Goth Girl Rising (7 page)

Hey, you know what? I was a little girl once and I
kicked ass.
I was awesome.

But no. It's all ... It's like this story my dad told me once. There was this football coach and his team was losing the game at halftime and he made his team sit in the locker room and wait and they all sat around and were waiting for him to come in and yell at them, but he didn't show up, so they just sat there and waited and waited and then—at, like, the last minute—the coach just pokes his head into the locker room and says, "Oh, I'm sorry, ladies—I was looking for the Notre Dame football team." And it pissed them off so much, they went out and won the game.

Because, like, the worst effing thing in the world—the worst thing in the
world,
the thing that enrages you and pumps you up—is being called a
girl?

Really?

And even other girls do it. They get sucked into it. They say they're strong—Miss Powell, my English teacher, does it all the time—but they're not. They go ahead and they watch the stupid movies and TV shows, like the ones where the guy kisses the girl and she resists, but then she gives in. Because, oh, yeah, sure, like if we don't want to kiss you it can't possibly be because we don't want to—it's got to be because we just didn't know how great a kisser you are. Well, if I don't want your tongue down my throat, you're not going to change my mind by trying to put it in there anyway.

Or the ones where these strong career women end up having these miserable, empty lives until they get a husband and a kid because—right—life isn't worth living without them. It's like they're selling this idea to me, like the whole effing world wants me to get married just because ... I don't know why. I don't know why they care if I get married or if I kiss Jecca or if Fanboy's gay or not. I don't know.

But people care. They keep butting into other people's lives and other people's business. And so much of it is about who's kissing who and why.

Why, Neil? Explain it to me. Explain why it matters at all.

You know all of this. You understand it. I know that's why you made Death a girl. The most powerful force in the universe and you decided that it was a cute, slender, cheerful goth who had dimples when she smiled.

God, I love that.

But even though you get it, you can't explain why the world is the way it is. You understand a lot, but even
you
don't know the answer to this.

simsimsimoaning:
r u sure hes gay

Promethea387:
Yeah. He told me.

simsimsimoaning:
becuz lisa says he chex her out

Promethea387:
Bullshit. He's gay. He's not checking her out. Lisa thinks she's hot shit.

simsimsimoaning:
u don't even kno her

Promethea387:
Whatever. Just trust me.

simsimsimoaning:
i told billy & he totally blieves it

Promethea387:
Good.

R
OGER'S NOT HOME YET, SO
I wander the house, alone. It doesn't feel like I belong here anymore, if I ever did. I'm like the ghost of someone who's not dead yet, haunting a place where no one wants me.

And when I catch myself in the living room mirror...

I see a girl.

I see someone who's tough.

But I
don't
see...

I don't see
me.
I don't know how to explain it. I know it's me in the mirror, but sometimes I just don't recognize myself. The mousy brown hair doesn't help.

I have a red stone through my nose and a cute little silver ring at the corner of my mouth. I love my piercings. They make me look like me; they make it easier for me to identify myself. But people like to give me shit about them. My grandparents and my dad, for starters. But even just random people. They see my piercings and they assume that I'm, like, a skank. Or a druggie. or whatever they don't like.

Roger had such a shit fit when I came home with them a couple of years ago. And even now—even after all this time—he still looks at me like I did something dangerous. something wrong.

"I guess I should be glad you don't have any tattoos," he said once, like he'd just dodged sniper fire.

And just because he said it, I considered—for, like, the millionth time—getting a tattoo. simone has a dragon that winds around her left leg, starting near the ankle and ending somewhere around midthigh. Here's the thing, though: I don't have the patience for it. Waiting forever for some guy to finish inking me. I don't think I could stand it.

I've got all this time before Roger gets home, so I hide my cigarettes and scrounge around the house, trying to find my razor and stuff like that. He also took my scissors ("skissors"—heh; it's still funny). He took
everything.
Hell, there's nothing sharper than a butter knife in the kitchen, and even the friggin
hedge clippers
are missing out in the garage.

He's taking this seriously.

On one of the cabinets in the garage, there's a big padlock that wasn't there before. It doesn't take psychic powers to know that my razor's in there.

I spend some time trying to pick the lock, but it's not happening. Stealing cars is actually easier. For one thing, you can usually find someone who's been stupid enough to leave their car unlocked. Back doors are the best—people are always putting shit in the back seat and then forgetting to lock it. But even if it's locked, there's still a bunch of ways to unlock a car that have nothing to do with picking the lock.

But you can't slim-jim a padlock. You have to get in there and make it happen, you know? I dick around with it for a little while, but then I give up and go look on the Internet for some tips. At least it's not a combination lock. I would have to find Roger's combination or just cut the damn thing off.

The whole time I'm working on the lock, I'm also working on my Fanboy problem. Telling Simone he's gay is fine—by the end of the week, it'll be all over the school. Hell, if Simone just tells the guys she makes out with this week, that'll be half the school right there. I picture it:
Ooh, baby, oh, yes, ooh, baby, yes, hey did you know that kid's gay? Ooh, yeah.
Or something like that. I imagine there's a lot of "ooh" when Simone has sex.

