EvilCrazyMonkey
will be the prettiest little girl since Zac Efron.
Phone Calls From Home
If there was ever a bored enough person to create a one-to-ten scale of how fed up one is with their unsatisfying life, Bartholemiou Alexander Thorneapple III might have ranked a high 8, or maybe he would have obtained a low 9. He, of course, was sick enough of his daily routine to consider volunteering for his church. Mrs. Alexandria Thorneapple objected, because, well, maybe her own dear son had best start realizing the dire importance of this wonderful God-given gift that many refer to as family time. Bartholemiou hadn’t the slightest idea why anybody, be they teenager or adult, would enjoy countless nights in front of the television watching unlimited reruns of pathetic game shows, but it seemed to please Mr. Thorneapple. Bartholemiou wasn’t the most fond of planning, so he downright despised repeatedly waking up at the command of his alarm or his mother, whichever seemed the more furious; traveling to school in a gas-guzzling van while listening to a hilarious, by Mrs. Thorneapple’s standards, radio show, which Bartholemiou could swear said the same things every day if he paid it attention or was able to hear it over the airy laugh of his mother; enduring the endless, monotonous drone of the teachers who seriously needed to consider swimming, as they were able to take a single-digit number of breaths while lecturing for ninety minutes; eating lunch with relatively few friends who neither shared his interests nor were interested in him; riding the bus packed with freshmen, which is hopefully self-explanatory to any poor soul who has had the unfortunate occurrence of having to withstand them; moving literal mountains of homework that neither looked friendly nor were issued by friendly folk; finding that, while he had bought with his own money fresh ingredients for a tasty-looking and unique recipe out of a gently used cookbook, his mother had already started a meal which the Thorneapples had had previously multiple times; and falling asleep over his studies in vain hope that he may receive marks that give him a fighting chance of being accepted into an excellent college.
Most high schoolers would very heavily consider it blasphemy to, while wasting a perfectly bright and sunny Friday evening, attend a church to volunteer at an annual fair which did, as opposed to popular belief, require a certain and fairly high level of volunteers. Bartholemiou estimated that, excluding the extremely religious, the volunteers could consist of two groups: those forced by their parents and those attending to have a safe haven from their parents to chat about things of which their parents would likely not approve. Bartholemiou had doubted that he had considered seeing anyone by themselves who looked remotely happy to be here.
When Bartholemiou had checked in at the volunteer check-in booth and received the slip containing where he was to work, which was the dreaded ice cream booth, called so as this fair was inhabited by rather picky and quite snobby children who, when presented with anything for which they asked, changed their minds and demanded a non-described do-over, he quickly crossed his fingers and toes, knocked on wood, drew three X’s backwards in front of him, and did other such precautions to guard against horrid luck that would likely befall him the one day he ends up in public.
At every booth there were various volunteers and an official who worked at the church or was very close to it. Bartholemiou, who decided to arrive early and not late, was at the booth before any other volunteer but not the official. After he was taught the tools of the trade, such as two scoops per cup, extra scoops fifty cents each, be generous but not too with the chocolate and caramel syrups, and, most importantly, to, please, for the love of all that is sane, get the order right, these are kids they are talking about here. The Barbie-esque official had an apparent and gasp-inducing problem to quickly solve about the church, so she quietly left suspiciously in synchronization with the arrivals of the first customers.
Bartholemiou was eventually lost in his art of people watching. Jimmy should please not have so much sugar tonight and please lay off the sprinkles, would he. Karen knows that she and peanuts do not quietly agree and that they should be avoided. David wanted cherries, but when there were none, he wanted cherries, thank you very much, and his mom and Bartholemiou were a bunch of meaniefaces that don’t know what real ice cream is. Bartholemiou quickly lost a few customers. Laura was almost –
There was this girl, and Bartholemiou assumed she was a volunteer because she almost had to hate ice cream to keep that shape, and this girl, who was actually quite attractive, was walking closer by the second, and Bartholemiou should fix his shaggy blond hair and, please tell him he didn’t eat spinach for dinner, should practice his smile, but this girl, who he had seen never before in his life, was devilishly close and was causing Bartholemiou to come unglued.
