I am currently sitting on my couch at 1:33 AM on Sunday morning and there is a single cricket outside the window and, despite the fact that I live on a fairly busy Bellevegas street, that's pretty much the only thing breaking the silence. Normally, it's filled with birdsong and puttering neighbors and a near-endless stream of cars, but right now it's just me and Jiminy out there and a cat staring at me and wondering why the hell we're both awake. It's kind of weird, how you never really notice the noise of your life until it stops, isn't it?

 

And, goodness, but I've had a noisy day. I went to see my eyebrow professional (I know, right?), who always sets my face and, somehow, the universe to rights and got a little zen, which never lasts long enough. After that was done, I careened around the store for a bit. I bought hair things, body wash for Mr. J who refuses all the handmade bars of soap in the world, and new lipstick, lipstick the color of cartoon apples. It's the kind of thing I only buy under a very specific set of circumstances and it pleases me so the first time I slick it on, which is never at the right time except also always at the right time?

 

After that, it was hurtling through time and space to DO ALL THE THINGS!, which should be reassuring to everyone who read last week's column but was a little exhausting. I won't bore you with the details of my social diary, but my favorite part of the day was meant to be a fairly quick stop and totally turned into a three-hour play date with Ms. Maru, no relation to the famous one but famous in her own right, that I left with a fabulous new dress, ten different shades of blue nail polish on my fingers, and a little bit of perspective. Ms. M was in a unique position to give me some advice and boy, did she.

 

To be fair, I needed it. Sometimes I manage to set myself up for problems that can’t be solved with a hasty application of my debit card, despite the fact I like to think I know myself fairly well. Of course, anyone who says that is typically a total twerp madly careening off the walls of their existence and I'm probably no different but I occasionally like to think I typically still know how to handle my feels and my schedule and my entire life, even under whatever disguise I’ve decided to put on. 

 

If it's hard to know yourself, though, it's still harder to know other people and it's easy to forget that even though you look a little different, it's still you under there. Karin, the heroine of Kaho Miyasako's Kare First Love, is an awkward, bullied high school student. She's got an absolutely terrible “best friend” and an outsider who sticks up for her and is playing a little out of Karin's league but means well, despite being a prototype bad influence. Our time with Karin starts with an awful encounter with some dudes on a bus, one of whom has a conversation with her about photography, kind of, except it's really, honestly, about ninety-five different shades of awkward because no one is listening to the words that are actually coming out of anyone's mouth. Also, her skivvies may have inadvertently been viewed, which, yeah, casts a shadow of doubt on anyone's good intentions.

 

But then it turns out the ertswhile bus pervert, Kiriya, is actually kind of a sweetie and also very attractive, as manga dudes are. The presence of an attractive manga dude sets off all kinds of drama between Karin and the frenemy, who has decided that only she is worth of hotties. The hottie in question disagrees, but you know how girl-on-girl crime works. His appearance in Karin’s sphere also sends her into no-girlie's-land while she tries to figure out what, exactly, it means to be cute and how love works and whether or not, like, kissing a dude makes you a total hoo-er or what. (Answer: it totally doesn’t.) While she's doing that, her mom is all up in her grill about college and her dad is out of town and she gets grounded and school is miserable and it's just all a mess. The first couple volumes of the book are a perfect maelstrom of teenage madness.

 

And, just like most teenage dramas, this one slowly starts to settle down. The world slowly rights itself, Karin figures out the compromises that she needs to make with the universe to survive, much like most of us do on a daily basis. Future volumes hint at a trip, that classic manga device. And I haven’t gotten there yet, but I’m sorry, Boys Over Flowers had the best manga minibreak interlude ever. Maybe. Or maybe I’m being unfair. I do that sometimes. Either way, you guys should pick up Kare First Love from VIZ Digital and we’ll find out together. | Erin Jameson

 

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