Jamie had predicted that there would be no finer sight in all the world than that of the main hallway of Thomas Jefferson High School covered with tiny wax Dixie cups filled to the brim with water and food coloring in various shades of neon; in retrospect, Alice had to agree.
In retrospect, Alice was also kicking herself for leaving the master key to the building in her locker on the other side of the hallway.
“I hate you so much right now,” Jamie said, with feeling.
“This was your stupid idea,” Alice said. “Don’t try to blame this on me.”
“You agreed to it. You organized it. You’re the one whose credit card charges are going to show the purchase of half a gazillion plastic Dixie cups!”
“They’re wax paper,” Alice said. “Try to get it right.”
“You’re complicit, that’s all I’m saying.” Jamie sat down on the linoleum floor, taking up half of the three square feet of free floor space. The rest that wasn’t covered by the aforementioned Dixie cups was occupied by a mountain of empty water bottles.
“Oh, God,” said Alice. “I’m never going to get into college. They’re going to look at my application and say, ‘Oh, it’s Dixie Cup Girl, who left the master key in her locker and had to wait until the janitorial staff showed up the next morning to get out of her own school! Let’s ridicule her and then reject her!’”
“You’re being hyperbolic,” Jamie said, rolling her eyes.
Alice stared at her. “What?”
“Hyperbolic,” Jamie repeated.
“In what way do I resemble a hyperbola?” asked Alice. “I mean, do you look at me and think, ‘Man, if that girl were a conic section, she’d totally—’”
“How can you be such a dork and still survive high school?” demanded Jamie.
“Just because I’m not going to grow up to be a starving English major surviving on subway recitations of Chaucer and proctoring tests to undergrads in summer school programs—”
“Right, because no English major has ever amounted to more than that.”
“Well, have fun living in a cardboard box for the rest of your life.”
“And I hope you enjoy living in your ebony tower of academia for the rest of yours!”
There was a long moment of silence. Then Jamie said, “It’s ‘ivory tower,’ isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know, being a math person.”
“Oh, shut up.”
More silence.
“God, look at us,” Jamie said quietly. “We’ve been stuck here for less than an hour and we’re already arguing, because of a stupid attempt at a senior prank.”
“If we crawl over the cups,” said Alice thoughtfully, “you know, spread out our body weight, they might not get crushed and I could get to my locker without messing it up.”
Jamie looked at her. “You’re not serious.”
“In theory, it should work like a bed of nails,” Alice said.
“Holy crap; you’re serious.”
“Or snowshoes.”
Jamie slapped herself on the forehead. “Of course! Why didn’t I bring my snowshoes? Stupid, stupid me!”
“We might get a little wet, though, but it’s probably better than being stuck here all night.”
“No, seriously, please tell me you’re joking.”
Alice shrugged. “You’re right. It wouldn’t be practical.”
“God help me,” muttered Jamie. “Hell, you probably calculated the area of the hallway to know how many Dixie cups to bring, too.”
Alice began to blush.
“No way,” said Jamie.
“Well, I had to know how many to buy!”
“You actually went through the trouble of calculating how many tiny, tiny Dixie cups would fill the main hallway of our school?”
“Well, be reasonable; what was I supposed to do? Buy two thousand and hope that covered it?”
“Yes!” exclaimed Jamie. “Because that’s what a sane person would do!”
A sullen silence descended as both girls tried to put as much distance as possible between them. As there was only three feet of floor space not occupied by Dixie cups, this was quite a challenge.
A few minutes later, Alice added, “This is all your fault.”
“If I killed you, it would be a justifiable homicide,” said Jamie.
“Why do I let you rope me into all this stuff?” Alice demanded. “Am I really that stupid?”
“Ooh, wait, I’ve got a better idea — I’ll kill myself!”
“Five years from now, when I’m in jail and dead because my cellmate shinked me because of some stupid plan you came up with, I want them to put ‘It’s All Jamie’s Fault’ on my tombstone.”
“One, for Christ’s sake, it’s shank, okay? Shank! S-h-a-n-k, ‘shank,’ a verb, meaning… to shank! And ‘b’, you’re completely overreacting, just like you always do.”
“Nothing bothers you, does it?” asked Alice. “Jesus, there could be a zombie apocalypse and you’d just say something like, ‘Well, that’s six billion people not eating chocolate anymore — more for me!’”
“It’s called a silver lining, and also, chocolate is delicious,” Jamie informed Alice sourly. “Also also, how did you get from ‘all my fault that we’re stuck in school at four in the morning with however many Dixie cups’ to ‘zombie apocalypse’? Because I think you took a sharp left in your logic somewhere, although it may in fact have been a three-point turn.”
“Screw you.”
The conversation had definitely derailed somewhere, and wasn’t coming back. There was another period of sullen silence, until Alice checked her watch – three-thirty. Class would start in four hours. Not that she’d be in class – more likely she’d be arrested for vandalism, and crying in some cell. Or maybe the Dixie cup thing would be like getting pulled over for speeding – cry enough when the cop can see your face and maybe get let off with a warning.
Probably not, though.
“If this were a TV show,” said Jamie thoughtfully, “this would probably be around the time that we’d have a conversation and decide that although we are probably gonna get in a crapload of trouble for this, it was worth it for the joyful camaraderie or something.”
“Well, you can take your joyful camaraderie and—”
“I get the picture, thanks.” Jamie sighed. “Still, maybe prison is like college, and we can request roommates.” She looked over at Alice. “Despite your complete inability to fess up and take your share of the responsibility for this, I think I’d choose you.”
Alice stared at Jamie for a long moment, then shook her head. “I’m going to do my best to try to take the fact that you want me for your cellmate in prison as a compliment.”
Jamie grinned at her. “Admit it,” she said.
“Admit what? That you’re insane?”
“There’s camaraderie here,” Jamie said. “It might even be joyful.”
“You really are insane,” Alice marveled.
“Oh, come on,” said Jamie. “Look me in the eye and tell me this was a waste of time, and that if we went back in time twelve hours you wouldn’t do it exactly the same way.”
“I would,” Alice allowed, “but only because I’ve watched enough Doctor Who to know that messing with established timelines only results in paradoxes.”
To say that Alice took some sadistic pleasure in watching Jamie begin to hit her head against the nearest hard surface would be something of an understatement.
“Okay, okay, fine. Stop before you do some damage,” Alice said finally. “Assuming there’s a brain in there.”
Jamie glared at her.
“It was worth it,” Alice agreed, looking out over the glimmering neon colors of the Dixie cups, “for the sight.”
“Damn straight,” Jamie said, pleased. “Also, I believe I feel an ‘I told you so’ coming on.”
Alice grinned.