***
Sandra was sitting on the desk filing her nails .
- Good, you’re on time. Now give me the translation homework to copy - she said with a smile and a lovedovey hug.
-Shit I forgot to do it. - she realized, surprising herself with this revelation even more than she managed to surprise her best friend.
She had forgotten to do her homework. Normally, if she hadn’t finished it in the school the previous day, she would do it in the morning, having breakfast, watching TV and writing all at the same time.
She now remembered forgetting to do all of those things today.
-What happened to you then in God’s name girl, you never forget homework!- Sandra was now up, hands on hips and eyes wide with disbelief, studying her face closely, searching for an explanation of this unprecedented event.
Even if the end of all life on planet Earth was announced for tomorrow, you could bet all your lunch money on Hope having her homework done.
Just in case it falls through.
She sat down on the child-sized chair staring at the board, wondering if she could wiggle her way out of the inquisition that was about to take place and her friend eventually squeezing every petty detail of last night out of her. She wondered if she was sure she knew what had really happened last night.
Shivering once more at the glimpse of him shirtless playing in a string of her thought, her body once again reminded her of the full and mind blowing reality of the experience.
-You’d better sit down for this one - she said with a tone in her voice that Galileo must have had when he was forced to acknowledge the geocentricity of the universe out loud, - it might take a while
As she began trying to explain slowly the who where when how and why, the other girls from the class, with their ears fine tuned to pick up any sex talk in radius of fifty meters closed in around them.
-And what? What did YOU do?
–What did he DO?
-Don’t tell me you moron didn’t do anything after THAT?
-WHO?
-Did you actually SEE him do it?
-How can you HEAR what someone is feeling?
- And how could he do all that AND play the guitar at the same time?
-You know that drowsy girl from IV 2 who slashed her wrists when she heard he had left the country, she’s gonna kill you when she hears - THIS.
-How in the world can YOU of all people know it was 'an orgasm' since you’ve never even had sex?
***
Sandra was an unusually silent listener today. With everyone around them talking at the same time, only she asked nothing and just studied Hope's face under the barrage of questions.
The fire alarm bell announcing the beginning of the lesson rang and they were left alone, sitting behind their desk and free to continue the conversation.
-You should find him and do it, with him, you know.
- Come on, Sandra, the man is a fuckin’ legend in this town. He probably has dozens of screaming pubescent fans to jerk off with after every concert. And those musician types…they all have those great looking intelligent women hanging around with them all the time.
-With some proper make up on you’d be a great looking woman too. And the way you described him, I have never ever ever heard you talk about a man like that before. It only happens once, and if it happens with the wrong man you will regret it and remember regretting it for the rest of your life.
Sandra knew what she was talking about.
She was one of those upper class hot high school chicks that had big breasts and tiny feet and usually a Neanderthal moron with loads of money for a boyfriend.
She told Hope once, when they were both really drunk, confiding in each other standing in the kitchen at some house party, how the first time she had sex was with a horrible criminal forty something shady character who was fat, married, stank like a corpse and had long hairs growing out of his ears.
Sandra told her how she went to the bathroom and actually washed her private parts with a mouthwash disinfectant called Hexoral afterwards.
The sheer horror of that image had made Hope even more determined to ignore sex altogether for at least a couple more years.
And never ever use mouthwash again.
They were the strangest of best friends, one bred in culture of ballet lessons, playing tennis and fine cutlery Sunday meals with her family of doctors and lawyers, and the other one a wild child, raised by her older brother and his friends, the girl who could never wear a dress without tearing it in at least two places, and whose middle class parents both slaved in shifts and almost never shared a meal together, even on weekends.
Sandra was also one of those girls that are expensive in their habits, but in a way so natural one could never say she was a snob.
She and her kind despised the refugee newcomers to the city and the noveau rich of warlords and redneck culture that had the social influence and the money the upper class, due to the total collapse of the society, was losing in heaps.
But, once her parents were no longer able to provide for her with what she needed, French perfumes, Italian shoes and Spanish holidays, she, still true to her manners of a princess, started providing for herself.
The criminals who had the money nowadays also had a taste for upper class girlfriends.
And she was the city’s finest upper class girlfriend you could find.
***
People would look puzzled at the two of them together, one or the other out of place wherever they went.
Sandra would rather be caught dead than without evening make up and high heels even in the early morning on schooldays, always dressed to kill and prepared to cash in on it.
