When My Heart Was Wicked

by Tricia Stirling

  “Of all the classes to have to miss.” I sigh, flopping down on the grass. “I wish that woman had been subbing my PE class instead.”

  “You and your science.” Stacia grins. “Haven’t you gotten the memo? Science is b-o-r-i-n-g?”

  “No, it’s not,” I say, grabbing her and pulling her onto the grass beside me.

  “So this is what people do when they cut class?” Martin sits beside us. “Talk about school?”

  “No!” we say. For a minute I think about the old days, when I used to cut class. I would never have used that time to talk about school. I would use it to smoke cigarettes and shoplift from the bottle store down the street.

  In Chico, my shoplifting capabilities grew. Instead of licorice ropes and potato chips, I’d steal CDs and incense, skull rings and rubber ducks with horns. I kept everything I took in a drawer in my bedroom. Even though I later donated everything to the Salvation Army, I still can’t open that drawer without feeling guilty.

  When I was a bad girl who stole and cut class, I would never have dreamed of spending my free time ditching class lying on the grass next to a playground with two friends, one a bit goofy, one a bit punk rock, and staring up at the clouds in the sky. But at the moment, it’s exactly what I want to do. We lie there as the clouds form themselves into dragons, pirates, an avocado, a bird. We stay until the sky looks like its inches from our faces, and everything else has disappeared.

  That morning at the river, my mother dug a grave. The baby lay still and gray in a yellow blanket. The sky turned gold, then pink as the sun began to rise, and I watched my mother in the pale pink light as she worked, her face devoid of emotion. My own emotions battled like cartoon ninjas — Relief and its equally strong opponent Grief. No magic that morning. No God. Just my own ugly, victorious black soul.

  The security guard at Rite Aid makes me check my backpack. I almost turn away to go somewhere else because I hate that kind of thing, people who don’t trust you just because you’re a kid with a backpack. But who cares. Maybe I will steal something, just to show them I can do it.

  But I don’t. I hold a black eye pencil in my hand. It would be so easy. I could just slip it up my sleeve. But I don’t want to.

  I grab the cheapest box of black hair dye. The cheaper, the better. I don’t need it to look good.

  When I get to the cashier, I make a big deal about not being able to pay because my backpack has been confiscated. The cashier, a girl with purple eye shadow and a lip ring, smiles kind of rudely and hands me my bag. She’s probably sick of the whole bag-check thing too.

  At home, I take scissors from the kitchen into the bathroom and chop off my hair, letting it fall in clumps at my feet. The hair looks prettier, healthier, on the floor than it ever did on my head. I decide to leave it there on the ground. I’m not picking it up. I wet what’s left of my hair in the sink and mix the dye.

  I wish I had my bomber jacket, but I don’t. I wish I could take my scissors to all my expensive black clothes and cut them to shreds, but I can’t. Myrna made them. I touch the rose necklace. It is just too beautiful to consider damaging.

  The dye stings where I pulled out my hair. My eyes fill with tears but I massage the color in. I imagine it seeping into my bloody scalp. Black dye pooling into my veins, turning my insides murky. Monster girl as monstrous on the inside as out. I wish I could scribble black all over my face, like I used to do to pretty girls in my picture books. Princesses with scraped-out eyes.

  After rinsing out the hair dye, I run my fingers through my newly shortened, blackened hair and leave without giving a thought to where I’m going.

  I could wait until late at night, and I could go to the hospital and visit Drake, cut my skin open and bleed onto his sleeping face so that he awakens to warm blood in his eyes. I could hitchhike downtown, hang out with the homeless kids and smoke their cigarettes. I wish I were wild and unpredictable, but I’m not. I go to Myrna’s store, where everything looks sinister, but nothing is, not really.

  Myrna greets me with a plate of cookies.

  “I knew you were coming over today, I just knew it,” she says, chipper as a little girl. “I’m a little bit psychic sometimes, and just an hour ago, I was like, I’ll bet my friend Lacy is on her way. And here you are!” She doesn’t mention my hair. I run my fingers through it again, just to make sure it’s still short and weird. “I’ll put tea on!” she says, and disappears into the kitchen.

