuff in the car, and headed out, like we'd been doing it forever. Like the decade plus we'd been apart had only been a day.

I-40 West through the mountians was beautiful, as always, except for the overcast skies and the sometimes rain. Not that it mattered, because the company makes the trip. I was so engrossed in our conversation, I would have forgotten to stop for gas had Josh not said, "Okay, we need to take a break now." Since there was an exit right there--I didn't even look at the sign to see where we were--I immediately pulled off. And I immediately had a sense of deja-vu.

"Oh my god," I whispered reverently as I turned left. "Oh my god," I repeated as we pulled into the BP station.

"What is it?" Josh asked.

I opened the door and stood outside the car, staring off over the hills behind us, my flesh covered in goosebumps. "I've been here before."

"You have?" Josh said incredulously. "This exit?"

"This exit," I nodded, not taking my eyes off the horizon. "This is where I had my flat tire. Last June, on the way home from Casey's." I pointed down the road to the left. "Further down, there's a NAPA Auto Parts, and a barn with a cowboy on the side. If you take a right, you can get to the Wal Mart where the tire center is open until 8pm. It was pouring down rain that day. And on the way back I saw the double rainbow." I put my hands over my mouth. "My god, Josh..this is the last essay of Beauty & Dynamite. It all happened right here."

I had been prepared to dredge up all the old memories once we got to South Carolina, but I was not prepared for this, my own recent ghosts revisiting out of the book I had written. So much had happened in the year since I had seen that rainbow. I was the same me, only I was in a much different place. A much better place. And, standing in the same place, I realized that. I smiled at Josh, standing there with me. Right then, I could not have imagined a more perfect end, or a more perfect beginning.

We made it to Casey's; I drank about four gallons of water and let someone else carry the conversation for a while. We caught up more and laughed more, and I fell asleep on the arm of the couch in the middle of everything, surrounded by people I loved.

Josh and I made it to Columbia the next morning just in time for him to have lunch with his grandmother before she left for the beach. I was going to go find Casey's parents' house downtown and drop my stuff off. We planned to hook back up later, or at the reunion. I helped him get his bags out of the back, we said goodbye, and I sat for a moment in the driveway trying to decipher Casey's directions...only half of which had street names, and those that did I wasn't totally sure were correct.

There was a knock on the window, and I opened the car door for Josh's mom. "Would you like to join us for lunch?" she asked. I mumbled the obligatory line about not wanting to impose, but I'm pretty sure my face answered for me. She insisted, and then Josh insisted, and then Josh's grandmother insisted. I was officially outnumbered.

I hopped in the back seat, expecting to be whisked away to your average, generic sit-down restaurant of the Applebee's variety. "How about Rush's?" Josh's mom called over her shoulder, and my jaw dropped to the floor.

Rush's. Rush's is the local chain of fast food restaurants that I ate at just about every day when I worked at the movie theatre. Their burgers are huge, their fries are delicious, and they have the best chocolate milkshakes this side of the moon. After Casey's wedding almost eight years ago, still in my bridesmaid's gown, I had made my parents stop at Rush's on the way home. And Josh's mom didn't take us to just any Rush's. She took us to our Rush's. The one on my old side of town, right by the high school. I was positively giddy.

Caught up in the giddiness, after lunch Josh's mom took us the long way home, on an impromptu tour of our old stomping grounds. It was strange to once again see the places, the roads and the buildings I had dreamed about for so many years. You know how, when you're explaining a dream, it sounds sort of like: "You were there, but you weren't really you. Or, you didn't look like you. We were at school, only it was a different school, this massive multi-story brick complex, and we were waiting for the bus. And we drove by the orchard, only it wasn't an orchard, it was this huge shopping complex on both sides of the street..."

The strangest thing about seeing Northeast Columbia again after so long wasn't witnessing the parts that had changed (like the new high school and the shopping complex) and the parts that hadn't changed (Schiano's, Rush's, the entrance to my old neighborhood). What threw me for a loop was how closely the town I was now being driven through resembled the surreal amalgam of a town I had been dreaming about for the past decade. I was being given a tour of the inside of my head come to life, and it was almost too much to take in.

In the past two days, I had never missed an opportunity to remember out loud how much I had hated Columbia, and how very little I wanted to return. Three-quarters of the way home, I looked at Josh across the back seat and whispered, "I guess it's not so bad after all."

"See?" he whispered back.

---TO BE CONTINUED---


Me and Josh pre-prom, 1992

I tell people that my high school years were like a television show, but I know they don't believe me. It's true, though: there were almost 600 kids in my graduating class, which is enough people to shake out over four years into definite strata. There were the popular kids who ate lunch in the cafeteria and got voted for homeroom representative and class office. There was the art club and the Latin club and yearbook staff; there were the band geeks and the drama freaks. There were the back-porchers, a trenchcoat mafia of the likes that would not be tolerated in this day and age. There were the jocks, the vocational students, and the nerds. At the pep rallies, one could almost draw an imperceptible line between the black kids and the white kids.

A few of us bridged gaps between one group or another, but nobody touched them all. On our first day at Spring Valley High, Casey's mom told her that she should try her best not to have a label. It was the first of many impossible dreams our parents had for us...dreams shadowed only by the delusions of grandeur we created for ourselves.