She would get into fits of rage over what Hope was capable of wearing - mostly her brother’s T-shirts, jeans she still allowed her mother to buy for her but never before the old ones started falling apart, and a pair of something on her feet that could be seen only in old Run DMC videos, a white three-striped pair of Adidas tennis shoes , for crying out loud.
Oh, and then there was the hair.
Sandra’s school bag was like a walking beauty parlor that housed, amongst other things, that hair pressing-ironing device that was invented solely for the purpose of torture and torment, which Sandra had on several occasions actually tried to use on her friend’s restless hair to no avail.
One time, after attempting to straighten out a lock of her protesting friend’s hair for more than half an hour and seeing it twist in disobedience every time it was freed from the grip of the horrible machine, she finally gave up and proclaimed with despair:
- Hope, there is no hope for your hair. That thing growing on your head is as crazy as you are.
***
The large twenty minutes break was the peak point in schoolyard traffic, a narrow and graffitied concrete playground that had been the defining point to most of the ’real’ citizens.
The refugees who flooded the city mostly kept themselves and their lives and their children to the outskirts and still predominantly rural suburbs, while the schools downtown, classical gymnasiums like this one, belonged to the urban youth.
Belgrade was always a city that cherished the taste for the alternative, especially now when the main alternative was staying alive.
Sandra had a cigarette left and the two of them were sharing it now like it was their last one ever, a practice that was no extraordinary sighting. Fags were expensive and hard to buy so the addict solidarity spirit allowed no nicotine to be wasted, and often a lot more people than just the two of them were sharing the same one.
-So, are we still on for that embargo party on Thursday? You could bring along that puppy historian friend of yours.
- Sasha? He’s no puppy and most certainly not mine.... I don’t know..... He’s leaving town to avoid being dragged into the army.
- Idiots – a single word that was her comment on the politics and politicians and war and a whole lot more.
Sandra pressed her lips hard, which was what she would do instead of swearing in public.
- By the way, have you heard from your brother?
-No. They don’t even pick up the telephone anymore at the switchboard in the main barracks.
***
Hope realized how angry answering that question made her feel.
Her four years older brother had a month ago left to serve the one year obligatory military service and was down south in Podgorica, city in Montenegro awfully close to the war zone.
Her mother had been trying to telephone and talk to him but he was always out of the reach of the telephone wire, doing something somewhere on the premises and was regrettably never able to come to the phone.
Hope knew that something was definitely wrong after, one night when she was dialing the number endlessly trying to get a ring tone instead of her mother, who was finishing off her usual evening paperwork, the operator who had picked up the receiver lazily informed her that her brother was playing basketball.
Her brother had never touched the bloody basket ball in his life, except by mistake.
The fucker was lying through his teeth and she hung up after she had shouted a series of obscenities into the handset, making her mother cross herself in distress at the language this child had mastered somewhere outside of the house.
- He is not there. And if you’re gonna continue pretending he is, you might as well do the bloody calling yourself.
And pray he is still alive, she thought but dared not say it out loud in front of her mom.
.
***
The lessons were a gruesome tiring waste of time.
End of their final high school year was in a couple of weeks time, and endless sessions of exams and students usually skipping school to avoid them meant that the classrooms were half empty, and that the students sitting in them were forced to endure significantly larger energy drenching experience than normal.
Hope spent the rest of the morning half asleep, woken up here and there by her friend stepping on her foot under the table, or pinching her arm. to signal that she needed help.
Sandra was struggling to improve her grades by enduring long, painful oral questionings by the teachers who knew she had no knowledge for the final mark she was aiming for, but were unable to tell her that to that pretty, long-eyelashed, polished face of hers.
School was a haven of sort, where one could feel secure enough to worry about normal things like boys parties grades and stupid vindictive teachers whose sole purpose of existence was to ruin one generation of students after another.
But even there, this particular teenage angst reality had to filter in some unusual accessories.
Like thoughts of brothers in army at war and friends leaving town trying to avoid it.
Sandra was finished, gleaming victoriously, calculating her end of the year average grade for the umpteenth time. She was still not fully satisfied, tapping her pencil elegantly in distress one might imagine Mona Lisa felt waiting for The Maestro to finish her up.
-OK...so...that leaves...... Latin and Math on Wednesday...... and English on Thursday…and we can study literature Thursday afternoon together. I still have to do that poem analysis thing on Friday, before that old hag is done with me and I'm done with her for good .
-Deal.
Long, chatty coffee drinking studying session was something to look forward in a week as empty as this one
probably was gonna be.
She had nothing to do and with Sasha leaving, she had no one to do it with either.