  Instead of following her, I walk around her shop. Demeter’s Daughter, it’s called. I know from homeschooling with Anna that Demeter is Persephone’s mother. Persephone is the Queen of the Underworld. Her mother spends all winter mourning, while Persephone is ruling down below, and when Demeter mourns, crops die. But when Persephone returns each spring, Demeter rejoices, and everything turns lush and green.

  So if the store is Demeter’s Daughter, then it’s Persephone’s store. And if it’s Persephone’s, then maybe it’s the underworld. Hades. Maybe that’s why I like it here. Maybe that’s why it makes me feel safe.

  “Are you Persephone?” I ask Myrna, walking into the kitchen.

  “Pardon?” Myrna is pouring tea.

  “The name of your store. I wondered if you named it after yourself.”

  “Oh.” She looks sad for a moment, and warms her hands with the teapot. “No, I’m not Persephone. I’m Demeter.”

  “You have a daughter?”

  “No.” She looks down at the table, so I leave it at that. “Sit down,” she says. “Have some tea.”

  I take a sip, warm and sweet. It’s regular tea, not like my mom’s weird tea.

  “You cut your hair,” she says, just like that, with no judgment. She sounds sad.

  “It’s just hair,” I say.

  “I suppose.” She sips her tea. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but it doesn’t suit you. You look like you’re trying too hard to be someone you’re not.”

  “I don’t know who I am.”

  “Well. You’re a teenager, that’s normal.”

  I think about Holden Caulfield, calling everyone a phony. Is Holden a phony? Am I? Maybe Holden isn’t as judgmental as he seems. Maybe he’s just trying to figure out who he is.

  “Whenever I’m around my mom, I start acting like her. I can’t control it.” I shouldn’t be telling her this, but I’m here. I don’t know why I’ve come. But I can’t talk to Anna and I sure can’t talk to Cheyenne.

  “And you don’t want to act like your mom?”

  “I didn’t use to. But then something bad happened to me, and I didn’t mind acting like her for a while. But now I’m being mean to Anna again, and she’s never been anything but great to me. I miss her so much, but I don’t even think she’d like me if she could see me right now. I’ve become bad again.”

  Myrna reaches across the table and takes my hand. “Oh, Lacy, you’re not bad.”

  “But I am. I know you have to say I’m not, and I know probably you can’t even see it, but I am.”

  “Hmm.” Using her left hand, Myrna takes a drink of her tea. “Maybe you want to be bad, just a little bit.”

  “Why would I want to?”

  “Well, think about it. If you’re just bad, then you can do anything you want. You can be cruel to people, you can hurt even yourself. And when you’re asked to account for it, you can just shrug your shoulders and go, ‘Oh well, I’m bad.’ It seems a little liberating, doesn’t it?”

  I shrug my shoulders. I suppose it does.

  “But I really am. I cast a revenge spell on a boy, and the next day he got in a car accident. He’s been in the hospital.”

  Myrna nods slowly. “That’s bad. That was a bad choice. But we all make bad choices. God knows I have. So now it sounds like you have another decision to make. You can continue to make bad choices, or you can learn from that and move on. You can prevent yourself from making the same bad choices in the future. But only you can control that. Not me, not your mom, not anyone.” She takes a spoonful of sugar from a glitt
er skull bowl and stirs it into her tea. “You know, I do believe your mom is just a little bit sick. That’s why she has a hard time with some rules, that’s why she keeps ending up in prison.” Suddenly my body freezes up. Myrna is supposed to be my mom’s friend, her protector. If she can betray my mom, then she can betray me. I told her too much. I shouldn’t even be here.

  “I have to go,” I say, pushing my tea mug across the table.

  “Are you sure? Lacy, I hope I didn’t say the wrong thing.”

  “No, you didn’t. I just have to go now. Thanks for the tea.” I leave before she can walk me out. On the way, I pocket the glitter skull sugar bowl from the table.

  The knives in the silverware drawer sing to me as I walk through the kitchen. I pause, press the back of my wrist to the drawer. It feels good when I cut myself. I like the way the blood looks, the way everything feels so sharp and clean. But I hate how stupid I feel afterward. How lost and stupid and alone. I press my wrist hard against the drawer, but I don’t open it. I hit the drawer with my wrist, and then I go to my room.

