The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl (11 page)

"So what? They'll just grow up into more Jock Jerks. A new generation. Who cares? Anyone who would put a dumb-ass bumper sticker like that on their car needs to be yanked outta the gene pool."

"Is it worth totaling your car?" I'm desperate—it's not her car, after all, but maybe her sister won't appreciate the damage, if she notices between bouts of depression-induced Cheetos eating.

Her fingers loosen a little bit on the steering wheel, but she's still got the gas pedal jammed against the floor. "Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. I thought you wanted people like this dead. Thought we agreed on stuff like that."

The List scrolls through my mind. Death and/or dismemberment keeps my spirits up some nights, true, but at the end of the day I just want these people to go away and leave me alone. Preferably after acknowledging that they treated me like dirt and shouldn't have. But for all I know, the minivan people up ahead never even spit in my general direction. They're clueless, but that's not a capital offense.

"Dead is a pretty long way to go, Kyra. Come on. You don't really want to kill people, do you?"

She chews on her bottom lip for a second, then grins. Ring tilt. "I got it."

"Got what?"

She tightens her grip on the wheel again and the car lurches into another lane. The engine growls louder, which I didn't think was possible. The minivan starts to come into view alongside us.

"What are you doing?" Has she seen too many cop shows? You can't try to knock a minivan off the road with a car this small!

"Gonna get in front of them. Hit the brakes. Let them nail us."

"Are you insane?" I spin around to look at her, but she's intent on the road.

"Like I said—we have air bags. Don't worry about it. It'll mess up her car, and her insurance will have to pay for it since
she
hit
us.
"

"Kyra!" I don't know what scares me more—that she's going to do this, or that she's thought it out so well.

"What?" she asks, annoyed, turning to me at last.

"You can't just do this!"

"I can do whatever ... ah, shit!"

"What?" I look over my shoulder, out the window. The minivan has dropped behind us, slowing, its turn signal blinking.

"Shit!" Kyra yells again, then slams on the brakes and yanks the wheel, sending us careening into the other lane. My stomach doesn't get the memo and stays six to ten feet behind us as we skid over the tarmac. The minivan's nowhere in sight, already turned off. "Damn it! Lost 'em!"

"Thank God," I moan as Kyra settles back into the flow of traffic. Horns blare all around us, as if we somehow couldn't be aware of the automotive acrobatics we just performed, but Kyra just rolls down her window and blithely flips off all and sundry.

"I can't believe you were going to do that."

Kyra chuckles as she lights up a cigarette. She leaves the window down and holds the cigarette outside when not dragging on it. "You know what your problem is? You have no guts."

"No kidding."

"You agreed with that pretty fast." Plume of smoke out the window.

"I was joking. Didn't you call me a noble Indian or something?"

"Yeah, I'm having trouble reconciling your apparent fearlessness and gutlessness."

"There's a difference between fearless and stupid. You know that, right?"

She shrugs. "If you say so." She arches an eyebrow at me, favors me with a ring-tilt grin, and goes back to her cigarette.

I check my seat belt, just to be sure.

G
ET THIS:
M
OM'S PISSED.

My watch and the dashboard clock on Kyra's sister's ex-boyfriend's car agree that it's no more than five past nine, but when I walk through the front door, Mom starts screaming at me before she even comes into view from the "family" room. I almost jump out of my skin. Thank God Kyra just dropped me off and didn't actually come in—this would be mortifying.

"Where have you been?" Mom demands, rolling into the foyer from the kitchen threshold, her pregnant belly suddenly aggressive, like a tank or something. "You said eight o'clock and I want to know where you've been!"

I just stand there, shocked into silence. She's glaring at me, her eyes flashing, her jaw set. She's really,
really
pissed off! I can't believe it. I didn't
do
anything. I mean, imagine if she knew what Kyra almost did!

"I was—I was out." I should have
let
Kyra ram that minivan. Then Mom would be sorry. She'd be picking me up at the hospital. She'd be sorry.

"I
know
that. Where
were
you? You were supposed to be home at eight. You're an hour late."

I half expect her to break into some sort of rap. Eight, late, don't hesi
tate.
Something.

"We lost track of time," I lie, which is the easy way out.

"Oh,
did
you? You lost track of time, huh? Why? What were you doing that you lost track of time?"

And then she shouts—actually
shouts,
her face all red, her neck straining—so loud that I know they can hear her up the block: "ANSWER ME!"

But I've got nothing. I wasn't doing
anything.
"Mom, we weren't doing anything. We were just hanging out."

"Hanging out? For nine hours? Hanging out?"

What the hell has gotten into her? "Mom, I'm sorry I'm late, but"—
I didn't think you even heard me when I said eight, and I was lying anyway
—"I mean, I just forgot to look at my watch, is all."

"Because you were with your little friend, right? Doing what? Where?"

Oh, God. I see it now. "Mom, we weren't ... We really ... We didn't
do
anything." God, how the hell do I tell my mother I didn't have sex?

"Oh? What do you mean by that?"

"I mean whatever you
think
I mean. God, Mom!" I'm not. I am
not
going to tell my pregnant mother that I didn't have sex. I mean, what the hell? What
is
this? Not everyone's a freakin' animal like she is. Not everyone can't control themselves.

"This is how it's going to be now?" she asks. "This is what you've decided? It's not bad enough that you lock yourself in your room all the time and don't talk to anyone, but now you're going to do
this
to me, too?"

What?

"This is the example you're going to set for your little sister?"