A woman in the line agreed that Bartholemiou could very please get a move on, will he. Several others chorused the same idea and Bartholemiou went back to serving those dreadfully picky customers.
“These stupid chairs are in my way,” said the girl as she tried to move behind the booth. How close to Bartholemiou she was right now!
“They’re annoying. I agree,” Bartholemiou stated in a quick, choppy voice. His sentences’ simplicity bugged him constantly. Once while trying to write a story for English class, he had most definitely never used ten words in a single sentence.
“Hello. I’m Kate Wilson. Could I learn how things work around here?” She continued. Kate was such a pretty name, Bartholemiou mused. It was sweet and simple, unlike his.
“Bartholemiou Thorneapple,” he stated in an even more quick and choppy voice than before. “Here. It’s simple. Just watch me. The people give you a dollar. You give them two scoops. If they ask for toppings, give them.” He grew more flustered at his own voice.
“That’s a rather interesting name you have,” Kate said, “Although very wordy. Do you shorten that to anything?”
Mr. and Mrs. Thorneapple did in fact call him Bart, as a very poorly used term of affection, or, when they felt extremely affectionate, something along the lines of “Barty,” “Dear Son of Ours,” or “Snookums” was instead used. Bartholemiou, however, resented the idea of shortening things because then there is less to do and less chances to have fun or be entertained. Stumbling over a variety of things, which included Kate, the stand, and his words, Bartholemiou finally managed to stutter, “My parents call me Bart. I don’t like it. I think it’s dumb.”
“Longer things annoy me, but I’ll call you Bartholemiou anyway. Things that drone on tend to get on my nerves. Sort of like how I talk because I can’t just say one thing; I have to keep talking like I am now,” Kate input, likely closing her mouth to stop rambling. Bartholemiou liked the way she said things, he thought. Short sentences can quickly attract a snooze from Bartholemiou, as he wished to be wordy like Kate but could never truly be so because he was always attracted to qualities he desired for himself, but his own qualities were unattractive, so the cycle continues, and if he was ever able to obtain a quality he desired, he suddenly did not any longer want it.
“I like how you talk. Short sentences annoy me. Like mine.” Bartholemiou replied. He wished to know if Kate thought good of Bartholemiou, whether she wished to know the same of him or whether she didn’t, if she would approve of his dull blond hair and his teeth which hopefully – and Bartholemiou knocked on the wooden stand as he thought this – contained no traces of spinach, et cetera. Bartholemiou wished for likely the millionth time in his life that he was able to read minds although he would never wish an unprotected mind upon anyone, no matter the predicament.
“From my perspective, short sentences are sexy, like those guys in the movies that don’t even have to say anything and can still frighten the other side out of their wits. Those dudes with sunglasses so dark you wonder how they’re gifted with sight are major badasses and ridiculously awesome.” Kate gushed. Bartholemiou wondered if he would ever get the opportunity to hang out with Kate again. His chances were likely extremely thin, as he didn’t see the point of sunglasses – let alone extremely dark ones, which could render the sun the same color as the pitch black sky – and was currently ranking excruciatingly low on the badass scale. Kate was probably way out of his league, just as the innumerable other girls who caught Bartholemiou’s eye. He could only wish so much as to –
Kate interrupted his thought process. “So, what school do you attend? You seem pretty cool, Bartholemiou, and I don’t want to lose more potential friends just like I’ve lost Matt, who is too obsessed with being captain of the basketball team, Jonathan, who is too obsessed with his girlfriend Clarissa, and Ethan, who is too obsessed with illegally buying lottery tickets.”
Bartholemiou was shocked. He had never been asked questions containing personal information by a girl, but there was the first one, standing there with her long, dark, flowing hair. “I attend Forest High School.” He finally spoke up over his paralysis due to fear and nervousness.
“That’s too bad, but it explains why I’ve never seen you. My school is lame old South High, home of the rednecks.”
They smiled at each other and Bartholemiou blushed, both happy of his relief and sad of his inability to talk to Kate any longer as customers seemed to all crave ice cream simultaneously and rush over to the ice cream booth, rendering their conversation as no more than an inhibitor to the amount of food they can output.
