The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl (9 page)

Kyra pulled into the development and guided the car past quiet houses that may as well have been from a ghost town. At the end of the development the road terminated in a circle of five houses, beyond which loomed trees and tall grass.

"C'mon," she said, finally lighting the cigarette after she killed the engine.

Technically, it was trespassing. We walked right through someone's yard, sneaked behind their house, then headed into the woods. Just when I was starting to worry about getting lost, the woods opened up into a broad clearing. I could see fallow farmland in the distance. The ground sloped down to a chain-link fence, which ran in a rough oblong around a weedy, muddy flat, then sloped back up on all sides of the oblong. It was like the ground made a bowl here.

Kyra sat down on the slope, then lay flat on her back, a black line on the green grass. I sat down next to her and listened to the wind in the leaves, the rustle of grass, a croaking that could have been a frog or just wind in a hollow log. Kyra blew plumes of smoke into the sky.

We said nothing for the longest time.

I guess that part of me that wants to know is persistent. I know how I got here. But sitting here now, in the quiet, needing to say nothing, feeling no need to speak, just watching her black lips surrender white-gray clouds, it really doesn't matter.

"Y
OU LIKE THIS PLACE
?" she asks after a while.

She's been lying there with her eyes closed, so I've been watching her fearlessly. At the sound of her voice, I avert my eyes as if caught doing something, even though she's still not looking.

"It's nice."

"Nice?" She opens one eye and blows smoke through her nostrils, snorting aurally
and
visually. "Nice? That's it?"

"I'm not big on nature stuff. It's pretty."

She laughs. "It's a testament to stupidity is what it is." She flicks the cigarette butt down the slope in the general direction of the fenced-in swamp. "It used to be beautiful here. There was a pond down there." She points to the fence. "Then they built the houses back there, and the idiots who bought the houses decided that they didn't want the pond because they were all afraid of mosquitoes breeding in it. So they drained it and figured they'd build a playground instead."

"And?"

"And look." With a hand, she sweeps the entire vista. "No one could be bothered. They drained it, the imaginary mosquito problem went away, and they couldn't be bothered to do anything else. So what could have been a little bit of unspoiled nature in the middle of more stupid cookie-cutter houses, they made a dumb-ass swamp and fenced it in so the dumb-ass kids they all bred won't accidentally fall in." She looks at me seriously. "people are stupid. people suck. period."

"Yeah. I know."

"That's what I like about you."

I shiver even though it's warm. What's going on here?
That's what I like about you.
What am I supposed to do? Does she want to be my girlfriend? That's impossible. The silence hangs in the air, heavy and impossible to ignore, so I say the first thing that comes to my mind:

"There's a comic book convention next weekend. You want to go?"

"Are you asking me on a
date,
fanboy?"

Back to fanboy, then. In which case, no, I'm
not
asking her on a date.

"Just wondering if you wanted to go, that's all."

"Anyone there I care about?"

I should have checked that. I
will
check that. I tell her so, then add, "Bendis will be there. I know
you
don't care, but that's a pretty big deal, whether you like his stuff or not."

"Whatever." Dismissive hand wave.

"Oh, come on! Come on! You have to admit it—it's a big deal. He's, he's an Eisner winner and stuff. Come on."

"OK, OK, it's a big deal, fanboy."

Hey, the Goth Girl likes to condescend! For some reason it doesn't really bother me. It's actually sort of cool. I like arguing.

"It's a bigger deal than if
Neil Gaiman
came," I say, stressing his name like a lovesick girl. I throw in some batting of the eyelashes for effect.

"Oh, please, it
so
is not."

"Yes, it is."

"No way. Bendis is this little superhero writer, and Gaiman, Gaiman's a best-selling
novelist.
A
novelist,
OK? People other than emotionally stunted adolescents read his stuff."

"Then why do
you
read it?" I ask.

She giggles. She actually
giggles.
I thought that would piss her off.

"He just reads a bunch of history books and comes up with bogus crap to tie it all together."

"Like your guy is any better."

"We're not
talking
about my guy." I'm going to check. I really am. I'm going to check the website and look to see if someone from Top Shelf or Fantagraphics or whatever is going to be there, and then I'll see if she wants to go, not because it would be a date but just because it would be cool to have someone go with Cal and me. Someone
else.

But in the meantime, I start to gear up: She wants to talk about Neil Gaiman? Fine. I can do that. Where are the Greek gods in
American Gods,
I'll ask her. Wouldn't it make sense that Hercules would be around? What about Santa Claus? What about a god of democracy? Racism? He didn't think about it at all.

"What would you normally be doing?"

I open my mouth to let the Gaiman stuff come out, but instead I nearly choke. "Huh?"

She sits up, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging them tight. "What would you normally be doing on a Saturday?" Her eyes are luminous and somehow huge set against the pale nothing of her face. "If you weren't hanging out with me?"

"I..." What
would
I be doing? Talking to Cal, if he didn't have a game. Reading, maybe. That's ... That's it. God, my life
sucks!
"Probably nothing," I admit. Man, it kills me how I keep forgetting to lie to her! What the hell is wrong with me? "Probably hang out with Cal. But he would have a game or practice today, so I'd probably, you know, watch TV. Read something." Work on
Schemata.
But I don't tell her that. It's not a lie; it's an omission.

"You don't have any other friends?"

I don't know if she means "other friends" than Cal or "other friends" than her. But it doesn't matter. There's a tone in her voice—it takes a second to recognize it, but I pick it out. Concern. Sincerity.

