PANDORA

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “Well, yeah. We’re all idiots,” I said without a trace of mockery. “We think we know better than adults and pull our clichÉ rebellion shit. But the truth is, most of us are idiots. We read about things, see stuff on TV, and accept it if we want to. If we don’t, we just blow it off. We’re entirely too fickle.”

  “Kathleen,” Aka said with a weary sigh I seldom heard from him. “You are not ‘we’ ever.”

  “I’m a lot more like the masses than you are.” There were some definite sheepified tendencies in my thought processes, and I reluctantly accepted it. “You are a necessary aberration.”

  “Compliment acceptable.” Aka nudged my knee with his boot. “Still, the bitter color? Unattractive.”

  I thumped his boot with my fist lightly. “I’m not bitter.” That might have been a tiny lie. It did not escape my notice that he was the second person to accuse me of it. Maybe it was a guy thing. “I’m realistic. I see the world as it is.” Okay, so I was a little bitter about my life, but refused to give up all hope for surely this was not permanent. It just felt that way sometimes.

  “Through bile-colored glasses.”

  “Not . . . entirely. I just think being an adult is not something to fear if it means I’ll stop being an idiot. I’ll have responsibilities and stuff, but at least I’ll be smarter.” And out of my mother’s house. That was the important point I didn’t want to voice.

  “NaÏve and cynical,” Aka said. “Strange bedfellows. You usually think you’re pretty clever.”

  “No, I’m usually just a smartass. Not the same thing.” Not by a mile. I might be witty and have a larger vocabulary than most, but I already proved to myself I could make some pretty stupid decisions. Hopefully, age and maturity would cure that.

  “Are you having some sort of crisis?” The genuine concern on Aka’s face touched me.

  “Probably.”

  It was Rigel’s fault. He made me question so many things about myself, and his mere existence made me question everything else. There was also the nagging thought he wasn’t even real. It was possible I suffered some sort of personality disorder and he was a manifestation of my diseased mind. I had no tangible proof he even existed. I had no idea why I would create a small creature that would irritate me so much, but I wouldn’t put it past me.

  “Well, get over it,” Aka said, lifting himself from the ground. “You’re better than this.”

  “I’ll try,” I said. “Going back already? We’ve got fifteen minutes or so.”

  “Things to do.”

  “Okay.”

  I watched him retreat to the school building full of people who were utterly unaware of his genius and depth. Aka would make it out of our stifling burg. He was going to be someone important. I was certain.

  He had not been gone a full minute when I heard Rigel behind me in the bushes.

  “What are you afraid of?” he said without preamble.

  “Fire. And sharks.” I wasn’t in the mood for another quiz round with Rigel. I would have preferred to have a few minutes alone to dwell on my own shortcomings and question my worth. “Being on fire in a pool of sharks.”

  “Unlikely. And irrational. You are miles from the ocean. Do you even like to swim?”

  “Not where there are sharks.” Or even where there aren’t. I hated being in water. I didn’t like feeling self-conscious in front of judgmental people because my size fourteen thighs were the color of cauliflower. I also didn’t appreciate the emotional scarring I received at the age of four when my babysitter made me watch Jaws with her. I still couldn’t be in a mere pool without hearing the infamous theme music.

  I glanced at my bag and debated packing my notebook and things back into it. I tried to ignore Rigel’s eyes boring a hole into the back of my head.

  “Why do you spend your time with that boy?” Rigel said after about ten seconds of silence.

  “Who, Aka?”

  “Is it Aka who is too thin to be healthy, dresses like a ragamuffin, and has his dark hair in his face at all times?”

  “You pretty much just described the majority of the male population of my school.” I bit back any comment that sprang to mind at Rigel’s use of the word “ragamuffin” in the twenty-first century.

  “Is Aka the one who feeds you?” Rigel said.

  “How do you see that?” Aka only gave me food in the lunchroom; a place Rigel had no business being. “Creepy little stalker.”

  “But that is Aka?”

