Goth Girl Rising (24 page)

Most of the table laughs. Even the people who haven't had Miss Powell for English have heard the stories.

"I'd lend her this one, but her boobs are too big," Simone says, and quickly opens her jacket and arches her back, just in case all the boys missed which specific bra she was talking about. (They double check, just to be sure.)

"What did she really want?" Lauri asks.

So I tell them.

There's some giggling and some horrified looks and some head-shaking.

"What did you say to her?" asks Troy.

So I tell them.

Total silence at the table.

And then they applaud.

"Holy shit!" says Troy. "Holy shit! You're my hero!"

"Whatever."

"That's
awesome,
" Simone says. "You really screwed her. That is
so
awesome!"

"I just told the truth. That's all."

For the rest of lunch, I'm the Hero of the Table, the Goddess of the Lunchroom. It's pretty nice.

A
LAS, THERE'S A PRICE TO PAY
for such popularity.

As lunch ends, I get paged to come to the office. Troy pretends to check something off on an imaginary clipboard. "Right on schedule," he says.

"The Spermling and your new girlfriend want a disciplinary threesome," Simone cracks.

"Guh-ross."

"Don't worry—the Spermling can't find his dick under all the rolls of fat. Your virtue is intact."

"Nice to know."

I go to the office. Miss Channing barely even looks up at me. "Mr. Sperling," she says (like I don't know), and points to a chair. I flop down. Once again I miss my Bangs of Doom; one of my pleasures in life is sitting in this very chair with the BoD shaken over my eyes, glaring out at the world from under cover.

But I have no Bangs, no hair at all, so instead of slumping down all sullen, I decide to sit up nice and straight—perfect posture. When Miss Channing looks over at me, I smile at her with my ElecTrick Sex lips instead of glowering. It sort of freaks her out. I can tell.

"Are you
on
something?" she says to me in a low voice.

I suppress giggles. "Just high on life," I whisper back.

The Spermling pokes his head out of his office. "Miss Sellers."

I stand up nice and tall and walk proudly into the Spermling's office. He lowers himself into his chair like ... like...

Like something
really
fat being lowered into a chair, OK?

I sit down like I'm the queen of the world. Miss Channing, of course, joins us, standing in the doorway. Because we need a chaperone—otherwise the Spermling will try to have his way with me, ha-ha.

He just sits there and looks at me for a second.

"Well, uh, this is an interesting new look for you, Miss Sellers." I guess the latest gossip hasn't hit the teachers lounge yet.

"Is that why I'm here? Fashion tips?"

He grimaces. "No. No. Uh." He messes with some papers on his desk. As usual, my disciplinary file is there—it's a massive slab of papers in a folder that has to be held together with big clips.

"I understand you had an, uh, altercation with Miss Powell."

I decide to give him the silent treatment for a little while. I just look at him. Let him do the talking. I'm tired of talking.

"You accused her of, well, of having an inappropriate relationship with her students." It takes him a little while to get the sentence out. I don't blame him. There's a history of this kind of shit in Brookdale. This wacko middle school teacher Evelyn Sherman, she effed Crazy J back when he was in middle school. It was all over the papers. It was a big deal. "That's a very serious charge, Kyra."

Yeah, whatever. I didn't say she actually effed someone. I said she made all the boys
want
to eff her. But what's the diff, right? Like I'm supposed to expect the Spermling to get it right.

"You used some pretty..." He's looking at his computer now, probably reading an e-mail from Miss Powell. "Some pretty foul language. We've talked about language before, Kyra."

And that's a total joke. I probably have one of the cleanest mouths at South Brook because I don't say the F-word. Anyone else here drops that bomb ten times in homeroom alone.

He sighs deep down in the fattest part of his fatty body and leans back in his chair, which groans and begs for the mercy of a quick death. I wait for it to break and send him sprawling back into the wall, but reality—as usual—disappoints me and the chair lives to suffer another day.

"So, do I have it, right, Kyra? You swore at her? You accused her of sex with a student? Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

I still say nothing. Which is a feat for me, I admit.

"Come on. I always let you have your say."

Still nothing. Giving him the opposite of what Miss Powell got. It doesn't matter what I say. He won't believe me anyway. And what's he going to do, tell Miss Powell to stop being a slut? He probably
likes
that she's a slut. He probably gets turned on by her—why should he be any different from any other guy? Even if it takes him an hour to find his own dick?

And besides, she'll never, ever try to talk to me again. So, really, I win.

"Fine, then. I have no choice but to let your father know what you did."

Oh, well.

He lets that sink in, like it's supposed to scare me or something.

"OK, get going." He starts to fill out a hall pass.

Whoa. No detention? No suspension? Nothing? Really? I can call a teacher a slut and I get nothing but a call home to Roger? Shit, I wish I'd known that
years
ago! I would have been calling teachers sluts back in middle school, man!

I guess my surprise shows because he says, "No, I'm not doing anything else to you. you've missed enough school and believe it or not, my primary concern is that you get an education. If you have a ... a ... a personality clash with Miss Powell, we'll see if you can't just resolve it like an adult. If not, we'll look into transferring you to another English class."

He tears the pass off his pad and holds it out to me. I jump up and grab it. He doesn't let go.

"You caught me on a good day, Miss Sellers. Don't think otherwise."

A billion comebacks fly through my brain. Sometimes I think God built my brain and then tuned it specifically for the cutting comeback, tweaking it like the geeks tweak their computers for maximum game performance, only I'm tweaked for maximum put-down performance.

But I like the silent vibe I've got going, so I swallow all those delicious insults, take the pass, and leave.

I
T KILLS ME, HOW CLUELESS
adults are.

