Sarcasm is My Superpower

By Alex McGilvery

Petunia Smith is a senior in High School. The good news is that she only has to survive one more year in the battleground of High School relationships. The bad news is that she is short, shapeless and the preferred target of the cheerleader captain. Petunia knows what she needs to do, but when Marilyn walks into their home room all bets are off. The only thing worse than being Marilyn in Punkie's Hounds High School, may be becoming Marilyn's friend, but Petunia doesn't let that stop her.

"Like me," the door opened behind us and everybody turned to look at who had said that. Standing in the door was a vision in pink. Marilyn wore a wicked pair of pink stilettos with pink skin tight jeans and a skin tight tee to match. All that pink was covering a body that would make a cheerleader pant. Buff doesn't describe it. He/she looked like one of those impossibly muscular men on the covers of the books my mom likes to read. Add dangly earrings, fire engine red lipstick and a neatly trimmed goatee and you have a vision of confusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex McGilvery
• Release date: Nov 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311858283

Alex McGilvery

Alex has been writing stories almost as long as he's been reading them. He lives in Kamloops, BC and spends a great deal of time figuring out how to make his characters work hard at life. His two dogs, named after favourity scotch malts are a big reason he doesn't suffer as much as his characters.

Book preview

Sarcasm is My Superpower

Alex McGilvery

Cover Illustration by Victorine Lieske

Copyright Alex McGilvery 2014

Smashwords Edition

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Sarcasm is my Super-Power

My mom has forgotten that High School isn't the golden years. It's a battle zone. If she'd remembered that, she wouldn't have named me Petunia. She wouldn't have taken me shopping to squeal about cutesy outfits that no self-respecting kid would be caught dead in, never mind a seventeen year old, especially if she looks like she's only twelve. She'd be buying me some fricking battle armour.

So here I am on my last, first day of school. I've only got ten months to survive before I go out into the world to learn what is so bad that it makes High School look good.

The doors of the school are painted a fresh bright blue.,our team colours in fact. We're the Punkie’s Hounds High Blues. You'd be blue too, if you had to live in a place called Punkie’s Hounds Corners. I mean, really? Our claim to fame is that in the back end of nowhere, seven roads meet at one corner at the most complicated set of traffic lights on the planet. I think the surveyor wrote that on his map because it was too early in the day to be drunk enough to write what he should have written on that map. Of course if he had, we wouldn't have the name of our town printed across the front of our T-shirts now, would we?

Scratched in the fresh paint of the doors was Rickard is a dich. That gave me my first good laugh of the school year. Only a football player could screw up simple graffiti that badly. According to my mom, we are all like super heroes.

In that case, my super-power is sarcasm.

Chapter 1

What kind of name is Petunia? Chastity sat beside me in home room and waited for me to burst into tears. It after all happened just like that four years ago in this very room. No wait, my bad, it was in the Ninth Grade room. We were both Nifty Niners back then, though she was already showing signs of being much niftier than me.

Hi Chastity, I said. My summer was great. How was yours? She looked momentarily confused, but decided to carry on.

I mean, Petunia, she said loudly, isn't that Porky Pig's girlfriend? She got the predictable laugh. She'd been doing this for four years and she had the timing down perfectly. It was like watching re-runs on TV. It was time to change the channel.

Well, yes, Chastity, I said putting as much brightness in my voice as I could. Petunia was Porky Pig's girlfriend. You've got me there. I didn't get much of a laugh, except from Ron the stoner who sat behind us. I don't think he was actually laughing at my comment. He's just slow. Really, really slow. He was probably laughing at something somebody said last year. Petunias are a mild hallucinogenic used by Ecuadorian Natives. My parents must have been Incas in a previous life.

Really? Ron said.

Really, I turned and looked at him. Why else would they name me for their sacred flower? He looked puzzled.

What are you talking about? he said.

My parents being re-incarnated Incas.

No, he said, shaking his head, about the petunias getting you high.

Trust Ron, the only multi-syllabic word he knew was hallucinogenic. I smiled at him. Don't be chewing any petunias, Ron. You don't know what's been put on them.

I know this great organic gardener, he said.

Don't try to change the subject, Chastity said. Everybody knows that you're named after a pig.