  “Yes, shit.” I grabbed my bag and stuffed my things into it angrily. “Why does it matter so much to you?”

  “No reason.”

  The sound that escaped my throat was somewhere between a frustrated sigh and a furious growl. Rigel only wanted attention. He learned enough about me to know what buttons to push, and now, on occasion, he tried to play with me.

  That was fine by me. My retaliation was ignoring him. I wouldn’t rise to the bait.

  I deliberated over my belongings in my bag with intense focus, shoving around one thing or another. A few minutes passed before Rigel spoke again.

  “He is not a good person.”

  I lifted my eyes and searched the area, but the only person I saw was Beth Dwillis. A beat later I realized Rigel was referring to Aka. Bullshit. I wasn’t going to let him rile me up, no matter how hard he tried or what crap he spewed.

  “That’s a girl,” I said as I zipped my bag shut. “You need to work on telling the difference between human breasts and penises. Granted, Beth can pass for either one at a distance, I’ll give you that.”

  “What?” If Rigel had eyebrows, I think he would have raised one. “Are you being deliberately dull-witted?”

  “No. I’m not-so-subtly hinting for you to give up your little game.” I stood and slung my bag over my shoulder. “I trust Aka more than I trust you. I trust him more than anyone. He is . . .” Exasperating. Voluntarily obtuse. Selectively blind. “Difficult to define. He surprises me at times, when I think he may do or say a thing and he doesn’t. It’s part of his charm.”

  Which was a weird thing to never realize until I said it aloud. It must have been festering in me, the knowledge of my faith in Aka, but I couldn’t recall ever forming the thought and deliberating it with the voices in my head.

  Not to worry. My voices all sounded like me.

  “It is misplaced,” Rigel said. “Someday, he will betray you.”

  “Drop it,” I said.

  I didn’t know or care what Rigel was up to, but whatever it was, he would fail. Screw trying to discern any of Rigel’s motivations or trying to figure out what his end game even was. I couldn’t get rid of him, but that didn’t mean I had to put up with all of his bullshit. I stepped into the sunshine to head back to the school.

  “What has he done to warrant such devotion?” Rigel called out.

  Oooh. “Devotion” was a bit strong. The word made me uncomfortable in any context.

  I turned around and peered into the shadows. “What have you done that proves you are so much better? That you’re honest? Kind? Not a douche bag? Nothing. No offense, but all you do is hang around and annoy me.”

  “No offense?” Rigel perched up on his hind legs and almost looked like an indignant old man who happened to be covered in fur. “Why does that phrase even exist? It is incredibly rude to be so insulting yet disregard the offense with so flippant a remark.”

  I barely contained my amusement. Maybe next he would stomp a foot or put his front paws on his hips and huff. “Wow. You’re really not from around here, are you?”

  He clucked his tongue and said, “Of course I am not.”

  “That was rhetorical, Jeeves.”

  “Rigel,” he promptly corrected. “Ri. Gel. How you can misinterpret or distort my name in so ghastly a manner, I really am at a loss.”

  “You are far too easy to rile up, Gellypants.” The laughter I at last allowed myself almost drowned out his response.

  “You are purposefully antagonizing me?” Rigel asked it
with so innocent an expression, guilt crept in on me for teasing him, but then I remembered how much he loved to annoy me and I got over it pretty quick.

  “Why not? You do it to me all the time, you little hypocrite.”

  A class dismissal bell rang in the distance. Only a few minutes to get to my next class. “Look, I gotta go. I’ll see you later.” I took only a few steps before I paused to say over my shoulder, “And stop talking to me at school. You’ll get me shipped off to a nuthouse if anyone sees me.”

  “No one said you had to say anything back,” was his reply.

  11: Accusations and Revelations

  “Kathleen!” my mother bellowed from downstairs. “Can you come here a minute?”

  It was the sort of thing that never ended well. When she just wanted to know something, she didn’t use my name. My name was reserved for those multiple moments in my life I was in trouble for something.

