I, Penelope
By
Amanda Hamlin
Chapter One
part I
Dungeon Master I
I am Penelope, a long haired, tiny breasted sophomore at Holerton High. I dress in guy's clothes, love heavy metal, and have a secret obsession with video games and Dungeons and Dragons. And I am in love. He is currently sitting across from me in geometry class working on a proof. His name is Robert and, with his neatly brushed hair, crisp shirt, and glasses, he looks every bit as intelligent as he really is. He's in all advanced classes which is great because so am I, which means we get to spend a lot of time together, and he's always saying clever and witty things. I could listen to him for hours.
We make a great team for to doing proofs. When it comes to math, I'm no good at creative thinking and can't always see all the relationships between lines, angles, etc. and Robert has no problems with this. But then, he can't turn his observations into a proof because he doesn't remember all the proof rules. I, on the other hand, have all the theorems memorized and can recite them at a moment's notice. Robert looks at the problem and tells me what steps he wants to prove and then I tell him how to prove them. It's a great system we have going and it's a good sign for our future life together. Even though he's obsessed with cheerleaders right now, he will see that we are meant to be.
Sven Plotz, a friend of Robert and the object de lust of my best friend Kendra, is sitting next to him. I'm not sure why she likes him. He's hyper, random, and spastic. So different from Robert's reserve and dignity. He contributes to our proof writing team as well...by trying to distract us and, then, when we finally manage to finish the problem anyway, by copying our answers. With this excellent brand of teamwork, it's no surprise that we finish the assignment far ahead of the rest of the class. Sven immediately pulls out a video game hint guide and goes flipping through it. I grope in my backpack for my latest fantasy novel. Robert starts pouring over a stack of typewritten pages, muttering to himself and making strange gestures as he does so.
“What've you got there?” I ask tentatively. We talk to each other a lot because we're always working together but casual conversation is still a little scary.
“It's a play I wrote for my English class. My partner and I have to act it out today, so I want to make sure I'm well-rehearsed.”
“Let's see what you've got.” I know Robert's a great performer. He's been in theater for years and I would love to watch since, one of the things I love most about Robert is how creative and imaginative he is. Robert clears his throat and straightens his papers, then begins. It's a story about a hero whose wife is stolen away by an evil wizard. Robert is going to be playing the hero and his partner the evil wizard. But, since his partner isn't here now, he's so talented he plays both parts. He bangs his fist on the table and says in a commanding voice, “Give me back my wife.” Almost, I can imagine we're in the dark cave of the wizard's fortress instead of such a boring and ordinary place as geometry class.
Robert quickly switches roles and starts playing the wizard. “You can only have her back if you perform all the tasks I set you, no matter how impossible they seem. Your first task will be to retrieve the perfect pearl that is hidden in the belly of a giant shark.” His performance is so compelling that Sven actually puts down his hint book and starts paying attention to us. “The shark was huge and hideous,” Robert goes on with a dramatic flourish. “It had five rows of razor sharp teeth, each as big as a man. It's fins were like small ships and its skin so thick that a sword would barely scratch it. Our hero knew he had no hope of defeating it in combat so, instead, he hid in some seaweed close by and memorized the pattern in which the shark opened and closed its mouth.” As he says this, Robert takes his hands and mimes the opening and closing of the mouth. “When he was able to time it perfectly, he waited until the mouth was at its widest point, then swam inside to retrieve the pearl.” I'm completely immersed in Robert's performance but I can't help wanting to enhance it more. Thinking I'm being subtle, I sneak my hand across the table and swipe the script.
“Why did you do that?” asks Robert.
“I wanted to see if you could do it without looking at the words.”
“If I'm looking at you,” oh yes he is, “I can't read off the sheet anyway. Unless I had eyeballs in the roof of my mouth. Wait, that would be really sick. I could see myself chewing.”
“How about up your nose?” asks Sven.
“Think about what you would see when you sneezed.”
“What if you had eyes in the back of your head?” I suggest.
“You would poke yourself in the eye when you combed you hair.”
“Be careful with those razors,” says Sven.
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“He shaves the hair behind his ears. See?” Sven grabs a hold of Robert's ear and bends it forward to reveal a small crescent of bare skin behind. Robert does not appreciate the action at all.
“If you don't mind,” he says stiffly, shoving Sven away, “I would like to finish my story now.” He smooths his hair, so that every strand is just so again and straightens the collar of his shirt before continuing. Another thing I like about Robert is that he has such excellent composure and never lets anyone upset it. “For the hero's final task, the wizard took him to a room filled with thousands of identical statues of his wife and said to him, 'Now you must pick the one statue out of all of them which is really your wife. You only get one chance and, if you choose wrong, she will be burned alive before your eyes.'” Now Robert switches back over to the hero again, as he muses on how to make his choice. “'The reason the wizard must attack me through my wife is because I am protected by a magic talisman so he cannot touch me. That talisman is in form of a hair pin, which my wife wears on her head pointing upwards. The wizard must not know this or he would have removed the pin and killed me by now. If he does not know about it, it won't be in the statue copies.' So he carefully ran his hand over the head of each statue,” Robert mimes this too, “and only one pricked him in the hand. But, just to confuse the wizard, he ran his hand over all the heads of the statues a second time.”
At this point, Sven has gotten bored with the story, so he picks up some of the large paper polyhedrons on display on the table behind him, and starts amusing himself by tossing them about, pretending they're dice. “Once the wizard was completely bewildered,” Robert goes on, “he took his true wife by the hand and...” One of the large polyhedrons hits him in the head when Sven tosses it a bit too vigorously. “You idiot. That's the second time you have disrupted my story. You die now.”
“Give me a chance to escape,” whines Sven in mock fear, holding out an octahedron to Robert as if it's a peace offering.
Robert picks up the octahedron. “If I roll a number from one to eight, I kill you, Sven.” Then he picks up the dodecahedron. “What number do you want to be your death, Sven?”
“Forty-two”
“Fine, I get to roll as many times as necessary to get a forty-two.” He rolls the polygon several times, keeping track of the sum of the numbers, until they total forty-one. Then, he looks at each side carefully until he finds the one and sets the polygon carefully on the table, so it is face up.
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Copyright. Amanda R. Hamlin
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