Not So Bad In Idaho Falls

“109 Ways to Suddenly and Violently Die In Idaho Falls.”

I glanced up at Linh with a “what is this” look in my eye. Linh nodded eagerly. “Yes! See! See!”

“Um, no,” I answered. The thin paperback book in Linh’s hand titled 109 Ways to Suddenly and Violently Die In Idaho Falls held exactly no answers for me, and I told Linh so with a look. In my mind the look said: “I know what you’re doing and would you please, please stop already.” But it may have just been a confused look since Linh took the chance to immediately start talking.

“Sudden and painful death!” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “How exciting!” 

“Ughhh.” I rested my head against a locker and sighed–well, groaned–at Linh’s infuriating, but still kind of endearing, persistence.

Unperturbed by my less than enthusiastic response, Linh continued, “No, look. I know you think moving to Idaho was the worst thing to ever happen to you, but it remains my mission to show you why Idaho is so awesome! I mean come on! Look, where else could you get…uh, get, uh…” She glanced down at the open book. “Get impaled by a falling magpie!”

I give her a sideways glance. “Yeah? What are the chances of that?”

“That's the great thing about this book,” Linh beams and shoves a lock of her shockingly long, white-blonde hair behind her ear as she talks. “It even has the percentages of each catastrophic death! And little quotes, graphs, pictures…oh my. That's gruesome.”

I rest my head on the locker again. And at that particular moment a boy from my English class walks up to me. Unlike Linh, who looks so pale and tiny you'd think a gust of wind could blow her away, this boy has a mass of curly brown hair that looks like a cross between a bunch of worms or an untidy bird's nest. With huge black glasses to complete Nax’s look.

I’m surprised when he comes to a stop in front of me, considering I’ve never spoken to him, ever. 

“Jennie.”

“Yeah?” I twisted my neck to look at him but kept my head on the locker (it was a Monday, don’t act like you don’t understand).

“That's my locker.”

“Ah, my bad.” I started to scoot over, but he grinned. 

“Just kidding.” Nax and Linh both laugh at the look on my face.

I sigh–definitely didn’t sigh this much at my old house–and congratulate myself on keeping all the thoughts bubbling in my head from coming out of my mouth. Most of them are Monday thoughts, which aren't so nice.

“Mrs. Bean wants to see you,” Nax says. 

“Great. Lead the way, Jokester.” 

“You have to admit,” Nax says, looking over his shoulder at me as we walk up the stairs, probably towards the English classroom. “That was pretty good.”

“I really don’t.”

“Yeah,” Linh pipes up. “She’s good at denial.”

After a few minutes during which I briefly considered strangling both of them, we made it to Mrs. Bean’s classroom. The English class resembled an old-fashioned print shop mixed with a crazy lady's hut. Which described Mrs. Bean pretty well. The music, an abomination of sound with no discernible rhythm or beat, blasted through a speaker in the wall. 

“Girls! You made it!” Mrs. Bean exclaims as she bustles into view holding a stack of papers in one hand and a mug of steaming tea in the other. 

“I’m here too,” Nax pointed out, but Mrs. Bean had already moved to the other side of the room and started filing the papers away in her ginormous filing cabinet.

“Jennie! My star pupil!”

“I got an A++ on my last book report,” Nax mumbled.

“Jennie, I think I have found the perfect story for you!” Mrs. Bean said, who either ignored or hadn’t heard Nax. 

“Uh, really,” I answered, glumly. The thing with Mrs. Bean (other than her questionable music taste) was that she tried to keep up with all the latest news. Not news-news. In fact, if you asked who the current president was she’d say something along the lines of: “Oh, sweetheart, I stopped keeping track of that decades ago! I suppose it isn’t Bush anymore?” No, Mrs. Bean kept track of gossip, rumors, and general nonsense. She said it was her job since she was in charge of the Newspaper Club, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what the principal had in mind.

