by Barry Lyga
dead already, to me
dead and gone
seventeen months of slow death
of hospitals and
hospices and
doctors and
radiation and
chemotherapy (latin For "poison")
("Honey, come close and let me see you.")
smell of death above the rosevomit
twelve and i had never smelled death before—
—but i knew
(I knew)
I know
this is what death smells like
dead already
why won't this g host leave me alone?
and let me get on with my life?
she touches me
once
on the arm
before her own arm becomes
too tired
and drops to her side
("Be strong,"
She said.)
i want to run
runscreamhide
get away
from the THING
in my mother's bed
the THING
that pretends to be her
Sixty-one
AT SCHOOL, I JUST TRY to survive. I don't want to go to the office today. I don't want to talk to anyone and I don't want anyone to talk to me. I want to be more than just invisible—I want to be unhearable and untouchable and unsmellable.
Of course, Mrs. Reed has to comment the instant I walk into homeroom. "Back in black, Kyra?" She says it like a chirpy little bird and of course that means everyone has to turn around and look and confirm that, yes, I'm wearing all black again.
I take a huge breath and hold it as long as it takes me to get from the door to my desk. Mrs. Reed doesn't know what to do when I ignore her, so she goes back to looking at shit on her desk. I slowly let the breath out through my nose once I sit down.
Today is a wasted day, I realize. I should have spent the night working on the Fanboy Revenge Plan. But instead I got all weak and then went to bed early and had that seriously effed-up dream and all that. Today should have been Day One of Fanboy's Mortal Embarrassment. I need to get back on track.
So.
Posters: Definitely. I'll put them up all over the school. I'll have to be careful because I don't want to be caught doing it.
Website: Sure, why not? I can get some anonymous free site and put the stuff up there. I should be sure to put the web address on the poster.
Flyers: Ooh, I like this idea. I'll print up a million of them and leave them all over the place. I could just, like, walk past the bathrooms and throw a stack of them in there.
Best of all: Get copies of everything to Michelle Jurgens, with notes explaining it all. Yes, oh, yes. I don't know where her locker is or which homeroom she's in. Maybe I'll look her up and go to her house and put it all in her mailbox or something? Yeah, that would probably work...
The bell rings and everyone shuts up and the announcements start and I sit in my own little world and plan my revenge.
It's gonna be a good day...
Sixty-two
MISS POWELL TOTALLY LEAVES ME ALONE in English. I mean, it's like I've got a disease that you can get just by looking at someone who's infected; she never even looks in my direction, even when some brainiac behind me is the only one raising his hand to answer a question.
And that's all good because I'm not really paying attention anyway. I'm just making plans. Figuring out the best ways to use the Schemata stuff, the best places for posters, what order to do it all in. I'll have to ditch some classes, but it's not like I've never done that before, right?
I'm putting more planning and effort into this than I did into trying to kill myself.
I give Miss Powell a little smile on my way out of her class. I just can't help it. She does nothing. Her face doesn't change at all.
I plan on sitting with the usual gang at lunch, but Fanboy starts calling out to me from his table and people start looking. I can't just diss him in public; it'll look suspicious. I'm supposed to be friends with him.
Shit.
I sit down across the table from Fanboy and next to Super-Cal. Oh, joy.
"Hey, Kyra."
"Hi."
Cal grins at me. It's the grin all the girls go crazy for, but it does nothing for me. "We need you as a beard," he says.
Fanboy rolls his eyes. "Cut it out."
"Just kiddin'."
"What do you mean?"
Fanboy just rolls his eyes again. Cal laughs. "There's these rumors going around that he's gay for me." He laughs again.
"Oh," I say as innocently as possible. Shit. They're both laughing about it now. Come on! That was a good idea! I got Simone to spread it and everything. They should be pissed about it, not laughing.
"It's weird," Fanboy says, "because it just started up all of a sudden, this week. I don't get it." He shrugs and looks at me. "Have you heard that?"
I swallow hard. Does he know? Does he know I started it?
"No. I haven't heard that."
"It hasn't spread to the goths," he tells Cal.
"Cool. I thought I was gonna have to mack on some mo'honeys to put this shit to rest." He says it all gangsta-tough, and he and Fanboy both crack up at it.
"Whatever." Fanboy waves his hand like he's waving away the rumors, like they're just stink in the air. He doesn't care. Shit!
"We're talking about Sandman," Cal tells me. "We both reread it over the summer."
"OK." I try to smile, but inside I'm seething. Fanboy's eating school pizza and I want to lean over and shove his face in it. And then dump his milk on his head for good measure. On the outside, I'm all nice, but inside I'm thinking, Destroy you. Over and over. I picture it like comic book panels:
Panel 1: KYRA, CAL, and FANBOY are sitting at a table in the South Brook High LUNCHROOM. There are kids in the background, acting up and doing the sort of stuff kids do in high school cafeterias. Kyra sits across from Fanboy and next to Cal. Fanboy and Cal are both eating. Kyra has nothing but a bottle of water. She's smiling at them both.
CAL: So, is it true that you've only read it in TRADE?
