body copy (a.g.)

= Chapter Six =

= Chapter Six =

"Remind me why I let you drag me into this again?" Melanie says to me as we stare into the gaping abyss of despair that is the van bursting with cardboard boxes full of newspapers in front of us.

Why all of the despair, you ask? We are but two small girls up against some very heavy boxes, and quite frankly, I'm already exhausted from just thinking about moving these things.

"I didn't drag you," I tell her as I sign the delivery form, throwing a little thank you to the printing guy. "You're a good friend and you told me you would help me."

"You didn't say there was going to be this much manual labor, though," Melanie whines, crossing her arms and pouting like an unhappy child. Her expression looks even funnier when you couple it with the fact that she's wearing dark, wine-colored lipstick and black overalls that barely cover her ass. (Melanie is the queen of avoiding being dress coded. I swear, I wear a skirt that's an inch too short and I have to come up with something else to put on, but she wears a crop top and a pair of itty-bitty shorts, and somehow, not one adult manages to write her up. It's so unfair, but I also have a lot of respect for her because of it.)

"Oh, shut up and grab a cart," I announce with a good-natured eye-roll, gesturing flippantly to the AV cart I managed to dredge up from the depths of the library's storage room.

I've enlisted Melanie to help me haul in the papers this morning, afraid that no one else would show up to help. It's a good thing, too, because we found ourselves alone, even though the delivery guy was fifteen minutes late.

The work is difficult, and I actually begin to break a sweat halfway through the job. Melanie tiptoes around in her velvet creepers, teetering under the weight of box after box of papers. I don't fair much better, back aching and arms weak by the time we get everything on the carts.

"I'm never helping you again," Melanie declares tiredly as the delivery van cruises out of the nearly-vacant parking lot, leaving us to push in four heavily loaded-down AV carts all by ourselves.

"Yeah, yeah," I say rolling my eyes again, "just grab a cart."

=---=

I'd have to say that the one drawback to working for the Chronicle is when we actually have to sell papers. People buy them right along, but you always get a few assholes that come by and poke fun at our work. I hate stereotyping outright, but I have to do it this time: it's mostly jocks that come along and bother us, you know, jerks in letterman jackets and athletic shoes. They like playing insert-their-sport-of-choice-here in the quad, and I guess we're easy prey when they get bored with whatever sport they're playing. I've heard stories about kids getting some flack in our other selling spots (outside the library, in front of the office, et cetera), but from having worked everywhere else as well as here in the quad, I can say that this is the place where you get the most shit slung at you.

The football players are usually the ones who do said shit-slinging (I know, I know, this sounds so cliché, but it's just the truth in this situation), the lacrosse team being a close second. The football players' terror tactics are usually very juvenile and generally primitive, just a few papers getting knocked over here and there and some good ol' fashioned harassment of whatever freshmen are working (poor freshmen, they can't ever catch a break), should there be any on the scene. The lacrosse players, however, are a little more artful, if that's what you would like to call it. They throw around a few insults and also partake in a little bit of freshmen harassing (hassling freshmen should be a sport at this school based on participation alone, now that I think about it), but it's nothing too Earth shattering. They're all still idiots, save for those few guys on either team who are actually nice people and make decent grades and everything. (Unfortunately, those kind of people aren't ever around on Monday mornings, it seems. They're probably doing something important, like homework or test-prep. Good for them.)