Ready or Not

Top ten ways to keep yourself occupied during after-school detention at John Adams Preparatory Academy:

10. Finish Trig homework.

9. Bite nails.

8. Attempt to do assigned German reading.

7. Wonder what your parents are going to do when they find out you got detention.

6. Decide they probably will forbid you from going to Camp David with your boyfriend for Thanksgiving.

5. Decide this probably wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

4. Write personal essay due in English class, What Patriotism Means to Me. Write that patriotism means disagreeing with the government without having to go to jail.

3. Make your own manga. Only not one of those lame ones with boys who turn into cuddly rabbits or whatever when the heroine hugs them. But a cool one, where the heroine is on a mission to avenge her family, like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, and kills everyone who stands in her way.

2. Give up on manga after five frames because it is too hard and try to draw your boyfriend from memory instead, concentrating on the whole and not the parts.

And the number-one thing to do in detention at Adams Prep:

1. Wonder if your boyfriend even likes you anymore, after the way you’ve been treating him. And worry that he may come to his senses and realize he could easily get a girlfriend who is much less of a head case than you.