  Reluctant to answer, but having no choice, I said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  That was the required response. Anything other than that was considered disrespectful. She deserved respect, I took it, based on no other achievement than expelling me from her womb. Frankly, I had nothing to do with that, and she hadn’t done much to earn my respect since then.

  When I got to the top of the stairs, I looked down at her in the foyer and gave her an expectant look. Her response was to wave me down the stairs. That wasn’t a good sign either. It meant we were going to have a discussion, which was always worse than her just yelling at me from afar then letting me retreat to my room.

  I was tense from the awareness of being in trouble, but more was the belief I had done nothing wrong and she had invented something to scold me about. This was also not uncommon, but that didn’t make enduring her scoldings any easier. I entered the kitchen a bundle of nerves, and her silent indication for me to sit at the table didn’t help. It was always worse when she didn’t yell straight away. If it had been building up in her, then it was going to be ten times as bad. Possibly no longer a matter based in reality at all, but something her broken brain had fabricated as a truth I must apologize for or make amends.

  My life was not an enviable one.

  “Before we begin, is there anything you’d like to say?”

  She was nothing if not consistent. Okay, that’s a stupid clichÉ. Mom was a whole lot of things, including consistent. Her tactic was to give me the standard if-you-confess pre-emptive get-out-of-jail-free card that existed only in her imagination. I know this, because she never actually gave me one. I was stupid enough once to confess before I was accused. I was five or six at the time, and it was the last time I was naÏve enough to think Mom was ever on my side. After that, she had to pretty much convince me I did something wrong, even when we both already knew I had.

  This time I was at a complete loss. I just hoped Rigel hadn’t shit somewhere because I had no explanation for something like that.

  “Nothing comes to mind,” I said without a smile. It wasn’t true. There were a lot of things that popped into my mind, just nothing I was brave enough to say right then. Or ever, to be honest.

  She sighed dramatically and shook her head.

  I braced myself for one of her martyr speeches. How many hours of my life had been wasted suffering through her hyperbole about how hard she tried to be . . . something? It changed each time.

  “It’s hard to raise a child right,” Mom said.

  Not laughing was incredibly difficult. She wasn’t raising me; she was enduring me between opportunities to torture me. We cohabitated a house, with the occasional pop in of Dad. Other than that, little could be said that was not negative about our interactions, aside from them being as rare as humanly possible.

  I spotted Rigel as he peeked around the corner. He wore a curious expression, as always. I resented him for being a spectator in my life when he was capable of doing something on my behalf. I didn’t have anything specific in mind, and I didn’t know what powers he had. He could teleport, speak, and see into the future (he knew something was going to happen, after all. Then again, if he wasn’t saying what, it could be anything). I was certain he could have been more proactive than just sitting there, watching me suffer.

  “An item has turned up missing from my nightstand,” Mom said. Her eyes scrutinized every inch of me, no doubt in a search for something to reinforce my guilt in her mind. “Does that jog your memory at all?”

  “No.” To say anything more was a calculated risk, and I calculated it was not a good idea to embellish my innocence.

  Her eyes . . . shifted. Crap. My math must have been way off. There’s an easily perceivable change in someone’s eyes when they are about to lose their mind, although the changes are so small it would be impossible to see if you were more than twenty feet away. Eyelids curve back, eyes widen. Pupils shrink and brows lift slightly.

  With Mom, tiny little demons danced in the striations of her irises and were a dead giveaway.

  Okay, that last part might be an embellishment. Unfortunately, I had no frickin’ clue what she was talking about. If I did, maybe I could have defended myself. Oh, who was I kidding? I didn’t have a shot in hell.

  “It was a tube of personal lubricant,” Mom said.

  “Oh, my God!” I shot backwards so fast, I almost toppled out of my chair. I don’t know which emotion was stronger; indignant anger or profound horror. “Are you serious? First off: ew. I’d never touch anything that might have your or Dad’s . . . grody on it. Secondly: ew. I’m in denial you guys even do that, okay? I’m pretty grossed-out just having this conversation.”

