Nerdfighters Gazette

My eyes open, eyelashes fluttering.  My vision is bleary; I can’t see yet.  My eyes adjust, and there it is.  The window.  It is open, and a soft breeze is cascading past the thin sarong that I’ve hung in a failed attempt to block out the sunlight.  Or at least that’s what I tell people.

Glancing around my bedroom, you can’t really tell a lot about who I am.  The walls are bare and white, no posters are hung, no pictures are framed, not even a calendar to show my taste in puppies.  The furniture is all the same: light, worn wood.  There is nothing on the floor; no papers scattered around to be gathered up in the morning for class.  My backpack is slouching against my full-length mirror.  No pictures are tucked into the sides.

I don’t have a computer; Uncle Dan says those are too distracting, that I have to focus on my schooling.  I always disagreed with this.  If there was one thing that every teenager of the 2000s needed, it was a computer.  And to make things ironic, most of my research could be done much more easily if I had my own laptop.  I always have to go to the library and tell Uncle Dan that I’m using books.  I don’t get his beef with computers, but he just hates them for some reason or another.

Pretty much the only thing that shows any hint of my personality is the amount of soda cans that I have stocked up on my window sill.  All of them are Sprite cans, except for one.  That one lone blue can.

The label says Pepsi, but when I was drinking out of it, it sure as hell wasn’t any type of cola.  No, it was filled with vodka.  It’s what the kids these days are drinking, don’t you know.

My uncle doesn’t know about the drinking, though.  If he did, he’d kill me.  Or worse.  But it’s not like he doesn’t do that anyway.  What’s another excuse to get inside?

… I didn’t just say that.

Ignore me.

I’ve never had a boyfriend.  All of the boys at school are too interested in large chests and open legs, that I just don’t seem to show up on their radar.  Maybe I’m just not pretty enough.  Then again, Uncle Dan always did like pretty girls.  Just my luck, I’ve shown up on his scanner.

But I didn’t just say that either.

The door opens abruptly in my bedroom, and there is Uncle Dan.  And would you look at that!  His eyes are already drooping, his cheeks flushed red, and his mouth slightly agape.  Seems as though he’s ready for a morning quickie.

He meanders over to me, not saying a word.  I lie in silence, watching him.  Looking at my face, you might say I seemed curious and innocent.  But it’s just easier that way.

The blankets are peeled off, slowly.  Then my shirt.  You don’t need to know the rest.

About fifteen minutes later, and Uncle Dan is exhausted.  He rolls over to the side, keeping still in my bed.  He doesn’t make a sound.  You might think he was dead.  He’s not.  I’ve gotten over checking for the slowing heartbeat, the quiet breath.

Something catches my eye and I glance over at the window again and I see that the wind has picked up.  The sarong is blowing almost horizontally.  Just beneath it, the empty Pepsi can is almost toppled over.  It teeters, it totters, but never quite makes it.  No, it just keeps rolling back and straightening itself out.  I wish I could straighten myself out.  But I guess I’m too busy trying to teeter, totter, topple over.

Fucking Pepsi can.