Goth Girl Rising (35 page)

"Like the park?"

I never realized that. "Yeah, like the park."

He looks up the name in the phone book and then calls the number. I know it by heart, but I guess he wants to be sure I'm not trying to pull a fast one.

He frowns into the phone and holds out the receiver so I can hear. "Busy signal. We'll try again later."

But I know there's only one reason for a busy signal at two in the morning: Fanboy's up and on the 'net. It could be busy until the sun comes up if he's really working hard.

"Can I use your computer?" I ask.

It takes some convincing, but he finally lets me at the computer. I don't have my buddy list, but I have Fanboy's username memorized anyway. I fire up a chat program, log in, and, sure enough, XianWalker76 is online.

Promethea387:
Hi. I have sort of a HUGE favor to ask you...

I
T'S NOT THE EASIEST THING
in the world to explain that you're under arrest and you need to be picked up at the police station
please please please
while you're in chat and there's a cop looking over your shoulder, but I somehow get Fanboy to agree to get his mom and come get me.

The cop (whose name—I swear to God—is
Roger.
Can you believe it?
I
barely believe it) sits with me on the front steps of the police station and waits with me. Now that he's got me in his computer, he seems much more relaxed and almost vaguely cool.

"Sorry if I stopped you from catching bigtime drug smugglers," I tell him.

"Nothing going on tonight. Another time." He looks over at me. "You don't do any of that shit, do you?"

"Dude, I don't even
drink.
" I think about it. "I smoke, though. Just cigarettes."

"That shit'll kill you, too. Lung cancer and all."

"Yeah, I know."

He shrugs. "I smoke, too. Stupid. But there you go."

Shit. I just remembered. "Are you gonna arrest me for smoking?"

"No. I didn't
see
you smoke. I didn't find cigarettes on you."

"OK."

Headlights flash out on the road and then a car turns into the police station parking lot.

"Watch yourself," Roger the Cop says. "don't do stupid shit."

"I'm trying."

He squints at the car, sees an adult, and goes inside after patting me on the shoulder.

I watch the car come to a stop a little ways away from me. I can make out Fanboy's mom in the front seat. Fanboy gets out from the back seat and comes over to me.

He has this walk ... This weird way of walking. Hands in his pocket. He walks like he doesn't know where he's going. Like each step could lead him somewhere terrible or somewhere wonderful. And he's OK with it either way because at least he'll get to see something amazing. He's all bundled up against the cold, with a hat and a heavy coat, and the coat makes him look ten times bigger up top than down below, which is sort of funny, but I just smile. I don't laugh; I just smile.

I'm all messed up, just seeing him. I'm still so angry at him. So hurt. Hurt that I was replaced.

But there's something else, too. Something that might be bigger than the anger. I'm not going to call it love. That's not my word. I don't know
what
to call it, but I know that it's the feeling I got in my drug haze in the hospital, the wanting for him to come rescue me, the tug, the pull. Wanting him to lend me a jacket when I'm cold.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey. Uh, thanks." I look over at the car. "How pissed is your mom?"

He looks over his shoulder at the car. "Not nearly as pissed as you'd think, if you want to know the truth. Betta was keeping her up anyway. And sometimes only a car ride will get her to sleep. So in a weird way, it sort of worked out."

"Oh. That's good."

I don't know what else to say.

"I asked her to let me talk to you a little bit before we left," he says. He's not sitting down. Just standing in front of me, his hands still in his pockets. He's bundled up against the cold and then, suddenly, miraculously, he does it. He does the magical thing:

No, he doesn't strip off his jacket and put it over my shoulders. It's like negative ten million degrees out here and he doesn't want to die. No, he takes off his
hat,
and—before I can move—he jams it over my head, right over my scarf.

"Your head must get cold," he says.

So, he surprises me and then I go ahead and surprise both of us because I start crying.

I don't mean to. I don't want to. It just happens. It catches both of us off-guard and I'm too shocked to cover it up or anything, so I just sit there, crying.

"Hey, uh, Kyra? Kyra, it's gonna be OK. I can ... Do you want me to talk to your dad? Like, I could go in first or something?"

Shit. That just makes it worse. Why does he have to be nice to me sometimes? At the worst times?

I shake my head. "No. No. don't do that. This is my crap and I have to deal with it. I have to take my medicine."

He shuts up and lets me cry a little bit. The car door opens and I figure, like, great. Great. Now it's over. I don't even get a chance to talk to him and even though I have no idea what to say...

Another door opens and then his mom walks by, holding the baby, who's fussing. "I'm going inside to borrow their bathroom and change her," she says to Fanboy. "So wrap it up in ten minutes or so, OK?"

He tells her that's fine and she disappears inside. Ten minutes. I have ten minutes. I don't know what to say.

So I do what I always do—I stop thinking about it. I just let it come out.

I wipe away the tears and I glare at him. "I was so damn angry at you. I hated you so much."

He just stands there, his lips pressed together. I can't tell what he's thinking. He watches me.

"I was so pissed. I ... I'm the one who left that note on your car." Am I confessing? Or showing off how mean I can be? I don't know.

"Yeah. I actually figured that."

What?

"I mean," he goes on, "Dina wouldn't have written that. And she's away at college; why would she come back and leave me a note like that anyway?"