"I've got ... There are some guys from my old neighborhood. From Lake Eliot, near Finn's Crossing?" She nods. "It's a stupid name. There's no lake there. But that's where my dad lives and that's where I grew up until my mom moved us here. There are some guys there and I see them in the summer when I live with my dad, but it's..." God, this is tough to talk about. I think I've always compartmentalized my dad and my mom: When I'm with one, I try not to think of the other. Two different worlds. Can't breathe both kinds of atmosphere at once; you have to go through an airlock first. "It's like 'out of sight, out of mind,' you know? They don't call me and I don't call them, but when I visit my dad, I see them. Sometimes. Less and less. I mean, it's tough, only seeing them once a month and then over the summer."

She's staring at me. She's been staring at me the whole time, perfectly still. With horror, I realize that my left eye is starting to water. I'm going to cry. I'm going to cry while the only girl who's ever said a word to me outside of school watches.

I cough, clear my throat, then rub both eyes. I don't know what I'm trying to pull, but all of these shenanigans have got
both
eyes watering now, but at least it's like I've got allergies or something.

"You OK?" she asks.

"Yeah. Something in my throat." I clear it a couple more times for effect. I need to change the topic. No way am I going to start bawling in front of her. That's just
not
going to happen.

"How do you use your sister's cars without your parents finding out?"

She sighs as if disappointed and stretches, yawning, throwing her head back, flinging her arms up into the air and arching her back. I can't help it—I steal a lingering image with my eyes: graceful neck, slim waist, baggy black shirt fluttering in the breeze like a dark cloud, hiding everything. She shakes herself, conjures her cigarettes, and lights up.

"I told you," she says, blowing a stream of smoke my way, "my mother's out of the picture."

"No, you didn't. You told me your parents weren't divorced."

"They're not. My mother's dead. The Big C. Lung cancer."

Oh. Oh. What do I say here? What do you say? I don't know anyone whose parents are dead. I don't know anyone like this. What do you say?

"Yeah, good ol' adenocarcinoma," she says sarcastically. "It's the up-and-coming thing in lung cancer these days. I mean, it used to be that squamous cell lung cancer was the big one, but these days, if you want to get lung cancer in the U.S., you go with adenocarcinoma. That's the one all the cool kids are getting."

Oh my God. Yesterday. Yesterday, when she offered me a cigarette—

"It's all these little cube- and column-shaped cells," she goes on, not looking at me now, adding clouds of smoke to the ones in the sky, "and they just cluster and grow in your lungs, around the edges mostly. It spreads fast and they usually can't even operate."

—she offered me a cigarette yesterday and I said, "I have an allergic reaction to lung cancer. Gives me tumors." Oh my God, how could I have done that? I'm slime. I'm such a piece of slime.

"You—" I can't get the words out. I have to apologize. I didn't understand. I didn't know. I have to tell her all of this, but I'm trying to do it all at once. "You, your cigarettes—"

She misunderstands. She snorts and turns to me. "Oh, yeah, here I am smoking, isn't it ironic, whatever, get off my back."

"That's not what I was going to say."

"My mom wasn't even the smoker. I mean, if you want to talk about irony, there it is for you. My
dad
was a friggin' three-pack-a-day man. You know how I know? When I was a kid, I used to empty the ashtrays and I would count the butts. I didn't even know why. I just did it to occupy my mind while I was emptying the ashtrays. It was like a game. Like a game." Her voice catches and she drags harder on the cigarette, then exhales an aggressive fog bank of nicotine and tar and tobacco. "But Mom never smoked. How's that for irony? Dad's healthy as a horse, can run a mile. Mom croaked. Women are more likely to get lung cancer. Did you know that?"

I shake my head. I want to tell her to stop smoking because I've just learned that women are more likely to get lung cancer.

"So Mom dies and Dad decides to stop smoking, which is a real bitch, let me tell you, because a lot of places card you these days, so it's tough for me to find my smokes."

"What about..." God, where do I go from here? She's huffing and puffing on her cigarette, rocking back and forth a little bit. "What about your sister? Does she—"

"Look, let's just..." She's inhaled that cigarette down to the butt in record time. She stares at it like she's seeing it for the first time, then flicks it away. She draws in a deep breath. "Let's drop it. I don't want to talk about it."

"That's fine. We don't have to talk about anything you don't want to talk about."

"Oh, please. That kind of—that kind of shit sounds like the crap my therapist says."

Therapist. Right. Now what do I say? I don't know anyone who goes to a therapist. Or at least, I didn't until just now. Mom wanted me to see a child therapist when the divorce happened, but I wouldn't go.

"Therapist, huh?" Oh, that was smooth. I'm as subtle as a fart.

"Yeah. I have to go once a week."

Time to play the empathy card, I guess. "My mom wanted me to go to one a while back. But I didn't."

"Yeah, well..." She lies back in the grass again. "I don't have a choice."

"There's always a choice." I'm Mr. Empowerment.

"No. The court makes me go."

The—? What?

"Court? Why?" Mistake. As soon as I say it, I realize it's a mistake. I've gone over the line, crossed the Rubicon, left Dagobah too early.

She sits up, tucking her knees up toward her chest again, resting her cheek on them so that she can look at me. Her eyes aren't brown, I notice—they're hazel. Glimmering sienna-gold. What? What am I saying? I don't know. It's like messed-up poetry, like e. e. cummings. She's so pale. It can't just be powder, can it? It's like there's something missing from her skin, like she's an albino. She grins the magic grin. That ring in her lip ... God, suddenly I want to kiss it. I want to brush my lips against it. Black-smudged lips.

"It's OK," she says. "You can ask. I don't mind." She fiddles with the leather bands around her wrists and slips them off, then holds both hands out to me, palms up, so that I can see the crisscrossing pattern on each wrist. The scar tissue is white, a dead white, almost a match for the hue of her skin. If she hadn't shoved it in my face and if it weren't for the fact that the scars are raised from her otherwise flawless flesh, I wouldn't even have noticed them.