Sandalrella

Perceptions of a Teenage Famepire

By J. F. Delery

FREE CHAPTER

Excuuuuuse me, nauseating narrator: Stop mangling my story! This isn’t another version of the candy-coated fairy tale about a pretty but, let’s face it, pushy peasant girl who crashes the dance, ignores her curfew, abandons her date, yet marries a prince and lives fashionably ever after in custom footwear.

This is the Do-NOT-panic-but-you-just-ate-GLUTEN scary tale I intend to tell about the horrors of high school [Carrie + Heathers + Scream + every Friday, pizza colder and soggier than the icy, slushy mittens you inadvertently left inside your winter boots overnight after a snowball fight], the price of fame [definitely premium retail, not outlet markdown] and, worse, the humiliation of still owning a dumbphone in a smartphone universe.

I, Sandalrella, a senior at Bey-Z High School for Celebrity Journalism and Other Nonsense Americans Consider News, live with my Very Odd Mother and Evil Stepmister in a “ramspackle” house.

[I know it’s supposed to be “ramshackle,” but believe me, my house is a plaster disaster held together with goo; also, I’m a logophile, a nerd who loves playing with words, so I define MY LIFE, MY WAY! Sorry for the capital punishment, but I yearn to be heard.]

Friends call me grimsical — yeah, yeah: half grim, half whimsical — but I’m not one of those teenagers who look at life through morose-colored glasses. Adults say I view the world weirdly, though I prefer to think I see the image people project: frightfully freakish.

I want to join the inexhaustible flock of famepires, those nocturnal creatures of habit who loathe sunlight [because it ages and wrinkles their precious skin] but worship the spotlight. No matter what they do, no matter how shamefully they behave, famepires can’t die of embarrassment; the only thing that can kill them is lack of attention, an impossibility in a country with an insatiable celebrity fixation.

I want to flee this blandscape and live on Ea$y Street, at the corner of Fame and Fortune. I don’t want diamond bling; I want EVERYTHING! I want to be a Beyoncé-grade diva. I want to be LADY GARGANTUAN! How hard can that be to achieve? One viral video containing full-frontal stupidity or one super-sarcastic tweet that gets the globe all atwitter immediately builds universal name recognition, the foundation of fame. Heck, nowadays in our instant-gratification nation, we make stars out of nitwits dimmer than night-lights.

*SIGH* I still haven’t forgiven myself for not being Jennifer Lawrence.

Every morning I shape my brows, curl my lashes, pick, squeeze and pop pimples [a flagrant violation of the beauty code punishable by one gazillion zits on prom night, but DQMOT*]. I cleanse and tone and moisturize and exfoliate. My hair shines, my eyes glimmer, and my lips shimmerlike Super Girlie, the strong but phenomenally feminine heroine of my favorite TV show.
She fights for fashion equality at elegant department stores that discriminate against all but the UnFed, those designer-bag-of-bones narrow-minded clothes makers consider their model customers.
*Don’t Quote Me on That

[If you’re wondering, I get my mountains of creams, serums, salves, balms, gels, foundations, eye shadow, mascara, lip gloss, lipstick, shampoos, conditioners, blushes and brushes from the charity Cosmetic Changes.  Stars donate outdated, unwanted makeup because it makes them look good … especially to the audience actors want to impress most: their tireless publicity machines and the Fawning Media Mob™. And no, I’m not a paid celebrity spokeswoman — yet.]

JSYK:* I prefer silent communication, or what I call nonversation — I can text your ear off. Sure, talk is cheap, but unlimited texting is affordable, easy, and fast. Imagine how much horsepower, breath, and time Paul Revere would have saved if instead of galloping from town to town shouting, “The British are coming,” he could have just mass-texted: TBAC. Try conveying such irrefutable techno-logic to my Evil Stepmister. What else would you call a “demon dad” who dictates his stepdaughter talk about her day at the dinner table — a torture harsher than no texting in class!
*Just So You Know

About the only people talking these days are those monstrous motormouths the Gorgon Triplets, my nemeses at Bey-Z High, or my prehistoric parents, who were born [Before Cable, Before Cellular, Before Celebrities, I think] in 1970 B.C.!!!!! I’d speak more if conversations were like skimming the terms of service online: I could ignore all the words, scroll immediately to the end, and automatically agree.

“C’mon, nobody calls anyone anymore,” I insist to my Evil Stepmister.

“You say that as if it’s an improvement,” he replies at the aforementioned dinner table, the pulpit where he does his loudest god-awful speechifying. “Little connects us except servers, signals from cell towers, and our devotion to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter, the sanctuary where the snide hide. An umbilical cable tethers members of your generation to a modem, the modern mouthpiece. I communicate the out-of-fashion way: vocally. Like ventriloquists, you and your peers ‘talk’ without moving your lips, content to ‘chat’ online or text in, IDK,* e-mitation English rather than speak in person or even on the phone, the home-away-from-home entertainment center you desperately clutch as though it were a fraying lifeline. You stare at your phone constantly, yet when it rings, you and your fellow telephobes recoil and scream, ‘Whoooo’s Callllling?’ — the title of the next horror-movie franchise, I’m assuming.
*I Don’t Know

“Somehow, I survived childhood, even though my computer was just a slide rule, a cryptic plastic stick with an inscrutable combination of numerals, graduated lines, and esoteric symbols only an arithmagician could decipher. Miraculously, I’ve lasted into adulthood, even though my ‘smartphone’ was only a land line with push buttons instead of a rotary dial. I grew up happily watching black-and-white TV and listening to a hi-fi. You’ve grown up gazing blankly at 1080p HDTV and searching for Wi-Fi — and looking lost without it. We come from vastly different times, vastly different solar systems.”

“I’m an underprivileged child,” I explain eloquently. “I have only basic cable and no data plan on my dumbphone. I need a telethon, people! OMG, it just struck me: I’m so digitally impaired, I’m almost Amish!”

“America is a nation of ravenous gadgeteers restless for the next device,” my Evil Stepmister yammers, resuming his sermon, which should be delivered by Domino’s® because it’s extra cheesy. “Oh, what’s the use, Sandalrella? I’m preaching to an empty church. Everything your mother and I tell you goes in one earbud and out the other. Look, I’m just saying we’ve shrunk life until it fits into a pocket-size gimmick. Yes, I’m a 2G straggler hopelessly trailing the whatever-G-we’re-up-to-now lead pack, but I’m not an ogre or a cheapskate because I won’t buy you all the gizmos you crave.”

“I forgive you, Reverend Evil ;], but just so you know: No Internet access
on a wireless phone is the new first circle of hell.”

“Home isn’t just where you recharge your cell phone,” says my Very Odd Mother, the sarcastic [her one good quality] but autocratic Mommy Superior of this virtually analog convent.

“Yeah, it would also be where I’d recharge my iPad and iMac … if I owned those, too!”

“Lose the brattitude, Justine Bieber,” demands my VOM, who also enjoys contorting words into funny shapes.

“I’d sooner lose my phone!”

So, now you see my problem: a fulminating father figurine and a surreally mordant mother who must secretly yearn to be an acupuncturist because she enjoys needling people, especially her only child. 

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