Goth Girl Rising (4 page)

And he says, "people can't even see you."

Duh.

And he says, "You know, Kyra, the world isn't so bad when you can actually see it."

Gag.

I
HATE THE BUS
. A
NYONE WHO'S SANE
should hate the bus. Ugh.

I have no friends on the bus, so I have time to think. I start thinking about Fanboy and that makes me remember Simone last night, talking about
Schemata.
Was that real? Did I just imagine it? I don't do pot a lot—maybe a couple of times a year—so maybe the whole thing was in my imagination. Maybe that's it.

Maybe.

I look at the schedule they sent me. Gross—I have Miss Powell for English. I
hate
Miss Powell. I had her for English freshman year, with Simone. Miss Powell sucks for many, many reasons. I can't believe this.

The bus stops at South Brook High, and for the first time my stomach does a weird little lurchy, hiccupy type thing.

Chill, Kyra. This is no big deal. It's just school.

I go inside and head for the office. That's where I'm supposed to "report" today. To Assistant Principal Roland J. Sperling, known far and wide (especially wide) as the Spermling. One of my favorite adults to eff with.

And once I'm there, I crack my first smile of the day. Because the Spermling isn't alone in his office—he's got Miss Channing, the secretary, there with him. Probably because the last time I was in his office alone with him, I walked out crying and with my shirt untucked so that everyone would think he molested me. Sucker.

The Spermling harrumphs and is nearly strangled by his own fat and tells me where my new homeroom is and how he's aware of my "issues" and how if I have any trouble I should feel free to come see him...

"As long as we have a chaperone, right?"

He clears his throat, and his meaty lips clash together in a way that makes me realize that—somewhere under that fat face—he's gnashing his teeth.

"You created this situation, Miss Sellers. We're merely living it."

"Yeah, I control things. don't you forget it."

"Miss Sellers! We are
trying
to help you. One more comment like that and you'll have the dubious distinction of ending up with detention before you've even gotten to homeroom!"

I think about it for a second. That would be kinda cool, actually. It would really rub the Spermling's nose in it and it would piss off Roger, too.

But no. I have to stay focused. I need to find Fanboy.

Of course, I'm not about to tell the Spermling any of that, so I just sit there with a smirk on my face and glare at him from behind my Bangs of Doom and tap my foot because I'm dying for a cigarette.

He lets me go. I resist the urge to look over my shoulder and say, "Stop looking at my ass!" as I leave.

I
HAVE A FEW MINUTES BEFORE
the bell rings, so I go looking for Fanboy. I feel all light and puffy inside, like someone filled me up with a cloud or something. The Spermling doesn't bother me. Roger doesn't bother me. I'm going to find Fanboy and then everything is going to be fine.

No, wait. That's wrong. Everything is going to be
perfect.
Because I'm going to make it that way this time.

I'm halfway down the hall when something catches my eye. It's a poster on the wall, sort of a combination of computer type and artwork...

The artwork...

Jesus! It's
his.
It's
Fanboy's
artwork. I would know that style anywhere.

The poster says
LITERARY PAWS VOL. XX
#3 and then
COMING BEFORE THANKSGIVING
.

And then ...

Holy shit.

Under that:
FEATURING THE NEXT CHAPTER OF SCHEMATA!

No. Effing. Way.

I
T'S NOT JUST
S
IMONE
. T
HE WHOLE
world...

The posters are
everywhere. Literary Paws
is the school's literary magazine. No one gives a shit about it. It's like a total joke. It's run by Mr. Tollin, this eight-hundred-foot-tall English teacher who spends all day talking about how he played college basketball and almost made it into the Final Four one year. (Whatever
that
means.) He's a total loser and he only runs the magazine because he's the newest English teacher and they must pass this thing along like it's a pissed-off skunk.

I don't get it.
Schemata
is running in
Literary Paws?
Did the whole world go crazy while I was away?

The bell for homeroom will ring soon, but I can't help myself—I have to see him. I have to find out what's happened.

So I rush to his homeroom, hoping for maybe just a minute before the bell.

And...

Yes, the world has definitely gone crazy.

Because there he is, there's Fanboy in all his Fanboy glory, sitting at his desk.

Surrounded.

Surrounded
by like half a dozen people. They're all laughing, and here's the thing—they're not laughing
at
him. They're laughing
with
him.

And then his friend—the jock, Cal—starts waving them all away and busts out this fake ghetto shit: "Yo, yo, all y'all gotta back off my dawg here, OK? My man needs
space
to be the
ace!
"

I want to puke. What the hell?

And Fanboy kinda chuckles and starts drawing something. He holds it up and it looks like some caricature of one of the kids standing around him and everybody laughs and...

Caricatures?

He's wasting his effing time drawing
caricatures?

And since when is he
popular?
God, I was the only person he showed
Schemata
to. Now he's ... he's serializing it? In the effing literary journal?

None of this makes any sense.

I back out of the room before anyone can see me. Dimly, like it's off in the distance somewhere, I hear a sound—the homeroom bell.

And I don't care.

I'
M LATE TO HOMEROOM, BUT
Mrs. Reed doesn't say anything other than "Welcome back, Kyra," which makes everyone look up at me, which I don't like, but whatever. I plop down in my seat and I stare out the window. I can see the roof of South Brook Elementary, which is across the street and down a hill from here. It makes me think of the playground there, the first place I met Fanboy.

