Jammed!

Gabriella stands on the top back of my teal typewriter, somehow positioned such that pressing the keys does nothing to the page. She looks at me very seriously and shakes a finger at me. I feel overwhelming confusion, and look around for snakes. Luckily there are none.

The stretch marks are for speed

Preparing for a roller coaster ride with my team; upon reaching the peak we stopped for supplies.

We were informed that the theme of the ride had been changed en route to the top, to a downhill mule-and-cart race. We were the last to know, and got stuck with the slowpoke mule.

Out of the gate, everyone except us seemed to know what they were doing. We found ourselves in last place, a dangerous position as the powerups allowed the leading mule carts to plant booby traps.

We hit one, and went spinning into an alley, destroying the cart and smashing our lantern. We figured we could continue the race on the back of our mule, but first we had to find the sprite that had occupied our lantern, to light our way.

We examined the alleyway, opened the backstage door, went into the grimy barbershop and out again, then located a stairwell lit by fluorescent lights. Noting the foreboding graffiti on the wall, we began to lead our mule down the stairs as the other competitors raced by us on their second lap.

I never believed in an afterlife

I sit in front of the coffee table preparing rootbeer floats with my dad for Doan's birthday party. First I have trouble finding glasses. We have pint-glasses, but then all I can find in my grandma's dishwasher are like giant martini glasses with no stems. We use these anyway. Then, the only ice cream we have is Godiva chocolate raspberry truffle. I am not convinced this will make the best tasting rootbeer float, but my dad starts scooping anyway because it's melting. Then, I start slicing orange poppyseed bread from work to put in there as well, because we have to use it before it gets stale. Finally, we run out of ice cream entirely, so I head up to Kathryn's to borrow some from her.

As I pass by Shorewood, I pause by the basketball courts to rest. It is starting to get dark. As is sit there, a shadowy figure crosses the field and steps up to the fence by te sidewalk with a vendor's tray and a ziplock sack. He whispers to the nonexistent passersby the goods he is selling, which include candy such as pixie stix and cocaine. I start to worry that if he notices me he will think I intend to tell the police and maybe kidnap me or something. I decide to try and continue on indiscreetly.

I slowly start tiptoeing down the hill towards Kathryn's house. When I start walking more normally I hear footsteps, but i can't tell if they're mine or the drug dealer's. I walk faster and the footsteps get louder. Finally, as I turn the corner, practically running, I turn halfway around and say,"Can I help you with something?" to the guy, but keep walking at a slower pace. He is probably younger than me, but is seriously tough-looking with cornrows, a black bandadna, and I think a gun as well.

To my surprise he asks me some totally innocent question that I don't know the answer to. We're still walking towards Kathryn's but it is so dark now that I am completely blind. The drug dealer, on the other hand, is completely fine (because those drug dealers, you know, they have night vision). I stumble and grab his hand, and he guides me the rest of the way to Kathryn's house. By the time we get there he's really friendly, which makes me really uncomfortable, but when he reaches out to hug me goodbye I comply because he has a gun. Then he kisses me twice on the lips, and once on the neck as I take his arms off me and turn away.

He stands in the driveway for a few moments to make sure he's brought me to the right house, and finally leaves. I walk up to Kathryn's basement window, looking to see if anyone is up before I knock on the door, since it's 3:30 AM. Then i figure, if it really is 3:30 AM it would probably worse to be spotted suspiciously looking in windows. Then I realize that none of this is relevant because it's actually 8:30 PM and I knock on the door.

Kathryn's dad answers and lets me in the front door, but leaves me enclosed on the landing behind a waist-high gate. I wonder if it would be rude to just step over this small gate. Kahtyrn comes upstairs before I can finish wondering and lets me through. I turn to her and say, "Kathryn, you won. You know what this means, right?" She nods and says, "Yes, and I haven't changed my mind either. I want you to have it all." It is understood that Kathryn has won a huge sum of money, and she cannot accept it for moral reasons, but she wants me to have it because I will do the right thing. I'm not entirely sure Kathryn has the right idea, but I don't argue, because, as I tell Kathryn, "Aaron, Holly, and Sally are already on their way." She nods and I turn around to lock the door. I get the gate locked, then try to lock the door, but can't reach it. Instead of stepping over the gate again I unlock the gate, lock the front door, and the relock the gate. Aaron Smith is already in the driveway, and he will claim he prize for his own religious purposes if I do not get to the prize office with the official scroll. Kathryn tells me we can escape through one of the barbershops on the east side of her house. She leads me through a hallway, and I start to ask her again if she is sure of the decision,when we enter the kitchen and I finally look around her house. It is a wreck. All the furniture is broken, the applicances are all gone, the linoleum floor has been ripped out, and everything is covered in filth. Kathryn and her family have been living in poverty, and I didn't even realize it because I hadn't seen them in so long. I tell her, "Kathryn, you know you have to take some of this money, right?" She nods and leads me further back into the house.

