Goth Girl Rising (38 page)

Or would you have told all the same stories, just shorter? In that case, which
details
would have been lost?

But the more I think about that, the more I realize it doesn't matter. Because the lesson I get from all of this is that you didn't have it all figured out from the start. You rolled with the punches.

And maybe that's what
I
need to do.

I learned a lot from reading your comics. From thinking about them.

But it's weird, because tonight I learned a lot from another comic book. It wasn't one of yours, but it had some of your characters in it.

Here's the thing: In your comics, Death (you know, the big
D,
like my cup-size, LOL) is comforting and cool. And that's great.

But that's just Death herself. It's not death (with a little
d
), the actual, you know,
event.
You made her up and she's the person or the thing or the whatever that helps us get through the door from being alive to being dead, right? She isn't actually
being
dead, right? I think I've got this straight.

That Captain Atom comic made me realize that actually being dead might not be all comforting and calm, you know? Even if a nice person with a perky smile and a cool outfit greets you. Being dead might actually suck. It might be a lot of work. And if that's the case, then maybe ... maybe I should do the work here and now, while I'm alive, so that maybe someday—like a million years from now—I can relax and enjoy being dead.

That's sort of what I learned tonight.

Oh. One last secret:

This will be the last time I write to you.

I'm not sending this one, either.

It's been a while. Sorry I haven't written until now.

It's so late at night that it's early in the morning. I did something pretty stupid tonight (or last night, I guess) and I got caught. don't worry. It's all going to work out.

Still, I was up for hours talking to Dad and then I did some writing to someone else and now I'm writing to you. I'm going to have to get some sleep soon, but I wanted to write this while I was thinking it.

And wow. Now that I'm actually sitting here at the computer, typing, I don't know what to say. Dr. Kennedy was right—it's a good idea to write to you. But it's also scary. Because there's so much to say. And I don't want to get it wrong, which is weird because you're dead, so it's not like I can really send this to you. It's not like you can really read it.

But maybe you can. I feel like you can. Like you can read it while I write it. Is that weird? Probably.

I'm OK with weird, though. If you've been watching over me since you died, you know that I'm OK with weird.

I'm sorry, Mom.

I'm crying while I'm typing this. I want to tell you that so you'll understand if there are any typos.

I'm sorry.

Not just for saying what I said the last time I saw you. Not just for that.

I'm sorry for hating you.

I hated you before you died and then you died and I
really
hated you after that.

I'm sorry.

One time you told me that the opposite of love isn't hate. And I didn't understand that, but I think I do now. Because if you hate someone, you must still care, right? You have to care a little bit; otherwise you would just ignore them and forget they even live. Or lived.

So maybe ... Look, I'm sorry I hated you, but maybe—once you died—maybe that was my way of keeping you alive.

I think it was
easier
to hate you. Like, if I hated you, then I didn't have to be so sad. And that was better for me.

But even though I hated you, I still loved you. So I guess it's possible to love and loathe at the same time. It's like when you were dying, I was all, "Thank God she's dying" and "What am I going to do without her?" at the same time.

Does that make any sense?

It makes a weird sort of sense to me.

I only let myself think of the bad things. The times you criticized me. The times you made me change clothes when I liked my outfit the way it was. The times you made me do things I didn't want to do, things I didn't see any sense in doing. It was easier to think of
those
things and hate you.

So when I sat down to write this letter, I forced myself to think of my favorite memory of you. I wouldn't let myself start until I had that memory, until it was strong and bright and bold in my mind.

I thought it would take a long time, but it didn't. Once I let it, it popped right into my head.

It was brushing your hair, Mom.

Do you remember? When I was a little girl, you would sit on the edge of the bed at night and I would get up on the bed on my knees behind you and brush your hair with the big paddle brush. Fifty strokes on the right, then fifty on the left. We would count them together.

I loved those times. When did we stop doing that?

I don't remember.

Why
did we stop?

I don't know that, either.

But I remember this: I remember your hair falling out from the chemo. And I remember those memories of brushing your hair each night hitting me suddenly, powerfully, like bullets in my mind, in my soul, in my heart. I had forgotten about brushing your hair until suddenly there was no hair to brush anymore.

