Goth Girl Rising (5 page)

Then shut up,
I want to say to him,
and let me sleep.

At home, he tells me that I'm grounded for the day, the night, forever. I can go back to school in the morning and I'd better "shape up." For now, I'm banished to my room and he's going to have to stay home and "keep an eye" on me.

Great. My room. Like the hospital. Roger sends me places—that's what he does. That's all he does.

So I sit in my room and stare at the computer. I think of how I first saw Fanboy, standing in gym class, all noble and unyielding while this big blond asshole punched him over and over in the shoulder. Took a picture with my cell because I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Here's the thing about Fanboy: He's really smart and talented and all that, but he's also like really stupid. Naive, I guess. He thinks that not having anyone looking for you is the same thing as hiding.

Wrong!

That's how I found him the first time—an old MySpace page of his that he didn't use anymore, but the account name was XianWalker76 and I figured that he would probably use that for everything ... and he did. It was his IM name, so it wasn't hard to track to him down. And you know what?

He couldn't be bothered to do the same. To track me down when I went away. To even
try.
The whole time I was gone, the whole time I was DCHH—nothing. I came back home and I checked my computer and there was no e-mail from him at all.

I was disappointed, and then I figured...

I don't know what I figured. There weren't many e-mails from Simone or Jecca, either, but they knew where I was and they knew I couldn't get e-mail there, so they called me and sent me letters and stuff.

But
him...

He's moved on. obviously.

He's gone.

And I'm ...

What?

I wish it were easy. I wish life were easy, like one of your comics.

I don't mean that your characters have it easy. That's not what I mean. Because you do some really terrible, really awful things to your characters sometimes. (And I kind of like that, so it's cool.)

What I mean is that I wish life could be simple like the actual page of a comic book. You look at a comic book page and there are rules, rules that make sense. The page is always the same size. There are panel borders and you know that the artwork goes inside the panel borders. Word balloons. Caption boxes. One panel leads to the next, one balloon to the next, and it makes sense, OK? It all fits together and if you tried to look at just part of it, it really wouldn't work. You look at the whole thing, though, and you have a little piece of the story.

It's simple. You can do anything on a comic book page, but at the end of the day, it's all based on these simple ideas, right? It's all lines and blocks and that's good.

Everything makes sense.

So I wish life were like that. That's all.

S
O
, R
OGER HAS BANISHED ME
to my room. Like this is supposed to change anything. Please. I can outlast Roger. I've been sent to my room by
professionals,
man.

After writing a letter to Neil, I log on to chat, but no one's available. Which makes sense, because everyone's in school, but I thought maybe Simone might be in the library.

Literary Paws
is on the school's website, but I don't think I can bring myself to even look at it. But then I do anyway.

And I see it, but I don't believe it. My brain just won't accept what my eyes are showing it. This can't be. This is impossible. What was he
thinking?
What the hell is he trying to do?

Schemata.
There it is.

It's too painful to look at the whole thing. I do notice, though, that Fanboy has made some changes: The main character's—Courteney's—hair is no longer blond like Dina's, but jet black. Her nose is shorter and her eyes are wider. It's still Dina, but only if you know what you're looking for and sort of squint really hard.

I can't bear looking at all of it, though. Every time I try, I get all caught up in a bunch of different emotions and they're all bubbling and gurgling inside me like I swallowed a bunch of seltzer and salsa.

It's not even noon yet. I can hear Roger moving around out there in the rest of the house. I roll up my sleeves to look at the scars on my wrists. They haven't changed much in the years since I put them there.

You and your scars,
Fanboy said. That day in his bedroom. That's what he said to me:
You and your scars.
Like they didn't mean anything. Like they didn't matter.

I touch my right wrist. The slight raise-bump there. I remember every second, every
instant
when I did it. When I pulled the box cutter across, it's like all of a sudden my eyes and my mind became completely clear. It's like I could see the sharp lines and edges of the world, where the blade met my flesh, where the blood bubbled over, where the cuff of my shirt lay crisp against the skin. And it was all burned forever into my brain so that I could never ever forget it, even if I wanted to, which I don't.

And he sneered at me. At me and at
it.
At this ... this
moment
in my life, when for the first and only time
ever
things made perfect, almost holy, sense.

(The blade, sliding...)

And he said,
That's just a cry for help. That's just attention. Everybody knows that. Cutting across just gets you to the hospital.

Remembering it, it's like I'm there again, in his bedroom. How could he
do
that to me? How could he treat me that way? God, I tried to
explain
it to him. Tried to explain women to him. I ... I showed him myself. opened myself to him in every way possible. But all he could do was mock me.
A cry for help.

Everyone knows that.

But everyone doesn't.

I didn't.

That day. That day I made the first cut and received that amazing clarity of vision, I really thought I was killing myself. And I really wanted to die.

But I effed it up.

You didn't really try to kill yourself,
Fanboy said to me.
You just wanted attention, but you screwed up.
And then ... And then the harshest...

Try harder next time.

That's what he said to me:
Try harder next time.

And I left his house that day thinking,
I will.