By now Aaron is in the front door, and working his way past the gate. I open a door and see room with a window leading outside, so I go inside. Kathryn says, "No! That's Robert's bedroom! You have to go through one of the barbershops!" But I'm already halfway out the small window. Kathryn soon emerges outside from a room next door. Aaron is coming down the hallway, has almost found us, so we toss the scroll I had been carrying into the bushes and rush across the street. There is a giant cedar tree in the neighbor's yard, so I leap up, seize the end of a branch, and swing into the tree, pulling Kathryn up with me. Just then, Sally and Holly pull into Kathryn's driveway as Aaron comes out through a window. He tells them, "No sign, but there's still time." As Sally and Holly respond, I swing unnoticed over their heads on a particularly springy branch and pick the scroll out of the bushes. As I fling myself back over to the branch next to Kathryn, Devin walks down the street and informs me that the party will not take place until next weekend, because Kellen and Doan are both out of town. Sitting next to Kathryn on the branch, I unroll the scroll to see that it has already alotted Kathryn her share, appropriate for buying a new house and repaying er family's debts: $119,000,000.00. I don't remember the exact amount of my share, but it was something like $439,500,000.00. I ask where Kathryn thinks her family will live now, and she points across the street to a house like a grey cement wedding cake and says, "Well the neighbors have a nice house for sale." I try to confirm that I will perform the appropriate deed with her money, but I can't remember what it is.

Next we are standing in a room I have never been inside before in the care home where my grandma last lived. I am crying, and when Kathryn asks what's wrong, I say, "She had a stroke. She was supposed to be dead, but she had a stroke." Two nurses with a defibrillator move away from the bed, and reveal my grandma laying there. My dad is nearby and the rest of my family is around somewhere. I am hysterical. "Where have they been keeping her since she died?! What have they done to her?!" My dad looks a little hurt, but then gives me a small, understanding smile, which I do not return, and gets up and leaves.

My grandmother rolls over, gets out of bed, and puts on her robe. She walks out of the room, past my brother in the hallway, to a nearby kitchen. There she turns on the stove and bustles about, making breakfast. Apparently a few months dead have cured her of Parkinson's. I'm standing there next to Kathryn, who looks at me questioningly, and Nick, who is calm. I ask him if he knows what is going on, and he just shrugs. My grandma hums to herself and flips a fried egg of the griddle. Then she serves a scrambled eggs to my dad, and a poached egg to my mom. Then it looks like she's trying to flip another egg, but has trouble. She turns around, glancing at me briefly and saying, "Look at me, I can't even make a proper grilled egg for you." I realize that she has made each member of my family our favorite type of egg. She pries open a waffle iron to reveal that my egg of choice is a waffle-egg. I start crying.

Now my mother is taking our entire family and many friends on vacation to Gig Harbor. We paddle up to the floating dock at the marina in our tiny rowboat and hop off. I have the directions and lead the way to our motel. To get there we go up to the street first, which looks like Pac Highway, where there is a strip club across the steet with huge plate windows. However, all we can see from the outside are sleezy men sitting in chairs. The dancers, it seems, are encased in mirrored columns. I assume they are the two-way mirrors, (which doesn't make sense, because then the dancers would be seeing out and the viewers wouldn't be able to see in.)
I puzzle over how that works and continue leading the way to our motel. The directions lead us out onto another floating dock, with components that look like a combination between a giant put-put golf course and a playground castle. This is the motel. "Thanks, mom," I say sarcastically. "Another great choice. This one is right up there with Hotel Diva". As we reach the end of the dock, we meet the manager, who is the grandpa who died when I was 5. To get into the hotel we have to climb over the tiny castle rooftops and through an opening.

At this point our mission becomes clear. My grandpa has been holding my grandma captive, under heavy sleeping pills, but we can wake her up and must take her away. My mom and dad distract my grandpa while Laura and I make our way to the bedroom. There we each kiss my grandma on the forehead, like we did when we said goodbye for the last time. Her eyelids flutter, and she opens her eyes and smiles, in a very Sleeping Beauty-esque fashion. She gets out of bed, and puts on her dressing gown, very similar to before, but now she is much younger, probably in her forties. She begins to feel like our mother; I think Laura becomes Aunt Vicki and I become Aunt Anne. In any case, we are in a hurry to get away, but not because grandpa might find out she's missing. Now we just have to make the next ferry from Bremerton to Seattle. I run down to the dock where my brother has my grandpa's old rowboat ready, with my sister's friends Michelle and Modessa inside, and My mom has some kind of small barge, and a tiny one-person floating pod ready. I want to ride with my grandma, but my brother tells me that to balance the weight out, Laura and I must go in his boat and our grandma will go with my mom.

I get in the boat last, and am surprised when I step up to my knees in opaque black water. Nick says the boat works fine like this and tells me to sit down. Now I am up to my waist in black water, getting ready for a long boat ride, but when Nick starts rowing, the boat submerges, and becomes an unenclosed submarine. There is a window in the bottom, and I watch several clumsily-drawn silhouettes of manta rays swim underneath. I want to make a joke to my mom about manta rays being "strictly underwater", but she is too far behind. Then a clumsily drawn silhouette of a shark swims underneath. I point it out to my sister, and she makes a remark about what a shame it is that we're no longer able to make art projects like that. The view under the boat becomes thumbtacked to the wall as a watercolor painting that one of us had painted at grandma's house years ago. The shapes of sea creatures are still moving, and I see another shark coming closer. It opens its mouth to reveal messy, but sharp white teeth and almost eats me.

We quickly surface and enter the Bremerton ferry terminal, which is organized like an airport, and decorated with giant wreaths with purple bows. I direct my mom and dad through the food court, where everybody from our group picks something to put on our tray. We end up with Vietnamese-Mexican-Greek food, among which I am proud to point out to Kris' cousin Clayton is my family's own homemade hummus.

Innaguration

Lizzie is so drunk, and we are sitting on either side of her being convincing. The room is very north and this may be the source of a problem we are having communicating with each other. We is Jay and me and a third shadowy figure. Jay puts a sweater on and off. We crouch next to a wall.

Jay and I attempt to get on the roof.