CAL: You NEVER read the single issues?
KYRA: Yeah. So what?
KYRA CAPTION: Destroy you. Destroy you.
Panel 2: Close in on Cal as he leans into the table, turned to talk to Kyra.
CAL: But you HAVE to read it in single issues! That's the way he INTENDED for it to be read! Don't you get it?
CAL: No one was even THINKING about trade paperbacks back then. You can only really understand it if you read it in its CONTEXT.
KYRA CAPTION: Destroy you. Destroy you BOTH.
Panel 3: Kyra, shrugging.
KYRA: It's the same story, right? What's the difference?
KYRA CAPTION: God, I hate you. I will DESTROY you so bad...
Panel 4: Pull back a little bit. Now Fanboy is getting into the act.
FANBOY: It's the same story, but you have to imagine the monthlong wait between each chapter.
CAL: The anticipation.
FANBOY: Right, the anticipation. And the letter columns, which add a whole new dimension to the story.
CAL: But they were never reprinted.
KYRA CAPTION: Destroy you. Destroy you. Destroy you.
"So you're missing a whole level of the story," Cal says. "Like a ... a..." He snaps his fingers at Fanboy. "What did you call it the other night?"
"A meta-level," Fanboy says, like we're all supposed to understand that.
"Right!" Cal slaps the table and my bottle of water almost topples. "A meta-level."
Fanboy raises an eyebrow at me and I see a new expression on his face, one I've never seen before. Never.
It's pity.
Pity.
"See," he says, "a meta-level is when the story comments on itself."
My cheeks burn. I pray my white powder covers it. I can't stand the idea that he knows I'm embarrassed.
"It's like the old Sherlock Holmes stories," Fanboy
goes on, and he sounds like the worst kind of teacher at this moment, and if I was pissed before, if I hated him before, I hate him twice as much now. Ten times as much, maybe. "See, those stories were mysteries, but they were really designed to teach you how to read them. You weren't just watching Holmes solve the mystery—you were also being taught how to solve the mystery of the story. See?"
He smiles a self-satisfied little smile. I want to lunge across the table and rip his throat out, but his bodyguard/boyfriend would probably stop me.
Treating me like an idiot.
Like an idiot.
"It's so cool," Cal orgasms. "When you read the whole thing, you see all these meta-levels that Gaiman put in there. Like, the whole thing in Brief Lives, where Dream has to go to see the oracle—"
"I know the story," I tell him. My voice sounds tight and coiled. They don't notice. Brief Lives is my favorite part of the Sandman series. How the hell can he try to tell me about it?
"Well, you know how he goes to the oracle at the end, right?" Cal goes on. "And it's like ... He's going there to find what's-his-name..."
"Destruction," Fanboy and I say at the same time. He laughs.
"Destruction. Right. Anyway, it turns out that Destruction is hiding out on the bluff right across from the oracle's temple! It's like he's living across the street. All the oracle had to do was look out the window." Cal is laughing his ass off now.
Fanboy shakes his head. "This part cracks him up."
"I don't think it's funny," I tell Cal. "It's sad. All that time, Destruction was so close."
"No, no," Cal says. "Dream owes the oracle a favor for telling him where Destruction is, right? And that favor is why Dream ultimately dies. But if Dream had just looked out the damn window at the oracle's temple, he never would have..." And he's off laughing again.
"It's funny and sad," Fanboy says. "It's ironic, Kyra. You go to an oracle and the oracle doesn't even need to look into the future or far away, just across the way a little bit. See, it's—"
"Stop it," I say. They're ruining my favorite story. "Just stop it, OK?"
"I'm just trying to explain—"
"Well, cut it out. I can figure it out myself. I'm not stupid, OK? I'm not a genius, like some people, but I'm not stupid, either."
The table goes quiet. I drink from my bottle.
Cal clears his throat. "So, uh, Kyra. Do you, uh, do you think that the whole series is a dream?"
"What?"
"Let's just drop it—" Fanboy starts.
"No." I turn to Cal. "What are you talking about?"
Cal looks over at Fanboy, then shrugs. "Just wondering ... do you think the whole series, all of Sandman, is supposed to be a dream?"
"Why would I think that?"
"Something we ... well, he noticed." He nods in Fanboy's direction.
Fanboy sighs and polishes off his pizza. "Maybe we should just not talk about this. It's upsetting Kyra—"
"I'm not a friggin crystal goblet, Fanboy. I can talk about this shit."
He sighs. "OK. Fine. At the very end of the whole series, that guy Burgess wakes up. You remember Burgess?"
I'm not a dummy. Burgess was the guy at the very beginning of the series—he was the son of the guy who trapped Morpheus in the real world. Morpheus cursed him with "eternal waking," which is like where you dream and you keep dreaming that you're waking up, but you never do.
"Yeah, I remember him."
"Well, at the very end of the series, he finally wakes up for real. And he tells this guy that he's been having these weird dreams, and he even talks about cats. And there was that whole issue of Sandman that was about what cats dream about."
"So?"
"Oh, this is awesome..." Cal says.
