Tall Story

My name is Regina. I'm a senior, enrolled at Central High School. Right now, there are some good and some bad things going on in my life. Let's start with the good stuff and then the bad stuff.
Before I ever got into high school, I was a model. I went to an interview with an agency and they liked the way that I looked, so I got some training and then I got this photo shoot with a local department store. The clothes that I modeled were a big success that season and I got some more photo shoots. I had my own model portfolio and stuff. I found out that I had a really pretty face, a good figure, photographed well, looked good in junior miss clothes and I would become one of their top models later on. My future was so bright! Then, I developed this problem with the top of my head. It was suddenly bye, bye modeling career.
I graduated from middle school and I went to high school and I made a big mistake early on in my high school career. What I did was to get almost straight A grades. I also got top scores on the standardized tests. Actually, there are a lot of boys who like very intelligent girls. Unfortunately I don't know on which planet those boys are located. It was suddenly bye, bye Homecoming Queen.
I did get along okay with the other girls, someone talked me into going out for the girl's volleyball team and I became a star! I was really good at volleyball and so was our team. Unfortunately, one reason the team was so good was that the coach had hired one of our star players. The league found out and not only did we have to forfeit all of our games that year, the league wouldn't let us play for a whole year, next year, my senior year. It was suddenly bye, bye sports star.
Okay, I worked the summer before my senior year in my Daddy's office. My Daddy is a stock broker. I learned a lot about the stock broker thing through the summer, but I don't really want to be a stock broker. Bye, bye Regina the stock star.
I start my senior year of high school and, since I'm no longer a volleyball player, I decide to be a reporter for the Centurion, the school paper. Because I was on the girls volleyball team before, I do mostly sports reporting. I don't like the attitude of the guys on the sports teams (called the Centurions), but I stick with the reporter thing, because it's another extracurricular activity and I want to go to a local, very exclusive college. I have the grades to get in there, but I also need extracurricular activities to spiff up my college application.
I have to do stories about the boys who play on our Centurions basketball team. My problem with the top of my head isn't too big a problem for the basketball boys and they indicate to me that they just might be willing to take me out, providing that I'm willing to do what I'm not willing to do. There are some rather nasty verbal exchanges with the boys and I'm just about to give up on the reporter thing.
They tell me, “Regina, you have to interview a new basketball player for the school paper.” The guy is supposedly one of the better players. The better players are almost all black guys, although this guy is supposedly white. We stress academics at Central High, but the basketball players are an exception to that trend. Worse yet, this new guy supposedly doesn't even go to class. Why me?
I manage to track the new guy down to the library. There's this huge white guy, sitting at one of the library tables, reading and also writing things down, for a wonder.
I walk up to the guy and ask, “Are you the one they call the White Whale?”
The guy chuckles, eyes me up and down and says, “Call me Ishmael.”
I'm stunned. The guy not only reads, he has read Moby Dick and possibly even understood at least parts of it. He's not handsome, not ugly, just sort of an average face. The guy is obviously very well built. He has an extremely muscular upper body and arms. This is a very dangerous situation for a girl like me.