Posted: March 22nd, 2010 | Author: Laryssa | Filed under: Fireworks | No Comments »
The following excerpt is the third part of “Fireworks”. You can read the first part here. You can read the second part here.
I wondered if the nuclear power plant in Egg Harbor had exploded. Were we now slowly dying of radiation poisoning?
When I was in fifth grade, my teacher made me write an essay about the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine. She knew I was Ukrainian and wanted me to explore my heritage. What did I know about Chernobyl?
Well, when I used to attend Ukrainian school on Saturday mornings, my friends and I made fun of the “fresh-off-the-boat” kid in our class, the one who contracted leukemia from being exposed to Chernobyl’s aftermath. I had never wanted to visit Ukraine, and I swore it was a disgusting and toxic place. I deserved death by nuclear power plant explosion.
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Posted: March 19th, 2010 | Author: Laryssa | Filed under: Fireworks | No Comments »
The following excerpt is the second part of “Fireworks”. You can read the first part here.
By most standards, we were “good girls”.
My public school friends told me about kids who brought guns and marijuana to school. Neither Madsy nor I had ever done drugs. We hardly drank alcohol, and Madsy was the only one who had ever tried a cigarette.
But in the context of a Catholic school environment and under the strict rule of parents with high expectations, we tried to get away with what we could.
That wasn’t much. We were so innocent that no one ever believed how innocent we were.
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Posted: March 18th, 2010 | Author: Laryssa | Filed under: Fireworks | 1 Comment »
The following excerpt is the first part of “Fireworks”. You can read the second part here.
Madsy and I decided that we weren’t going to attend our senior prom.
First of all, we definitely didn’t want to spend the little money we earned from our part-time jobs on dresses we would wear once and formal hairstyles that would take forever to comb out at the end of the night.
More importantly, we didn’t know any boys. Many of our classmates at Saint Margaret’s had been set up with brothers, cousins, or friends of the few classmates who had boyfriends.
Any skinny and pimply prom date we could get at the last minute would probably ask for a blow-job in the diner after prom or show up drunk to the pre-prom photo shoot.
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