by Barry Lyga
Or the ones where these strong career women end up having these miserable, empty lives until they get a husband and a kid because—right—life isn't worth living without them. It's like they're selling this idea to me, like the whole effing world wants me to get married just because ... I don't know why. I don't know why they care if I get married or if I kiss Jecca or if Fanboy's gay or not. I don't know.
But people care. They keep butting into other people's lives and other people's business. And so much of it is about who's kissing who and why.
Why, Neil? Explain it to me. Explain why it matters at all.
You know all of this. You understand it. I know that's why you made Death a girl. The most powerful force in the universe and you decided that it was a cute, slender, cheerful goth who had dimples when she smiled.
God, I love that.
But even though you get it, you can't explain why the world is the way it is. You understand a lot, but even you don't know the answer to this.
Online
simsimsimoaning: r u sure hes gay
Promethea387: Yeah. He told me.
simsimsimoaning: becuz lisa says he chex her out
Promethea387: Bullshit. He's gay. He's not checking her out. Lisa thinks she's hot shit.
simsimsimoaning: u don't even kno her
Promethea387: Whatever. Just trust me.
simsimsimoaning: i told billy & he totally blieves it
Promethea387: Good.
Nineteen
ROGER'S NOT HOME YET, SO I wander the house, alone. It doesn't feel like I belong here anymore, if I ever did. I'm like the ghost of someone who's not dead yet, haunting a place where no one wants me.
And when I catch myself in the living room mirror...
I see a girl.
I see someone who's tough.
But I don't see...
I don't see me. I don't know how to explain it. I know it's me in the mirror, but sometimes I just don't recognize myself. The mousy brown hair doesn't help.
I have a red stone through my nose and a cute little silver ring at the corner of my mouth. I love my piercings. They make me look like me; they make it easier for me to identify myself. But people like to give me shit about them. My grandparents and my dad, for starters. But even just random people. They see my piercings and they assume that I'm, like, a skank. Or a druggie. or whatever they don't like.
Roger had such a shit fit when I came home with them a couple of years ago. And even now—even after all this time—he still looks at me like I did something dangerous. something wrong.
"I guess I should be glad you don't have any tattoos," he said once, like he'd just dodged sniper fire.
And just because he said it, I considered—for, like, the millionth time—getting a tattoo. simone has a dragon that winds around her left leg, starting near the ankle and ending somewhere around midthigh. Here's the thing, though: I don't have the patience for it. Waiting forever for some guy to finish inking me. I don't think I could stand it.
I've got all this time before Roger gets home, so I hide my cigarettes and scrounge around the house, trying to find my razor and stuff like that. He also took my scissors ("skissors"—heh; it's still funny). He took everything. Hell, there's nothing sharper than a butter knife in the kitchen, and even the friggin hedge clippers are missing out in the garage.
He's taking this seriously.
On one of the cabinets in the garage, there's a big padlock that wasn't there before. It doesn't take psychic powers to know that my razor's in there.
I spend some time trying to pick the lock, but it's not happening. Stealing cars is actually easier. For one thing, you can usually find someone who's been stupid enough to leave their car unlocked. Back doors are the best—people are always putting shit in the back seat and then forgetting to lock it. But even if it's locked, there's still a bunch of ways to unlock a car that have nothing to do with picking the lock.
But you can't slim-jim a padlock. You have to get in there and make it happen, you know? I dick around with it for a little while, but then I give up and go look on the Internet for some tips. At least it's not a combination lock. I would have to find Roger's combination or just cut the damn thing off.
The whole time I'm working on the lock, I'm also working on my Fanboy problem. Telling Simone he's gay is fine—by the end of the week, it'll be all over the school. Hell, if Simone just tells the guys she makes out with this week, that'll be half the school right there. I picture it: Ooh, baby, oh, yes, ooh, baby, yes, hey did you know that kid's gay? Ooh, yeah. Or something like that. I imagine there's a lot of "ooh" when Simone has sex.
But it's not enough. What I really need is the original artwork. I know he has sketches in his sketchbook and shit like that. Probably original files on his computer. He has to have images of Dina somewhere. I need to get my hands on them and show them to Michelle. I'm not sure exactly what will happen—she might get pissed, she might laugh—but the thing is, he's kept his Dina-worship a secret, so exposing it can only be a good thing for me.
And there's only one way to do that.
I have to be his friend again.
Twenty
BY THE TIME ROGER GETS HOME, I haven't managed to pop the lock—even with the instructions from the net—but I'm all sweaty from trying. I get out of the garage when I hear his car in the driveway and I'm sitting innocently at the kitchen table when he comes in.
"What have you been up to?" he asks, all suspicious.
"Nothing, Roger."
He glares at me for a second, giving me Pissed Off because I guess I don't look as innocent as I thought. Pissed Off is OK—it's easier to hate him when he's showing Pissed Off.