“Hey, Kate,” Bartholemiou greeted as they met in a mall named Luscious Acres after the neighborhood in which it is located, which hints at how fancy it can be.
“Bonjour, mon copain.” Kate replied with a nervous giggle. “That’s French for, ‘Hello, my friend.’ ”
“I didn’t know that we’re intimate enough for le français,” Bartholemiou stated.
They probably would have asked each other if they spoke French, replied in the negative, and asked ridiculously simple questions such as Comment t’appelles-tu? and Quel âge as-tu? if Kate had not asked: “So tell me. Is this a date, or no?”
“I’ll consult my magical nickel,” Bartholemiou spoke while retrieving said nickel from his pocket. He constantly consulted it for yes/no questions and advice because, Bartholemiou thought, it was never fun making tough decisions. “When it goes in the air, call heads or tails.”
As Kate called tails, Bartholemiou wished and wanted with every fiber of his being that Thomas Jefferson would not be staring at them as the coin came to a rest. He dared not look and closed his eyes.
Bartholemiou’s hopes were crushed when Kate squealed because she wouldn’t like Bartholemiou that much – couldn’t, in fact – but when he felt Kat’s hand slip into his his hopes were renewed, and they were even boosted because he had attracted someone! Bartholemiou wanted to skip all around the mall, but he didn’t want to hear the word he hated that started with “f” and ended with “g.”
“This is the best date so far,” Kate gushed as she was showing the movie tickets to the employee. “A guy who won’t see a chick flick or an action movie! I might be in heaven.”
“Action movies bore me. They’re so predictable sometimes. Most of them follow the sequence: punch punch gunshot punch gunshot evil guy punch gunshot helicopter escape punch gunshot.” Bartholemiou laughed at his own jokes, even though that made him feel corny. He felt the most self-confident in years.
“I know!” Kate gasped. “And I don’t understand why they call chick flicks what they do. I bet nothing good rhymed with girly-girls-who-are-oblivious-to-the-fact-that-their-boyfriend-is-only-here-because-he-wants-to-well-you-know.”
He arrived home to find two U-HAUL trucks parked in the driveway. He dashed inside and found no trace of furniture and no trace of any life in the house other than his parents, who were waiting for him to return. It looked to Bartholemiou as page seven of Realtors Monthly. Tears threatened to form in his eyes as he ran into his room to find that Kate’s number was no longer held to the wall with a thumbtack. Bartholemiou screamed, and the tears proved that they were not bluffing.
“YOU!” He furiously yelled to his parents. “You! There’s no word for it. No word denotes the horrible act that you have committed. While I was on my first date ever, you – you horrible people – cleared my room so we could move to God knows where! Oasis Greens! Sunny Forest! The number of my girlfriend was on that wall. You find where you put that number – those seven important digits – this instant.”
Bartholemiou didn’t know how this could have happened. He just went from the happiest he had ever been to the angriest he had ever been, and now he was crying hard enough to merit the saddest he had ever been.
Mrs. Thorneapple was not pleased and shook her head. “We would have told you we were moving, but you were not here tonight.” She handed him a slip of paper, likely containing directions and an address, and she left with Mr. Thorneapple.
Bartholemiou felt betrayed. He felt smacked in the face, punched in the stomach, kicked in the shin, and oddly hungry. His parents had thought he was just going to simply forget this! After all his parents had done, complaining he had no cell phone and no friends, no contact to the outside world and no life, they had cut him off when one was available! How sick and morally disgusting of them to do!
Bartholemiou thought he might be sick. He thought he might not be able to stomach the drive to wherever it was. And most of all, he thought of how he may not be able to stop crying hysterically.
“I love you so much, Kate.”
“I love you too, Daddy.”
