December 19, 2025
221 Penny Lane
Providence Flats, Alabama
3:42 p.m.
They say kids don’t know anything about love. Well, that’s just a bunch of bullshark right there, on the face of it.
“Bullshark” is my creative term for, well, you know. Mama don’t like me cussing, so … I have to come up with little words and phrases that aren’t cussing, but people know what it means, anyway, and how peeved off I am, which is most of the time, especially when Miss Bell, my old maid math teacher picks on me for the most ridiculous “bullshark,” like not doing my homework (Am I the only one?). Or talking to my friends during class (Am I the only one?). Or talking back (sure, I did strike an attitude that one time — but stop me if you’ve heard this before — Am I the only one?) My best friend, Clara, tells me old Batsy Bell — her real name is Betsy, which somehow is an offshoot of Elizabeth — isn’t racist, but Clara’s white as a bed sheet, so I don’t know what makes her the judge of all things racist. Amiright?
Anyway, how did I get on that? I guess, being fifteen, I find it so easy to get sidetracked. Now, Mom, that’s a different story. She is laser-focused on everything I do, who I hang out with, my teensiest, tiniest thoughts. I’m surprised she hasn’t run off with my diary yet. Boy, there’s some stuff in here that’d make her hair curl like she’d just left the Soulful Strands beauty salon (where, as she says, she gets her hair did) and then ran straight into a good, swift wind.
Now, before you think my diary’s something straight out of Euphoria, it’s really not. Clara, God love her and forgive her, told me that she and her boyfriend, Mark Carlyle (a senior — gasp), have been to second base. I took that to be a good thing — not necessarily in a Christian context — even though I am horribly behind in my sports/sex metaphors.
By the way, there’s not even cussing in my diary, not even a little bit. And you show me a girl my age who doesn’t cuss at least when her folks aren’t around, and I’ll show you a girl who lived in 1625, not 2025. Even so, I’ll bet little Purity Jones let a Zounds or a hellfire slip every now and again.