As opposed to someone who's named about a virtue that they gave away in the sixth grade.

I was named after Sonny and Cher's kid.

Didn't she change her name to Chaz and grow a beard?

I'm sure Cher doesn't have a beard, Chastity said, Moron. She oinked a once or twice for old time's sake, but she'd lost the beat.

Mr. Hand walked in and looked at us. I'm sure he looked older than last year. More grey hair, more wrinkles.

Class, before we go over the rules of the school, I have an announcement. The washroom in the lower senior hall has been designated for the sole use of Marilyn.

Why does this Marilyn chick get a whole washroom to herself? Chastity asked. I could hear some supportive muttering from the rest of the blonde squad. That washroom was prime turf. No girl dared darken its doors until their graduating year. It was tradition, like Chastity trying to sleep her way through the entire football team.

It is the Board's decision, Mr. Hand said. There are special circumstances.

Like what?

Like me, the door opened behind us and everybody turned to look at who had said that. Standing in the door was a vision in pink. Marilyn wore a wicked pair of pink stilettos with pink skin tight jeans and a skin tight tee to match. All that pink was covering a body that would make a cheerleader pant. Buff doesn't describe it. He/she looked like one of those impossibly muscular men on the covers of the books my mom likes to read. Add dangly earrings, fire engine red lipstick and a neatly trimmed goatee and you have a vision of confusion.

Needless to say, Mr. Hand didn't get to go over the rules for one last time before we graduated.

There might just be something worse than being named for Porky's girlfriend.

Chapter 2

The sea of bodies in the senior's hall parted as Marilyn walked through. Ne never looked at anyone. No one looked at nem. Yet not one student so much as brushed up against that insanely handsome body. Today ne was clothed in a bright yellow sundress.

Not being one to pass up a free ride through senior's hall, I sauntered along behind Marilyn. It was easy to pick up snippets of conversation.

Who does she think he is?

I'm glad he isn't in gym, it would creep me out to have him watching us in the showers.

Where does she buy her clothes?

Marilyn pushed open the door to her private washroom. It had a sign that said Nirs on it. Ne had spent some considerable effort trying to introduce a completely new pronoun to the English language in Punkie’s Hounds High. Ne had no success. The girls referred to ne as her, the guys as him. Except on the days that it was the other way around.

There were two groups in the school. Marilyn, and everybody else. As the door closed behind that sundress, the hall imploded. My books were knocked from my hands and my glasses kicked down the hall when they fell off as I scrambled to pick up my school work before it was completely destroyed. Given that I was the smallest person in the hall, it was a forlorn hope. A series of size eleven, twelve and thirteen shoes left prints across the paper that I was due to hand in at my next class.

I gave up on saving the work and just perched on my scattered belongings. That forced the mob to part around me or trample me into the floor. At this particular moment I didn't have a preferred option. The bell for class rang and I stuffed the papers into my backpack. I was due in civics.

Mr. Sheldon was our civics teacher. It was rumoured that he was independently wealthy, but that he couldn't face a life of unending leisure. He became a teacher so he could interfere with our leisure with maximum effectiveness.

Petunia, late again? He sighed deeply and peered over his glasses at me. I do hope you have your civics paper for me. He held out his hand. I reached into my pack and pulled out a bundle of paper covered with generous sized footprints.

You can't possibly expect me to read this? Mr. Sheldon refused to take the shattered remains of my paper.

No, sir, I said, I expect the copy I emailed to you will be much easier to follow. I dropped the mess into his garbage can and went to my seat.

The school has a policy against email submissions.

The school also has a policy against violence against students. I shrugged and tried to bend my glasses back into shape. I got them to the point where I could at least balance them on my nose.

How will I know that your submission is your own work?

It will be intelligent, coherently written, and actually have some tangential relevance to the subject you assigned. I pulled out a cloth and tried to clean the lenses of my glasses.

Mr. Sheldon looked at the paper in the garbage and my disheveled appearance and sighed again. If it weren't for the fact that he had been sighing in this manner since I had him as my history teacher in my first year in this school, I might have thought that he regretted his choice of hobby.

Marilyn chose that moment to enter and drop a thumb drive on top of the pile of papers already on the desk. Mr. Sheldon opened his mouth to argue, but Marilyn just looked at