I never thought we'd actually need Code Blue at school. It's not that I usually leave the building at lunch or stay after school anyhow, but just having security standing grimly around the doors and herding us around was intimidating. Who'd shoot people up at Leisure World??? I won't be so melodramatic as to say that the black shadow of violence lurks wherever I go. More like a smudgy grey chiaroscuro. I go to the Togo's (sandwich place) right next to the Aspen Hill gas station every day for lunch in the summer, and my mom was like, "Nooo! Don't go to there! It's dangerous!" and I was like "Yeah right, it's a gas station." Well guess who was wrong. These places aren't so geographically close to me, but I go to them on a regular basis it still feels like people are being murdered in my backyard, and my backyard is all over the news with caution tape around it and bullet holes and flowers in memorium. I wonder how first graders feel that seemingly every year they start school, there's always some Annual Random Act of Senseless Violence.

Needless to say, Spirited Away at White Flint is cancelled.

I suppose I don't have much to complain about in comparison to a good deal of other people.

As it is, I don't suppose anyone except people in this local vicinity really care very much.

I had a dream that Alex was run down by a car and died. Afterwards, we'd (meaning the juniors) would be at school and doing school stuff and we'd see things that reminded us of Alex, and places he'd been, and things he'd never finished. It would make us happy at first to remember him, and sad because then we'd have to remember that he wasn't there and he wouldn't be coming back. And also, I was wondering where he was, since he was dead and if there was an afterlife, and that made me sad too because I knew that he'd probably be really excited at having found out the answer to the Life, the Universe, and Everything, and wanting to tell us, and it sounded so much like Alex. And I said, "Did you hear about Alex?" to people and Jen said, "Yeah" and I told Andrew said that it wasn't so painful to understand what happened to him, but more that someone could intentionally do something like that. And then Nick S said something modern and nonsensical.

I'm glad you're alive, Alex.

Waking up crying is so much worse than waking up screaming- when I was little, I'd just have nightmares of monsters in the basement. I don't know why my dreams have to grow up as I do.

Finished Feet of Clay. Believe I said this already. Disturbing phenomena yesterday. Pratchett describes Carrot being shot through the hand with a crossbow, my left palm starts hurting like hell, only lessens when I dig into it with my fingernails, and after I go to sleep. Felt better this morning, doesn't hurt now. It's a condition with me or something. Describe a piercing injury through the palm in fiction (which happens more often than you think) and my palm hurts. Believe it's called "cognitive--..." uh something or other but it's cuz cognition is closely related to emotion, which can mainfest itself physically or something. Aw whatever. I used to, when I was little, think it was because Jesus didn't want me to forget his crucifiction, which is why I couldn't stand the sight of it and it hurt me. I also have a deathly fear of impalation. Fencing has helped a bit. Only when I stand still when people are doing drills and have to *wait* for people to drive three feet of metal into my chest, that's not very pleasant. I used to think that impaling someone would be rather graceful, sort of like cutting butter, and feel like a quick stab of pain through your body before you die, but now I think it'd be more painful because meat and bone and whatnot has got resistance, and if you're driving this long piece of metal through it, that'd probably require a bit of.. twisting and serating and tearing, even if the actual stabbing would probably be quick. The process is probably quite painful. And you wouldn't die instantly you'd have to wait to bleed to death.

I'm wondering about the nature of Carrot's injuries, depending on what type of crossbow Pratchett was talking about. Eddings seems to describe crossbow bolts as actual metal bolts, which, if something like that hit Carrot in the palm would probably smash all his hand bones and turn it into a bloody pulp. But Pratchett's crossbow bolts seem more like normal arrows. But if that were so then the arrow would probably punch *through* Carrot's hand, ew. And Pratchett doesn't describe him actually pulling the arrow out but next thing you know he's fighting like nothing happened to him, which was very weird in my mind because I imagined Carrot fighting with this bigass arrow still like sticking out of his hand. He doesn't even go for medical attention after the fight. Pratchett must've just forgot about it. Hmm. But the pain in my palm is more like a pricking like someone stuck a compass in it, not like someone smashed my hand with an iron bar, so that must be it. Arrow it is. Damn, hurts again. Knew I shouldn't have started writing about it.