"And I'm the one who called and pretended to be from the hospital." Oh, God, it feels good to say it. Good and bad. That's Purgatory for you.

He sucks in a breath. "I sort of figured ... I wasn't sure, but ... Well, I knew
some
thing was going on. But I didn't know why."

"Why? Why? I'll tell you why. Because ... because you forgot me!" Rage. It's back. Thank God. I almost didn't know how to live with myself without it. Being all lachrymose. Anger is better. Anger is always better than sadness.

"I was gone for six months, Fanboy. Six months! And you never called. You never wrote to me. You didn't send me a single e-mail or a text message or
anything.
It's like I didn't exist. And I come back and you're this whole different person. You have new friends and shit and it's like I never existed and you just went ahead and tossed me on the trash heap and forgot all about me and went off and did your own shit. So
that's
why.
That's
why, all right?"

I'm sort of breathing hard by the time I've got it all out. It feels
good
to let it all out. Finally.

He stares at me like I've slapped him, which I could have, which I
should
have. Maybe it's not too late. Maybe I could stand up and smack him right now.

"I called," he says, his voice low and small. "A lot. Your dad wouldn't talk to me."

And that stops me cold. Because the whole time I was in the hospital, I would ask Roger, "Has anyone called for me?" And he would say no. Well, he gave Simone and Jecca my number at the hospital, but other than that...

"I don't believe you," I tell him, but I'm not sure.

"I called and said I was your friend and he wouldn't tell me where you were. Because I couldn't tell him who I was. I thought he'd recognize my voice from the bullet thing."

The tears start to come back. My vision blurs. Shit! Why? Why are they here? He's lying. I don't believe him.

Or do my tears know something I don't know?

"And I e-mailed you every single day. Every day you were gone. You never answered."

And that is
total
bullshit because when I came back from the hospital, the first thing I did was check my e-mail and there was nothing from him at all. Not a single e-mail for six months. So
there.

I'm about to give him an entire boatload of shit for lying to me when his mom comes out carrying the baby and says, "All right, guys, let's get going."

Out of Purgatory. Into hell, no doubt.

S
HE MAKES HIM SIT IN
the back, to keep an eye on the baby. Which means I get to sit up front with Fanboy's mom, who does
not
look at me with anything remotely resembling kindness or pity.

So I stare straight ahead at the dark roads of Brookdale and try not to think of how many blood vessels Roger is going to bust when I tell him what happened to me. Because Roger the Cop has my name and shit, so I really can't avoid this anymore.

Crap.

To take my mind off it, I think about Fanboy's lies, which makes me angrier and, therefore, better.

E-mailed me every day. Yeah, right. What a load of bullshit.

I had no e-mails from him. None. Does he think I'm stupid?

If he does, he's not the only one. Jecca must think I'm stupid, too. Telling me she e-mailed me about Brad all summer long when she never did.

Wow.
Two
people think I'm stupid! And not just a little bit stupid, either. Really, hugely stupid. Because you would have to be an enormous moron to miss all those e-mails. If they really e-mailed me all the time, there would be so many e-mails that you'd have to be blind to miss them.

Wait.

Wait a second.

Does Jecca even know Fanboy? Do they know each other at all?

Because it would be really stupid for them to both use the same lie. And Fanboy is actually a really good liar, so he wouldn't screw up like that.

So, no. They can't know each other. It's not like they planned this or something.

But then ... Hang on...

So if they didn't plan it, then it's just a coincidence? It's just a coincidence that they both decided to tell the exact same lie?

Does that make sense?

No. Not really.

Jecca ... Jecca kept insisting that she'd sent me e-mails about Brad over the summer ... She really didn't sound like she was lying. With Fanboy I can't always tell, but Jecca, she's not the world's greatest liar. I can usually tell with her. I can—

It hits me like a truck on the highway: Roger. Roger wiped my e-mail account while I was gone.

He tiptoed through my account, deleting anything he thought would upset me...

("Someone has to protect you from yourself. From all the crap out in the world." That's what he said to me when I came home from the hospital.)

Leaving some spam and some boring, innocent stuff so I wouldn't get suspicious.

I don't know
why,
but I get it. He went into
my
computer and screwed around with
my
files and erased
my
e-mails!

Goddamn!

That means that...

That means that maybe Fanboy
did
e-mail me every day.

Maybe he was telling the truth.

Oh, shit.

What...

What does
that
mean?

Every day.

Who e-mails someone every day for six months? When they never get a single response?

God, this is
seriously
messing with my head! I was ... I was going to
destroy
him. The stuff I did already was bad enough, but then ... The flyers. The posters. The website.

My stomach goes all lurchy, like I'm on a boat on a rough sea. God. If I had actually
done
that...

I would have wrecked him. I would have ruined him for the rest of high school. I would have destroyed not just him, but also
Schemata.
No one would have taken it seriously after that.

And I would have done it for no reason.

Because he didn't forget me.

Oh, God.

He didn't forget me.

W
E PULL INTO MY NEIGHBORHOOD
and I hear my own voice—low and croaky and sick-tell Mrs. Marchetti which house is mine.

She pulls alongside the curb by the driveway. This is the part where I get out of the car, but I don't want to. It's not just that it's warm in the car. It's that once I get out of the car and go inside, I'm probably going to end up right back in a hospital for another million months because Roger will overreact
again.
And I'll never be able to tell Fanboy...