If there was ever a bored enough person to create a one-to-ten scale of how fed up one is with their unsatisfying life, Bartholemiou Alexander Thorneapple III might have ranked a high 8, or maybe he would have obtained a low 9. He, of course, was sick enough of his daily routine to consider volunteering for his church. Mrs. Alexandria Thorneapple objected, because, well, maybe her own dear son had best start realizing the dire importance of this wonderful God-given gift that many refer to as family time. Bartholemiou hadn’t the slightest idea why anybody, be they teenager or adult, would enjoy countless nights in front of the television watching unlimited reruns of pathetic game shows, but it seemed to please Mr. Thorneapple. Bartholemiou wasn’t the most fond of planning, so he downright despised repeatedly waking up at the command of his alarm or his mother, whichever seemed the more furious; traveling to school in a gas-guzzling van while listening to a hilarious, by Mrs. Thorneapple’s standards, radio show, which Bartholemiou could swear said the same things every day if he paid it attention or was able to hear it over the airy laugh of his mother; enduring the endless, monotonous drone of the teachers who seriously needed to consider swimming, as they were able to take a single-digit number of breaths while lecturing for ninety minutes; eating lunch with relatively few friends who neither shared his interests nor were interested in him; riding the bus packed with freshmen, which is hopefully self-explanatory to any poor soul who has had the unfortunate occurrence of having to withstand them; moving literal mountains of homework that neither looked friendly nor were issued by friendly folk; finding that, while he had bought with his own money fresh ingredients for a tasty-looking and unique recipe out of a gently used cookbook, his mother had already started a meal which the Thorneapples had had previously multiple times; and falling asleep over his studies in vain hope that he may receive marks that give him a fighting chance of being accepted into an excellent college.
Most high schoolers would very heavily consider it blasphemy to, while wasting a perfectly bright and sunny Friday evening, attend a church to volunteer at an annual fair which did, as opposed to popular belief, require a certain and fairly high level of volunteers. Bartholemiou estimated that, excluding the extremely religious, the volunteers could consist of two groups: those forced by their parents and those attending to have a safe haven from their parents to chat about things of which their parents would likely not approve. Bartholemiou had doubted that he had considered seeing anyone by themselves who looked remotely happy to be here.
When Bartholemiou had checked in at the volunteer check-in booth and received the slip containing where he was to work, which was the dreaded ice cream booth, called so as this fair was inhabited by rather picky and quite snobby children who, when presented with anything for which they asked, changed their minds and demanded a non-described do-over, he quickly crossed his fingers and toes, knocked on wood, drew three X’s backwards in front of him, and did other such precautions to guard against horrid luck that would likely befall him the one day he ends up in public.
At every booth there were various volunteers and an official who worked at the church or was very close to it. Bartholemiou, who decided to arrive early and not late, was at the booth before any other volunteer but not the official. After he was taught the tools of the trade, such as two scoops per cup, extra scoops fifty cents each, be generous but not too with the chocolate and caramel syrups, and, most importantly, to, please, for the love of all that is sane, get the order right, these are kids they are talking about here. The Barbie-esque official had an apparent and gasp-inducing problem to quickly solve about the church, so she quietly left suspiciously in synchronization with the arrivals of the first customers.
Bartholemiou was eventually lost in his art of people watching. Jimmy should please not have so much sugar tonight and please lay off the sprinkles, would he. Karen knows that she and peanuts do not quietly agree and that they should be avoided. David wanted cherries, but when there were none, he wanted cherries, thank you very much, and his mom and Bartholemiou were a bunch of meaniefaces that don’t know what real ice cream is. Bartholemiou quickly lost a few customers. Laura was almost –
There was this girl, and Bartholemiou assumed she was a volunteer because she almost had to hate ice cream to keep that shape, and this girl, who was actually quite attractive, was walking closer by the second, and Bartholemiou should fix his shaggy blond hair and, please tell him he didn’t eat spinach for dinner, should practice his smile, but this girl, who he had seen never before in his life, was devilishly close and was causing Bartholemiou to come unglued.
A woman in the line agreed that Bartholemiou could very please get a move on, will he. Several others chorused the same idea and Bartholemiou went back to serving those dreadfully picky customers.
“These stupid chairs are in my way,” said the girl as she tried to move behind the booth. How close to Bartholemiou she was right now!
“They’re annoying. I agree,” Bartholemiou stated in a quick, choppy voice. His sentences’ simplicity bugged him constantly. Once while trying to write a story for English class, he had most definitely never used ten words in a single sentence.
