One morning, Dana woke up and felt fat. Fat and ugly. Now, it's a given that at six in the morning, no one feels too hot about themselves, but this was a feeling that often stuck with Dana throughout the day. She knew she wasn't fat, per se, but she thought she could stand to lose a few pounds, or perhaps place those pounds elsewhere on her body. She sighed, and then heaved herself out of bed. As she walked to the bathroom, she caught a drowsy glimpse of her messy floor. There were magazines all over the place, with pictures of models whose daily regimen was three reps of sticking their finger down their throat. Dana took special care to step on the face of a particularly bright-smiled, empty-stomached young woman who was poised on the hood of a sports car, wearing a precariously short dress that could have been airbrushed on. Her face crumpled upon impact, much like the flashy red car would if it were driven into a brick wall. The bathroom door was locked. Normally, this would be a good thing, but this time she was on the wrong side of the door. She knocked, and she heard her brother's voice come muffled through the door. "What?" he said. 'What are you doing in ther

e?" Dana asked. "What do you THINK I'm doing in here?" her brother replied. "Well, either you had way too much to drink last night, or you're taking a shower," Dana retorted. There was no response from his brother. She hoped he had slipped on the tub floor and been knocked out upon his encounter with the tile. "Hello?" she called, "I need to use the bathroom! I need to get ready for school!" "It's my turn! You were supposed to get up an hour ago!" Apparently her brother was conscious, after all. "An hour ago?! What the hell are you talking about? It's six! Did the earth rotate a bit faster this morning or something?" Dana had no idea what her brother was talking about. "Apparently, Dana, you forgot about Daylight Savings Time. It's seven o'clock. You must have forgotten to set your clock an hour ahead," her brother said snootily. He was secretly (rather, not so secretly) relishing this moment. "What?!" Dana cried. She began to seriously doubt that she had a brain floating somewhere in that dark abyss known as her skull. "What?!" she repeated, this time more pathetically. "That's right. Now, if you don't mind, I am going to continue with my shower, as I've had enough of this stupid conversation! If I wanted to talk to idiots, I wouldn't have dropped out of college."

She lay down on her bed and turned on the TV for some much-needed vegetation. It was primetime, which could only mean two things: overhyped cheesy dramas, and sports. She flipped through the channels. Baseball. People having sex. Basketball. People in a bar who were about to have sex. Football People dancing who probably just had sex. Women in business suits pulling each others hair. A History Channel documentary... about sex. Dana turned off the TV, lay back in bed, and closed her eyes. The words "tomorrow is a new day" echoed through her mind. But it wasn't true, and she knew it. Every day was the same for her, full of disappointment and embarrassment. Every day she wished she were someone else. There was no one else in the world quite like her; is that her problem, or the world's? She felt like she was floating, swaying back and forth in the wind, and slowly, she drifted off the sleep.

Dana, who felt that this was all in some way her brother's fault, was ready to kill him. But she decided against it. She would get him when he least expected it. Perhaps some applesauce under his blanket, or mayonnaise in his shampoo... A few minutes passed, while Dana leaned against the wall and contemplated the many ways in which she would repay her brother for being such a little brat. She forgot it all, however, when he came waltzing out of the bathroom. She stuck her foot out, and down he went. Before he could get up and murder her, she ran into the bathroom, slammed the door shut, and locked it. She sat by the door for several minutes, while her brother pounded and screamed and made idle threats. He finally left, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She had to take a deep breath first, though, because she had been holding her breath the entire time, hoping that her brother wouldn't punch his fist through the door and begin choking her, like she had seen in a movie recently. She heard him enter her room. She had a feeling he was going to take some of her magazines. A bunch of them had "mysteriously disappeared" over the past few weeks, and although her brother claimed he knew nothing about them, she still thought that he had something to do with it. She stepped into the shower, only to be hit by a stream of freezing cold water. "Figures," she thought, "He used up all the hot water." She took as quick a shower as possible and jumped, shivering, out. It was then that she discovered that there were no towels in the bathroom. Not wanting to ask her brother to bring her one and face embarrassment and possible blackmail, she had to d

Some common words found in the essay are:
Savings It's, National Inquirer, Dana Dana, Dana Oh, Life America, Social Studies, Yeah I'm, Dana I'm, Star Wars, Reluctantly Dana, gym teacher, friends shouted, oh god mother, late gym teacher, deep breath, mother inquired, dana sat, inquired loudly, waited waited, late dana, mother inquired loudly, god mother screamed, lunch dana, bus stop,
Approximate Word count = 2576
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)