Goth Girl Rising (9 page)

Authors: Barry Lyga

I mosey around the parking lot a little bit, checking out the insides of the cars. I'm looking especially for baby seats in the back. Moms are always freaked out that they're going to lock themselves out of the car with the rugrat trapped inside, so there's a good chance they'll have one of those magnetic key boxes with a spare.

Sure enough, I find a sedan with a car seat and a key box in the driver's side wheel well. I look quickly—no one's around.

This is the toughest moment. You just have to commit at this point. I mean, I could get royally screwed if Mommy suddenly comes out of the store and I'm climbing into her car. But I could be equally screwed if I just stand here waiting to get busted.

I don't get all excited or anything in these moments. It's not like in the books: "Her heart raced!" or whatever. Nah, I get real calm. I figure whatever happens, happens. I just get this peace that flows through me.

And then I unlock the car and climb in and slam the door.

The key slides into the ignition. I bite my lip and turn it. You're only supposed to put special keys in those boxes, keys that only unlock the car and don't work the ignition. This way people like me can't steal your car.

But most people—like the people who own the car I'm in—don't bother getting the special key. They just make a dupe of their regular key. The car starts up on the first try, and I ease it out of the parking space and out of the parking lot, and then I'm gone, and my heart feels warm like it does when Jecca kisses me.

Twenty-five

T
HE WOMAN WHO OWNS THIS CAR
has shitty taste in music. Her CDs all suck, so I blast the radio instead, which is only a little bit better.

I go to the mall. I park in the most inconvenient place I can find so that it's less likely anyone will be around to see me when I leave. When I get out of the car, I take off my scarf to wipe off the steering wheel, the door handle, the gearshift, and the radio knobs.

I toss her CDs in the trash. Trust me, I'm doing her a favor.

OK, it's officially
weird
to be at the mall during a school day. Because there's no one here worth seeing or talking to. It's all old people. I don't mean parent old. I mean, like,
grandparent
old. Maybe even
great
-grandparent old. Why do old people even
come
to the mall?

I go buy a new razor and some blades. That's only twenty bucks, so I still have money to spend and God knows when I'll get back here. So I should spend it now, right? I should get some clothes to match my new look.

On my way to my usual store (all black, all the time), something in a window catches my eye. It's a display for some new store, and I guess I notice it because the manikins in the window are all bald. They don't have fake hair or anything, so they kind of look like what I'm going to look like as soon as I get home and shave off the rest of this stuff.

Anyway, I stand there for a minute, looking at the display, and then I go in and I try some stuff on and I buy it. It's a totally new look for me. The guy at the counter looks at me a little weird, like, "Why are
you
buying
this?
" but he just rings me up and then I'm done.

I still have about fifteen bucks left, so I go to the music store and poke around in the bargain bin until I find a CD that has a few decent songs. I take it back to "my" car and put it in the CD player. Then I wipe everything down again, lock the car, and put the key back. Too risky to drive this back to where I found it—by now, Mommy has called the cops, I bet.

So I wander the parking lot, looking for another car to swipe so that I can drive home.

Twenty-six

A
T HOME
, I
LAY OUT
my new outfit. Weird. How am I going to look in this?

I stare in the mirror as I unwind the scarf from my head. I'm all knobby and gross. It's worse than I remember from just a few hours ago. Gotta take care of that.

I unpack the razor and the blades at the sink in the bathroom. I try not to think of the way the blade felt on my wrists. It was years ago, but I can still
feel
it. It's like it happened yesterday. It's like I could look over my shoulder and
I
would be standing there, the me of then, the me of
ago,
standing right there, smiling up at me while blood ran down her palms and dripped off her fingertips.

I look into the mirror, but there's no one behind me. I'm all alone.

"Are you there, Despair?" I ask the mirror, because in
Sandman,
that's where Despair lives—in a world behind all the mirrors in the world. It should be creepy to think that some pale fat chick who likes to cut herself is living on the other side of the mirror, watching me all the time, but it's actually OK. It's sort of nice not to be alone all the time.

So I snap a blade into the handle and before I can think about it any more, I work on finishing what I started before and pretty soon my head is totally naked and totally smooth and I only nicked myself once just above my left ear.

Wow.

I'm a total chrome-dome.

I look like...

Like...

Fanboy's voice pops in my head for some reason: "Professor X."

Ugh.

No. Not some stupid comic book character. It reminds me of—

Bendis.