It's actually easy to hate him a lot of the time. He's such an effing phony. When he meets people and gives them that big man-handshake and that big shit-eating grin, he always talks about how "Roger means I get it," as in "roger, over, and out" and all that nonsense. What he never says is that "roger" is also an old colonial-era euphemism for the F-word. So when I call him "Roger" it's not because I'm trying to be one of these hip, well-adjusted brats who call their parents by their first names. I'm just telling him to eff off.
"Seriously, Roger. Nothing."
He nods slowly, slipping into Sad, Tired. He hands me a plastic bag from the drugstore. There's a Lady Remington inside, along with batteries.
"Thanks, Dad."
Oops. I called him "Dad." He shifts to maybe halfway between Sad, Tired and Blissed Out. He sits down at the table with me, like we're a big happy family or something.
"We need to talk a little bit, OK? About what happened right before you, you know, went away."
And effhim! Any sympathy I just felt because of Sad, Tired is now gone. Because I didn't "go away." I was sent away. By him. Made DCHH.
"That boy who called me at work. The one who gave you a bullet. I need to know his name."
Fat chance. They tried to get that out of me in the hospital, too. But I'm no narc. I have my own ways of getting revenge.
"Kyra, talk to me. Please. I don't want you being mixed up with someone like that. you've had a tough enough time without someone else making it worse for you."
God, what an idiot! He doesn't get it. Being with Fanboy didn't make things worse. It made things better. I could talk to him like I couldn't talk to anyone else, not even Simone or Jecca. I could...
Shit. Now I'm leaking tears.
Roger sees 'em. He tries to take my hand, but I pull it away. Goddammit. Why am I doing this? Fanboy betrayed me. He sold me out to my dad, and I could have forgiven that, I did forgive that, but then he moved on without me and sold out his art. And those things I cannot forgive. Those things I will not forgive.
"Leave me alone, Roger." I mean to say it angry and loud, but the tears do something to my breathing and it barely comes out at all. He gets up and comes around the table to put his arms around me and there's a second—just a second, but it's there, I have to admit it—where I just want to let
the tears go and fall into his arms and wail like a baby and call him Daddy and let him make everything better.
But he can't. He can't make everything better. I know that. I know it because he's screwed up too much.
So I just get up and I can barely see through the tears, but this is my house and I know how to get around, so I make it to my room and slam the door and he's calling out to me, but I don't care, don't care, don't care.
Twenty-one
A LITTLE WHILE LATER, HE KNOCKS on my door and says he's coming in no matter what. So I let him in.
"We're going to have this conversation, Kyra. Whether you want to or not."
So I sit on my bed with my arms crossed over my chest and stare at a little crack in the paint on my windowsill. Because here's the thing: You need two people to "have this conversation." And if I'm not one of them, I don't know where he's going to get another one.
"Did you really have a bullet? Or was it just a prank call? Because he sounded really worried and really convincing to me. I need to know who it was. The police will want to talk to him, and I want to at least talk to his parents."
The police ... There's a thought. But no—Fanboy would just say I stole the bullet and I could lie and say he gave it to me, but it would be his word against mine and he's a goody-goody, so they would believe him and not me.
"Do you have any idea what I went through? Hanging up the phone? Rushing out of work, driving home at a hundred miles an hour, thinking you'd be ... you'd be dead?"
Yeah, I know. I know because he told me over and over again when he sent me away, and then he told me again every time he came to visit.
"You owe me an explanation."
No, I don't. I keep staring at the crack. I don't owe him anything. I'm allowed to have my secrets.
Just like Fanboy has his. His "third thing." He told me that there were three things in the world that he wanted more than anything. Three, OK? One, two, three. And then he only told me two of them.
And when I asked about the third, he lied and said he meant there were only two, so I kept at him and he admitted there was a third, but he wouldn't tell me what it was.
The thing he wants more than anything else in the world. And he wouldn't tell me. Bastard.
I told him everything. Even when I lied, I was telling him something.
"Kyra, goddammit!" Into hard-core Pissed Off. I can always count on Roger.
Staring at the crack. Wondering where it came from. It was just there one day, like it had always been there. I don't remember doing something to cause it. It's like the world just decided to break right there, right on my windowsill.
"I don't understand how you can be in the hospital for so long, dealing with all those wackos and doctors, and not understand how goddamn serious this all is!"
"Eff off, Roger!" I spin around to him and he actually takes a step back, which is so. Damn. Cool. "I was in the hospital be cause you put me there. And guess what? I was one of the wackos. So get the hell off my back!"
He stares at me. Still Pissed Off. But bleeding back into Sad, Tired. Because the truth hurts, bitch.
"You gave up the right to ask me questions when you locked me up somewhere for other people to ask me questions."
Ooh, to the gut! He deflates. He goes all guilty-looking. Easiest thing in the world, making him feel guilty. I'm pretty good at it.
"You can't blame me for that," he says, but there's no strength behind the words. None at all. "You were out of control."
"You got a phone call. A goddamn phone call. And you committed me."
"You have a history—"
"Of slitting my wrists, not blowing my head off."
Now he's fully in Sad, Tired. He's guilty. He's wondering if he's a Bad Dad.