"Well," Fanboy says, going into teacher mode again. I imagine this is what he sounded like when he fooled Mrs. Sawyer with the "Great Ecuadorian Tortoise Blight of 1928." She believed him and she ended up a complete laughingstock. So now I know how she felt when Fanboy psyched her out.
"Well," he goes on, "how could the cat story be a part of Burgess's dream unless the whole series was a dream? There's no other way for him to know about it. It's not like he could have read the comic book! So the whole series must be taking place in Burgess's head while he's dreaming."
"I don't believe that. The series is real."
"Then why does it end with The Wake?" Cal asks. "The whole thing's a dream and it ends because the dreamer wakes up."
I shake my head. "No. I don't believe that."
The bell rings. Thank God.
Sixty-three
BUT I SPEND THE REST of the day out of sorts and pissed off. Are they right? Did I read the whole series and not get it at all? Is that possible?
I mean, I love that series. I adore it. I read it over and over and over again. I took it so seriously, and those two think it's all a dream and that all the sad parts are actually funny...
It makes me angrier and angrier as the day goes on and I keep thinking about it. Because even if they're right, who the hell are they to tell me I'm wrong? Who the hell are they to ruin something for me, to tell me that I'm stupid and that I didn't get it?
So maybe this morning I was a little ... conflicted. Maybe I wasn't a hundred percent sure about wiping the floor with Fanboy, but now I am. I'm two hundred percent sure. And I'll have to think of a way to nail Cal, too. Just because.
Simone gives me a ride home. Jecca climbs into the back seat.
"I'm only gonna ask one last time," Simone says as we roll down the windows and smoke like crazy.
"Thank God for that."
"You sure you don't want to go to the party tonight?"
"Please please please pleasepleaseplease!" Jecca says from the back seat.
"No. I'm not going. Get off my back."
Simone shrugs and snorts smoke out her nose. I wish I could do that. "OK."
Jecca flounces against the seat and crosses her arms over her chest. "You suck."
"I know."
We all crack up.
"I bet Katherine would have come," Jecca says. Simone coughs and chokes on her smoke. "Holy shit. I haven't thought about that in a long time."
Katherine.
Yeah.
Katherine
KATHERINE WAS MY MOM'S MIDDLE NAME. When she was in college, though, she used it as her first name. When I was little—like, in elementary school—I asked her why.
She sighed. "I don't know, honey. I was in college. People do weird things in college sometimes."
So she had all of this stuff with "K" monogrammed on it, and sometimes I would wear it or borrow it and pretend it was mine.
And then I invented my own Katherine. I don't know why. It was just one of those kid things that seems like a good, fun idea at the time for no particular reason.
I was maybe nine and I was hanging out with Sim and Jecca and I said, "I'm not Kyra. I'm Katherine, Kyra's sister."
It became a game. We all worked together and we invented this new persona. We decided that Katherine was three years older than Kyra. Her favorite color was plaid. (We thought this was really, really funny.) She liked old music and boys with blond hair. She wasn't afraid of anything except for ants.
When I was "in character" as Katherine, I would stand really tall and straight. I would walk a little differently, too, sort of like the models we saw on TV.
It was cool and fun. Simone or Jecca would call the house and talk to me and sometimes they would say, "Hey, put Katherine on," and I would put the phone down and pretend to go get Katherine and then pick it up and totally channel this different person and have a whole new conversation.
Katherine was fearless. She did everything I was afraid to do. She tried out Simone's brother's skateboard (and when she scraped her knee, she didn't cry or anything). She climbed trees like a boy. She was awesome.
Eventually, she went away. Jecca and Simone lost interest in her, and I guess I did, too, but I never forgot her. Whenever I would run into something tough
or hard to deal with, I would say to myself, OK, just be Katherine for this.
Katherine died before my mom died. I guess I just stopped needing her. Or maybe I absorbed her into me. I don't know if it was suicide or homicide. I mean, I killed her, but she was me, so which one is it? I don't know.
And then—this part is where it gets a bit weird, but only a little bit—soon after Mom died, Katherine came back to life.
People were always asking me why I was so depressed or acting out and shit. And some of them knew about my mom and they still asked, like I was supposed to get over it right away. And some of them knew and just looked at me with pity.
That was bad enough, but then you had the people who didn't know about Mom, like new teachers and idiots at the grocery store or the mall. People who think it's their job in life to get into other people's business and be annoying like that. They were all in my face about, like "Why don't you smile?" or "What's wrong with you?" or "You'd be so pretty if you weren't frowning all the time."
So I had to tell them something, just to shut them the hell up, but I'll be damned if I was going to tell them the truth. Because who the hell are they to deserve the truth? What makes people think they have the right to impose on you, to tell you how to live your life, to tell you to cheer up and be happy and all that shit? Who the eff gave them the right?
And that's when Katherine came back to life. She rose from the grave and this time she was mean and angry. At first she was just my annoying older sister. But then I started giving her all these other problems: The asshole boyfriend. The pregnancy. The miscarriage. The depression. It turned into a sort of game—how bad could I make things for Katherine and still have people believe it?
