Goth Girl Rising

by Barry Lyga

  Promethea387: Shut up.

  XianWalker76: but u do. u showed me in my basement.

  simsimsimoaning: y?

  Promethea387: None of your business. Just help me out.

  simsimsimoaning: did sumí hurt my kyra???!?!?!?!

  simsimsimoaning: cus ill kill that mf! í!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: r u pissed @ me?

  Promethea387: No.

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: ok

  Promethea387: Stop thinking I'm pissed at you all the time.

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: u just wernt tlking 2 me 2day

  XianWalker76 is offlin

  XianWalker76: u showed BENDIS

  Promethea387: Shut up. Seriously.

  XianWalker76: just messing w u

  Promethea387: Well, stop it.

  XianWalker76: im sry

  XianWalker76: really

  XianWalker76: im sad now ☹

  XianWalker76: hello?

  XianWalker76: u still there?

  XianWalker76: u pissed at me now?

  Promethea387: No. I'm here.

  Promethea387: I have to go now.

  Promethea387: I'll see you tomorrow.

  XianWalker76: ok!

  XianWalker76: goodnight

  Promethea387: Just let me handle this. I need to screw him up big time.

  simsimsimoaning: tell every 1 his DICK is really small

  Promethea387: Sigh.

  Promethea387: No.

  Promethea387: Try again.

  simsimsimoaning: really really small like tiny like miscoscopiic

  Promethea387: No.

  simsimsimoaning: its a good 1 y not?

  Promethea387: Because then people will think I slept with him.

  simsimsimoaning: so?

  Promethea387: I didn't.

  simsimsimoaning: so?

  Promethea387: And he's gay anyway.

  XianWalker76 is offline

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: much

  Promethea387: I talked to you.

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: much

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: tnks 4 saying my ass lks ok

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: lol

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: ☺

  Promethea387: I just hate when you do that shit.

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: yeah

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: hey u shd come 2 the party fri

  XianWalker76 is offline

  simsimsimoaning: thats perfect!!!

  simsimsimoaning: say u tried to sleep w/ him & he wuldnt but u saw his DICK anyway

  simsimsimoaning: & it was TINY

  simsimsimoaning: (shjoulnt be in ALL CAPS lol!!!!!)

  Promethea387: You're not helping.

  simsimsimoaning: ill call u

  Promethea387: What party?

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: ves

  Promethea387: I hate Pete Vesentine.

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: so?

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: no one likes him

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: they just go 2 the parties

  Promethea387: I don't know. Maybe.

  simsimsimoaning is offline

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: pleeeeeeeeeeese!

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: please

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: lol

  Promethea387: I have to go.

  xXxjeccatheGIRLxXx: ok

  Forty-nine

  MY CELL RINGS AS I sign off with Jecca. It's Simone.

  "Hey."

  "Hey. So, who's the guy?"

  I sigh. "Why does it matter? I just need you to fire up your bitchiest bitch parts and help me out."

  "If I know who he is and what he did, I can, like, do a better job. Like, poetic justice and all that. Irony."

  "Right."

  "Did you like that? How I busted out irony like that? Totally from English today."

  I wasn't paying much attention in English today. Or most days. "Nice, Simone."

  "Do you think Miss Powell has slept with any of the guys in our class?"

  "What?"

  "I'm just wondering. I heard a rumor that she gave a senior a blowjob her first year."

  "Where did you hear that?"

  "You know. Around."

  I can't help it—I start thinking about it. Slutty Miss Powell. I wouldn't be surprised if she's slept with the half of the school Sim hasn't gotten to. "Maybe she effed Josh Mendel."

  Simone laughs so hard, she starts coughing. "Oh my God! Crazy J, yeah. Maybe it's like something all the new teachers have to do, you know?"

  We laugh a little bit and then she says, "I would totally do Crazy J. I don't care how insane he is. That boy is hot." She sighs. "He could do, like, whatever he wanted to me."

  "I bet he's a real perv. After what he went through? I bet he's only into really kinky, sick shit."

  "Don't care. He's that hot."

  "You're too young for him. He only screws adults."

  "Yeah." She sounds depressed. I guess she really was thinking about having sex with him. God, Simone.

  "Anyway," she says, "who are we trying to screw over?"

  I give in. I tell her.

  "Really?" she sounds surprised. "God, I love that Schemata. We won't mess that up, will we?"

  Probably. "Nah," I lie.

  "Aren't you friends with him? He's kinda cute. Geek cute."

  "I told you before what's happening there. I want to destroy him, OK? And I have one way, but I need to be sure, so I want more ideas."

  "What are you going to do to him?"

  I look over at my desk, where the stack of Literary Paws and Schemata pages sit. Tomorrow ... tomorrow, I'll have the original pages, the Dina pages. But just in case, just in case it's not as obvious as I remember, I want to be ready.