Looking in the mirror, imagining him, it's like a few months ago, when I saw him at the comic book convention, where he rejected Fanboy and I taught him a lesson. My eyes are all wide and surprised by myself, surprised the way
Bendis
was when I flashed him and scared him and made him run away.

Great. Bendis. What the eff. I'm obsessing about him, just like Fanboy does.

Stop it, Kyra. Stop thinking about it. About him. About them. Just stop it.

This is why I tried to ... This is why I tried to go away. Why I tried to make it all end. Because I couldn't stop
thinking,
no matter how much I wanted to. No matter how much I tried I couldn't stop thinking about

The Last Time I Saw Her

the room the room the room is rosevomit because
roger left roses and
mom threw up before i came in
perfect timing

("Honey?" she said
In that clouded, confused way.)

cancer had eaten a path to her brain
yum-yum cancer loves brains
like zombies
eat her memory
she has trouble remembering me
remembering the year

(When I was eight years old, I
Had the stomach flu
And threw up in the kitchen
And then in the hallway
And then twice in the bathroom
—Only hitting the sink once)

i should understand
but I can't
Fluvomit does not equal rosevomit

Twenty-seven

I
SHAKE MY HEAD AT MYSELF
. I imagine Despair laughing at me through the mirror. Well, no. Not this time, bitch. I'm not giving into you or to little
-d
despair.

So I try on my new outfit and look at myself in the mirror and it's totally unreal. It's like I'm another person. With my white makeup on, it's like I'm already dead. It's like I really
am
a ghost now.

See, the outfit I bought is totally, purely
white.

It's the complete opposite of everything I normally wear. The shirt is this high-necked thing with a little collar and the sleeves have buttons halfway to the elbow. I love it. It comes all the way to my chin, practically, and there's no chance in hell of any cleavage ever showing. And with the sleeves buttoned all the way, my scars will never show, either.

Just to be safe, though, I put on a whole bunch of white rubber bracelets.

The pants are white jeans. They're a little tight, but they fit fine. I even have white sneaks and socks that I dug up from my closet. It's all awesome. I look like some kind of pissed-off angel or something. Final touch is my reverse-smiley button. It's the only bit of color anywhere—the black background and yellow eyes and mouth. But I have to wear it. I
always
wear it.

I walk around the house, checking myself out in every mirror. The only thing that doesn't work is my black lipstick, so I wipe it off and use the only other color I have: a deep blood red.

God. That's
it.
That's
perfect.

I've lost the Bangs of Doom, but it was a sacrifice worth making. Because, I mean, I honest-to-God only know it's me in the mirror because I
know
it's me. But it's like looking at another person entirely. The shirt doesn't hide my boobs as well, but it's like for the first time ever, I don't care. Because it's not
me
in the mirror. It's someone else.

For some reason, that makes me really, really happy.

Twenty-eight

R
OGER COMES HOME A LITTLE
while later and walks into the kitchen, where I'm getting something to drink.

"Kyra, are you—"

I turn around. He's staring at me, whatever he was going to say forgotten. Now that I'm facing him completely, he just stands there, his jaw working, no sound coming out.

Thud.

His briefcase, dropped. It lies there on its side next to him. He just keeps staring.

It's pretty cool. He's totally spazzing.

"Kyra, what the ... What the
hell?
"

"What the hell
what?
" Like there's nothing new.

"What did you
do?
"

"This? You're the one always saying I should wear more than just black."

"Not that! Your head! Your goddamn head!" He's shaking.

"Oh. That." I touch it. It feels slippery—I rubbed some moisturizer on it before. "Do you like it?"

His jaw works again—open, close, open, close. His eyes bug.

"Go to your room."

What? Did he really say that?

"Go to your room," he says again.

"Bite me. I can shave my head if—"

"Go to your room!" he screams, and spit flies from his mouth and his face is all red and veiny. "Go! Now! Go to your goddamn room this
instant!
"

What the
hell?

Fine.

Like I care.

I was going back there anyway.

I take my soda and I go to my room and I slam the door
super
hard, just to make my point. Eff him. Eff him up his stupid ass. I can shave my head. It's
my
head. He can't make me do what he wants me to do. He doesn't
own
me. He can't
control
me. Effhim. I hate him. God, I hate him.

I'm
glad
I hate him. It feels good.

So why am I crying all of a sudden? I don't get it.

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