“Hello. I’m Kate Wilson. Could I learn how things work around here?” She continued. Kate was such a pretty name, Bartholemiou mused. It was sweet and simple, unlike his.
“Bartholemiou Thorneapple,” he stated in an even more quick and choppy voice than before. “Here. It’s simple. Just watch me. The people give you a dollar. You give them two scoops. If they ask for toppings, give them.” He grew more flustered at his own voice.
“That’s a rather interesting name you have,” Kate said, “Although very wordy. Do you shorten that to anything?”
Mr. and Mrs. Thorneapple did in fact call him Bart, as a very poorly used term of affection, or, when they felt extremely affectionate, something along the lines of “Barty,” “Dear Son of Ours,” or “Snookums” was instead used. Bartholemiou, however, resented the idea of shortening things because then there is less to do and less chances to have fun or be entertained. Stumbling over a variety of things, which included Kate, the stand, and his words, Bartholemiou finally managed to stutter, “My parents call me Bart. I don’t like it. I think it’s dumb.”
“Longer things annoy me, but I’ll call you Bartholemiou anyway. Things that drone on tend to get on my nerves. Sort of like how I talk because I can’t just say one thing; I have to keep talking like I am now,” Kate input, likely closing her mouth to stop rambling. Bartholemiou liked the way she said things, he thought. Short sentences can quickly attract a snooze from Bartholemiou, as he wished to be wordy like Kate but could never truly be so because he was always attracted to qualities he desired for himself, but his own qualities were unattractive, so the cycle continues, and if he was ever able to obtain a quality he desired, he suddenly did not any longer want it.
“I like how you talk. Short sentences annoy me. Like mine.” Bartholemiou replied. He wished to know if Kate thought good of Bartholemiou, whether she wished to know the same of him or whether she didn’t, if she would approve of his dull blond hair and his teeth which hopefully – and Bartholemiou knocked on the wooden stand as he thought this – contained no traces of spinach, et cetera. Bartholemiou wished for likely the millionth time in his life that he was able to read minds although he would never wish an unprotected mind upon anyone, no matter the predicament.
“From my perspective, short sentences are sexy, like those guys in the movies that don’t even have to say anything and can still frighten the other side out of their wits. Those dudes with sunglasses so dark you wonder how they’re gifted with sight are major badasses and ridiculously awesome.” Kate gushed. Bartholemiou wondered if he would ever get the opportunity to hang out with Kate again. His chances were likely extremely thin, as he didn’t see the point of sunglasses – let alone extremely dark ones, which could render the sun the same color as the pitch black sky – and was currently ranking excruciatingly low on the badass scale. Kate was probably way out of his league, just as the innumerable other girls who caught Bartholemiou’s eye. He could only wish so much as to –
Kate interrupted his thought process. “So, what school do you attend? You seem pretty cool, Bartholemiou, and I don’t want to lose more potential friends just like I’ve lost Matt, who is too obsessed with being captain of the basketball team, Jonathan, who is too obsessed with his girlfriend Clarissa, and Ethan, who is too obsessed with illegally buying lottery tickets.”
Bartholemiou was shocked. He had never been asked questions containing personal information by a girl, but there was the first one, standing there with her long, dark, flowing hair. “I attend Forest High School.” He finally spoke up over his paralysis due to fear and nervousness.
“That’s too bad, but it explains why I’ve never seen you. My school is lame old South High, home of the rednecks.”
They smiled at each other and Bartholemiou blushed, both happy of his relief and sad of his inability to talk to Kate any longer as customers seemed to all crave ice cream simultaneously and rush over to the ice cream booth, rendering their conversation as no more than an inhibitor to the amount of food they can output.
–––––––
A few days later the weekend arrived, and Bartholemiou had talked to Kate a couple of times. He didn’t call daily or at regular intervals so as to not make it a part of The Routine, as Bartholemiou had begun to call it. They had discussed thoroughly and introspectively flowers, melodramatic reality TV shows, the best books, overrated celebrities, new music, et cetera, and Bartholemiou grew ever fonder of Kate. They were going to hang out tonight, and Bartholemiou both looked forward to it with anxiety and dreaded it, but that was a good sign, he thought, because the best things are loved and hated at the same time.“Hey, Kate,” Bartholemiou greeted as they met in a mall named Luscious Acres after the neighborhood in which it is located, which hints at how fancy it can be.
