Goth Girl Rising (26 page)

And since I was lucid dreaming ...

Does that mean I
made
her turn into Fanboy?

Either way, it doesn't matter, I guess. One way or the other, Jecca became Fanboy and I have to deal with that.

I don't
want
to deal with it.

I don't want to think about it.

But sometimes, the more you try
not
to think about something, the more you can't help thinking about it. So I'm standing here at my closet and I'm thinking,
What would it be like? To kiss him? To be with him? To have him as my boyfriend?

Would we hang out all the time? Would I have dinner at his house? Would I have to hold his baby sister and pretend I thought babies were cute?

Would I help him with
Schemata?
Would it get even better because of me? Would we sneak down into his room and kiss and fool around a little bit (with the door open, of course, listening carefully for his mom's footsteps on the stairs)? Would we go places and hang out and talk about
Schemata
and his dad and my mom?

Would I...

I wonder.

I wonder what it would be like.

What would his friends think? What would
Cal
think? Would it be
Hey, check it out—Fanboy's slumming with the psycho goth chick?

Or
Hey, dawg Fanboy's gettin'some?

Probably the first one. They all think I'm nuts. And ugly. And a freak with no hair and piercings who wears all one color all the time.

But...

But I don't
have
to be.

I could ...

Stop it, Kyra.

But I
could!

I look in my closet again. I could totally...

I could totally go a different way. I could wear a different bra, one that doesn't compress my boobs so much. And then if I wore a button-down shirt with some of the buttons undone ... and a skirt with the waistband rolled up so that more of my legs show...

I don't even think about it; I just do it. I put on the outfit—white top with my least restrictive bra. I usually button it up to the last button, but this time I undo the top two. Then I undo a third one. Black skirt that usually comes almost to my knees, but I roll it and it's above the knees and when I put on my boots, you get this sexy six inches of leg between the top of the boots and the bottom of the skirt.

I take a step back and look at myself in the mirror.

Another new Kyra. We've had Goth Girl Kyra, White-Out Kyra, ElecTrick Sex Kyra, and now...

Sex Bomb Kyra?

I can't even describe how it makes me feel. This weird, delicious combination of horny, embarrassed, proud, and excited.

What would Fanboy do if he saw me like this?

Would he be like Billy Odenkirk with Simone? Would he
expect
things and then walk away if I gave them to him?

What would the
world
do?

Everyone would look. I know that. I have to deal with that. Everyone would look.

OK.

Fine.

Let them look. Whatever. Looking doesn't hurt, right?

So, we would go places. And people would look. At me. With him.

And they would be like ...

I don't know.

I look really...

I turn in front of the mirror. Holy shit. My ass, in this skirt, like this...

Damn. I have a nice ass! Who knew?

People would look and think...

We would go to the comic book store together, maybe. And I would buy some cool Vertigo shit and some cool Top Shelf shit and he would buy, like,
The Delectable DildoMan
and I would tease him about it, but not in a mean way, and all of the fat, sweaty, pathetic virgins in their forties who work there and shop there would be staring at me and drooling, and they would all be so jealous of Fanboy, and I would be like,
Look all you want, you sad, sad effers. I'm not for you. I'll never be for you. I'm for—

Shit. Shit!

What the hell is
happening
to me?

I don't know. But I know what it would be like. I know.

I stare in the mirror. I thought I'd gotten it down yesterday. When I looked at myself with the ElecTrick Sex lips, when Roger said I looked nice. I thought I'd hit the right combination: Ultimate Kyra.

But now I look pretty effing awesome.

Maybe there's more than one Ultimate Kyra? Is that possible?

My cell goes off. It's Simone:
want me 2 pick u up?

God, yes.
Better than riding the bus.

Back to the mirror. No way I'm ready for this yet. I get undressed and get a shower and all that. I feel like I'm washing away the night, the dream, all of it. And that's good because I need to get rid of it all. I need it all to go away because it's too much.

O
NCE
I'
M OUT OF THE SHOWER
, I feel a little bit better. Some of the confusion is gone and some of the anger is coming back, which is nice because anger is easier.

And I have a lot to be angry about, after all. I don't care
what
I dreamed—Fanboy still betrayed me. He just totally forgot about me while I was DCHH and then when I came back he acted all happy to see me and put that dedication in
Schemata
just because he felt guilty. So eff him.

And Simone wore all white, even though that was totally
my
thing.

And Jecca followed Simone and keeps acting all weird and won't even talk to me about what the hell we're doing and then talks about how she's got this big crush on Brad, so what the hell?

Oh, yeah! That feels
good!
A little righteous anger after your morning shower is good for the soul.

I start pulling stuff out of my closet—old stuff.
Black
stuff. We'll title this chapter "The Return of Goth Girl" or some shit like that.

Soon, I'm all in black again, except for one thing: a bright blue scarf that I tie over my head. It goes with the ElecTrick Sex. I look friggin'awesome. My reverse smiley face is pinned on the scarf, right above my ear, and it's perfect.

When I get into Simone's car, she stares at me. She's doing Slut in Virginal White again.

"I thought we were doing
white
now."

We
weren't doing anything. I did something and you copied it. "I feel like mixing things up." I shrug.

She frowns, but then pulls out of the driveway and we're off. We both light up.

"You gotta go to the party tonight," she says.

Christ, not
this
again. "Whatev, Sim."

"Seriously. Jecca's going, I'm going, a whole mess of cool people are going. You gotta go."

"I hate that shit. God, Sim! You
know
that."

"You went to the party at Jecca's the other night."

"That was
different.
That was a
goth
party. A
quiet
party. That was all people I know. I hate being around all those douchebags I don't know, all those dumb-ass popular people."

"Fine, fine." She blows smoke.

I look at my cigarette. I've barely smoked it at all. I suck it deep, deep into my lungs. My head goes fuzzy and my lungs go orgasmic. Go ahead, lung cancer. Kill me. I dare you. Guess what? You can't. I'm stronger than my mom.

the room the room the room is rosevomit because
roger left roses and
mom threw up before i came in
perfect timing

("Honey?" she said
In that clouded, confused way.)

cancer had eaten a path to her brain
yum-yum cancer loves brains
like zombies
eat her memory
she has trouble remembering me
remembering the year

(When I was eight years old, I
Had the stomach flu
And threw up in the kitchen
And then in the hallway
And then twice in the bathroom
—Only hitting the sink once)

i should understand
but I can't
fluvomit does not equal rosevomit

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

A
T 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...

M
ISS
P
OWELL 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.