by Barry Lyga
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
Forty-eight
Forty-nine
Fifty
Fifty-one
Fifty-two
Fifty-three
Fifty-four
Fifty-five
Fifty-six
Fifty-seven
Fifty-eight
Fifty-nine
Sixty
Sixty-one
Sixty-two
Sixty-three
Sixty-four
Sixty-five
Sixty-six
Sixty-seven
Sixty-eight
Sixty-nine
Seventy
Seventy-one
Seventy-two
Seventy-three
Seventy-four
Seventy-five
Seventy-six
Seventy-seven
Seventy-eight
Seventy-nine
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2009 by Barry Lyga, LLC
All rights reserved. For information about permission to repro-
duce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South,
New York, New York 10003.
Houghton Mifflin is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Company.
www.hmhbooks.com
The text of this book is set in ITC Legacy Serif.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
T.K.
Printed in the United States of America
MP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Molly, who told me I should.
And look, I did.
my hair my hair
my hair's gone brown
i look in the mirror
and who do i see?
a brown—haired girl
who is she?
One
MY MOTHER AND I BOTH spent a lot of time in hospitals. Unlike her, I survived.
Before she went and died, my mom told me to stop bitching about my cramps all the time. "It's nothing that every other woman on the planet hasn't gone through," she said.
And besides, she went on, your period is a good thing. It's a sign that you're alive and healthy.
Easy for her to say—cancer was eating her lungs from the inside out, so what's the big deal about some cramps, right?
Still, I knew that what I was experiencing wasn't right or normal. It wasn't what other girls were feeling every month. (I know—I asked around.)
Weird thing, though: After she died, my cramps sort of got better. It's not like they went away; they just stopped being so intense and so consuming. I started to think that, OK, maybe this is what other girls felt. Like I had been abnormal before, but now I was somehow becoming normal, that now the world was working properly and everything was good and normal and usual.
Everything except my mom's face...
My mom's face before they closed the casket looked like a Barbie doll's.
A Barbie doll someone had left in the sandbox too long.
All plasticky and too shiny, but somehow gray at the same time.
And then one day after the funeral—it was a pretty nice day, too—I took a box cutter from my dad's workshop and slashed across my wrist. It hurt, but not that much. Not bad at all.
So I slashed the other one, too.
And that's how I ended up in the emergency room and then in front of a judge and then locked up in a mental hospital.
That was my first time in the hospital. And I got out and I covered up my scars and I went on with my life and I tried to figure out what it was all about, and I'm still trying to figure it out.
But it just gets more and more complicated all the time. Every day. The world doesn't slow down long enough for you to figure out anything; it keeps adding things in. Things like geeky guys and comic books and comic book conventions and effed-up teachers and...
And another stay in the hospital.
Two
GOD I'M DYING FOR A CIGARETTE. I turned sixteen while I was away but this stupid state says you have to be eighteen to smoke, so they wouldn't let me smoke in the hospital.
When I got home this afternoon, the first thing I did was look for my cigs. But Roger had tossed them already. Now that he's quit, he's an effing cigarette Taliban, even though it's, like, years too late for that.
"Mom's already dead!" I yelled at him. "Who the hell do you think you're saving?"
And he just gave me his Sad, Tired look. It's one of the three he's got, the other two being Pissed Off and Blissed Out on ESPN.
"you, Kyra." Like it's some big revelation. "Someone has to protect you from yourself. From all the crap out in the world."
"Don't do me any favors," I told him.
He took a deep breath. "It's your first day back home. Can't you behave just a little bit?"
I went to my room. Home all of five minutes and I was already isolated in my room. Living with Roger isn't much different from being in the hospital. He's in charge, just like the doctors and nurses are in charge in the hospital. I have no say. I have no rights.
To make things worse, I'm going back to school in the morning. I don't want to go back to school.
See, I haven't been to school in a while. Six months, which includes all of summer break, when everyone else in the universe was off having fun. Except for me. I got put away. Now I'm supposed to go back to school like nothing happened.
School seems like something that happens to other people.
Last spring, I met this guy. And I guess I fell in love with him a little bit, which was a stupid thing for me to do because it never works out and it's pointless. So I kicked him in the balls and walked away from him and even flipped him off over the Internet.
And then my dad started in on me because, see, before all of this, this kid—this Fanboy—had a bullet. And I guess I sort of stole it from him and he figured out I had it and he called my effing dad and then all hell broke loose at home because my dad was all freaked out, like I was going to try to kill myself again. And he spent all this time tearing apart the house, looking for this goddamn bullet, which he couldn't find because I'd already given it back to Fanboy ... right at the same time I kicked him in the balls, actually.