Newspaper Club was another lame thing about moving to Idaho. I’d been part of the school newspaper for years, and this year was no different. But here, there was nothing to write about. The most exciting thing I’d written about was when Stoney Robins fell down the stairs and into the freshly painted mural (which was hilarious but not exactly newsworthy). Back home I’d written about lies and blackmail and interesting things! The little Mural Incident was nothing. So when Mrs. Bean told me she had the perfect story for me, I was unimpressed.

“A little bird told me some very interesting tidbits.” Mrs. Bean winked. I tried hard not to roll my eyes. Mrs. Bean was either in the company of many semi-delusional birds or her “tips” were fabricated by students, because they were almost never true.

Mrs. Bean leaned in conspiratorially, and instinctively Nax, Linh, and I leaned in too. Well, Nax just sort of shuffled since he didn’t seem to be sure if he was actually involved in the conversation or not. “When I was walking past the principal's office this morning to deliver some papers,” Mrs. Bean began, “I overheard someone speaking. It was Stoney Robins, you all know him, right?” We nodded. “Well, it turns out he destroyed the mural on purpose! I do believe Jamie Lee paid him to do it because his little brother or maybe his best friend, not sure which, painted it and Jamie was angry with him at the time. It was a sort of revenge.” She beams down at us. “Isn’t that something! I’m tasking you three with writing the most illuminating story on it. It will be the story of the year! What do you say?”

“Yes! This is perfect,” Linh shrieks. “This is the perfect example, Jennie! Now you’ll see Idaho isn’t boring!” Nax made a skeptical face. “Plus you won’t have to read the death book, but I still recommend it because it is really fascinating and–,”

“Um, won’t Stoney be super mad at us?” Nax asks.

“Well, to be honest, I had only envisioned Jennie working on this since she’s new, and Stoney wouldn’t know her, but then Linh showed up and you stuck around…Ah, well! What's done is done. I’m sure you’ll find a way around that! Be creative.”

And with those cryptic instructions, Mrs. Bean left the room.

“How has she not been fired yet?” I wondered.

“I’m guessing the principal doesn’t want to face ‘The Wrath of the Unhappy Educator,’ ” Linh answered. Me and Nax turned to look at her.

“89,” she replied to our confused looks.

“What?” Nax asked.

“Its number 89 in 109 Ways to--”

I rested my head on the nearest locker and sighed for the millionth time that morning.

Two weeks later, to everyone’s surprise–especially mine–the story Mrs. Bean had suggested we write actually did turn out pretty well. My writing was good, Nax’s interview with Stoney Robins was spot on, and Linh’s snippets from 109 Ways to Suddenly and Violently Die in Idaho Falls…were squeezed into the very bottom of the page, but Linh didn’t need to know that.

“Number 34,” Linh read aloud. She was still determined to get me to read that strange book. “‘Deranged Nurse-Lady With A Taste For Human Blood: While experts say the chances of death via vampire nurse are low, in reality the percentage is rather high. Some say even in the ones! But most agree it is much more likely to be eaten by a radioactive cow (for more information see Number 60: Cows With An Affinity For Radiation on page 73) tha b n to have your blood sucked by a vampire nurse.’” Linh paused and scrunched up her nose. “This one seems a little far fetched.”

“Oh, really?”

At that precise moment a boy with hair that reminded me of a whole lot of worms ran up to us. Ran, as in, full sprint. I half expected him to say something like: “The Titanic 2.0 is sinking and the world is dying and vampire cows are riding radioactive nurses through the streets!”

In reality Nax said: “Guysguysguysguys!”

“Whatwhatwhatwhat,” was my bored reply. Having Nax and Linh as friends meant dealing with a lot of weirdness so this had barely phased me.

“Stoney found out who published the article, and don’t say ‘it was anonymous’, Linh because I know that. Stoney found out somehow!”

Linh gasped. “He’ll be so angry! What do we do?”

