It's Monday morning and my stomach aches. I 'm trying to hide out in the basement bathroom until my parents leave for the day.
"You're going to school!" My stepfather yells from the other side of the locked door.
"Nope!" I'm sitting on the toilet.
"Oh yes, you are!" He retorts, as if I'm five and there's anything he can physically do to make me.
"I can't go anywhere right now!" My stomach is in agony, so I'm guaranteed to be free for the day. My indigestion has saved me yet again!
"You're going to be there for the second period!" Steve insists.
"Yeah, we'll see about that," I mumble to myself, picking up a water damaged copy of Reader's Digest. I've already read 'As Kids See It' about a million times, but I'll give it another go anyway. I don't even crack a smile as I do so. I'm a hardened soul.
Within half an hour the entire house is empty. My parents are at their jobs, and my step sister is at school.
I go upstairs to the living room, where I hustle on over to the computer. My word document is still open in a tab at the bottom of the screen. It has the speech that's due in my Language Arts class today. It's not finished yet. But I'm a procrastinator, and this is how I work best.
I pretend to crack my knuckles and then put on some music to set the mood. Some Adema will do. We're allowed to choose the topic of our speech. I decided to make it on the temple of Solomon. No matter what I say in it, the conclusion will be weak. My conclusions are always weak. Mr. Barnhart makes sure to write this on my paper in red pen every time I submit something. If I'm so consistent, I think he should accept that it's part of my style!
I hate Mr. Barnhart. He's constantly telling me to smile. I think he smiles too much! His face is always red from all his stupid grinning, and he's a ginger on top of it all. Between that and his shortness, he looks like some kind of drunk leprechaun.
All my teachers suck, except for Mr. Savoie. His class is Art. Everybody likes Art, even the jocks, because they can slack off. But that's not why I like Mr. Savoie. I like him because he lets me leave whenever I want, since he knows I have IBS. With everyone else I need to have my hand up for eight million years to even get acknowledged. It's ridiculous.
I turn my music up louder and tent my hands in front of my face.
I don't know what else to write for this stupid speech. Even though I like the topic, I don't want to talk about it. I hate public speaking. I mean, I can do it, but I don't want to. Even if something's written out on paper and has a good conclusion, it still doesn't seem worth saying. Not to my classmates, anyway.
I always overhear the stupidest shit from those dummies. I just have to sit there and absorb it, like a sponge. Then I have to wring myself out later to try to get rid of all the inane information I've accumulated.
People talk way too much. Me, I keep quiet.
I really don't want to give a speech in front of my classmates. But I also don't want to say it in private during lunch hour to just Mr. Barnhart. He's creepy. Whenever he gets the opportunity, he talks about sex. He told us the word 'fuck' is an acronym for 'found under carnal knowledge' and it essentially means you hope someone gets raped when you say 'eff you'. He also told us that one time he was camping and got stuck in a snowstorm with his friends, and they all had to all get naked and cuddle for warmth but 'it wasn't sexual'. I don't believe him on either account.
I need a distraction.
I investigate cyberspace, hitting up my usual haunts. Vampirefreaks.com is first. I have a profile but it's empty. All I've filled out is what bands. I'm not good looking enough for pictures, unlike the rest of the scenesters on the site who spam the pages with their emo sweep thorax hair pix. I chew the inside of my cheek as I study the top rated girls of the day. I look nothing like them. Oh well.
I move onto psyke.org. They just want pictures of your cutting. Everyone wants to be as badass as Richey Edwards, and so far there's only one person to rival him, that girl who etched 'Daddy fucked me and I loved it' into her flesh. But how can anyone normal compete with that?
I push up the sleeves on my own lightly scarred arms and frown. I need to make a statement. Someday I'll do something worth a thousand hits, but I'm not sure what.
I decide to go to the corner store a couple blocks away. I put on jeans, my Iowa hoodie, my army jacket, and my combat boots. I know I look precisely like a gargoyle. My hair is messy and shaved on the sides, I have bags under my eyes, and I'm so pale I look ill.
I head out the front door.
I'm a girl but I never get cat-called. I know why. It's because I don't even look female. I walk with a swagger and keep my hands deep in my pockets like I've got a weapon. I'm only 17, but I'm intimidating.
My step-sister Julia is 15, and she gets harassed by random men all the time. She has blue eyes and long brown hair and is generically pretty. She plays on the volleyball team and probably writes good conclusions to essays. But I know what she is. She is a skank, and has been since age 12. I don't think her dad knows. But every other man does. They can sense it.
I buy an energy drink and lamb samosas at the store. They won't help my stomach, but I don't care about that. I don't care about anything. We're all going to die anyway.
I sip on my Monster as I walk back home.
Steve hates that I have so many energy drinks. He says they're making my mouth rot. He's a dentist, so he says a lot of shit like that. He's also always going on about how he can fix my slightly crooked front tooth, but I don't know if I want him to. I don't want braces at my age. Plus, it'll make it easier to identify my body if I'm ever murdered.
Steve tells me I'm morbid. My mom Candace agrees with him. All they care about are white smiles and fluoride treatments. She's a receptionist at Steve's dental practice. I don't think she even does anything there, aside from feeding the fish and answering the phone. It's the same shit she does at home, except we don't have an aquarium. I wish we did. I'd put in a piranha.
