Authors: Barry Lyga
He shrugs. "OK. Cool. That's fine."
He's way too relaxed. What happened to him in the last six months? I have to chill out. I'm supposed to be his friend again.
"Sorry," I say, and it takes every last ounce of strength I have in me to say it.
"It's OK," he says. "I'm just glad you're back from ... you know."
Yeah. Yeah, I know.
The hospital.
Where I was DCHH.
I
STARTED OUT IN THERAPY TWICE
a week when I was in the hospital. Three times, really, if you count Group. But in the beginning I saw Dr. Kennedy twice a week—Mondays and Thursdays. Group was on Wednesdays, so Thursdays were usually just a chance for me to bitch about Group. Because the people in Group were this crew of burnouts and idiots who let their boyfriends beat them up and shit like that. Why was I in with that crowd?
"Because you can learn from them," Kennedy told me every week. And for some reason—even though it was total bullshit—I believed him when he said it and I didn't hate him for saying it and I wanted it to be true even though it wasn't.
I didn't hate Kennedy. That was pretty weird in and of itself, because I basically hated everyone in the hospital: the effed-up patients, the retarded orderlies, the clueless asshats who ran Group, and the nurses.
Especially the nurses.
I hate how on TV shows and shit they always make the nurses like these effing angels of mercy. It's all bull. The nurses treated me like crap. Like I was something they saw on the hood of their car when they came out of the house in the morning and they just didn't have time to deal with it.
"What's D-C-double-H?" I asked Kennedy one day.
For the first time since I'd met him, he flinched. He looked like I'd jabbed him with a hot fork. I felt good about that for, like, half a second, and then I felt really bad about feeling good because it was Kennedy, not some useless douchebag.
"Where did you hear that?" he asked, but he asked it in that weird way people have when they already know the answer. Like he was stalling for time because he didn't want to answer.
"From the nurses." The more honest answer would have been
Where
didn't
I hear it?
Because I'd heard the orderlies murmur it, too, but it was mostly the goddamn nurses. Mumbling it at night when they came in to check my vitals and to make sure I hadn't killed myself by leaping off my bed or something. Snickering it to each other in the hall outside my room, when they thought I couldn't hear it, or maybe they didn't know or care if I could hear it. I don't know.
Kennedy leaned back in his chair. He was a tall, rangy guy. That's the word:
rangy.
I looked it up to be sure.
"I'm sorry you heard that," he said, and then—before I could snark something at him—he leaned forward real quick and said, "No, no, strike that. I'm not sorry you heard it. I'm sorry they said it. I'm sorry they
thought
it."
I just sat there and gave him nothing. I liked Kennedy, but I wasn't going to help him with this.
He fidgeted some more and then took a deep breath. "I told you from the beginning that I would never lie to you, Kyra. I'm not going to lie now. DCHH is an acronym that some of the staff here uses. I don't like it. It's mean-spirited. They do it as a way of blowing off steam, but that doesn't excuse it.
"It means 'Daddy Couldn't Handle Her.'"
A
ND HERE'S THE THING:
I
T WAS TRUE
.
I couldn't even get mad. Because it was true. Roger
couldn't
handle me. So he sent me away. And now I totally understood the contempt that the people working here had for me. They were seeing burnouts and drug addicts and abused women and then along comes this girl with a rich daddy and they probably figured I should just take my Wellbutrin and my Effexor like a good little girl and let myself be drugged so hard that I can't think anymore and maybe stop dyeing my hair and powdering my face white and take out the piercings and wear some colors and just be
normal
because that's all it is, right, I'm just
acting out,
I'm just being a little bitch, I'm just trying to get attention from Daddy and eff all of you anyway because none of you knows, none of you understands.
Whew.
I started to giggle.
Kennedy just watched me. Not what he was expecting, I guess. It felt good, though. I understood them now. I knew where I stood.
And that's the problem with Fanboy: I'm still getting a handle on where I stand with him. (Other than, you know, between two rows of lockers.)
A bell rings and saves me. "I have to go to homeroom," he says.
"Sure you do. Can't be late. Gotta follow the rules."
He laughs, which is
not
cool! He's supposed to feel all wussy and ashamed because I basically just called him a goody-two-shoes.
"Yeah," he says. "I guess so. Hey, what period do you have lunch?"
"Fourth."
"Me, too! Cool. Can we eat together? You know, and, like, catch up?"
I hear myself saying "Sure" before my brain has finished processing all of this. Then he runs off to homeroom and I'm left standing there like an idiot, trying to figure out what just happened.
S
EE, IT USED TO BE SIMPLE:
I was in charge. Fanboy was my friend, but it wasn't an equal relationship. He was clueless; I clued him in. Simple.
And now...
I don't know what the hell to think now.
I make it to homeroom just as the second bell rings. Look at me: respectable and everything today!
Mrs. Reed acts like the other day never happened—she just looks at me brightly during roll call and says, "A new look, Kyra?" which is, like, the stupidest thing in the
world
to say. Because, duh.
So I look at her with my best, most innocent look, and I say, "What do you mean?"
She keeps smiling. "Well. You look." Just like that. Stops dead in the middle of a thought.