I mean, I get in trouble just for
talking.
For
talking.

Do they realize that there are kids doing shit a million times worse in this school? Like Troy, for example. He supplies pot to all of the goths and sells it to some of the jocks, too, which is probably how any goths got invited to Pete Vesentine's party in the first place.

There are two freshmen who've had abortions. It's supposed to be a big secret, but there really aren't any secrets in high school. Someone tells someone, who tells someone, who tells someone...

And I know of a kid who does heroin and sells it to a couple of guys on the football team, but only during the off-season, which cracks my shit up.

Girls give guys blowjobs in the bathrooms between classes. Kids sneak in knives and drugs. All
kinds
of shit goes down, every day.

But, hey. I tell a teacher I can see her underwear and I get in trouble for it. What-the-hell-
ever
.

Roger is waiting for me at the end of the day. He's parked right in the bus circle, right out in front of everyone. I consider going to my bus anyway, pretending I don't see him, but he gets out of the car and stands there and then my phone rings and it's a text from Roger saying,
In the car—now.

Shit.

So I get in, even though it's
way
embarrassing because my friends see it. Everyone sees it—everyone is getting on the buses.

As soon as the doors close, he starts in, going straight to Pissed Off:

"What the hell, Kyra? You couldn't go two days without getting in trouble?"

"I'm not in trouble. I don't have detention—"

"I got a call from your assistant principal—"

"—I'm not suspended—"

"—at work and you know I hate that, so, yeah, I'm sorry, but you
are
in trouble—"

"—I don't even have to write an essay or any shit like that—"

"—sort of the
definition
of trouble, Kyra—"

"—so how can you say I'm in trouble when they didn't even
do
anything—"

"—because when I get a phone call in the middle of the day that interrupts
me
at
my
job—"

"
—totally
blowing this
totally
out of proportion—"

"Enough!" he shouts. "Enough until we get home!"

I spend the drive figuring that I could tell him everything. I could tell him about Miss Powell and her underwear and the boys with their drool and their boners and how I called her a slut, which totally should
not
be an issue because you can't get pissed at someone for telling the truth, right? And I didn't even call her a slut, not really. I just sort of
compared
her to a slut. Which is different.

But then he'd want to know
why
I was talking to her in the first place and he'd want to know what she said and I would have to tell him how she was trying to "get through to me" and all that shit. And that would make
him
want to "get through to me" and talk about all that shit and I just don't want to. I have a system, you know? I've got Dr. Kennedy and I've got my letters to Neil and I do all right. I figure shit out on my own.

So by the time we're home, I'm ready to just go silent again and take my medicine. Which is what Roger has called getting punished since the beginning of time—taking my medicine.

"Tell me what this was all about," he demands as soon as we're out of the garage and in the house.

It worked for the Spermling; I shut my mouth.

"Come on, Kyra. You were talking plenty in the car just now. Spill it. Why did you go off on this teacher?"

I say nothing. I watch Roger go from Pissed Off to Sad, Tired to Pissed Off again.

"Fine. Fine. Go to your room."

Shit. Now I
have
to talk. "How long am I grounded for?"

"You're not grounded. I just want you out of my hair for a while so I can work."

Before I get to my room, he calls out, "And I can tell you
this
much—you're not getting that driver's license any time soon!"

Whatever. Like I even need one.

I go to my room and lie on the bed for a little while. I don't get it. Most of the time when my dad yells at me, I can sort of see his side of it. It's not like I
care
or anything, but at least I can see it.

But I don't think I did anything wrong this time. Miss Powell had no right to try to buddy up to me. I didn't ask for her to be my friend. She's a hypocrite. I hate hypocrites. I called her out on that. I told her the truth, right to her face. Why should I be punished for that?

But Roger wouldn't understand that. The Spermling wouldn't understand that.

I do my homework. I spend extra time on English because I once heard someone say, "The best revenge is living well." Which isn't as cool as
A little revenge and this, too, shall pass,
but it's still not bad. I figure that the best way to piss off Miss Powell at this point is to totally kick ass in her class.

After I finish my homework, it's probably time for dinner, but I don't want to remind Roger that I exist by going out to the kitchen. I have to walk past his little home office and God knows the sound of my
breathing
might disturb him or something.

But, hey—I have something else I can do, right?

I pull the envelope out of my messenger bag. The envelope with
Schemata,
Version 1 in it.

Oh, boy. I can't wait!

The scanner's in Roger's office, but I can still go through everything and figure out the best shots to use. I flop down on my bed and kick off my shoes and put the old stuff next to the new stuff and start paging through them, comparing.

But something weird happens. I can't focus. Well, no, that's not right. I can focus just fine. On
Schemata.
What I can't focus on is screwing over Fanboy. I should be looking for the best shots of Courteney, the most Dina-like shots. And then scan them in and make up posters and shit.

But instead I keep getting caught up in the story. I keep comparing the old stuff to the new stuff and ... God, you know, it's not just the change in Courteney. It's not just that he's not drawing this grown-up fantasy version of Dina anymore. It's everything. I mean, he really made a big effort. The artwork is stronger and more mature. More detailed when it needs to be. But it's not like he's trying to cram every panel with as many lines as possible to impress the reader, like some guys do. He's got panels where he's completely removed the backgrounds, for example, because it makes the foreground stuff pop that much more. And in the old version, he had all these cool Photoshop effects for Courteney's powers, but he's toned them down. They're still there, but ... I don't know. I thought it looked cool before, but now it's even better. It's more confident. It's like he doesn't need all that flash to impress you. He doesn't need to overwhelm you with a million filters and gradients and all that shit. He's just got the confidence to tell his story.