T
HIS IS WHAT HAPPENED THAT DAY
when I came home from his house...

I'm surprised I made it home at all—my eyes were all blurry and effed up with tears because Fanboy was such an asshole to me.

But that didn't last long. Because by the time I got home, I was angry, not sad. And the tears went away and I got madder and madder and then I started to think about what he'd said, about how I wasn't
really
trying to kill myself. He thought I was faking. Even if he thought I really wanted to die, he would think I was stupid for effing up. I didn't know which was worse.

But I had something. I had his bullet now. I had stolen it from his hiding place while his mom was yelling at him.

I slid my hand into my pocket and I touched the bullet there and God!
I got it.
I understood. I understood why he carried it with him.

It was power.

I mean, a gun is
useless
without a bullet. Bullets do all the damage. The gun just, just
throws
them.

I couldn't keep my hands off that bullet. I lay in bed that night, rolling it between my fingers. I loved the brassy smell it left on my skin.

And I thought how easy it would be. If I had a gun, it would be
so easy.
One bullet. One shot.

I could show him. I could show him that I
could
get it right.

I actually got out of bed. I went into the kitchen and got the big knife Mom used to cut up chicken and stuff—before she died.

I sat on the floor. The cold kitchen tile made my butt go numb.

This time I wouldn't screw it up. This time I knew how to do it
right,
Fanboy, and this time you wouldn't be able to call me a wannabe.

But I turned my wrist up and my hand was closed and I had to open my fist, I just
had
to, and I saw the bullet lying there, a perfect little dull spot of brass.

Not with the knife,
I thought.
Not like that. Been there, done that. Do it with the bullet this time. With
his
bullet. That'll teach him. That'll show him.

So I put the knife away. I put it away and I stood up and went back to bed. I slept with the bullet clutched in my hand and I thought,
I'll find a gun. I'll find a gun and do it that way and I'll win.

S
O, YEAH, THAT'S WHAT
I thought that night as I drifted off to sleep. Obviously, I didn't do it, because I'm still here, six months later.

I don't know what happened or what changed in my sleep, but by the time I woke up the next day, I wasn't suicidal anymore. Angry, yes. Still, I ... It was weird. As angry as I was at Fanboy, as much as I hated him, I still cared about
Schemata.
So I called him that night and I told him what was wrong with it, and I thought that was going to be it, but...

God! Eff him! Eff him!

I tried to help him. I was his
partner.
I was giving him advice and shit and then I went away and he just forgot about me and went on with his life and now whenever I think about him, my gut feels wrong and my head hurts and my breath doesn't come out right.

It takes a while, but eventually all my hot rage burns out and goes cold. which is better. when you're hot, you're not thinking clearly. You just sort of lash out and do stupid shit.

But when your anger goes all cold ... That's when you can think straight. when you can plan and execute.

I've made up my mind. I've decided.

I'm going to destroy him.

Ah. I feel better already.

I
TOSS AND TURN ALL NIGHT
and wake up with my head pounding from thinking too much and sleeping too little. That's bad enough. But I also want to wear a skirt to school today and that's when I realize that Roger has taken away my razor.

Please.

He's in the kitchen, making coffee. "Roger. I need my razor." I'm standing there in a ratty old bathrobe, and my boobs would be spilling out of the damn thing if I wasn't holding it closed really tight.

He doesn't even look at me. "Sorry."

"'Sorry? What does that mean?"

"I can't let you have it."

I'm trying to imagine how someone could kill herself with a Schick Silk Effects. You'd leave a nice, smooth corpse.

"I have to shave my legs. And my pits." Ugh. I effing hate having to even
say
it to him! It's none of his business.

"I'm sorry, Kyra."

"What the eff am I supposed to do, Roger? Walk around like Bigfoot or something?" And this is the worst part of it all—that suddenly I give a flying eff what people think about my appearance. Why can't I wear a skirt without shaving my legs? I mean, why should I care if I have hairy legs or armpits or whatever? But I guess I do. And that bugs the shit out of me.

"Hang on." He disappears into the garage for a second, where we keep all kinds of shit. Then he comes back with a container of Nair. "Here."

I take it and start to walk off. "No thank-you?" he asks.

Bite me,
I want to say. Somehow, I restrain myself. "I want a razor."

"I'll get you an electric one, how about that?"

It's better than nothing, I guess. I go off to de-hair myself. The Nair smells and burns. That's it—I'd rather go hairy than use this stuff again.

Before I go out to the bus, Roger stops me. He's at the mirror in the hallway, tying his tie.

"Are you going to behave today?"

"Sure. Why not? Might be interesting."

"If you can get through to Thanksgiving break without getting kicked out again, maybe we can take you to get your driver's license."

Oh, damn. Here we go. Roger likes to hold that over me. He has no idea how much driving I actually do. or did. I haven't been behind the wheel since before I went away.

"OK." I keep it short and to the point.

And then he does something really disgusting: He brushes my Bangs of Doom out of the way and plants a kiss right on my forehead. Gross. I'm gonna get zits there now.