The Marijuana Chronicles by Jonathan Santlofer

Author:Jonathan Santlofer [Santlofer, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843442592
Amazon: 1617751634
Barnesnoble: 1617751634
Goodreads: 16057203
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

AMANDA STERN is the author of the novel The Long Haul, and the founder, curator, and host of the popular Happy Ending Music and Reading Series in New York City.

acting lessons

by amanda stern

The initial quantum fluctuation that burst forward to create this universe implanted particles programmed, in years nine to fourteen of a human girl’s life, to flood the neural regions and saturate her suggestible self with one single, rabid desire: to become an actress. Why this specific link, no one knows, although recent scientific studies suggest a congruity: both teen girls and actresses embody a multiplicity of personalities, expressing each through overt behavior in narrow windows of time.

It was the first week of eighth grade and school was a cauldron of odors: fresh carpeting, new varnish, paint fumes, recently opened reams of three-hole-punch paper, just-sharpened pencils, wet presses of highlighter across textbook pages, ground meat and canned vegetables from the cafeteria, polyurethane coating the gymnasium floor, and the commingling, lingering off-gassing scent of back-to-school packaging. The notice board was wallpapered in greed, a pyrotechnic display of bubble-lettered pitches, business cards, and flyers, hatched by opportunistic adults eager to capitalize on private school kids, each blocking the other like tall kids in a class picture.

Assemblies were overbooked with presentations, a cattle call of adults trying to sell lessons that no one wanted. From Judo to gardening, our collective interest held steady at their resting rates, until the appearance of the young married couple straight from the pages of Sweet Valley High. Two tall tow-headed stalks synchronized down to their split ends, walked onto the school stage. The angular pretty boy and his chisel-cheeked wife were the color palette of our dreams; the living, breathing incarnation of how we wished we looked, of the models we circled, tore from magazines, and brought to one hair salon after another, hoping each time, as we handed them the photos of Christie Brinkley and Carol Alt, that their salon would have the necessary supplies to cut off and bleach out our actual selves, providing us an opportunity which did not exist: to be replaced by preferred selves, now, specifically, the two expensive-looking fine-grain birch-totems on stage. Even their names sounded elite.

Ian and Caroline ran a theater company for teens; Caroline did most of the talking. She spoke fast and efficiently, like she’d not lost connection with her inner teen, but Ian was slower, he talked like he was inside a dream, and all the girls found him sexy. Three times a week the group met and wrote plays, performing them at the end of each semester. They were holding auditions and if we were interested, we should stay afterward and take a form. My friend and I exchanged knowing glances. We were going to audition for this theater company and we were going to get accepted because we were talented, damnit! Success was awaiting us; all we had to do was show up. Hell, I felt my future fame kicking from inside me like a drunken fetus.

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