Okay, before I turn in for the night (pointedly ignoring e-mails, letters, stories, and sundry conversations), I just have to say one thing.

Mr. Darcy I get, but James Bond? Superman? Puh-leeze. Where's my Brandon? A certain grey-streaked Broadway producer, anyone? Or perhaps a starry-eyed Bohemian poet?

If we're going to go for the man of our dreams, don't give me that Heathcliff nonsense. Talk about unhealthy fixations.

I was in my first accident today.

I wasn't driving-- I wasn't even in a car. And it was just a sharp, shuddering movement that threw me forward in the bus, my hands flying out in a reflex I didn't even know I had. Dropping White Oleander on the floor, my mind abruptly jerked out of crushed diamonds and turquoise dust, and I couldn't even imagine where I was.

It wasn't anything big, really, if you can look at it from the bemusement of somebody that was snug up in a bus between a physics major and the window. Just a little silver car and a small, spreading crack in the side of the bus. Like a bullet hole. I just blinked at the sight, picked up my little silver cell phone, dialed home.

I'll be late, I said. A car hit the bus-- I'm fine. No, my neck's okay (I had a semi-chronic injury two years ago). The only person even shook up was a pregnant woman fresh from car accident two weeks ago.

Even so, it made me think.

And I'll be home, I said to my dad,

(in another hour)

or so.