But it's not enough. What I really need is the original artwork. I know he has sketches in his sketchbook and shit like that. Probably original files on his computer. He has to have images of Dina somewhere. I need to get my hands on them and show them to Michelle. I'm not sure exactly what will happen—she might get pissed, she might laugh—but the thing is, he's kept his Dina-worship a secret, so exposing it can only be a good thing for me.

And there's only one way to do that.

I have to be his friend again.

B
Y THE TIME
R
OGER GETS HOME
, I haven't managed to pop the lock—even with the instructions from the net—but I'm all sweaty from trying. I get out of the garage when I hear his car in the driveway and I'm sitting innocently at the kitchen table when he comes in.

"What have you been up to?" he asks, all suspicious.

"Nothing, Roger."

He glares at me for a second, giving me Pissed Off because I guess I don't look as innocent as I thought. Pissed Off is OK—it's easier to hate him when he's showing Pissed Off.

It's actually easy to hate him a lot of the time. He's such an effing phony. When he meets people and gives them that big man-handshake and that big shit-eating grin, he always talks about how "Roger means I get it," as in "roger, over, and out" and all that nonsense. What he never says is that "roger" is also an old colonial-era euphemism for the F-word. So when I call him "Roger" it's not because I'm trying to be one of these hip, well-adjusted brats who call their parents by their first names. I'm just telling him to eff off.

"Seriously, Roger. Nothing."

He nods slowly, slipping into Sad, Tired. He hands me a plastic bag from the drugstore. There's a Lady Remington inside, along with batteries.

"Thanks, Dad."

Oops. I called him "Dad." He shifts to maybe halfway between Sad, Tired and Blissed Out. He sits down at the table with me, like we're a big happy family or something.

"We need to talk a little bit, OK? About what happened right before you, you know, went away."

And
effhim!
Any sympathy I just felt because of Sad, Tired is now
gone.
Because I didn't "go away." I was
sent
away. By
him.
Made DCHH.

"That boy who called me at work. The one who gave you a bullet. I need to know his name."

Fat chance. They tried to get that out of me in the hospital, too. But I'm no narc. I have my own ways of getting revenge.

"Kyra, talk to me. Please. I don't want you being mixed up with someone like that. you've had a tough enough time without someone else making it worse for you."

God, what an idiot! He doesn't get it. Being with Fanboy didn't make things
worse.
It made things
better.
I could talk to him like I couldn't talk to anyone else, not even Simone or Jecca. I could...

Shit. Now I'm leaking tears.

Roger sees 'em. He tries to take my hand, but I pull it away. Goddammit. Why am I doing this? Fanboy
betrayed
me. He sold me out to my dad, and I could have forgiven that, I
did
forgive that, but then he moved on without me and sold out his art. And those things I
cannot
forgive. Those things I
will not
forgive.

"Leave me alone, Roger." I mean to say it angry and loud, but the tears do something to my breathing and it barely comes out at all. He gets up and comes around the table to put his arms around me and there's a second—just a second, but it's there, I have to admit it—where I just want to let the tears go and fall into his arms and wail like a baby and call him Daddy and let him make everything better.

But he can't. He can't make everything better. I know that. I know it because he's screwed up too much.

So I just get up and I can barely see through the tears, but this is my house and I know how to get around, so I make it to my room and slam the door and he's calling out to me, but I don't care, don't care, don't care.

A
LITTLE WHILE LATER, HE KNOCKS
on my door and says he's coming in no matter what. So I let him in.

"We're
going
to have this conversation, Kyra. Whether you want to or not."

So I sit on my bed with my arms crossed over my chest and stare at a little crack in the paint on my windowsill. Because here's the thing: You need two people to "have this conversation." And if I'm not one of them, I don't know where he's going to get another one.

"Did you really have a bullet? Or was it just a prank call? Because he sounded really worried and really convincing to me. I need to know who it was. The police will want to talk to him, and I want to at least talk to his parents."

The police ...
There's
a thought. But no—Fanboy would just say I stole the bullet and I could lie and say he gave it to me, but it would be his word against mine and he's a goody-goody, so they would believe him and not me.

"Do you have any idea what I went through? Hanging up the phone? Rushing out of work, driving home at a hundred miles an hour, thinking you'd be ... you'd be
dead?
"

Yeah, I know. I know because he told me over and over again when he sent me away, and then he told me again every time he came to visit.

"You owe me an explanation."

No, I don't. I keep staring at the crack. I don't owe him anything. I'm allowed to have my secrets.

Just like Fanboy has his. His "third thing." He told me that there were three things in the world that he wanted more than anything. Three, OK? One, two, three. And then he only told me two of them.

And when I asked about the third, he lied and said he meant there were only two, so I kept at him and he admitted there was a third, but he wouldn't tell me what it was.

The thing he wants more than
anything else in the world.
And he wouldn't tell me. Bastard.

I told him
everything.
Even when I lied, I was telling him something.

"Kyra, goddammit!" Into hard-core Pissed Off. I can always count on Roger.

Staring at the crack. Wondering where it came from. It was just
there
one day, like it had always been there. I don't remember doing something to cause it. It's like the world just decided to break right there, right on my windowsill.