And I kept my mouth shut, too. No matter how much my dad screamed and yelled and ranted and raved, I wouldn't tell him anything about the bullet. Not about where I got it. Not a
bout where it went. Not about the kid who called him at work to tell him about it.
So Roger—my dad, officially—gave up. He sent me to the hospital again.
And now I'm back home. Because as bad as it was, I'm tougher than my mom.
The Last Time I Saw Her
the room the room the room is rosevomit because
Three
THINGS ARE A LITTLE BIT BETTER at home, of course—I have my own room, without a crazy roommate who got knocked up at fifteen and used to let her boyfriend beat her up. So I've got that going for me.
And I have my computer.
It's been months since I've been able to do anything on a computer. They had computers in the hospital, but we were monitored and we only got, like, fifteen minutes at a time, so I didn't bother.
I fire up the computer and log on to my chat program and there's Simone, like she's waiting for me. Simone's my best friend—I know all of her shit and she knows all of my shit.
So it goes like this:
simsimsimoaning: welcom back!!!!!
Promethea387: Thanks. Already feel like I'm in jail or something. Roger is being a PITA.
simsimsimoaning: u need 2 get oiut
simsimsimoaning: uv ben cooped up for MONTHS
Promethea387: Yeah, I know.
simsimsimoaning: grounded?
Promethea387: I don't think so. He's just watching me real carefully.
simsimsimoaning: shit
Promethea387: So? Never stopped me before.
simsimsimoaning: lol
Promethea387: I'm dying for a cigarette.
simsimsimoaning: i can hook u up
Promethea387: Roger is still home. I'll have to sneak out tonight when he's asleep.
simsimsimoaning: meet me @ jeccas house big party 2nite
Promethea387: OK.
Four
I SPEND THE REST OF THE DAY in my bedroom, just sort of trying to avoid Roger and the thought of school tomorrow. I'm not real successful at either one.
I turn up some music and try to drown my own brain, but I only succeed a little bit.
Roger knocks on the door a bunch of times. I talk to him just enough that he won't get too suspicious and start coming in without knocking. He told me on the way home from the hospital: "This is how it's going to be, Kyra—if you give me enough reason to worry about you, I'll just come in without knocking." And then, as if he read my effing mind: "And if it's locked, I'll knock it the hell down."
He thinks when he busts out "hell" I take him more seriously. Yeah. Insert eye roll here. (Man, I wish life had emoticons, you know? So that when your dad pisses you off you could like click a mental button or something and just show him one of those rolleyes. That would rock.)
Anyway.
After, like, forever, it's finally nighttime. There are no nurses to come in and check on me. No one tries to give me meds or anything like that. No psycho roommate crying herself to sleep.
Just me. In my own bedroom.
Roger knocks and then comes in and sits down. I'm lying on the bed. He sighs because that's what Roger does—he sighs a lot.
He gives me Sad, Tired.
"Are you going to behave in school tomorrow?"
"I guess."
"I need more than a guess, Kyra."
"What do you want from me, Roger?"
He flicks to Pissed Off for a second before returning to Sad, Tired. "I want you to think straight for once."
For some reason I feel sorry for him all of a sudden. That happens sometimes with Sad, Tired.
"I'll try, Dad."
He nods and leaves. I hear him head into his bathroom, then into his bedroom. Pretty soon the TV's on, just loud enough that I can hear something but not loud enough to tell what it is.
I give him an hour to fall asleep.
Then I stuffa bunch of clothes and old stuffed animals and shit under my covers to make it look like I'm in bed. I get dressed for the real world for the first time since spring—all black, of course; minimizer bra, of course. In the hospital, my black hair dye washed out, so now I have this ugly brown stuff. Nothing I can do it about it right now.
I sneak out the back door because that one squeaks a lot less than the front door.
Outside. I'm outside.
I'm in my own clothes.
I'm free.
Freedom! Like in that old Mel Gibson movie they made us watch in history. I want to scream it to the night sky: FREEDOM!
I stand in the cold and shiver a little bit. It's OK, though. The cold's OK. It's better than being in the hospital.
The only real problem is that I have no car. I used to be able to boost one pretty regularly, but I've only been home for a few hours, so I haven't been able to sneak out and steal one. So I'll have to walk to Jecca's. Damn.
Oh, well. I breathe in deep. The air's cold, but it feels good in my lungs. Better than the air in the hospital, that's for damn sure.
I start to walk.