"It's not going to be my sister!" It's out before I even realize it. "It's going to be my
half
sister, OK?" Will you get it straight?

I want to go on. Will you get it straight that it's
half
because Dad had
nothing
to do with this, and it drives me nuts when she calls it my sister.

I made a mistake before. I thought she was mad. But she wasn't.
Now
she's mad. Her eyes bug out. "I am so TIRED of that! This is not about YOU! This baby is coming whether you want it or not, so GET USED TO IT!"

I don't want it! I don't! I grit my teeth instead and stare at her.

"You are going to have to GET USED TO IT! Your father and I are NOT getting back together. And I don't care HOW unhappy you are, it is NOT going to change a thing!"

She's gonna shout herself into a miscarriage, and for a minute I'm terrified. I'm absolutely terrified that something's going to rupture or break or explode or whatever, and there's going to be blood on the floor and 911 and I'm going to get blamed for killing my half sister before she's even born.

"Now WHAT WERE YOU DOING ALL DAY?"

I realize that I'm shaking. I'm afraid to open my mouth, afraid to speak, so we just stare at each other.

"Go to your room," she says finally, calming down.

"What?"

"I said 'Go to your room.' You're grounded."

"For what?"

"Go!" I start to head for the stairs, but then she stops me. "But first go get your stuff from the family room. You left more of your pages lying all over the place."

So suddenly I'm one of the trolls in
The Three Billy Goats Gruff,
banished to the dark, dank spot under the bridge, all because I came home an hour late the
one time
I bothered to go out at all. The one time I spent the day with a friend, my mother—the same woman who is constantly telling me to make friends—punishes me for doing exactly what she's been hounding me to do for years.

There are a million—a
billion—things
to say, but none of them wants to come out. I just stand there in mute, stupid rage and disbelief. How can I argue with someone who has so completely abandoned even the
pretense
of consistency and logic? Do pregnancy hormones cause brain damage? And is it contagious—because that could explain the step-fascist.

Under her watchful, angry eyes, I go upstairs and find some pages from
Schemata
in the family room, partly hidden under a newspaper. The step-fascist is watching TV—professional wrestling. Two guys dressed like bad superheroes pretend to pound the crap out of each other while the crowd roars approval. He doesn't look at me and I don't look at him as I gather my papers and head out. Then downstairs, into the dungeon.

But the dungeon's OK. I don't mind the dungeon. Grounding me is sort of like telling a pedophile he has to hang around a nursery school. I've got the phone and my computer in my room: What else do I need?

I pop open the hard drive case and there's the bullet, a little brassy star. I somehow forgot to take it with me today. Funny how I didn't really miss it when I was with Kyra.

I lie on my bed and smooth out the
Schemata
pages before me, looking for bad continuity and goofy balloon placement. The whole time, I roll the bullet between my palms. Such a small thing. A little bit of metal and some powder. That's all it is. That's all it takes.

After a while, I hear footsteps overhead—bedtime. The steps don't stop where they should, though—they continue to the staircase, then come down.

Crap. I tuck the bullet into my pocket. I don't need this.

A moment later, there's a knock at my door. I consider pretending to be asleep, but my light's on and she's seen that, I'm sure.

"Come in."

Mom waddles in. She gives a little sigh as she glances around the room, taking in the chaotic piles of books and paper, and I can see her decision to say nothing about the mess as it flits across her face.

"I need to talk to you," she says.

Tell me you're leaving him,
I think.
Tell me you guys are getting a divorce. You know how to do it. You practiced with Dad.

She pulls over my computer chair and lowers herself into it. "I'm sorry I yelled at you. I lost my temper. Hormones..." She smiles, but I'm not buying.

"I didn't do anything," I tell her.

"I was your age once. I know what ... I know the feelings that you can get. I'm not so old that I don't remember."

Oh, thank God for the self-control that descends from nowhere and enables me to keep myself from staring pointedly at her belly and saying, "Obviously." And did she actually say, "I was your age once"? Is there a script somewhere for parents? Can I just read it instead of listening to it?

"I know that you have all of these feelings inside and that you want to—"

"Mom!" I can't take it. "Mom, I swear to
God
that I didn't do anything. We just hung out and talked. I
swear.
OK?"

She shakes her head. "This is the first girlfriend you've ever had—"

"Jeez, Mom! She's not my girlfriend! She's just a friend!" Now she cocks her head. "Is there something you want to tell me? I mean, you've never seemed interested in girls, and I want you to know that you can tell me
anything.
I might get angry, but I won't
stay
angry, and I'll always—"

"I'm not gay!" I can't believe this! "I'm not gay and I didn't do anything tonight. We just lost track of time. God, Mom, have I ever done anything stupid before? Have I ever screwed up? Have I ever lied?" No fair with that last one—I lie all the time, but she doesn't know that. And it's not like I lie about important stuff.

She watches me. I feel desperate and stupid. I wish my dad were here. He would understand. He would laugh and say, "Miggy, don't worry about it." That's what he called Mom—Miggy. Some nickname from college. I miss hearing it.

"You know you can tell me anything, right?" she asks, as if the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

I try to match her gravity. "Yes, Mom."

"And you promise me you'll always be careful?"

"I promise to stop having unprotected sex with Haitian immigrants and intravenous drug users," I tell her, just as serious.

In spite of herself, she laughs, then "Oofs" as she levers herself out of the chair.

"How long am I grounded?"

"You're not grounded. I shouldn't have done that."

Like it makes a difference. I spend most of my time in my room anyway.