It's been years since I saw my real dad, Thomas. He's a pastor turned missionary who lives in Ukraine. My mom divorced him back when she realized he cared more about saving random strangers than his previous commitments, like having a family. He sends me trinkets from Uzhgorod every once in a while. I keep them in a box with all the other crap that isn't relevant enough to have earned a place on my bookshelf or dresser.
It starts to snow and I pull my hood up
As I'm passing the trail I hear a 'wuff!' and a loose dog runs up to me. It reminds me of a crocodile. "Wuff!" It says again, wagging its twiggy tail. It has bright blue eyes and a sandy colored fur coat. A crooked stripe runs down its face and it has three white socks, but one leg is all tan and barefoot. All its paws are splashed with dirt, making it look like it's wearing little boots.
I reach out to pat it, and it licks my hand eagerly.
"SUZIE!" Goes a man's voice, cracking like a whip across the grey winter air.
I look up and see a dude. He's older than me, maybe by like ten years. He's handsome and tough looking, wearing tattered black jeans and fingerless gloves. He has blue eyes, too, they're not as blue as the dog's. Looking into his eyes I am overcome with a feeling of primal dread. Maybe that's just what happens when you're attracted to someone. I don't know. I don't see that many good looking people in the wild.
He clips on leash on the dog's choke chain. "Sorry about that," he says without looking at me. I guess he might be talking to the dog, but I don't think so? "C'mon, Suzie, let's go." They leave.
I lower my head but keep my eyes on them, still feeling weird. I'm both disappointed and relieved to see them wander further down the trail. The dog, Suzie, I guess, looks back at me and wags her tail.
I think about them all the way back to my house.
When I get inside I fling off my jacket and then chug the rest of my Monster. I'm feeling feral.
As I dance across the kitchen floor and throw out my can, I think about the dude. I wonder if hot guys like that have ever liked me. Maybe in elementary school. I was cute once, I guess. I didn't always look like an androgynous delinquent. My mom told me that I need to start caring about my appearance because, "The reality is," as she put it, "Looks matter."
I headbang over to the computer to work more on my essay, speech, whatever the fuck it is. I should write a really good ending just to blow Mr. Barnhart out of the water. I mean, I would if I could, but I don't really know how. Still I bet nobody else in his class has written a paper on the temple of Solomon. Everyone else is probably going to do it on something asinine, like The OC.
I bang away on the keyboard for a bit and then print off my speech. It's just barely three pages long in size 12 font. If I read it slowly enough, it'll take me two minutes: the minimum amount of time required. Even the ending should be good enough. It has four whole sentences. What else does he want from me?
I staple it together and then throw it on top of the printer before flopping on the couch to watch TV. I am lost in my own boredom for the next few hours. In spite of the energy drink, I drift off to sleep.
Then the front door opens. Julia has come home with two of her friends, Mandy and Natalie. They look like a trio of Barbies.
I take their arrival as my cue to leave. I grab my jacket, put it on, go back outside and head to the elementary school. I can swing in peace now that all the little shits have gone home. I swing and I swing and I swing, getting higher and higher.
I close my eyes and pretend I'm being swallowed by the mounting darkness of the night. Finally when the swing is at its apex, I let myself fly off, and I land in the snow with a mirthless laugh. I lay there for a minute, staring up at the stars, and convince myself some of them are moving. Maybe it's aliens. I wet my lips and then pull on the ski mask I keep in my pocket.
I walk back home with it on and my hood up. People avoid me, as usual.
"Tamara!" My mother says when I come in looking like a burglar. "You're late for dinner!"
The house stinks of salmon.
"Not hungry." I say, rolling my mask up, but I go into the kitchen anyway and grab a pudding cup.
"You can't eat that. Have supper." Mom insists.
I shake my head.
"Get over here and eat," Steve tries to regain control of his household. "And by the way, you're grounded."
"Pfffft," I exhale. "For what?"
"You stayed home sick, but felt well enough to be gone all evening? No way, uh-uh. This isn't party central. You have responsibilities, and one of them is getting an education. You can't just wander the streets at all hours like a hobo. Keep it up, though, and that's what you'll be."
All this bullshit makes me lose my appetite. I throw the pudding back into the fridge and head down to the basement. What was once the den has become my bedroom. The room is huge and always cold. I call it the morgue.
There's an entertainment center, but the TV isn't connected to cable anymore so I can't watch anything. But I can play video games. I have a Playstation 2 hooked up to it. The Resident Evil 4 loading screen is up and has been for days. The music coming from it is sort of soothing.
A beat-up sectional serves as the bedframe for my queen-sized mattress. I call it Bed Fort.
My actual bedroom is upstairs. Sometimes I raid it for clothing, but in all honesty, I only wear about five things. I put on deodorant and change my underwear and socks, what more does society want?
When company comes over, Mom makes me move the mattress from Bed Fort back into the spare room down the hall from the den, where it belongs. But normally I sleep down here, far away from everyone else.
I like being alone. I think.
I wrap myself up like a burrito in a blanket and play Resident Evil on professional mode until my eyes hurt. When I look over at the alarm clock I snatched from my bedroom, I see it's midnight.
Time to sleep! I squirm into my blanket pile and fall asleep.