Girl Incredible

by Larsen, Patti

  My room seems cold in comparison. Shivering, I pull out my fuzzy pajamas and slip them on, scrubbing at my wet hair with a towel. I have to keep moving, so I don’t break down. I can feel it coming, rising inside me, the shattering movement of emotion that could tear me apart. I know it, it’s as familiar as the girl in my head and she’s the trigger, isn’t she?

  She’s the reason for everything. But I can’t remember why. And I don’t want to.

  I should get up, keep doing things, distract myself. Kitalia would be there for me if I let her. Instead, I can’t muster the energy to stand from my computer chair, listlessly staring at the silent screen of my laptop until it dings.

  I’m sure I imagined it. But it dings again, the screen coming to life. A message.

  Calvin and Clare. Want to vidchat.

  My hand shakes as it rises. Like doom approaching, I click the mouse over the vid icon and their faces appear. They aren’t smiling, both grim and worried as they lean in together, matching blonds with blue eyes as intense as a cold winter morning.

  The girl with the blue gaze laughs as they speak together.

  “Kit! Mom and Dad called.” Clare punches Calvin in the shoulder and muscles him out of the way. There are tears in her eyes. “Are you okay?”

  I shake my head, can’t speak.

  “Of course she’s not okay.” Calvin looks like he wants to break something. From the redness of his knuckles, it wouldn’t be the first blow he’s thrown. “I’m coming home, Kit. Have a list of names ready. We’ll bury the bodies where no one will find them.”

  Clare nods with him, their faces distorted as they push against each other in their need to get closer to the camera, closer to me.

  I burst into tears, I can’t help it. I love them so much, but they aren’t here and this is a giant mess I don’t understand.

  “Aw, Kitten,” Clare says, soft and kind, wiping at her own cheeks. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “We should never have left,” Calvin says, sinking back. “I knew going away to school was a terrible idea.”

  She nods. “We’re going to transfer back to city college,” she says.

  But I’m shaking my head. “Don’t you dare.” I gulp down my tears. “You can’t. I won’t let you.”

  “Kit.” Calvin’s face falls. “You need us.”

  Clare sighs, ruffles his hair. “Maybe that’s the prob, bro,” she says, turning to face me. “We’ve been there for her too much.”

  The blue eyed girl. They know, don’t they, who she is and why this is haunting me? Why I am the way I am…

  “Kit,” Clare says. “I know you don’t remember. Or, at least, you seem to have made yourself forget. But, a long time ago, you had a really rough patch. And Calvin and I have done everything we can to make sure no one ever hurt you again.” She rests her chin on her fists. “But I wonder if we went too far? Left you vulnerable by not forcing you to face what happened.”

  “What happened?” I whisper the words before I can stop them, not wanting to know. Needing to know.

  Clare pauses a long moment. “You tell me.”

  I’m at Abigail Simmons’s house, wearing my favorite dress. I love this dress. Mom gave it to me. It has kittens on the hem, in all different poses. They are the sweetest kittens ever. Makes up for the fact Mom and Dad won’t let me have a cat, I guess.

  Her name is Bonnie Hess and she’s the prettiest girl at school. Everyone knows it. Her dress is pink, a large, satin bow tied at her waist. I compliment her on it, because I really like it. She looks down at my kittens and points, laughing.

  “What a dumb dress,” she says, blue eyes sparkling.

  The other girls laugh, too. I don’t know what’s so funny. “My name is Kitten,” I say, trying to make her understand.

  She laughs harder. “What a dumb name.”

  It hurts. It hurts so much. Not just because she laughs at me that day, when I’m eight years old and loved my kitten dress I can’t stand to look at from that moment forward, but because she makes sure, every day for the next four years, I know just how dumb I really am.

  “Some genius,” Bonnie says as I smile over my A grade. “You’re the dumbest girl in school, Kitten.” She always calls me Kitten. I hate my name, now. “How come dumb girls are allowed in our school, anyway?”

