by Janis Ian
"Scared, Amaranth?"
I'm like, No! Billy clickety-clicked the cuffs on my hands behind my back, then ratcheted his own together and dropped the key onto the desk. It ring like a bell when it hit. We were standing on a metal desk in the junked-up office of an abandoned skating rink on New Circle Road, Roller Heaven. There's a joke if jokes are what does it for you.
They say sounds get real loud when you're fixing to die, but you couldn't prove it by me. I listened for a bird, maybe a nightingale, but there weren't any. Maybe they don't like night after all. Maybe it's just another phony name. The best I could do was a dog barking and a horn honking somewhere. Pluto in his little car, picking up his girl friend. Goodbye cruel world!
I heard a gagging sound like somebody trying to puke. At first I thought it was Billy trying to say goodbye, so I opened my eyes for one last smile-try, and then I saw he was stretching, trying to use his feet to reach the key. I don't know how he planned to pick it up, unless there was some magic gum on the bottom of his shoe, and even if he did, then what? Go home to our happy homes? That made me mad, after all my hard work. I kicked the fucking desk over. That's one thing big legs are good for. That and keeping boys away.
Billy was in, right away. As soon as I kicked the desk over, his mouth popped open and his eyes got the look you get when you enter the Realm for the first time. His legs were doing a little dance. My own eyes closed on their own even though they were wide open, which was weird. But OK. I couldn't breathe, but what did I care? I could see the stairs under my feet, and I could see somebody in front of me, running down the steps. I figured it must be Billy—who else? I reached out and grabbed his coat but it wasn't exactly a coat. It wasn't exactly leather. It was cold and slick, and when I tried to pull him back it slipped through my fingers, and he went on down, around the corner. Something was hitting the door. BAM then BAM, like those little rams on "Cops." There was a light, pulling at me, like another rope. It was so bright I closed my eyes, which was like opening them, everything being reversed, which makes sense, if you think about it. I was looking into a flashlight and I felt two hands under my tits, lifting me up. Mommy, I groaned, but it was a black woman.
I heard her say "This one's breathing," and then she stepped away and somebody else strapped me to a stretcher. Meanwhile EMS came in and cut Billy down. I barely opened my eyes so they wouldn't see that I was seeing. I could tell Billy had made it all the way into the Realm and I was glad, even though I hadn't. It's like in those movies when the guy dies happy because he has saved his girl friend's life, only reversed. It's gross to see the way they handle people when they are dead. It's not like what you see on TV, believe me. "Can you hear me?" The black woman was back.
I was like, of course I can hear you, you're hollering right in my fucking ear.
"Why did you do it?"
I said, to get out of class, and she goes, "Huh?"
I said, everybody gets out of class when there's a kevorker. Usually there's an assembly. She goes, "Good God, girl," (Have you ever noticed how some people are always calling you girl?) and gives me a shot, which you're not supposed to do without permission, I'm pretty sure. Don't make jokes with cops. Or EMS personnel, which are the same thing. I woke up in jail. You know where you are right away, because of the bars.
I sat up and groaned. There was a fat white lady sitting outside the bars reading a paper. Suicide watch. I felt better already. They brought me pancakes for breakfast, with a plastic fork. I acted like I was trying to stab myself with the fork but the lady reading the paper didn't seem to think that was funny. It was the Star. Did you know that the Star and the Enquirer are put out by the same company? When I found that out, it was like the last straw. After a while two cops wearing suits came and took me upstairs to a little Interview Room, just like NYPD Blue. One cop was black and one was white. Everything at the jail is perfectly integrated. There was another man waiting for them in the room, wearing a less cheap suit.
"I'm your lawyer," he said. "I was engaged by your father."
Congratulations, I said (on his engagement) but he didn't get it. Instead of paying attention to me, he laid a briefcase on the table and unsnapped the two snaps, and they were so loud I thought, maybe I'm dead after all; everything is so loud. But no such luck. The white cop told me I was going be charged with murder, and could possibly face the death penalty if I was tried as an adult. I'm like, Hooray, I feel better already. The black cop pulled out a palmtop, the kind that records onto a flashcard, and set it on the table in front of me.
"Eleanor," he said. "Can I call you Eleanor?"
I shrugged and said, Why not. Everybody else does.
"Here." He took a pack of cigarettes out of his cheap generic sport coat.
"You can't give her that," the white cop said. "She's underage."
"So what," said the black cop. They were playing good cop/bad cop. "You are going to charge her with murder and you won't even give her a fucking cigarette?"
"It's not established yet that they intend to charge her with murder," said the lawyer; "my" lawyer.
The black cop, the Good Cop, tapped a Marlboro out of the pack and lit it for me with his orange Lakers lighter. I took a drag even though I don't actually smoke. I saw a woman smoke once through a hole in her neck. She was dying of cancer. It was cool. He said, "Can you tell us why you did it?"
