"Yo, Hayseed ... "

Paige Guthrie looked up from the book she was reading and glanced across the room to the girl sitting at her computer. "Yes, Jubilee?" she asked, pushing her dark-framed glasses up on her nose.

"What's a word that means like hid, but not hid?"

Sighing, Paige marked the spot in her book and looked at the monitor, where Jubilee was typing the creative writing assignment Ms. Frost had given earlier that day. "In what context?"

The younger girl wrinkled her nose in disgust and absolute confusion. "Huh?"

"I mean ... " Paige searched for a word to use in place of 'context', but soon gave up. "Nevermind." She sat back down on her bed and picked up her book again.

Jubilee stared at the computer screen. "C'mon, Guthrie, I need a word."

"Withdrew," she responded without removing her eyes from the page before her.

"Cool."

with true into her like onw little world and stuff. She wasn't like suicidal or nothing she was just sad. The day came when she didn't fly anymore and that was real sad but what's even sadder is that it wasn't realy flying it was just fake flying and she couldnt' even do like the fake flying and stuff anymore and that's what's so sad about it.

Jubilee took her hands from the keyboard and stared at the computer screen in consternation. The creative writing assignment wasn't going very well -- Frost had said that the story was supposed to "have depth", and she had a feeling that she wasn't getting very much depth. She figured, though, that the sadness would be a great way to achieve depth, and with a flourish turned back to the keyboard.

So like the girl grew up and she had like hell in high school 'cause everyone knows that's what hell is. I mean, really, it's bad enough I gotta go to this school at all, I know some cheap crappy public school gotta be even worse.

She reread that paragraph over again. "Hey, Pagie?"

Paige looked up from her book again wearing a face that screamed *She called me "Pagie"?*

"C'n I use, like, 'hell' in this assignment?"

In a completely, utterly bored monotone she replied, "I don't think so, Jubilee." She turned the page and kept reading.

"What about 'crap'?"

"I don't know," Paige replied. "Ask Ms. Frost. You got a highlighter?"

Jubilee opened the drawer in the desk that the computer sat on, pulled out a bright yellow highlighter, and tossed it across the room to her roommate.

"Thanks." She removed the cap and highlighted a particularly interesting passage in her book.

So like the girl grew up and she had like heck in high school 'cause everyone knows that's what heck is. I mean, really, it's bad enough I gotta go to this school at all, I know some cheap public school gotta be even worse.

That didn't look right.

"That doesn't look right," Jubilee muttered. "I gotta use 'hell' or it doesn't sound right. I mean, like, everyone knows that school is hell!"

Paige didn't respond.

So like the girl grew up and she had like hell in high school 'cause everyone knows that's what hell is. I mean, really, it's bad enough I gotta go to this school at all, I know some cheap public school gotta be even worse. But she like lived and stuff. Oh, wait, I forgot to give this girl a name. She doesn't have one. And she doesn't fly anymore, but she use to fly all the time. she just sings now, I think. Yeah, she sings all the time cause she's a proffesional singer and she's really good at it and she makes these songs about the people she used to know when she was growing up and they made fon of her because she kept to her self and with true all the time and they didn't like her even though there's no reason they didnt like her they just didn't.

It was too short, Jubilee realized. What could she do to add more? She glanced around the room, searching for some kind of inspiration, hoping something might strike her, when her eyes fell on poor defenseless Paige, just sitting there reading and never suspecting a single thing.