  I tell my mother, but she can’t help. No one can help. My heart hurts every day, my soul shriveling and retreating from the constant, endless, breaking pressure of Bonnie’s attention. She takes great pleasure in it, even coming to the park to torture me on weekends. Calling me at home to tell me how dumb I am.

  I must be, if she says it all the time. Then other girls start saying it, everyone. Until I’m just dumb Kitten who doesn’t know anything and shouldn’t be allowed at Rimtree Elementary because she’s so stupid and ugly and a waste of space.

  It’s Clare who finally sits me down and tells me not to listen. But it’s too late, isn’t it? Until she hands me a copy of a book, about a teen heroine who solves mysteries and I am instantly lost in the world of Grace Grant, Girl Detective.

  She’s so smart and strong and she always saves the day. I want to be just like her. Cheerful, optimistic, the one who makes sure everyone is safe before taking the bad guys down. Best friend to everyone at her school, quirky, funny, charming with a huge heart and the mind of a genius.

  I feel myself become her overnight, devouring book after book in her series until I am her and I don’t need to read about Grace Grant anymore. Not when the seed of an incredible spy forms, the soul of Kitalia Ore growing inside me, taking her place.

  Bonnie still bullied me. But she couldn’t reach me anymore, not even when she stole the kitten my mom and dad gave me for my twelfth birthday. Mom and Dad thought I lost her, so they didn’t get me another one. She almost broke me that day and would have, if it weren’t for Kitalia Ore.

  And Grace Grant.

  I look up over my computer desk at the line of books, twenty-four in all, hard covers with titles I remember clearly: Grace Grant and the Open Code, Grace Grant at Musty Manor, Grace Grant and the Phantom Tree.

  When I look down again, I meet Clare’s eyes. And I remember everything.

  “I have to go.” I hang up on her, not wanting to be rude but needing to be alone. To process what I just remembered.

  I sit there a long time, absorbing the pressure of memory while the optimistic girl I’ve been for so long fades away into the night and the Kit who was reemerges. I feel like I’m someone I’ve never met, an older version of the child who Bonnie turned into a fraud and a fake.

  It’s a while before I drag myself to bed and under the covers, still not knowing who I really am and where the lies begin. For the life of me, I can’t even muster Kitalia for a brief escape and, as the old crashes continually into the new, I cry myself to sleep.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Saturday and Sunday are a blur of covers and pulled curtains, of staggering to the bathroom to brush my teeth when I can’t stand my breath any longer and sneaking snacks from under my bed where I left my stash of chips and chocolate.

  It's a terrible thing to find out your whole life is a construct you created to protect yourself from the fact you were a weakling who let someone bully you into being a fraud. It hurts. A lot. For a long time. Unless you wallow. Then, it can go one of two ways. Either deeper down the black hole.

  Or into so much anger you want to punch your way through the walls of your house and scream until they come for you with the meds and the straight jacket.

  I toss and turn, fighting the urge to just let Tom win. Like Bonnie won, clearly. She drove the real person I was into some fantasy caricature of a girl who thought everyone was her friend when they have obviously been laughing at me, just like she did. Looking down at me like a freak. I cringe over my boots, over my clothing choices, over everything. How could I have lived like that, thought I was normal, that anyone could ever like me?

  Loser. Dumb and stupid
and a waste of space.

  Genius girl who gave up being smart so she could fulfill the standards of a cruel and heartless child.

  I don’t know how long it takes me to get to empty, but I finally reach it. The clock beside me says 5:30, but is it Saturday? Sunday? Could be next week for all I know. And yet, here I am, sprawled under my heavy comforter, sweating and uncomfortable because my windows are all closed and the room is stuffy. I could stay here and suffocate or…

  I slip out from under the covers and yawn, feeling light, oddly. Kind of fresh, despite my need for a shower. My head is clear, startlingly so. I can see everything, as though it’s been washed clean, my memory. Bonnie, my little kitten dress. The years of abuse all unfolding outward. I almost hug myself, but no. I’m done with that. And it’s no wonder, really, why I wanted to help Tate. The hurt little girl I hid behind fantasy and cheery fakery knew she needed me.