And then I wished for it to come back. I wished for me to be a little girl on her knees behind her mommy, brushing her hair and counting to fifty...

And then I hated you.

You were so sick. And I was growing up and I needed you, but you were dying. So I hated you. And I hated you even more when you died, when you left me, left me all alone. Yes, alone, because Dad wasn't even alive at that point. It's like he died when you died, and by the time he came back to life, it was too late.

Am I a terrible person for thinking these things? I don't know. I hope not. Because it feels good to finally write them down, to say them to you.

God, Dr. Kennedy is a
genius.

I promised myself that I would be honest with you in this letter, so there are some things I need to tell you. Three things. Three things that I need to tell you more than anything.

First of all: There's this girl. Jecca. You remember Jecca. She used to come over to the house. She was just plain old Jessica back then. We started calling her Jecca after you died.

Anyway, for a little while there I thought maybe I was falling in love with her. But I wasn't. It wasn't that at all. Because in writing this letter, I realized where this whole thing with Jecca started,
how
it started.

It started with me brushing her hair.

We used to have math together. We sat in the back of the room, me behind her. And back then she wore her hair long and I would spend math period brushing her hair, counting to fifty in my head ... Sometimes she would forget her brush, so I would use my fingers, just combing through her hair, over and over, touching her hair, feeling how warm and soft it was.

Somehow that turned into more. I don't know how. It doesn't really matter anymore, because I finally get it. I was confused about Jecca because with her it was never about sex or even love. It was about
need.
About needing someone and wanting someone and wanting to be held, but knowing—deep down—that you were needing and wanting and being held by the wrong person. But still thinking that the substitute was good enough. Because the truth was too tough.

And for a while there, I thought that maybe I was using her as a substitute for
you,
but now I know that that's not true, that that's not what I was doing.

Which brings me to my second thing.

I want you to know: I'm going to try. I'm really going to try. I can't make any promises. I'm still Kyra. People still piss me off and you can bet I'm going to tell them when they do. But I'll try to watch my mouth. And I'll try to be nicer to Dad. Maybe I'll even start calling him Dad. (But maybe not—let's not get
too
carried away!)

I don't know if you know this or not, Mom, but I tried to kill myself a while back. And then a few months ago I had a bullet and I was gonna try to do it again, but I didn't.

It's not that I was trying to see you again. I'm not sure
what
it was anymore. It's weird, because just a day ago, I felt like I understood it. And now I feel like it's something that happened to another person, a long time ago, something I heard about from a friend of a friend.

So what changed in the meantime? Well, I know a little bit of what changed. But I think for the most part, I just realized some things.

Like, life isn't perfect. Hell, life is shit most of the time. But it's my life. I get to do what I want with it. And getting rid of it would be like throwing away an outfit just because you're not entirely sure you'll ever wear it. Why not just keep it, just in case? You never know what you might do with it. Just like my clothes. I could have thrown out all of those outfits that Grandma bought me, but I kept them, way in the back of the closet. I even wore the scarf. I could have thrown out all of my black clothes when I started wearing white. But I kept them. And now I'm going to wear them again. Because I've realized: I'm not just White, ElecTrick Sex Kyra. I'm also Black, Post-Goth Kyra. And maybe a bunch of other Kyras, too. Who knows?

And Ultimate Kyra? What about her?

Well, I figure Ultimate Kyra is
all
the Kyras.

That's what I figure, and maybe I'm right or maybe I'm wrong, but the only way to find out for sure is to keep going and keep looking and find out someday.

So some days I'll be one. And some days I'll be the other. And some days I'll try something new.

And sometimes I'll let my hair grow out. And sometimes I'll shave it off. People will wonder about me, but I don't care.

I don't care because...

Well, because of my third thing.

I've met a boy.

I know. I know you're worried. I remember when you sat me down and talked to me about sex. And you told me that I wasn't old enough for it yet, and I was curious, so I said, "When will I be old enough?" and you sort of sighed and you said, "Too soon. No matter when it is, it'll be too soon. But there's nothing I can do about that."