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epitome of incomprehensibility
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Rereading Jane Austen's book of this name has me, perhaps predictably, noting that both Emma and Miss Bates have classical ADHD symptoms.
Emma is clever but restless. Miss Bates talks a lot and goes off on tangents.
Kirsten armchair-diagnoses.
...
The Emma in my class wasn't much like either of them, or like me, but it didn't stop Eliezer from calling me Emma back in tenth grade. When I correct him, he says, "Oh, sorry. I mixed you up with the other new girl."
Okay, I thought, but she has darker, straighter hair. She's about my height, but you haven't noticed she has bigger breasts? "Rack" is a silly word, but it fits here: her bras or shirts smoosh those two roundish blobs into the appearance of a shelf. Mine are too small for that to work.
Emma has a boyfriend named Alex who's four years older and rides a dirt bike. She tells us about him when we're playing a card game at lunch called Asshole - politely, President. There are four roles: President, Vice-President, Vice-Asshole and Asshole. Some people put "secretary" or "treasurer" in the VA spot, but Vice-Asshole is funnier.
Who plays? Her, me, Stephanie often, and let's say the fourth spot is variable. My memory is spotty, but it's also a fact that defined cliques were rare in my FACE days. Granted, I got most of my ideas of "cliques" from books like Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, where even there groupings were exaggerated for comic effect, a relief from the otherwise grim story. Maybe narrator Melinda gets her ideas from teen movie stereotypes.
Speaking of movies, sometime in the course of our two years together a film comes out called Alex and Emma. Emma isn't impressed with it. Then Alex and Emma break up, but not because of the movie. He's a lying cheat, a cheating liar.
So Matt from our class flirts with her. In gym class we're all sitting on the floor and he says something like, "So I'll meet you at McDonalds and rape you."
Emma snorts. "You couldn't rape your way out of a paper bag" - which makes me bend over in helpless laughter.
A few others laugh too, someone saying, "Ew, how would that even work?" but Astrid sitting near me remains stony-faced, grave with her long ash-blond hair and brown eyes. I worry that something happened to her, like in the Speak book. Maybe I'm overdramatic, but now I feel bad for laughing. Shouldn't Matt feel bad, though? But he didn't seem to mean any actual harm; he and Emma had some sort of in-joke - some sort of understanding, as Jane Austen might say.
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