The last place I saw him before I became DCHH.

That's what they called me in the hospital when Roger sent me there six months ago. DCHH. I didn't know what it meant at first, but I found out. Oh, yeah, I found out.

And why were you in the hospital, Kyra? Well, Kyra, because
Fanboy
ratted me out. Told Roger about the bullet, so Roger decided to hustle me off to have my brain scrubbed clean.

Thanks a lot, Fanboy.

What an asshole. I was
right
to be pissed at him. I was right to hate him. Why did I ever think I was wrong? Why did I ever think I owed him an apology?

He talked so big about being an artist, and what does he do? He publishes his "great masterpiece" in
Literary Paws.
God, how lame can you get?

And it wasn't even
done
yet. He still had all this work to do. How could he start publishing it when it still had so far to go? He's compromising his art. I was helping him with it and he just ... he just goes off and does this, this stupid thing, without thinking about ... thinking about...

God, I'm so pissed I can't even think straight!

He doesn't deserve to succeed. Not if he's willing to settle for
Literary Paws.
Pathetic.

"Kyra?"

I blink and turn away from the window. The room is empty, but some kids are starting to file in from the hall. What the hell?

"Didn't you hear the bell?" Mrs. Reed asks.

I didn't. I was totally off in fantasyland, but I'm not about to tell
her
that. I stare at her instead.

"Kyra? Are you OK?"

Why do people always ask me that?

"I'm fine."

"You look a little ... spaced out. Maybe you should—"

"I was just
thinking,
OK? God! Get off my back."

"The bell—"

"I don't need a
bell
to tell me how to live my life," I say to her.

She looks over her shoulder at the kids clustered in the doorway, all watching. Great.

Then she looks back at me and holds out a hall pass. "I think you should head down to the office, OK? Maybe talk to a guidance counselor."

I roll my eyes behind the Bangs of Doom.

"Your first day back can be tough," she goes on, and just to shut her up, I take the hall pass. Before she can keep lecturing me, I push my way through the kids coming through the door and head to the office, where I get to hang with the Spermling and Miss Channing again, lucky me.

"This has got to be a record, Miss Sellers," the Spermling wheezes. "Even for you."

For once, I can't think of anything to say. Because it really
is
a record, and I'm kind of distracted by that. So I just sit and stare at him.

"Your father and your therapist assured us that you were doing better. That things would be different this time. What happened?"

I shrug. "She wouldn't leave me alone, is all. I wasn't hurting anyone."

He watches me with his beady little eyes. They look like tiny chocolate chips in a huge bowl of lumpy cookie dough.

"Maybe we should have you speak to the county psychiatrist," the Spermling says.

"Jesus Christ!" I can't help it. "All I did was space out for a minute and you all are acting like I brought a gun to school or something!"

"Given your history—"

"The hell with my history! Just leave me alone and let me do the shit I have to do here and..."

I trail off because there's no point in talking anymore. The Spermling's not listening. He's made up his mind already. Hell, he probably made up his mind the minute I walked in here with Mrs. Reed's hall pass. Blowing up in his face just confirmed the decision for him.

I sit in silence as he sighs and picks up the phone. Pretty soon he has Roger on the line and he's saying things like "Maybe it was too soon" and "I'm sure you did" and "Right now, I don't see any other choice."

The Spermling hangs up. "Your father is coming to pick you up. You may wait in the outer office with Miss Channing."

I go into the outer office with Miss Channing, who types away on her keyboard and answers the phone and shit. You'd think after all the times I've come here and sat outside with her that she would, like, talk to me or something, but no. It's like I'm not even here.

Time goes by. Bells ring. Some kids and some teachers come in and out. I ignore their stares. I just glare at them from behind my Bangs of Doom.

Eff all of them.

And eff
him,
too.

Who said he could be happy? Who said he could just forget about me?

Roger arrives. Great.

Well, at least I don't have to deal with Miss Powell today.

T
HE DRIVE HOME IS FILLED
with shit like "...made me leave work
again
" and "...couldn't behave for one day, could you?" and "Here we go again, Kyra. Here we go again." He sounds like he's tired of saying it all.

I know I'm tired of hearing it all.

"Whatever, Roger." I say it because I know it drives him crazy.

"Goddammit, Kyra!" He slams his hand on the steering wheel and for a second there I imagine what would happen if the air bag suddenly exploded open right in his face.

"I thought this was the end of it, Kyra. You told Dr. Kennedy you wanted to go back to school."

"No. I told him I was
ready
to go back. I never said I wanted to."

I guess the worst part about it is this: I was ready to try. I really was. But then I was betrayed. How am I supposed to be nice to people who stab me in the back? Fanboy shared the thing that had only been between the two of us. And Cal, acting like he had always been there, like he was the best friend, when I know for a fact that it wasn't
Cal
that Fanboy first showed
Schemata
to—it was
me.
It was
me,
and
I
should have been the one standing there, brushing off the admirers and telling them to give
my
ace some space...

"—listening to me?" Dad rants. "I can't even tell if you're
awake
with your hair down over your eyes like that."