I could go on, but there's no point. Right now, nothing I say—absolutely nothing—could be one-tenth as bad as what he's got scrolling through his brain. So I just look back at the crack, staring at it until he leaves.
The Dreaming
I HAVE A DREAM SOMEONE IS touching me.
Not just, like, touching me on the shoulder or something. I mean touching me. Hands from behind, cupping my breasts, and for the first time in my life, I don't mind them. For the first time in my life, I like that they're big. The weight of them—the heft—feels good in someone else's hands.
Lips touch the back of my neck. The side of my neck. My collarbone. Oh, God—I'm naked. I just realized it. I'm totally naked. And someone is behind me, arms wrapped around, lips on my skin, hands on my breasts and now moving down, down, and God oh God I didn't know. I didn't know—
It's Jecca. I know her lips. Oh. Jecca. I turn. Turn to see her. To kiss her.
But it's not Jecca.
It's not a her at all.
Twenty-two
I WAKE UP. NOT A HER. Oh. Shit. Shit and goddamn. What the hell is wrongwith me?
I lie there in bed, confused, messed up, effed up. My breath is coming too fast. I feel warm but I want to shiver at the same time.
I don't understand. What was I...?
No. Just stop it. Just stop it.
I amnot going to think about this. It was just a dream. It doesn't mean anything.
I crawl out of bed. I can't shake it, no matter how much I want to. I keep thinking about ... I keep thinking about the way he looked at me there in his bedroom. When I was open to him.
At first—when I was just unbuttoning my shirt—it was just this shock. He just couldn't believe it was happening. And then, when I opened my bra...
God.
He just...
Ten million things all warring on his face, in his eyes: Surprise. Disbelief. Want. Need. Concern. Fear. Joy. Lust.
And I made it all happen. I created that moment for him, created those thoughts and feelings. Me.
And now...
And now, what the hell is he doing to me in return? Why am I dreaming...?
In the Sandman series, there's this bit ... It's early on. I think it's in The Doll's House. Where Morpheus goes into this woman's dream and he's flying with her and she says something about how when you dream about flying, you're really dreaming about sex.
And Morpheus says, "Well, then what are you dreaming about when you're dreaming about sex?"
God.
Shit.
There's a full-length mirror on the back of my door and I stand before it, staring at myself in my T-shirt and my sleep-messed hair and my puffy eyes.
And you know what? I'm sort of OK with what I see, minus the brown hair. I don't get these girls who go all schizo over their bodies. I mean, sure, my boobs are just out of control. I get that. But that's why God invented the minimizer bra.
It pisses me off when these bulimic and anorexic chicks go all spastic. Or the girls who, like, cut themselves and shit. I mean, give me an effin'break, OK? If you don't like your body, just fix it. Deal with it.
When you feel like things are out of control, you take control.
So, yeah.
I go into the bathroom and look at myself in the that mirror. Nothing has changed; no magic in this mirror. My pits are stubbly. My legs are rough. I wield the Lady Remington and glare at myself in the mirror from beneath my Bangs of Doom.
When you feel like things are out of control, you take control.
Yeah, that's what you do. Take control.
I thumb on the Lady Remington. She whispers to me in a buzz.
Oh, yeah.
Twenty-three
IT TAKES LONGER THAN I thought it would take. I thought it would be like in the movies—zip, zip, zip and you're done.
But no. My hair's thick and when I try just plowing through it with the razor, the whole thing jams up and stops. So I take, like, five minutes cleaning the thing and getting it to work again.
I stand in the shower with a makeup mirror in one hand and a pair of cuticle scissors in the other. I found the cuticle scissors in the back of the medicine cabinet—it's the one sharp thing Roger forgot to hide. It takes a long time to c
ut my hair down enough that I can get the Lady Remington to go through it. At one point, Roger gets agitated and knocks on the door. "Kyra? Everything all right in there?"
"I have cramps!" I tell him, which usually shuts him up.
Back to my hair. Between the scissors and the razor, I manage to get most of it off my head. My body isn't so lucky—I'm covered in hair clippings. I look like the floor of a barbershop. This is a little more complicated than just dyeing it, it turns out.
I run the shower to wash it all off of me and the drain starts to clog up. Shit! This is supposed to be easy.
I scoop up as much wet hair as I can. The drain starts, y know, draining again, like it's supposed to. The water feels strange on my semibald head. It's too cold, then too warm, while my skull skin gets used to it. My head's, like, supersensitive. I run the tips of my fingers over it, skipping the patchy, stubbly parts. Maybe this is what babies feel like? All new and just born?
Wow.
New.
Just born.
I wash off all the hair clippings on me, then scrape clear the drain and dump the hair into the trash can. When I'm clean, I turn off the shower and dry my head—the towel's scratchy and coarse against the new skin.
Roger knocks on the door again. "Kyra. I have to get going to work. You're gonna miss the bus."
"I'm almost done!" I tell him. I look at myself in the mirror. ugh. This didn't work the way I wanted it to: I'm all ... mangy. I have patches of stubble and patches of longer hair, broken up by swaths of naked head. I look like one of those topographic globes, with hair representing altitude or something.
