Sprout

remained as flat as the Kansas
    “No no no ,” Mrs. Miller cut in again. “Exposition. Background. Don’t start with a character sketch. And for God’s sake, please . No nipples . I’ll give you three minutes. Now go!”
    “Maybe if you’d stop inter—”
    “Two minutes fifty-five seconds. Go, Sprout. Go!”
    My pen quivered above the page, just as it had when Ruthie first commanded me to write. How were you supposed to compose something meaningful when someone was standing over you, stopping you every time you got started? Telling you what to write about, but not what to actually write . But that reminded me:
    “I will be your muse,” Ruthie said to me, standing on one of the stumps at the edge of the playground with her arms in a Statue of Liberty pose. “Nancy Spungeon to your Sid Vicious, Patti Smith to your Robert Mapplethorpe, Courtney Love to your Kurt Cobain.”
At first I was like, my muse? And then, after she explained to me who everyone was, I was like, my muse ?
“I’m a little worried here. All those guys are dead.”
“Death,” Ruthie didn’t bat an eye, “is a crucial component of fame. Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Eva Peron, River Phoenix, Tupac and Biggie. Heath Ledger. Anybody worth their salt is planning for death from the moment they’re born. Otherwise what’s the point?”
“How much is salt worth?”
“I mean, everyone knows Princess Di, but who was that guy in the car with her? No one remembers.”
“Dodi Al Fayed. And isn’t salt, like, cheap?”
“I’m thinking pills,” Ruthie pirouetted on the stump. “On the eve of my fortieth birthday. Or maybe I’ll become a terrorist. Patty Hearst was so glam in the SLA. She wasn’t smart enough to get shot though, and what is she now? Just another heiress with bad plastic surgery and a tall gate around her house, dreaming of the days when life used to be fun. Like, yuck .”
“Di’s boyfriend was named Dodi Al Fayed.”
“Yeah? And who read his biography?”
    “And … time. Pen down, Sprout.”
    Mrs. Miller looked over what I’d written.
    “Getting there, getting there. You’ve certainly got good material in your friend. Although I wonder if I need to report her to Mr. Philpot.”
    The Phil-bot was the school counselor.
    “Mrs. M.!”
    “Just kidding, S. ,” she said, her laugh fluttering behind her own joke like a Confederate flag on the antenna of a muddy pickup truck. “But seriously. I’m wondering where you are in all this. You kind of disappear, you know.”
    I nodded. I did know.
    “Ruthie’s like that.”
    Mrs. Miller’s nod echoed mine, although, like her laugh, it went on too long. Then, out of left field:
    “Have you ever talked to Mr. Philpot?”
    Cue smile going hard and sharp as a pizza cutter, eyes blinking faster than a gat, fingers clutching at my dictionary cover. (That’d be me, by the way, not Mrs. M.) I had the sudden urge to drop my glass on the patio, but I fought it off.
    “Have you ever talked to the Phil-bot?” That was me, too.
    Duh.
    “The—? Oh.” Mrs. Miller couldn’t quite suppress her smile. “I know he can be a bit stiff.”
    “He wears bowties.”
    “Effective counseling doesn’t require that he be ‘down with the kids,’ as you say.”
    “If I ever employed such a doof-butt phrase, I was doing so ironically. And the Phil-bot’s bowties have smiley faces on them.”
    “In fact ”—apparently Mrs. Miller was feeling persistent today—“it’s often better when you don’t think of your counselor as a peer, so you don’t feel he’s judging you in the same way kids your age might.”
    “He has a poster in his office that says ‘Mental Health Is Mental Wealth.’ ”
    Mrs. Miller closed her mouth. Then: “He does?” (She opened it again to say that. Duh.)
    “Where the E’s should be there are old-timey gold pieces instead.”
    “ Really ?” Mrs. Miller grabbed the empty pitcher and stood up, wobbling slightly. “I didn’t realize it was as bad as all that .”
    As she walked away, it occurred to me that mentioning the poster was a mistake, since it gave away the fact that I’d actually been to see the Phil-bot. I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell that particular story. So:
    In ninth grade my dad got picked up for drunk-driving. (Wait, don’t act so shocked, you’re making me self-conscious.) It being his first offense, the only thing that happened was his license was suspended for three months, which lead to the hi lar ious