One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories(26)

February 15th—So cold.

February 28th—I hate this month. I just can’t take one more day of it. This month will just have to be shorter than the rest, and if people don’t like it, they can go f*ck themselves.

March 1st—Feeling much better! I don’t know if it’s just symbolic, but I’m glad February is over. I have a really good feeling about March.

March 9th—There’s this new type of berry that looks soooo good, but somebody told me it’s poison. Oh well.

April 1st—A lot of shenanigans today, like pranks (which are lies-for-no-reason). People say it has something to do with the calendar, which I wasn’t crazy about hearing, because to be honest I think the whole thing is kind of lame. It’s just not my style. But I guess that’s good, when your invention takes on a life you never expected. That’s what the inventor of the scarf told me—it was originally supposed to be a weapon.

April 12th—Someone should invent a new type of clock. Really simple. No cuckoo, no sun business, just numbers.

April 30th—I think 31 days was a mistake. You can’t divide anything into 31, so you can’t make anything half a month or half a week or anything (because 7 is the same way). There should be a word for numbers like that. So: 30 days it is. Glad to be done with this decision.

May 2nd—Ahhh, now maybe I want months to be 31 days. (Why am I so obsessed with this?)

May 20th—Ran into Alice again, and I played it so cool! She congratulated me on the calendar stuff and asked if I ever thought of putting pictures on it—she could maybe pose for it or something. I said that I’d think about it but that it sounded kind of cheesy. She asked when I could hang out more and catch up, and I told her I was busy, but I’d let her know in August. “What’s August?” she said. “Oh, it’s a month I’ve been kicking around—you’re going to love it,” I said. I could not have played it better!

June 29th—Met this really cool girl Jane at a stoning. Will write more later!

October 9th—Can’t believe I haven’t written in so long! Summer was amazing. Harvest amazing! People keep asking if I can make the days longer during the harvest season, just by an hour or two. I told them that they should just wake up earlier if it was so important to them, but everyone was too drunk to understand, so eventually I just said, “Sure, maybe one hour, maybe someday,” and everyone cheered. “More sleep!” Huh? None of it made any sense.

October 21st—Things are still going strong with Jane. This year has been so amazing, and it’s only October! So much has already happened, and there’s still November, December, Latrember, Faunus, Rogibus, Neptember, Stonk …

October 26th—Got all excited about the clock thing last night and built an early prototype! I did it in a hurry, though, and I wrote too big and ran out of space for numbers halfway through. Jane tried to be supportive. “Maybe you can just have every number count twice,” she said. Then how will they know which “six o’clock” it is, for instance? I asked. “They … they’d just have to know, I guess. From context?” she suggested. I really liked how supportive she was trying to be, but I knew this was too lazy to be a real solution. Alice would have known what to say.

November 5th—Stuff with Jane getting a little tense. She keeps wanting to push the relationship forward. She says that we’ve been together “forever.” I said that maybe it feels that way, but that I kept track of it on the calendar and it’s actually been less than five months. She just stared at me. Then to change the subject I told her this new idea I was excited about: we’d choose a date in the future to make things official, and then every year after that, that day on the calendar would be like our own personal holiday—for just the two of us. Good idea, right? “You’d never remember it,” she said.

November 6th—Things with Jane getting better. I think we’re going to work this out. I love Jane. That’s all that matters.

November 11th—They sacrificed Jane today. Really happy for the Sun God.

November 12th—Cold.

November 13th—Dark.

November 18th—Turns out those berries aren’t poison. So, now I’m the guy who discovered that.

November 23rd—Alice came by and said she felt bad about the Jane stuff, and that I should hang out with her and her friends. Then it turned out her friends included this new guy she’s seeing who—get this—invented the diary. Anyway, to be the mature one, I said, “Oh, that’s great, I use that almost every day.” Guess what he says: “Oh, really? I invented that for girls.” What a dick. Then he said, “So, what else have you done?” and I said I have been totally distraught about Jane being sacrificed (I kind of exaggerated, but whatever) but that I plan on pulling it together soon and working on something new, maybe something with clocks. He said: “Well, you know what tomorrow is?” I said, yes, November 24th. He said, “No, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.” And everyone said, “Awwww” and I was like Are you kidding me?! Do you know how long it took me to get people to stop talking like that?

December 1st—I think the key to feeling better is to really just focus on work. Starting tomorrow, I am going to choose a new project to work on every day. It doesn’t have to be clocks; it just has to be something. Let’s go!!!!