Fanboy
AND I CAN'T HELP MYSELF. Even though I try to think of other things—Jecca, Simone, the party—I keep thinking about Fanboy.
And his graphic novel. And the way he kept trying to check me out without really checking me out and how for the first time in my life that, like, totally didn't bother me or freak me out. Except it freaked me out that it didn't freak me out.
I don't get it.
I remember kicking him in the balls. And e-mailing him a picture of me flipping him off. I was so pissed at him. I was so angry.
There was this senior named Dina Jurgens, and she was this total Maxim bimbette with the tits and the ass and the legs and the tan and the blond hair and all that shit that makes guys turn into such jackasses. Against all odds, she even put the moves on Fanboy. I found out that at a party one night she started sucking face with him, which is so stupid.
So maybe I was right to be angry because I liked him and I shouldn't have, but he shouldn't have kissed effing Dina Jurgens of all people, but she graduated while I was gone, so she's not an issue anymore, right? Out of sight, out of mind.
But he's just scary talented. I mean, I've read a lot of comic books and manga and shit, and Schemata was just totally kick-ass. I busted him a lot about some of the stuff he put in there, and it really pissed me off that his main character was just wank-bait Dina all grown up, but still. It was amazing. I read most of the script and saw like twenty pages of artwork, and it was phenomenal. I still can't believe that bald little shit Bendis didn't realize he was looking at genius. (Yeah, big-shot Brian Michael Bendis. Big-shot comic book writer. Whatever. Prick. He didn't deserve to see my boobs. Long story.)
Cute, in that geeky way only guys have, really. Geeky girls can't really pull it off. Not the same way. Geeky guys have this shyness that works because it's, like, so different from the normal asshole guy behavior. So when you see a shy guy, it makes you sit up and take notice. It makes you want to understand them or makes you feel like you already understand them or...
I don't know. Protect them? Does that make sense?
I hate jocks. I hate big buff guys who think they were handcrafted by God to dispense orgasms to the world. They're more into themselves than anything or anyone else. And that's just bullshit. Because here's the thing: No one in this world is so great that they're worthy of self-obsession. Believe me, I know. It's just the truth. We're all flawed, broken half-people. None of us is complete or even worthwhile. We all suck.
But Fanboy...
See, for a while there, I thought of him as just "fanboy." Lowercase. It wasn't his name—it was just his description, you know? The way you'd call someone in the army "soldier," or the way obnoxious pigs call guys "sport" or "son."
But somewhere, somehow ... while I was away, it changed. It became a title. It became like a proper noun, you know?
I guess he wasn't so bad. I mean, it pissed me off that he was obsessed with Dina, but all guys are obsessed with her, so I should really let that pass. And he kept messing up stuff about women
in his graphic novel, but I realized something while I was away—he tried. He was a fifteen-year-old boy from effing Brookdale and he was trying to create a graphic novel about women and their problems.
I have to give him props for that.
And a part of me ... a part of me thinks that maybe I can help him. Maybe I can help make his graphic novel even better. I mean, I was the only one he showed it to. The only one he trusted. He never even showed it to his "best" friend, this superstar stud jock who's like a secret geek or something.
He showed it to me.
But I really treated him like shit. I shouldn't have done that.
My shrink in the hospital—Dr. Kennedy—told me that every day is a chance to start your life over again. Which is bullshit, really, but not total bullshit. I guess we can make changes. Things aren't always set in stone, right?
Fanboy didn't call while I was in the hospital. He couldn't—he didn't know where I was. So I forgive him for that. But he also didn't send me any e-mails, which sort of pisses me off because he could have e-mailed me at least once, right?
But...
Look at it this way: He didn't e-mail me, which is a mean, shitty thing to do. But I was mean to him, too.
So we're even.
So everything is cool, then.
Yeah.
This is what I'm going to do: Make it all better. I can do that.
At school, he'll be excited to see me. I'll apologize and then he'll apologize (see, I'll even go first) and we'll pick up where we left off and this time...
This time I'll try really, really hard not to eff it up.
Five
JECCA LIVES ABOUT TEN MINUTES AWAY by car, but it takes me a while to get there on foot. That's OK—all that time walking and thinking is good for me.
There's a bunch of cars parked along the road, but the house is dark.
I walk into the middle of a "quiet party." Everyone's in the living room, all the furniture pushed into a circle. There's like twenty kids, all dressed in black, some with white makeup like I wear, some with exaggerated black or smoky gray eyeshadow. I'm the only one here without black hair. I feel like someone should revoke my Goth Girl membership card.