“Bonjour, mon copain.” Kate replied with a nervous giggle. “That’s French for, ‘Hello, my friend.’ ”
“I didn’t know that we’re intimate enough for le français,” Bartholemiou stated.
They probably would have asked each other if they spoke French, replied in the negative, and asked ridiculously simple questions such as Comment t’appelles-tu? and Quel âge as-tu? if Kate had not asked: “So tell me. Is this a date, or no?”
“I’ll consult my magical nickel,” Bartholemiou spoke while retrieving said nickel from his pocket. He constantly consulted it for yes/no questions and advice because, Bartholemiou thought, it was never fun making tough decisions. “When it goes in the air, call heads or tails.”
As Kate called tails, Bartholemiou wished and wanted with every fiber of his being that Thomas Jefferson would not be staring at them as the coin came to a rest. He dared not look and closed his eyes.
Bartholemiou’s hopes were crushed when Kate squealed because she wouldn’t like Bartholemiou that much – couldn’t, in fact – but when he felt Kat’s hand slip into his his hopes were renewed, and they were even boosted because he had attracted someone! Bartholemiou wanted to skip all around the mall, but he didn’t want to hear the word he hated that started with “f” and ended with “g.”
“This is the best date so far,” Kate gushed as she was showing the movie tickets to the employee. “A guy who won’t see a chick flick or an action movie! I might be in heaven.”
“Action movies bore me. They’re so predictable sometimes. Most of them follow the sequence: punch punch gunshot punch gunshot evil guy punch gunshot helicopter escape punch gunshot.” Bartholemiou laughed at his own jokes, even though that made him feel corny. He felt the most self-confident in years.
“I know!” Kate gasped. “And I don’t understand why they call chick flicks what they do. I bet nothing good rhymed with girly-girls-who-are-oblivious-to-the-fact-that-their-boyfriend-is-only-here-because-he-wants-to-well-you-know.”
–––––––
Bartholemiou emerged from the movie theatre having had the most fun in his boring life. When she was picked up and headed home, he appreciated the sheer luck that had brought him and Kate together. He probably shouldn’t have, because whenever Bartholemiou is grateful for something, it is ruined by balancing bad luck.He arrived home to find two U-HAUL trucks parked in the driveway. He dashed inside and found no trace of furniture and no trace of any life in the house other than his parents, who were waiting for him to return. It looked to Bartholemiou as page seven of Realtors Monthly. Tears threatened to form in his eyes as he ran into his room to find that Kate’s number was no longer held to the wall with a thumbtack. Bartholemiou screamed, and the tears proved that they were not bluffing.
“YOU!” He furiously yelled to his parents. “You! There’s no word for it. No word denotes the horrible act that you have committed. While I was on my first date ever, you – you horrible people – cleared my room so we could move to God knows where! Oasis Greens! Sunny Forest! The number of my girlfriend was on that wall. You find where you put that number – those seven important digits – this instant.”
Bartholemiou didn’t know how this could have happened. He just went from the happiest he had ever been to the angriest he had ever been, and now he was crying hard enough to merit the saddest he had ever been.
Mrs. Thorneapple was not pleased and shook her head. “We would have told you we were moving, but you were not here tonight.” She handed him a slip of paper, likely containing directions and an address, and she left with Mr. Thorneapple.
Bartholemiou felt betrayed. He felt smacked in the face, punched in the stomach, kicked in the shin, and oddly hungry. His parents had thought he was just going to simply forget this! After all his parents had done, complaining he had no cell phone and no friends, no contact to the outside world and no life, they had cut him off when one was available! How sick and morally disgusting of them to do!
Bartholemiou thought he might be sick. He thought he might not be able to stomach the drive to wherever it was. And most of all, he thought of how he may not be able to stop crying hysterically.
–––––––
Twenty years later, Kate Thorneapple looked as if she were very happy when she was walking with Bartholemiou as she held his hand during an evening stoll.“I love you so much, Kate.”
“I love you too, Daddy.”
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