Dear Robot Diary,

First of all, I was going to try to give you some badass secret code name like "Long-winded Grocery List" or "Not A Diary" in the hopes that it would keep people from reading you, but then I realized that Robot Diary is probably enough. Anyone who would voluntarily subject themselves to the overly-emotional-vomit of a teenage girl's 'diary' is clearly on a mission to ruin their own day and who am I to stop them.

Second of all, yes, I'm a teenage female. Though recently my friend Jessica (who also recently renamed herself Banana) warned me about ageist and sexist self-identification. "Classification is something society forces on us," she said to me after homeroom on Monday. "If I have to, I choose to describe myself as an amorphous, perpetual breath machine of the multi-layered, X chromosome persuasion. Or just Banana." Then Banana whipped out an actual banana from her oversized backpack and held it in front of me. "Go ahead, just try and gender my banana."

"Why don't you try and gender my banana?" interrupted Harry, captain of the lacrosse team and resident small-minded jock. Then he grabbed Banana's banana and air humped it a couple times. "Yo Banana, you know what goes good with fruit? Nuts!" he mocked, laughing with his gaggle of athletic idiots. Banana stared at him, blank faced. "You probably don't want this banana anymore, huh?" Harry asked while struggling to open the fruit. Then we watched as the massive physical specimen in front of us wrestled with the yellow peel, flopping it against lockers and flailing it against the foreheads of his teammates but still failing to open it. "YO SCREW THIS," he shouted, and shoved the whole thing into his mouth at once.

"That's not the right-" Banana started.

"YOU'RE NOT THE RIGHT SHUT UP. LET'S GO, GUYS" Harry yelled and headed down the hallway. His pimple-faced posse followed him, some of them shoving whatever they could find in their mouth as a sign of solidarity.

Hmm...sorry I get sidetracked a lot. Why did I tell you that story, Robot Diary?

Oh, right, yes. It was a quick anecdote inspired by me being a girl.

Back to introducing myself. My name is Lace Heavensmall. I'm a senior at Greatway High School and I'm currently writing to you from the school's basement while I seek shelter from the storm outside. But, let me warn you, this is no average storm.

This is a Shih Tzu storm.

Yes, you read that correctly. Actual Shih Tzus, those adorable, floppy dogs that always look confused as to how they're alive, are currently raining from the sky. Why is this happening, you ask?

Because Freak Week has begun.

Allow me to explain. It's currently the year 2021, but it all started in 2017, well actually 2016, when warnings about climate change reached a fever pitch but we chose to ignore them. Because, let's be honest, it's hard to worry about things that might happen in the future when you have real problems right now. I, for example, was growing out bangs at the time.

I remember sitting in Freshman Biology, watching a nature documentary that was, for the most part, very boring except for a part where two praying mantises started mating and then the female ATE THE MALE'S HEAD. SHE JUST STRAIGHT UP ATE IT. Which I was NOT expecting but somehow it gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation of a lot of pop music.

Anyway, sorry, sidetracked.

AFTER the intense mantis sequence, an unexpectedly attractive old guy started to mention global warming and said if we didn't do something, bad things would happen. My friend Marmalade (we call her Marmie for short) stood up and pointed to her crotch and screamed, "Hey buddy, I got something you can do, and trust me bad things will happen." We all laughed even though we were only thirteen and didn't totally understand the joke.

Society continued on as it normally did, indifferent to anything environmentally helpful. And then it happened. In the early spring of 2017, the atmosphere underwent a dramatic rift. For one week, the world's weather went absolutely and completely haywire. One day the world was a post-apocalyptic deserted wasteland, one day it rained full body tattoos, one day you could only move in reverse, and dogs were made out of balloons. And the weird environmental stuff wasn't all; Freak Week affected people's personalities too. Every environmental event seemed to set off an emotional event inside of each of us. This became disturbingly clear on day four.

On the fourth day of Freak Week, gravity disappeared. You would think it would be fun to fly for a day (it is, just don't wear a dress or loose fitting romper) but there was another aspect of gravity-free day that none of us were prepared for. Gravity doesn't just hold objects down; it also holds people's feelings down where they belong. Gravity keeps us grounded, in more ways than one. All of the sudden, on day four, people started blurting out outrageously private and slightly embarrassing things; my aunt confessed her love for my uncle's brother, the president tweeted a bunch of crying-face emojis at the House of Representatives, and the Pope held a press conference outside the Vatican to let everyone know he'd really love a smaller hat.

And that was just one day of Freak Week.

The climate continued to change for one week and when the week was over everything went back to normal. Everyone was panicked. None of what happened showed up on any radar and none of it seemed able to be measured or tracked; meteorologists were dumbfounded and scientists were scared. The only way they could explain anything was by calling the week-long episode a "freak of nature." Soon after, people started referring to it simply as "Freak Week."

But it wasn't a freak of nature. It happened the next year. And the next year. And the next year. All generally around the same time. People tried their best to adapt; in 2019, our high school decided to shut down two weeks before spring in anticipation of Freak Week so that we could all theoretically wait out the week from the safety of our own homes. Luckily, Freak Week started roughly on time and we all did just that. I should also mention that during Freak Week you can't step outside, it's too dangerous, physically and emotionally. No one wants their most awkward emotions revealed against their will. No one wants their "inner freak" exposed. So we all learned it's best not to interact with anyone during Freak Week, unless they were people you could truly trust to stay calm and rational while you and the rest of the world got its freak on.