  “Stop the dramatics,” Mom said, her eyes never wavering and her expression frozen. “There are only three people in this house at the moment. It didn’t simply vanish. It was moved or taken.”

  My eyes returned to where Rigel had been. He was gone. Part of me wanted to accuse him, but what the hell would he use it for? Mom was just nuts. More so than usual. I figured she’d stopped putting out a long time ago since Dad hadn’t bought her anything shiny for a while. My mother, the prostitute. She must have wanted something and was pissed she didn’t get a chance to soften Dad up first.

  To ponder that led to repeated tramping down of images in my mind again, so I stopped trying to figure out why she was so pissed. Lube costs a couple bucks. She could have easily replaced it.

  I was tempted to suggest Dad had some ho stashed somewhere, some young thing that treated him good and laughed at his stupid jokes, but I preferred to live to see the next sunrise. I used to hope they’d get divorced. I’d daydream about it sometimes, having it be just me and Dad. I’d do his laundry and take care of things while he was gone. A bit domestic for my taste, but it was preferable to having these sorts of conversations with Mom.

  “Well, I didn’t take it,” I said. I sat back and crossed my arms against my chest. It’s not like she was going to believe me, so our conversation was going to take a while. Once she got it in her head something was true, she never let it go. Evidence was a useless commodity in my family.

  “Someone did.” Mom probably thought that proved something, but it would be laughed at in a court of law.

  “Wasn’t me.” I shrugged and looked away. I hated looking at her most days, and that hatred increased during these moments. “Did you ask Karen?”

  “She’s been gone for weeks. I’ve used it since—”

  “Whoa! Don’t tell me!” I scooted my chair further backwards and turned sideways. “Way too much info.”

  For me, the conversation was over. I was innocent. She was nasty.

  “Your little pouts won’t save you this time.”

  “This time? When has pouting about something ever made a bit of difference?” I truly wanted to know. She was completely insane if she deluded herself into believing she’d ever shown me an ounce of leniency just because I stuck my lip out.

  Besides, I wasn’t pouting.

  “I don’t want to have another of these conversations—”

 
“Oh, you and me both.”

  “Stop interrupting me!”

  I tensed at her shrill voice and the crazed look in her eyes. It’s seriously fucked up my defense mechanism is to drip sarcasm and run my mouth when cornered by a rabid beast.

  My fear of her had diminished a little over time, I suppose. When I was smaller, she had no qualms with shoving me, hitting me, throwing things, or any other act of violence that popped into her head. That stopped when I gained some inches in height. I figured she didn’t want to find out if I could kick her ass if I snapped one day and retaliated.

  In this regard, I am both a coward and a pacifist. I turn the other cheek because I am not a violent person. But if I was a violent person, I would be too scared to hit back. She was crazy. To engage in battle with her would be like taking a knife to a gunfight. I lack both the skill and the desire to harm other people with brute force. Words are my only weapon.

  Mom came complete with an alarm to let a person know when logic and reason had abandoned her cerebellum: her foot. I could hear it tapping under the table, possibly counting down the seconds left in my life should I not cooperate.

  It was like her madness was tenuously contained in the center of her body most of the time, but in moments of stress it rocketed to the polar ends of her body to spout insanity while simultaneously driving me crazy with the incessant tap-tap-tap-tap-tap against the tile.

  Seconds had ticked by since her outburst. It was part of her torture; to scare me then say nothing for long moments. I preferred the yelling.

  “You’re grounded.” She said it with the simplicity one would use to remark on the weather or the color of a car.

  “For what?”

  “Theft and deceit. Until you own up to what you did, you’ll not leave this house except to go to school. No phone, no television, no internet; nothing.”

  “How is that fair?” I don’t know why I bothered asking. Nothing was ever fair. “I didn’t do anything. Dad probably moved it, or you used it all and forgot or something. But it wasn’t me. I never even go in your room, and I definitely wouldn’t need any of that stuff anyway. Remember, Mom? I’m too fat for boys to like me.”