Several middle schools all funneled into Spring Valley. There were five of us: Margo and Casey and I came from E. L. Wright, Josh and Chris from Bethel Hanberry. Our paths had crossed briefly before on ALERT trips (ALERT being the special class the smart kids got to attend once a week), and we all fluttered around a bit Freshman year getting our bearings before we succumbed to the inevitable like points on a star, or fingers on a hand. Josh was the late bloomer, the hyperactive athlete. Chris was the sensitive artist and poet. Margo was the vibrant actress, the go-getter. Casey was the blonde cheerleader, the naive optimist with the brilliant smile. I was her dark half, her shadow, her heart. I smiled too, despite being convinced that no one noticed me. I was the writer.

For four years, we shared classes, secrets, and fantasies. We copied each other's homework outside the drama room door in the wee hours before school started. We created worlds and wrote novels together. We passed enough notes to kill a rainforest. We had so many inside jokes that we unerringly cultivated a language all our own. We sat on the grass at lunchtime, by the big rock (or sometimes on it), and we laughed until our sides hurt. We challenged each other to be the funniest, the best, the brightest. We commiserated when somebody's mother or teacher went psycho, as mothers and teachers are wont to do. We went to the prom, we watched movies until dawn, we swam in the lake, we sang in the car, we forged notes to get out of class, and we all skipped the senior assembly.

I was a good kid. Too good. I did all my work--albeit at the last possible minute--and I didn't get in trouble. I didn't break rules. I was too protective of my genius brain cells to get drunk or do drugs. I wasn't brave enough to go goth, or dye my hair pink. My single, solitary act of teenage rebellion happened the instant that my mother told me that one never kept ones friends from high school. "You make your real friends in college," she said. And the thought of losing the people that I loved most in the world hurt so much that I refused to let it be true.

Thankfully, the early 90's saw the advent of the internet, and social sites like AOL ushered in an age where, with a small amount of maintenance, you could keep track of the friends you didn't want to let go. Chris got married, had a kid, and stayed in Columbia. Casey went to graduate school at UT, got married, and went on to become an English professor. Margo finally hooked up with Matt Appenzeller, my third grade partner-in-crime who had held a torch for her ever since E.L. Wright (a torch as bright as the one we'd all held for Erik Younginer in those days). Josh went to France, and I lost him when he came back to the States. It haunted me, so much so that I'd have a dream about him every six months, and every six months I'd resume my search for him. I put my name and information on all sorts of former classmate sites. I went so far as to contact his thesis advisor at Georgia Tech, but other than the name of an international corporation, the trail was cold.

The ten-year anniversary of our graduation date came and went without fanfare. There would be no reunion, no chance of reuniting there. In the eleventh year, I started keeping a blog. In the twelfth year, Josh just happened to drop by and comment on an entry. Hoping against hope, I sent a brief, excited email to the address the blog had forced him to leave behind. Like magic, he answered. And I stopped having the dreams.

In the fourteenth year, I received an email from someone I hadn't thought of since 1993, addressed to a laundry list of people I never thought I'd see again. Brad had scooped up all the names off those classmate websites, and broke the ice by announcing our fifteen-year reunion.

Like hell I was going to go. It took a MySpace conversation between me and Mahesh and Ben Green to sway me to the other side, so I went ahead and bought my ticket before the advertised price increase. I sent out an email to Casey and Margo and Josh and Chris with my intentions. There was a lukewarm ho-hum response. And when the email finally came around with the very short list of people who had confirmed and I was the only one on it, my request turned into a demand--something along the lines of "Don't you dare leave me alone with all these people!" And they didn't.

Chris was overjoyed that we were all finally coming back to Columbia. Margo drove to her mother's house with her daughter Mia, and Dr. Matt flew there straight from Cincinnati after making his rounds. Josh flew into Nashville from Houston and drove with me to Charlotte to visit Casey and Todd and the kids on the way to his grandmother's house in Blythewood.

After all that time and all those years and all that searching, the first telephone conversation Josh and I had in about thirteen years went something like this:

"The monitor here says your plane's arrived. Where the heck are you?"

"Walking off it," said Josh.

As conversations go, that's not a bad one to have.

---TO BE CONTINUED---

The price of being a princess: a disturbing number of people took Fred's letter seriously (including my mother!), so Fred posted this comment (see the July 30 entry). Per request, I've recalled my flying monkey assassins.

*********************************

You see, Alethea?

I told you some people wouldn't realize it was a joke. Now Kontisphile assassins are on the way to my house with piano wire and a taste for vengeance.

Maybe it wasn't that funny - but YOU laughed and that's all I cared about.

Love (or at least more than average fondness)

Fred

PS. Please call off the flying monkey assassins. They're outside and I can't hear the television. I'd shoo them off myself but I don't want to miss a minute of this infomercial.

PPS (or is it PSS?)
Someone, somewhere just read that and really believes there are flying monkey assassins at my door. That's absurd. Some people will believe anything. They're just regular monkey assassins. Now Call Them Off!

-F-

(Seriously, she mentions our convention an embarrassing number of times and has only had good things to say about us. If you've read the book, you'll see what I mean. If you get to come to our convention, stop by the con suite. We'll be serving Deep Fried Monkey Assassin. --Fred)