  The party, the invite, the drugging, all clearly orchestrated by Tom Brown, using Tate as the instrument. He must have something truly heavy on her to make her act this way. For a heartbeat, I wonder. Bonnie was always so smiley, so sweet looking, kind in tone and action. Even when she was torturing me. It made it impossible for me to complain about her, because everyone thought she was just so lovely.

  My foot kicks my bag as I stand up, stretch. The sparkling case of my phone falls out. I lift it into my hand and stare down at it. Thumb it to life. Am I ready to see what’s waiting for me? Maybe nothing.

  Or maybe the end of everything that is Kit MacLean, at least at Rimtree High.

  I’m prepared, or I think I am. For the endless texts telling me what a loser I am. Telling me to die, go jump off a bridge, to just end it because I’m so dumb and a waste and what am I waiting for…?

  I thought I was prepared. But I’m not. Because there’s nothing. Not one text, not one message. Blank, quiet, empty. Just the original vids sent by Tom that night.

  I sink to the edge of my bed and hug my phone, heart pounding. Could he have kept this quiet? I don’t see how. There were a lot of people at that party. And yet, his claim he owns the school… does that mean he has all the footage himself? He seems to be a bit of a control freak—a bit, snort. Blackmail is his thing.

  So, what does he want from me? I don’t know yet, and frankly I don’t care. But I know what I want from him. I’m smiling as I go to the bathroom, step in the shower. And plan my revenge.

  ***

  I pace my newest safe house, almost refusing to use that term, as I scowl over my present circumstances. J.J. hung me out to dry. The evidence is there. And my bosses now think I’m the traitor. They’re going to want to keep a close eye on me from now on, I’m sure of it. If I don’t have a tail on me already, one is definitely pending.

  There’s no one I can rely on. Not even C1 and C2. They’ll just side with M. and D.

  But I can’t let T.B. win. If for nothing but pure revenge, I’m going to get what I need to take him down and do so, personally. Even if it costs me my life.

  I slip out of my apartment and into the darkness, spotting my CIA tails easily. Really, using two plain clothes agents to cover a psychic? M. and D. have underestimated me.

  For the last time. But maybe their new pet project can give me answers or direction I need to track T.B. and end this once and for all.

  ***

  I hesitate at Tate’s door, hand up, ready to knock. I’m still sure she’s innocent in all of this, but I have to know for certain. My hand moves without my consent, knuckles sore from hitting the door so hard.

  The last person I expect pulls it open and I gape up at Officer Cradle. He glares in turn, seeming much larger in the threshold of the house dressed in jeans and a bulky sweatshirt. “Miss MacLean,” he grumbles.

  “Hello, sir,” I say at my most polite, trying for the optimism I’ve mostly lost. Darn it, it’s after 6PM on a Sunday night. They must be having dinner. I should just go, what was I thinking? “Is Tate home?”

  “She isn’t available to talk.” He slams the door in my face. But not before I see her peeking from the hall behind him with a guilty look.

  The walk down the half block to my house stretches out like miles. I can’t just go home, not feeling this way. Mom and Dad didn’t catch me slipping out and I don’t want to talk to them just yet. No way am I going to be able to hide my shift in personality. And no way am I letting them have the “therapist” talk with me. I remember seeing the older lady with the bowl of peppermints when I was ten, the one who suggested medicating me.

  I’m not sick. I’m just messed up.

  The park beckons, so I retreat to it and swing on my swing, sneakers scuffing the ground, wondering what a mental institution would do with a girl like me. Years of delusion, smothering my genius, pretending to be one thing and fantasizing about another.

  Yikes. I’m a total nutcase.

  That makes me giggle, my cheer rising. I guess I’ve been that Kit for so long she won’t go away without a fight. And do I want her to? Who says the happy go lucky young woman I’ve been since I adopted Grace Grant’s life as my own isn’t the real Kit MacLean now?

  I shake my head, turn in a circle, let myself swing back. I’ll never be her again, not completely. But, I can be mostly her, can’t I? I miss being her.

