Chapter Eight: A Good Pot of Red Sauce

I was going on about Duran Duran to Mai over lunch. And every time I mentioned for the hundredth time how I was in love with John Taylor, she’d roll her eyes at me and pretend she was throwing up. O.K, I’ll admit I am crazy obsessed with him. I dream about him at night, and have every possible poster I could find of him hanging on every inch of my bedroom walls. I really felt he was the man I was going to marry. Mai’s response to that was “you and 10,000 other girls in the city of Chicago”.
I was telling Mai how I had found a local TV channel that aired music video’s, and instead of watching reruns of the Brady Bunch or the Partridge family after school I would sit mesmerized watching video after video of bands that I had never heard of just to see one by Duran Duran. I was becoming manic about my attraction to John Taylor—mother blamed it on my hormones. I blamed it on the fact that I went to an all’s girl’s high-school and was depraved of male attention. Mother’s come- back was that I didn’t need to have male attention at my age, and the boys of my age were just pimply faced horn-dogs. Whatever that meant, I took it with a grain of salt and still complained that it would be so nice to have gone to a public high school.
I could tell it was annoying Mai that I could talk about nothing else but John Taylor. She didn’t want to talk about Duran Duran. But then again, she really didn’t talk that much.
We were finishing up lunch and I say to Mai, “Do you ever think about your father, and what he was like?”
“Sometimes,” she said as she started to get up.
Does your mom ever talk about your Dad, I asked as I followed her out.
“No never, but when I found that box with a picture of him in it, I also found some letters.”
“No way, did you read them?”
“Yes.”
And before I could ask her what was in the letters, the fire alarm went off.
***
Why the school officials had to decide on a fire alarm in the middle of the afternoon when it is freezing cold outside and none of us could go and get our jacket was beyond my comprehension. Was it some kind of punishment? I bet it was, and the Nuns got a good giggle off of it. We filed out the back doors and lined up against the wall. All of us stomping our feet to try and keep warm, and huddling together. Thank god, the sun was sort of peeking out from the clouds. But, still it was abuse to make us stand outside for twenty minutes. The only good thing was that we got to miss half of our Algebra class. The bad part was that Vickie eyed me the whole time—mouthing swear words and giving me the finger. I just ignored her.
As we were walking to class, Mai told me that she missed not seeing me on the train.
“You know, Gianna you really are my only friend. She said with a smile. I smiled back at her, and then I told her about how I was still scared of running into Vicki. ‘Oh, don’t worry about her,” she said, “she is all words and no action, plus you got me.”
As we walked into class together, Vickie yelled “Hey freak, Duran Duran are a bunch of Pussy boys.”
‘What-ever” I said giving Vickie the finger.
And then she mouthed “You are so dead after school”
And then I mouthed “No, you are so dead after school”.
And then she just gave me the finger, again!