  I feel bad about taking the sugar bowl. I shouldn’t have done it. Myrna was probably just trying to be nice. I place it on the windowsill. It glints in the afternoon sun. Then I dig through my bag for my cell and call Anna. She doesn’t answer.

  I have captured the gray cat. I don’t know when his owner is coming back for him, but he’s late. I don’t care. I will make this cat like me. I will make him love me. Even though, at the moment, he is pressed against my makeshift nature table, hissing at me.

  My phone chirps. Anna.

  “Lacy?” she says after I answer. “I’m sorry I missed your call. How are you?”

  “I’m doing okay,” I tell her. “I mean, you know.” I shrug, even though she can’t see me.

  “Mr. Murm misses you. He’s with me right now. Do you want to say hi?”

  I sniff and say, “Hi, Mr. Murm,” and I laugh when I hear him murm in reply. He doesn’t actually say “murm” anymore. He says “meow” like a regular cat. “I miss him too,” I say. “I miss you too.”

  “Any chance of you coming up for a visit?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll ask Cheyenne. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

  “Just tell me what you want, Lacy, and I’ll make it happen. I don’t know what to do for you right now.”

  I nod into the phone. I know what she means. It’s not the type of thing she can understand. She’s not my real mom, after all.

  I push the END CALL button without saying good-bye. When it starts chirping again, I leave the room. I hate the sound of chirping now. It’s grating and babyish. It’s the sound a little girl might choose, a girl who believes in fairies and magic. A monster would never choose a ringtone like that. I’ll have to find something more suitable.

  The orthodontist returns in time for dinner. I think he is here to pick up his cat, but he settles in, he stays too long. At dinner, he reaches for more of the mashed potatoes Cheyenne made by adding water and butter to a packet.

  “Lacy,” he says. “Has anyone ever told you you need braces?” I close my mouth and shake my head. I don’t need braces. I have perfect teeth — my dentist in Chico said so. This is my mom’s work. She wants to lock me in a steel cage. First my teeth, then she’ll make for me a corset of bones. And rose-colored thorn shoes for my feet.

  I leave the dinner table early. As I walk into my room, I hear Cheyenne say, “She is so much like her father.”

  And something lights up inside me. A little glimmer of hope. I’d forgotten about that. I’m not either Cheyenne or Anna. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. I have my father inside me too. The man who took me on moonlit canoe trips down the river. Who took me to the observatory to see the stars and to the Blue Room Theatre to watch midnight plays. Who dressed in a chicken suit in support of his Treehugger friends. And that’s when I know. My father wasn’t abusive. He may have been angry sometimes, but everyone gets angry sometimes. Anger is an emotion, and emotions are good. I’ll ask Anna about it, but I already think I know what she’ll say. That none of it’s true. Because birds don’t come to the funerals of abusive husbands and fathers.

  After he died, Anna and I wandered through the house like ghosts. Mr. Murm went back and forth between us both, like a little nurse, licking our tears and kneading our empty bellies with his black paws. I slept in Anna’s room. Part of me was afraid she wouldn’t want me, that I’d end up in an orphanage somewhere, eating gruel from a rusty metal bowl. But I think deep down I knew she wouldn’t let me go, not without a fight. We lay in her bed, studying one of my dad’s old books about the stars. Searching for answers. Like characters from one of our fairy tales. Stepmother. Black cat. Little match girl.

  My hands are cold. My feet are icy. It is May, a hot month in Sacramento, yet I dress in sweaters and I am still cold.

  At school, I huddle at my desk and try to keep from shivering. Olive watches me out of the corner of her eye. Her eyes are always on me. She whispers things to her friends as they pass me and they laugh. It isn’t enough that she has started a rumor. She wants to take me down.

  They don’t hang out under the cherry tree anymore. They haunt the halls, their mean eyes peering out beneath glittery eye shadow. “Loser,” they call me. “Witch,” they call me. They make me nervous, the way they watch me, with their glittery eyes and blank zombie faces. I don’t know how much they know.