***
Sandra was sitting on the desk filing her nails .
- Good, you’re on time. Now give me the translation homework to copy - she said with a smile and a lovedovey hug.
-Shit I forgot to do it. - she realized, surprising herself with this revelation even more than she managed to surprise her best friend.
She had forgotten to do her homework. Normally, if she hadn’t finished it in the school the previous day, she would do it in the morning, having breakfast, watching TV and writing all at the same time.
She now remembered forgetting to do all of those things today.
-What happened to you then in God’s name girl, you never forget homework!- Sandra was now up, hands on hips and eyes wide with disbelief, studying her face closely, searching for an explanation of this unprecedented event.
Even if the end of all life on planet Earth was announced for tomorrow, you could bet all your lunch money on Hope having her homework done.
Just in case it falls through.
She sat down on the child-sized chair staring at the board, wondering if she could wiggle her way out of the inquisition that was about to take place and her friend eventually squeezing every petty detail of last night out of her. She wondered if she was sure she knew what had really happened last night.
Shivering once more at the glimpse of him shirtless playing in a string of her thought, her body once again reminded her of the full and mind blowing reality of the experience.
-You’d better sit down for this one - she said with a tone in her voice that Galileo must have had when he was forced to acknowledge the geocentricity of the universe out loud, - it might take a while
As she began trying to explain slowly the who where when how and why, the other girls from the class, with their ears fine tuned to pick up any sex talk in radius of fifty meters closed in around them.
-And what? What did YOU do?
–What did he DO?
-Don’t tell me you moron didn’t do anything after THAT?
-WHO?
-Did you actually SEE him do it?
-How can you HEAR what someone is feeling?
- And how could he do all that AND play the guitar at the same time?
-You know that drowsy girl from IV 2 who slashed her wrists when she heard he had left the country, she’s gonna kill you when she hears - THIS.
-How in the world can YOU of all people know it was 'an orgasm' since you’ve never even had sex?
***
Sandra was an unusually silent listener today. With everyone around them talking at the same time, only she asked nothing and just studied Hope's face under the barrage of questions.
The fire alarm bell announcing the beginning of the lesson rang and they were left alone, sitting behind their desk and free to continue the conversation.
-You should find him and do it, with him, you know.
- Come on, Sandra, the man is a fuckin’ legend in this town. He probably has dozens of screaming pubescent fans to jerk off with after every concert. And those musician types…they all have those great looking intelligent women hanging around with them all the time.
-With some proper make up on you’d be a great looking woman too. And the way you described him, I have never ever ever heard you talk about a man like that before. It only happens once, and if it happens with the wrong man you will regret it and remember regretting it for the rest of your life.
Sandra knew what she was talking about.
She was one of those upper class hot high school chicks that had big breasts and tiny feet and usually a Neanderthal moron with loads of money for a boyfriend.
She told Hope once, when they were both really drunk, confiding in each other standing in the kitchen at some house party, how the first time she had sex was with a horrible criminal forty something shady character who was fat, married, stank like a corpse and had long hairs growing out of his ears.
Sandra told her how she went to the bathroom and actually washed her private parts with a mouthwash disinfectant called Hexoral afterwards.
The sheer horror of that image had made Hope even more determined to ignore sex altogether for at least a couple more years.
And never ever use mouthwash again.
They were the strangest of best friends, one bred in culture of ballet lessons, playing tennis and fine cutlery Sunday meals with her family of doctors and lawyers, and the other one a wild child, raised by her older brother and his friends, the girl who could never wear a dress without tearing it in at least two places, and whose middle class parents both slaved in shifts and almost never shared a meal together, even on weekends.
Sandra was also one of those girls that are expensive in their habits, but in a way so natural one could never say she was a snob.
She and her kind despised the refugee newcomers to the city and the noveau rich of warlords and redneck culture that had the social influence and the money the upper class, due to the total collapse of the society, was losing in heaps.
But, once her parents were no longer able to provide for her with what she needed, French perfumes, Italian shoes and Spanish holidays, she, still true to her manners of a princess, started providing for herself.
The criminals who had the money nowadays also had a taste for upper class girlfriends.
And she was the city’s finest upper class girlfriend you could find.
***
People would look puzzled at the two of them together, one or the other out of place wherever they went.
Sandra would rather be caught dead than without evening make up and high heels even in the early morning on schooldays, always dressed to kill and prepared to cash in on it.
