By the time most of you get around to reading this I'll be a hundred miles out to sea. I joined the Merchant Marines last week and sold or gave away all of my personal belongings. I'm writing from an Internet cafe in Baltimore; we ship out at 21:00 tonight and we won't make landfall again until Panama.

The hell with school, I'm ready to see the world. I haven't any sort of plans for the future but I reckon things will work out in some manner. Don't let the rabbits bite.

I am such a mook. She's in love with someone else.

To: elandon@euphemewebmail.net
From: sdhammett@euphemewebmail.net
Subject: Thursday

Lettie,

Would you like to have dinner on Thursday? My treat, your choice of dining establishments. I don't have a car so it has to be somewhere in Icaria, sorry about that. I'll pick you up at 7:00pm if that's acceptable.

Dash

P.S. Unless it's snowing? Definitely the short skirt.

Miss Charlotte Bronte accused me of existing solely on the Internet. Not true, and yet she had no way of knowing since we'd never met. I was bored today, so I made a list of everyone I'm in class with. Making lists is a hobby of mine, what can I say?

Mikhail Bakunin
George Gordon Byron
Albert Camus
Lewis Carroll
Émilie du Châtelet
Agatha Christie
Anne Dudley
Ernest Hemingway
Victor Hugo
Franz Kafka
John Keats
Sinclair Lewis
Jack London
H.P. Lovecraft
Christopher Marlowe
L.M. Montgomery
Friedrich Nietzsche
William Makepeace Pendennis
Edgar Allen Poe
John William Polidori
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dorothy Rothschild
Emilio Salgari
Louisa Jean Salomé
Jean-Paul Sartre
William Shakespeare
Cecily Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Adeline Virginia Stephen
Chrétien De Troyes

How many of you do I recognize on sight? Most. How many of you have I interacted with? Surprisingly few. Dot, Mikhail, Bill, Hemingway, anyone who was at the poker party a couple of weeks ago. Clearly I am not doing my part to keep the faculty happy with my social activities.

Maybe it's something in the water, but seems like everyone's getting their heart broken every hour on the hour. Don't tell a soul, but I hate to see it. Love's a grand thing. I'm just not sure anyone knows how to manage it, at our age or any other. So people are selfish or stupid and then hell shows up carrying the most fetching handbasket.

Meanwhile, a little birdie told me that me asking about one Emily Dickinson has got the faculty in an uproar. Good! They should be. Seems the lady disappeared last year and no one's done a thing about it except pretend she never existed. Something's rotten in Denmark and I? I'm no Hamlet, nor yet a hero. I like justice. I'm a simple guy with simple needs.

I've been sticking my nose where it didn't ought to be, as they say in the South. And oh my my, have I got some interesting information.

So, who is this Emily Dickinson? I haven't seen her around.

Lot of piranhas in these waters. Lot of bitter ghosts and broken hearts. Eupheme only looks like a slightly dotty liberal arts prep school. But there are echoes of dark deeds everywhere. I've heard the rumors. I believe 'em. People are never what they seem. The ones who look like thugs and perverts are the easy ones to hate. They're not the problem.

Watch your back.

Since the power is unreliable and we're forbidden to smoke or have sex (a surer goad to pursuing those activities I can't imagine) I suggest we gamble.

I've got unopened packs of cards, plenty of poker chips, a number of candles, a modest amount of social lubricant and if you insist on nutrition bring it yourself. I declare this evening Poker Night at Macarther's Common Room. Play for matchsticks or up the ante, I don't care. It's a game of skill everyone should know.

Game starts at...oh, say 7:30. That gives us enough time before the warden locks us into our cells for the night.

Do you think Alfric's a reincarnation of Carrie Nation? He's such a fussy old lady.

That's what this place is: strange. Everything's high key, high drama, high in general. If I'd known private arts schools were such hothouses I would have begged harder to be sent to Westpoint.

The dames here are amazing. The fellows are mostly clowns, reprobates, stooges or junkies. The teachers are standard issue central casting, especially the Dean. I hope a giant snake eats him. Or hyenas.

Icaria is a wide spot in the road, hardly worth going to except for cigarettes and the occasional break from the school caf. They have two vintage clothing stores, if you can call them that. No hats, of course. No decent men's clothing. I'll have to get my clothes in Boston, though I hear the thrifting is crud there.

The nightclubs sound dire. God, I hate being underage. I don't want to buy my booze on the sly and guzzle it in secret or at hideous parties full of drunken teenagers. I want to go into an older bar and have a quiet drink by myself. Listen to some jazz or just think. Talk to a pretty girl.

Swell. I can hear showtunes. I'm going for a walk.

You'd think my parents would give up on me after I got kicked out of three high schools in two years, but you'd be wrong. They wouldn't listen to my pleas to join a military academy. Instead, being writers themselves, they have decided my future is in the arts. They found Eupheme and packed me off to finish out my incarceration.

I don't understand why anyone talks about the joys of being young. It's a crock. You have no control over your life. Any adult automatically thinks they know what's best for you. Fairness has nothing to do with it; wrong universe for fair. But that's unimportant right now. What's important is to nod and take one's licks like a man. Soon enough I'll be of age, and when that day comes I will depart these halls for Real Life.

Meanwhile, I'm going to investigate the local burg for a new Fedora. Mine was crushed by that oaf who sat next to me on the train from Baltimore. Blocking won't rescue it. I ought to sue him. I got his name, address and telephone number easily enough. People think they're so careful, but it's laughably easy to find out anything you need to know.

I wonder if there are any other hackers here? I'll soon find out.