  "You'll see when it happens. Come on, Sim. Help me out here."

  "Are you sure he's gay?"

  "Yeah. He's gay for that black kid he hangs out with. The jock. I'm the only one who knows." By saying that, I've just guaranteed that by lunchtime tomorrow, everyone at school will know that Fanboy has the hots for Cal.

  "OK, well, in that case, you should totally have sex with Cal," Simone says, like she's telling me to go buy a lottery ticket.

  "What?"

  "Yeah, if you want to piss him off, you should totally have sex with the guy he's crushing on."

  "Forget it. I'm not doing that."

  I hear her light a cigarette. My lungs cry out in lust. If I smoke in the house, Roger will smell it and bring down the Wrath of Roger. "Kyra, you just need to get laid. You need to get over all this virginity shit. Trust me. I'm your friend and I'm telling you—you're making this a much bigger deal than it really is."

  Not this again. Simone's been harping on me about losing my virginity forever.

  But maybe she's right. Maybe that's what I need. It can't be tough, right? Guys are easy. I could get one easy. I know I could. I saw the way Fanboy's eyes popped out of his skull when I showed him my boobs. He would have done anything I wanted. And there's this kid, this sophomore guy—Greg Titus—who's been staring at me in the cafeteria and during computer class. He's only a sophomore, but he's not bad-looking, and I bet if I went up to him, he'd be all over me in half a second.

  Easy.

  Guys are easy.

  Some girls are, too.

  But I don't want to be.

  "I'm not losing my virginity just to mess with someone's head," I tell her.

  "It's not a big deal," she says. "You're making this into something ... Like, I was gonna wait, once. I figured I would wait for some guy who loved me or something, or something special. But honestly, the thing is, you just jump in and do it and then it's over with and then you can really enjoy it, you know?"

  "Simone. Enough." God, I want a cigarette!

  "It really didn't hurt that much my first time. I was just sort of sore, is all."

  "That's not it. It's not the pain."

  "Then what? Are you afraid of getting pregnant? Or getting some disease?"

  I think of all those times watching the pregnancy te
st with her. Of the bus rides to the clinic. Nah. It's not those things. I'm not a total moron—I know how to protect myself.

  I think it's...

  I don't know what it is.

  No, wait. That's a lie. I do know. I know what it is.

  "It's really good," Simone says, dragging on her cigarette. I want to tell her that I'd have sex with her if she would just magically teleport me to that cigarette right now. "Most of the time, it's good, I guess. And when it's good, it's like you totally lose control of yourself. You just can't stop yourself and you do and you say things without thinking. Like this one time—"

  "Simone..."

  No thank you. I don't want that. I don't want to lose control like that. To lose myself like that would...

  Ugh.

  No.

  Just ... no.

  "No, Simone."

  She waits. "When it's happening, you know the guy likes you."

  And now I'm pissed at her. "That's stupid. That's stupid, Simone. He only likes you because you're having sex with him. Once you stop, he doesn't like you anymore."

  I hear her blow some smoke. "So? That's when you get another guy. Someone will always like you."

  God. "Look, it's a moot point because I'm not sleeping with Cal, OK?"

  "Fine. Fine." We sit in silence for a little while. I lie back on my bed and stare up at the ceiling. My pillow still feels weird against my shaved head. "Just blow him, then."

  "No! Get off the sex shit!"

  "OK..."

  We wait forever, just silence on the phone, until..."Hey," Sim says, "do that thing that happened to Andi Donnelly last year."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Oh, right. You were in the hospital when it happened. Someone put up these naked posters of Andi Donnelly all over the school and all over town with shit like 'I love to have sex'on them and her phone number."

  "How did they get naked pictures?"

  "I don't know."

  "I don't have naked pictures of him." And this is weird, but it's a good idea because it would totally embarrass the hell out of him, but for some weird reason, the idea of showing other people what he looks like naked makes me feel bad.

  "We could fake something," she says. "Something with a really tiny dick."

  For God's sake! "Simone, stop it! You've got tiny dicks on the brain. And don't even say whatever it is you're thinking right now!" Because I know she would say something gross about dicks and brains or dicks being on something other than her brain. Eew.

  The other end goes silent again, except for the occasional soft, wet pucker of Simone's lips giving up her cigarette. I lick my lips. I can practically taste the smoke.

  "I've got it," Simone says after forever.

  "Really?"

  "Yeah, totally. I saw this once. In Mean Girls. I tried it, too. On a guy. It totally works."

  And then she tells me, and God, it's perfect.

  Fifty

  AFTER I HANG UP WITH SIMONE, I just lie in bed for a while, thinking about cigarettes, thinking about Fanboy, thinking about Jecca, thinking about the fat makeup lady. I think about all of it, sometimes all at once, sometimes one thing at a time.