  She’s soft, weak. And yet, she’s safe. She’s kept me shielded from a whole lot of awful for four years. I should be grateful. And I am. I catch myself grinning into the growing dark. I like thinking about people in the best terms, assuming life is rosy and going my way. I loved Grace then and I love her now.

  If there’s one thing I’ve taken from Grace Grant, it’s her sense of justice and responsibility. What would Grace do? She’d find a way to bring Tom Brown down. And after everything she’s done to keep me from the looney bin, the least I can do is follow through and find a way to make sure he pays.

  He might have those videos, but what does he really have on me? It’s likely he’s uncovered Bonnie’s bullying by now. A few simple questions to some of the girls would fill him in, I’m thinking. And now that I remember it, he was asking at the party, wasn’t he? Poking around for dirt while pretending he wanted me on his side.

  I’m afraid of being bullied again, like that. But I’m even more afraid of letting him win. Because I think walking away, pretending I don’t know anything, might mean walking away from who I really am.

  Who I could be.

  I never expected to be soul-searching this way. But there’s a joy that comes from it when I finally decide no matter what the cost, I need to do what’s right. Because he’ll only be able to hurt me if I let him.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket. I check the text, knowing with a faint chill who’s messaging me.

  Offer to work with me still open—now mandatory. Or the videos go public. Past’s a bitch, Kitten. 

  I tuck my phone away and smile into the twilight. Time to do some research of my own.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty Four

  I bounce out of bed the next morning, bright and early, three books tumbling to the floor with soft thuds, a few others shifting sideways and over the quilt. I smile down at the covers of the Grace Grant books and hug myself.

  I’m back.

  It’s impossible not to whistle in the shower, it’s such an amazing day already and it’s barely 7:30. I hear Mom and Dad shuffling around downstairs but, by the time I descend in striped sock feet—purple and black today, just love them—they are already gone.

  Mom left me a note pinned to my lunch.

  Have a good day at school. Dad and I would like to talk when we get home.

  I tuck the note into my pocket and shrug. Hopefully, today will help me wrap up the mess and whatever they have to say to me won’t matter much. If they could only see the smile on my face, I know they’d feel a whole lot better.

  My boots carry me to the bus stop and, while the veneer of “everyone loves me” is faded and gone, I still smile at Clancy who tentatively smiles bac
k. Abigail won’t meet my eyes and I touch her arm. She seems embarrassed when she looks up but I shrug and grin.

  “Great party,” I say, winking. She snorts, shakes her head.

  “You’re a better person than I am, Kit,” she says. “I’m sorry. I heard what happened.”

  She sounds genuine. “Don’t worry about it,” I say as the bus pulls up. “All taken care of.” I ascend the step to the stunned look Clancy and Abigail exchange, bouncing down the aisle to sit next to Jimmy.

  Except, Jimmy isn’t there. No Jimmy Jones, silent as always, only now I understand just how irritating I must have been all these years. Though, he never once booted me out of the seat next to him. He sat silent and stoic while I cried during the bad years and just as quiet after my transformation. Makes me wonder about his story and wish I hadn’t been so lost in myself he’d become lost to me, too.

  I had planned to carefully reach up and remove the earbud from his ear when the bus pulled away. Startled, he would turn to me, brown eyes wide.

  “Thanks,” I’d say, before settling back and ignoring him. He would replace the bud, turning back to the window. But I’d catch the barest of nods from him, acknowledgment. It’d be a start.

  Instead, I’m alone, sitting in his place next to the window, staring out his view and wondering where he is. I miss him. I feel the first pangs of worry this might not go as I hoped. Jimmy has been my constant for as long as I can remember. Without him here, I feel even more adrift than I had after remembering Bonnie.

  I climb down to the pavement, bag swinging over my shoulder. No matter. I know what I have to do. Proof or not, there’s only one path to take. I have to say something. I should have from the beginning. Even suspecting something like this is enough to make the principal ask questions. And even if it gets people in trouble, it’s not like I’m the queen of the school anyway. I realize now I have no friends, no one to count on. Not even Jimmy.