  “Poor little psycho bitch,” Olive says as they all walk past my locker. “I hear her mom’s been trying to find a spot for her in one of the local loony bins, but none of them want her.”

  I could cast a spell against her. I could inflict sores on her legs and excruciating pain to her stomach. But I won’t.

  Stacia bares her teeth at her, growling. Sweet Stacia, who would never hurt anyone, not even a fly. Except maybe Drake, if she had a chance.

  “You’re so awesome,” I tell her. She glares at me. It’s okay. She knows she’s awesome, and she knows that I know.

  After school, I find Drake’s address on the Internet and ride my bike to his house. His mother answers the door. She is chic and tiny with short black hair and hazel eyes, Drake’s eyes. I tell her I’m a friend from school, and she points me to his room.

  He’s lying in bed and medicine bottles crowd his nightstand. His room is dark and gross. The walls are stained yellow and there is dust and clutter everywhere. When he sees me, he groans.

  “Oh God, Fin. What do you want?”

  I step over clothes and CDs to get closer to his bed. “There’s something I need to tell you,” I say.

  “What? I’m a dick. Whatever.”

  “That’s not it.”

  He stares at me. His eyes look heavy and drugged. “So?”

  “Look, it’s going to sound stupid, but it’s my fault you were in that accident. I cast a spell on you the day before in English class.” It sounds so stupid when I say it, and I’m not surprised when he laughs.

  “Jesus, Fin, how old are you? You cast a spell? Like a witch in a bad TV show? Your mom was right about you. You are crazy.”

  My eyes fill and he seems to notice. Uncharacteristically, he looks sorry for a minute. “You didn’t cause the accident. I was driving too fast. I was pissed off at my dad and I was driving too fast and part of me even wanted to wreck my dad’s car. He’s an asshole.” His face hardens and he swallows. “But whatever. Blame yourself if you want. Whatever makes you happy.”

  For a moment, I’d almost felt a connection with Drake. But the moment is gone. I nod and leave his room, shutting the door behind me.

  The orthodontist, who likes to be called Dr. Ryan (even though his first name, not his last name, is Ryan), wants to know how school was. I’m not kidding. I walk through the door, and the very first thing he says to me is, “Hey, kiddo! How was school?” Like he’s my father and we’re in some cheesy sitcom from the 1950s. Just swell, Daddy-O!

  “It was fine,” I mumble, going into the kitchen for some mint and gi
nger iced tea.

  “Lacy,” my mother calls after me. “Dr. Ryan wants to take us out to dinner. Isn’t that nice?”

  “My treat!” Dr. Ryan says. I have entered the twilight zone.

  “Great,” I mumble. I go into my room and close the door behind me.

  Moments later, I can hear them arguing.

  “Don’t tell me how to raise my daughter,” my mom says. He says something, and she says, “I am her goddamn male role model.”

  Dinner never happens. Voices rise and fall. They talk and argue into the night. After my homework is all done, and I have catalogued my herbs, I go into the kitchen, where I find a frozen pizza. I heat it up and eat it in my room. When I go to sleep, they are still in her room talking. Voices loud, voices quiet, him loud, her loud, him quiet, her loud. I am not awake when he leaves. But by the time I’m ready to leave for school the next morning, she is alone in her bed. She calls out to me as I pass her room.

  “Dr. Ryan’s gone,” she tells me.

  “I noticed.”

  “I mean he’s history.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I think I’ll live.” She sighs. “He was rich, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And really cute.”

  “Okay.”

  She snorts. “He wanted you to call him Dr. Ryan.”

  “I know, he was lame.”

  “Yeah,” but she leans back on her bed, kind of nostalgic-looking.

  “Mom, I was wondering. Memorial Day weekend is coming up. I was hoping I could go visit my friends in Chico.”

  “And stay with Anna?”

  “Yeah, I guess. If that’s okay.”

  She pushes her hair back with her fingertips and yawns. “I suppose,” she says. “Whatever.”

  “Thanks,” I say. I bend down to kiss her cheek. The gesture surprises us both. “Later, Mom,” I say.