Each year, after Freak Week passes, there are a few days of shared survival harmony before everyone gets sucked back into their regularly scheduled lives like nothing ever happened. It's kinda weird. Everyone returns to their comfortable disconnect until we get closer to another week of potential mayhem. The most difficult part about Freak Week is that no one can accurately predict exactly when it's going to happen. For the last three years it's happened around the same time, give or take a few weeks, and that's usually the time frame that everyone decides to start preparing for their personal lock-downs. This year, however, our planet's passive preparation has completely screwed us. Or as Marmie would say "it threw an ugly wrench up our beautiful butt pipes."

Freak Week started a month before it was supposed to.

Cut to about three hours ago, I was staying after school to go over my writing assignment with my creative writing teacher, Mr. Kevin. Our assignment was to write a series of Civil War style love letters to a fictional lover from a fictional lover, which is a terribly ironic assignment due to the very obvious divorce Mr. Kevin is currently going through. "They're too in love!" he asserted, waving my printed letters in a frenzy. "I mean, what's Eleanor's biggest flaw here? That she spends too much time loyally waiting for Charles to return from war? Phfewrrrghhh," he raspberried his lips in such disbelief that I felt his spit on my face from across the room. "Like she doesn't get bored and start to bat her eyes at one-legged Johnny in the saloon, or smile at three-toed Trevor in the Inn or hook-up with her college 'roommate,' Nancy, in a bathroom at the DMV while you were taking your eye test!"

There was an awkward silence and then Mr. Kevin said, "It's raining cats and dogs out there!" I got nervous because I thought he was starting a spoken word poem about his pain but when I looked out the window, I saw that it was literally raining cats and dogs.

It was an overwhelmingly bizarre and adorable sight and both Mr. Kevin and I couldn't look away until finally we heard the voices of Banana and Marmie running down the hallway.

"It's a classic Shih Tzu storm, y'all" Marmie yelled, leaning her head into the classroom. Banana popped her head in under Marmie's, "We gotta get to the basement and hunker down! Freak Week is starting!"

"Talk about being up Shih Tzu creek without a paddle!" Marmie started. "Speaking of dogs, one time I let a Great Dane drive me 6 blocks before I realized it wasn't my uncle-" but before Marmie could finish her story we hustled her out the door.

And so now I'm here. This is where I'll be spending Freak Week 2021, I guess. Stuck in the school's basement with Mr. Kevin, Banana, Marmie and potentially anyone else that got stuck in the school when this storm started and happens to find their way down here. We can't risk going outside now. We wouldn't make it home and the weather has already gotten worse. French Bulldogs have joined the mix (my favoritest wiggliest dog breed!). It's raining Shih-Ts and wiggles outside, you guys. But it's not the outside that scares me (the outside is actually crazy cute right now), it's the burning, emotional junk inside of us that does. The hidden freaks in all of us are bound to come out...

As you've probably already figured out I've decided to document this year's Freak Week in you, Robot Diary. I'm hoping that by sharing all of my thoughts and observations with you it might keep me from sharing them with anyone else. See what I'm getting at? It's science!

Currently, Mr. Kevin, Banana and Marmie are assessing our supplies (aka trying to distract themselves from our inevitable awkwardness by coming up with the cheesiest acapella group names).

"AcaSMELLya!" Marmie shouts. Banana and Mr. Kevin stare at her blankly until a familiar voice cuts the silence, "Aca-smell-MY NUTS. Right?" A high-pitched giggle fills the air as Harry struts into the room. Great, guess Harry just joined our Freak Week festivity.

"Sorry Harry," a shadowy voice from behind him starts, "your misogyny was overshadowed by your idiocy in that last one."

The shadowy figure steps forward and I see that it's Crush, my actual crush. Yes my crush's name is Crush; get over yourself, Robot Diary. And let me tell you something, Crush is by far the coolest, smartest and most attractive to my personal standards of attractiveness person in my whole high school and BY FAR THE LAST PERSON I WANT TO BE LOCKED IN A BASEMENT WITH DURING FREAK WEEK.

My mission is to survive.

I'd also like to be less dramatic overall as a person, but beggars can't be choosers.

I have to get through Freak Week without completely embarrassing myself in front of Crush.

I'm sorry I didn't tell you that I'm super in love with someone earlier, Robo-D. That's usually how teenage lady diary entries begin but I like to be different. I mean, I'm not, like, in love per se. I would just definitely like to spend the rest of my life with Crush until we both simultaneously die in each other's arms from a rare and beautiful form of heart disease brought on by loving too deeply. Oh god, Harry is trying to see my tablet and I'm worried he caught a glimpse of the words 'loving' and 'deeply' and is desperately trying to figure out a gross sex joke. Gotta go. Write more later.

7 Days and Counting,

Lace

Make sure to watch the new "Writing With Grace" episode on my Youtube channel next Thursday to find out what to include in your submissions for Chapter 2!  Then, write Chapter 2 on your Wattpad page and submit it using #WritingWithGrace.

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