“I don’t know,” Nax moaned. “He’s probably already boobytrapping our lockers with that Poisoned Pie Catapult you told me about.”

“Aw, come on,” I groaned. “She converted you to that book now too? Anyways, why would he target your locker?”

“Have you never seen a high school movie before,” Nax asked, exasperated like I was being exceptionally stupid. “Bullies always target the locker.”

With a “whatever” look I walk with Linh and Nax towards our lockers. And to be fair…people did seem to be staring at us and giggling but that could have just been Linh with her giant leather jacket which had her favorite quotes from a book (can you guess which one?) glued to it. Or Nax with his glasses so huge they magnified his eyes so he looked like a bird. Or maybe me simply because I was the “New Girl”.

We reached Linh’s locker first and Nax did seem to be right about the whole “bullies target the lockers” thing since Linh had something taped to her locker. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach as we drew nearer. 

Linh reached the paper and pulled it off. She seemed confused for a moment but then she gasped loudly.

“NO!”

“What? What is it?” Nax and I asked quickly. We glanced nervously at each other.

“My…my map of idaho. I spent so long on it; it’s hand drawn with a dot on all the exciting places. I keep it in my locker at all times–obviously, I mean who wouldn’t–and somehow Stoney got it out and…and…”

“And?” Nax prompted.

“He wrote ‘Idaho's lame’ all over it!” Linh wailed. I sighed and slapped my hand on my forehead. Meanwhile Nax consoled Linh and told her they could make another one.

As Nax soothed Linh a boy walked by and said to him: “Nice job, bro. That's impressive.”

“Huh?” Nax looked questingly at me. I Just shrugged. Nervously we went to Nax’s locker where we found a bunch of assignments stuck on with tape. They all had little B+’s and B-’s and one C+ written on them.

“Noooooooo!” Nax yelped. “This is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me.”

“Dude, If I got a B my parents would take me out for ice cream,” said Hallway Kid.

“Same here,” said someone who might have actually been Stoney.

“Nonononononononono,” Nax mumbled.

“Seriously.” I raised an eyebrow. “You are such a cliche. Actually this is like every high school movie ever.”

“Just leave me to die in peace,” he said as he slowly began ripping off the papers and hiding them in his locker.

“It's okay, Nax,” Linh said, patting Nax’s shoulder with a glare at me. “You don’t have to be perfect.”

“But I want to have a reputation for being flawless at everything academic! I want competitors for valedictorian to tremble at the sound of my name! I want teachers to create ballads of my scholarly successes! But now everyone will know that I once got a ‘C’. A ‘C’!”

“Someone gag me,” I muttered. “Come on. Let's go see my locker and get it over with.”

Once we reached my locker I saw a badly drawn picture of me in a cage with Idaho and the words “Your gonna be stuck here forever now. Hahaha!” written below it.

“It should be ‘you’re’ spelled Y-O-U-Apostrophe-R-E,” Linh remarked.

“And clearly Stoney can only destroy art, not create it,” Nax commented.

“To be honest, this was all a little disappointing. I was kinda hoping to feel bullied by the end. Not disappointed,” I said.

“Look,” Stoney said, appearing behind us. “You guys are hard to bully, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah. Excuses, excuses,” Nax responded. We all stared at the locker for a minute and then simultaneously started taking the “decorations” down from each locker. Stoney went off to bully some freshman kid and Nax went upstairs to beg his teachers for retakes on all the “failed” assignments. Never mind that they were years old.

 Me and Linh sat outside in the warm sunny air. That was one nice thing about Idaho. The summers were glorious. 

As we sat Linh read more ways to violently die, occasionally pointing out the more interesting pictures, the light wind swished my hair, the magpies chirped their ugly song ( By the way, none of them fell and impaled us) and I started to think that maybe, just maybe…

Maybe it wasn’t so bad here in Idaho Falls after all.

The End.