My Lady D'Arbanville

I feel like a Victorian lady without an escort; I'm insecure, uncomfortable, and suspicious that everyone can catch a glimpse of my bare wrist when I move to pick up my salad fork. Diantha is, once again, not at school today. It's a half day. And Utah is buried under this Narniaesque winter from whence we shall never recover. Or, seemingly so. Because none of my familiar escorts are here today, I'm left to guide myself on public transportation back to Downtown Salt Lake City. There, I'll wait around the public library until it's almost four o' clock, and then I have to get back on the public transportation system so I can meet my mother at the Hospital where she works.

And I must perform all of these uncouth tasks in the neverending drifts of snow and the so-goddamn-cold weather.

I'm looking out the window now, from one of the school's writing labs, at the dull shades of grey that are the sky, the trees, and the snow. It's so plain. So grey. There are flags flying half-heartedly against the greygreygrey sky, and even they look grey. I'm listening to Such Great Heights, the Iron and Wine cover, and even that is a grey song. Everything is just grey. I don't want to ride the grey bus in the grey seats to the grey library. I would like to just be home already, sleeping in my purple bed and my graffitti room. I miss my room.

What I'm trying to say is that I had such a good night last night that I can't seem to feel happy today.

Yesterday started on a high note, and by the end of the school day, I was at a state of mild contentment that would only be scrubbed against by The Boyfriend's customary 5th-period-depression. Whenever he gets that depressed, I always wonder what I'm doing wrong. I blame myself for his problems. Anyway. Dobbl and I got a ride from her mommy back to their house, and from there, we went back to Salt Lake Arts Academy to visit.

We chilled in our old Humanities classroom with our old Humanities teacher, who is engaged to be married. It felt almost like driving past a house after you've moved into a new one. I found myself saying, "That's a nice cupboard she's put in," and, "I'm not so sure about that chair." And it all really made me miss the place. The narrow halls, the recognizable smell of something a-brewing, a smell on which I just couldn't place my finger.

Salt Lake Arts Academy always had a certain familiarity between its faculty and its students. When alumni would return, they'd always be drawn to one classroom in particular, and that was the one where they had spent the most time. It isn't a rule or anything, that's just how it ends up.

Dobbl and I ended up in Ms. Arch's room. Maybe it was because we had her class the last year of our SLAAcupation, or maybe it was because we wanted to wish her well on her recent betrothal. But I think, more likely, it was because she and I really became friends that year, in Ms. Arch's class.

And now, I feel gray without her. I can't help but wish we were both back in Ms. Arch's class, when more often than not, she would arrive just a couple minutes late, and then we would eat lunch in the bathroom together, hiding away from the popularity we somehow garnered through our joint Dobbl And Brigity Power Hour. It's all so ironic.