I tilt my head and look at her like I'm wondering what she's getting at, when what I'm
really
wondering is how she hears anything at all with the wind and echoes in her head.
She shakes her head and moves on without another word. I roll my eyes and get some chuckles from people around me.
I go to my first class, which is algebra, which I hate. On the way, I get lots of looks, but people also stay away, totally in keeping with my Theory of the Freak Look.
My phone buzzes when I sit down in algebra. I'm not supposed to have it on in class. I look at it real quick:
r u pissd @ me?
It's from Jecca. Because I didn't text her back last night and then sort of blew her off this morning.
How do you text back
It's complicated. I don't know how I feel. I like guys and I think about guys and sex, but I also like you and when I kiss you, I feel like nothing can hurt me in this world. But then I learned that something
can
hurt me—you can. You did. You do. When you talk about Brad. You fall for some guy over the summer while I'm gone and you don't have the guts to tell me until I come back. And then you throw some bull my way about how you told me all of this in e-mails over the summer, but I read your e-mails (the few you bothered to send) and you never mentioned Brad. Not once. So you lied about that and then you spring it on me in a chat of all places. And I don't know if maybe the Brad stuff is just so that Simone won't think you're gay. And I don't know if you
are
gay. And I don't know if
I'm
gay, because like I said: I like boys. If you didn't kiss me, I don't know if I would ever kiss another girl again. So it's like I'm jealous of Brad, but I don't get it. I don't get any of it and I don't want to get it. I just want to kiss you and not worry about it, and maybe someday kiss ... a boy. And maybe then I can compare and see which one I like more. But in the meantime, please shut the ever-loving eff up about Brad, because every time you mention his name I want to rip your eyes out.
But I don't know how to text that, so I just turn off my phone.
I'
M SUPPOSED TO BE PAYING ATTENTION
, but when in my life will I ever need to know how to add x—y2 and x+2y? (Who adds
letters,
anyway?)
So, here are the possibilities for Fanboy's third thing:
Ha. Just kidding about that last one. LOL and all that...
N
O ONE CALLS ON ME
in any of my classes. Which is par for the course because a) I never raise my hand, and b) they're terrified of what I might say.
I have English with Jecca right before lunch. She comes into the room, scans it. She sees me sitting on the opposite side of the room and she waves her cell phone to get my attention and stares at me like she's trying to push a thought into my brain.
Translation:
Why didn't you answer my text?
I give her the Innocent Look. Translation:
I have no idea what you're talking about.
She waves the phone again.
My text, you dummy!
I widen my eyes like I'm just getting it and shake my head.
My phone isn't on.
"Put the phone away, Jessica," says Miss Powell.
Jecca slides into her seat and I pretend I'm really busy with my book, even though I haven't read it, so I have no idea what Miss Powell is talking about when she starts yammering about
metaphor
and
analogy
and shit like that.
Again: Am I ever going to need any of this?
I tune out. I really,
really
hate Miss Powell. She's a hypocrite, and I've known that since I had her for freshman English.
She always talks about Feminism and Female Empowerment and the Marginalization of Women in Our Society, but she's also hot (for an adult) and she always wears these tight shirts with the top button unbuttoned and skirts with slits so that when she sits sideways on her desk to read something to us, you can see halfway up to her ass.
At first, I didn't hate her for this. At first, I totally didn't make any kind of connection, OK? I just noticed that all of the guys in class kind of got this stoned look and some of them would make those quick crotch adjustments that guys—for some reason—think no one ever notices. (How can we
not
notice? You're adjusting your
dick.
How can anyone
miss
that?)
I thought it was sort of funny that she had all the guys yoked by their hormones and drooling on themselves, and that's always entertaining, even though it's sad. (If there are going to be sad things in the world, it helps if you can also laugh at them.)
Then one day I was in the bathroom with Simone. We were sneaking a smoke between classes because we were cool, even as freshmen.
"Do you think I should get breast implants?" Simone asked.
I was pretty sure I hadn't heard her right. "What?"
"Implants. come on."
"We're fourteen."
She shrugged. "Yeah, not
now.
But, like, when I'm sixteen. I saw on TV where this girl got them for her sixteenth birthday."
Simone's boobs are smaller than mine. (Most are.) But she actually shows them off, with thin, skimpy tops and push-up bras and all that crap.
"You're fine the way you are."
She grabbed them and pushed them up and together, creating a chasm of cleavage. She stared down into it. "I can't pull off the look I want."
"What do you mean?" Simone's "look" was endless variations on slutty goth, and she pulled it off just fine.
"Miss Powell was wearing this outfit yesterday with a blue shirt, but I could make it work in black, but my boobs aren't big enough."
"What?"
Simone dropped her handfuls of boob and leaned forward, all excited. "I went to the mall yesterday and found the same shirt, in black. Same material. Same everything. I tried it on, but it just didn't look the same, you know?"
That's when the bell rang and we had to flush our smokes and haul ass to class.
Even though that happened two years ago, I never forgot it. I watched Miss Powell the rest of freshman year, watched as she
posed
herself on the desk, tossing back her hair, pushing her tits out for everyone to see ... like we could avoid the damn things.