She would get into fits of rage over what Hope was capable of wearing - mostly her brother’s T-shirts, jeans she still allowed her mother to buy for her but never before the old ones started falling apart, and a pair of something on her feet that could be seen only in old Run DMC videos, a white three-striped pair of Adidas tennis shoes , for crying out loud.
Oh, and then there was the hair.
Sandra’s school bag was like a walking beauty parlor that housed, amongst other things, that hair pressing-ironing device that was invented solely for the purpose of torture and torment, which Sandra had on several occasions actually tried to use on her friend’s restless hair to no avail.
One time, after attempting to straighten out a lock of her protesting friend’s hair for more than half an hour and seeing it twist in disobedience every time it was freed from the grip of the horrible machine, she finally gave up and proclaimed with despair:
- Hope, there is no hope for your hair. That thing growing on your head is as crazy as you are.
***
The large twenty minutes break was the peak point in schoolyard traffic, a narrow and graffitied concrete playground that had been the defining point to most of the ’real’ citizens.
The refugees who flooded the city mostly kept themselves and their lives and their children to the outskirts and still predominantly rural suburbs, while the schools downtown, classical gymnasiums like this one, belonged to the urban youth.
Belgrade was always a city that cherished the taste for the alternative, especially now when the main alternative was staying alive.
Sandra had a cigarette left and the two of them were sharing it now like it was their last one ever, a practice that was no extraordinary sighting. Fags were expensive and hard to buy so the addict solidarity spirit allowed no nicotine to be wasted, and often a lot more people than just the two of them were sharing the same one.
-So, are we still on for that embargo party on Thursday? You could bring along that puppy historian friend of yours.
- Sasha? He’s no puppy and most certainly not mine.... I don’t know..... He’s leaving town to avoid being dragged into the army.
- Idiots – a single word that was her comment on the politics and politicians and war and a whole lot more.
Sandra pressed her lips hard, which was what she would do instead of swearing in public.
- By the way, have you heard from your brother?
-No. They don’t even pick up the telephone anymore at the switchboard in the main barracks.
***
Hope realized how angry answering that question made her feel.
Her four years older brother had a month ago left to serve the one year obligatory military service and was down south in Podgorica, city in Montenegro awfully close to the war zone.
Her mother had been trying to telephone and talk to him but he was always out of the reach of the telephone wire, doing something somewhere on the premises and was regrettably never able to come to the phone.
Hope knew that something was definitely wrong after, one night when she was dialing the number endlessly trying to get a ring tone instead of her mother, who was finishing off her usual evening paperwork, the operator who had picked up the receiver lazily informed her that her brother was playing basketball.
Her brother had never touched the bloody basket ball in his life, except by mistake.
The fucker was lying through his teeth and she hung up after she had shouted a series of obscenities into the handset, making her mother cross herself in distress at the language this child had mastered somewhere outside of the house.
- He is not there. And if you’re gonna continue pretending he is, you might as well do the bloody calling yourself.
And pray he is still alive, she thought but dared not say it out loud in front of her mom.
.
***
The lessons were a gruesome tiring waste of time.
End of their final high school year was in a couple of weeks time, and endless sessions of exams and students usually skipping school to avoid them meant that the classrooms were half empty, and that the students sitting in them were forced to endure significantly larger energy drenching experience than normal.
Hope spent the rest of the morning half asleep, woken up here and there by her friend stepping on her foot under the table, or pinching her arm. to signal that she needed help.
Sandra was struggling to improve her grades by enduring long, painful oral questionings by the teachers who knew she had no knowledge for the final mark she was aiming for, but were unable to tell her that to that pretty, long-eyelashed, polished face of hers.
School was a haven of sort, where one could feel secure enough to worry about normal things like boys parties grades and stupid vindictive teachers whose sole purpose of existence was to ruin one generation of students after another.
But even there, this particular teenage angst reality had to filter in some unusual accessories.
Like thoughts of brothers in army at war and friends leaving town trying to avoid it.
Sandra was finished, gleaming victoriously, calculating her end of the year average grade for the umpteenth time. She was still not fully satisfied, tapping her pencil elegantly in distress one might imagine Mona Lisa felt waiting for The Maestro to finish her up.
-OK...so...that leaves...... Latin and Math on Wednesday...... and English on Thursday…and we can study literature Thursday afternoon together. I still have to do that poem analysis thing on Friday, before that old hag is done with me and I'm done with her for good .
-Deal.
Long, chatty coffee drinking studying session was something to look forward in a week as empty as this one
probably was gonna be.
She had nothing to do and with Sasha leaving, she had no one to do it with either.
***
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