  Then I go to my computer and mess around. I have a message that says that Simone has updated her MySpace page, so I go check it out. (Yeah, Simone's still on MySpace. Please. It's all grownups now, trying to sell things to kids.)

  So she has new pictures in her gallery. It's the cell phone pics of her and Jecca in the Victoria's Secret changing room, but there are more of them, including one where they're standing boob to boob. I feel like I should feel jealous, but I don't. Instead, I'm just pissed. Like, why are girls always showing slutty pictures of themselves on the Internet? You don't see guys showing their dicks online (unless they're child molesters), but you can always count on a picture of a girl showing her boobs or her butt.

  There are comments under some of the pictures:

  this is my fav pic of you not only do you look gorgeous but tose tits look AWSUM and u r the so fierce!!! i love! grls rulez!!!!!!!!

  sigh I wish my boobies loked like that

  i wuld totaly hit that i want 2 hit both of thm

  hi will you make a ME sandwich? lol j/k (mabbe)

  dam grl!

  holy shit so hot

  *pops wood* !!!!booiiinnggg!!!!

  And some of those are from other girls! And a couple are from people I don't recognize—total strangers or adults.

  I don't get it. Is it just me? It's like everyone else acts this way and I'm the oddball, so maybe I'm just wrong. Maybe Simone's right. Maybe I should just give up and dive in and lose it.

  I shut down the computer and lie back on my bed again. Yeah, just go ahead and lose it and get it done and over with. Maybe that'll fix all of my problems.

  But I don't know who to go to. I mean, do I go to Jecca and tell her, "Hey, I want to go all the way with you. I want to do it all"? Or do I go to someone else? Do I go to a boy?

  I don't know what I am. I don't think I can be heterosexual because I like what I do with Jecca too much. And I'm not gay because I think about boys, too. So maybe I'm bisexual, but I don't know, because why does it have to be defined? Maybe I'm none of those things. Maybe I'm just sexual, period.

  That makes me start laughing out loud because I picture myself saying it to Simone, and she would say, "Uh, Kyra, I'm sexual. You're asexual, like those things in biology that only reproduce with themselves. You're like a geranium."

  And that's it—I'm a sexual flower. I have sex geranium-style, with myself only.

  Blue

  IN THE MORNING, MY HEAD is still nice and smooth. I just go over it quickly in the shower and rub in some of Makeup Lady's oil, just in case. I don't want gross ingrown hairs making my head all zitty.

  I put on one of my new white outfits. I like this one—it's basically one of my old black outfits, only in white (with a slightly larger top, to hide the goodies better).

  Check myself in the mirror. All that white makes my teeth kind of yellow, but I can deal. Maybe I'll get that special toothpaste or those white strip things. Or maybe I'll just say eff it and leave my teeth yellow.

  Looking at myself, I feel like there's something missing. I pin on my reverse smiley. Here's the thing: On the other side, there's a little picture of my mom that I cut out, like, a million years ago. That's why I always wear it.

  Something's still missing. Lipstick. Black or red?

  Oh, I forgot. I grab up ElecTrick Sex and open it. Why not?

  After I put it on, I take a step back and look at myself in the mirror again. It's a shock. Maybe that's the "ElecTrick" part.

  The missing hair, the white clothes ... that made me look different enough. But now, with the lipstick, it's like I'm a completely different person. My lips look full and fierce. They shine and sparkle like they could shoot a lightning bolt up your ass. I pucker up like I'm going to kiss someone and imagine electricity shooting out of me. It's like I'm a superhero, but not a lame one.

  It's totally different, but it's still me. In fact, it's closer to the real me than anything I've ever seen before. I never knew. I never could have imagined. I stand here and I almost start to cry because for the first time I'm looking in the mirror and holy shit I recognize the person looking back at me.

  Thank you, Makeup Lady. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I think I'm totally in love with you.

  Fifty-one

  WHEN I EMERGE INTO THE KITCHEN, Roger is drinking his first of many coffees of the day. He looks up at me and then down at his newspaper and then totally looks up at me again.

  "Good morning," I say, like nothing's happening.

  "Morning," he says, and keeps staring. I go into the fridge for a yogurt, my shoulders all bunched and tight, ready for the arrow to go right between my shoulder blades.

  "Kyra..."

  "Yeah, what?"

  "I can't believe I'm saying this..."

  I pry off the foil on top of the yogurt. It splits
in two. Why does it always do that?

  "You look nice," Roger says.

  I keep staring down at my yogurt. It's half uncovered. Lemon custard pie yogurt. My favorite. What did he just say?

  "I don't know what it is ... I mean, the whole white thing and the hair thing really freaked me out, but ... I don't know. You look nice today."