I told him so we could have assembly, the same thing I had told the EMS lady. That didn't go over too hot. The white cop looked disgusted. The lawyer looked pissed. The black cop took a drag on his own cigarette, and then squinted at it and put it out. You can always tell when somebody's trying to quit. The lawyer pushed the ashtray as far away as he could without pushing it off the table and said, "Her father tells me she likes to be called Amaranth." "Amaranth," said the black cop. "Why don't you tell us the truth."
I'm like, Okay. The truth, if that's really what you want. The truth is that there really is a Life after Death. But it's only for teenagers who kill themselves.
~~~~~
The assembly thing wasn't totally a joke. They call them Healing Assemblies. The first one was in November, right after I transferred to Oakmont. A boy and a girl kevorked in her garage using his dad's car exhaust. They left the radio on and died listening to WFFV, soft rock, the kind of folky stuff my original mother liked. According to the papers they were "popular," and it was a "mystery" why they had done it, and it was all true I guess. They were definitely more popular dead than alive. Who isn't? The next two were in January, and they were part of the goth crowd. They did it at the old skating rink on Outer Loop. They hung themselves with electrical cable. Their names were Gail and Gregory. The two Gs made it easy to remember.
There was another Healing Assembly. Afterward, there were all these girl-hugging clumps in front of the school, like they like to show on TV. I was just about the only girl standing off by myself, as usual, which is maybe why they wanted to interview me. They don't usually interview fat girls. Maybe it was the goth thing. The TV lady was all set up with a camera guy following her, and a sound guy following him, and a battery guy following them all, like the Wizard of Oz. She stuck a mike in my face and said, "Were they friends of yours? Why do you think they did it?"
Well, yes, I think they did it to get out of class, I said. She frowned and switched off her camera and they all stomped off together. By now I was in the middle of a circle of kids. They all walked away too, looking disgusted, like I had let an enormous fart. But Billy looked back. I had already noticed him because he was wearing a black string around his neck. Some skinny girl was holding his hand and she pulled him away.
Even though I don't smoke I can fake it. The next day I went to Marlboro Country outside the lunch room where the goth types hang out and bummed a cigarette. Pretty soon there he was. William Winston Lamont was his full name. I had checked it in the Yearbook database during English.
"It's no joke," he said. "There really is a Life After Death."
Cool, I said. Finall
y my father has put me in a school where I can learn something. I shook out my sleeve so he could see the scars on my wrist.
"What's your name?"
I said they call me Amaranth, my first actual lie. There wasn't any they. But I had just moved to Oakmont from Edgefield, all the way on the other side of Columbus, and why not start over?
"Know what this means?" he said, pulling down his collar, like I hadn't already seen the black string tied around his neck.
I said sure, just guessing. But you're not really going to do it.
"What do you mean?"
Guessing again, I said, your girl friend won't let you. Miss Teen Queen.
He stepped on his cigarette and said, "Fuck you" and walked away.
Okay, I said.
"What did you say?" he said. He stopped.
I said OK, I said. I said, are you hard of hearing?
~~~~~
Later that afternoon, my father and my latest mother came to the jail. It was upstairs again to the same Interview Room. Same two cops but they waited outside. Same cheap suits. Same lawyer, too.
"She's a minor," my father said. "She's barely seventeen."
The lawyer shook his head. "They say she's going to be tried as an adult." They talked about me like I wasn't there so I pretended I wasn't. The lawyer said the murder charge was because the Arresting Officer saw me kick the table over. He had watched the whole thing. "He waited to knock the door down so he could catch them in the act."
"Then he's the one who killed that boy, isn't he?" my father said. "Isn't that entrapment?"
"I took the liberty of engaging a psychiatrist," the lawyer said. I said congratulations again but he didn't get it again.
"We're getting you out of here tomorrow," my father promised.
I'm like, Is that a threat?
"I'm not sure she wants to go home," the Good Cop said. I hadn't noticed him back in the room
"Is that true?" my father asked. If I closed my eyes he wasn't there. I could almost see Billy going down the stairs. Wait! What happens now, since you can only enter the Realm in twos. Did he make it? Why didn't I?
"Is it a boy, honey?" my latest mother asked.
What's with the honey shit? I'm wondering.
"Damn it, open your eyes," my father said as they led me away in handcuffs.
~~~~~
I made Billy pick me up at the Kwik Pik since my father has a thing about boys with tattoos. About boys, actually. "Where do you want to go?" he said. I said, second base. He looked at me funny, then parked by this old lake. He started to unbutton my blouse and I cut him off and said, Let's talk.
"Okay." He lit two cigarettes and handed me one. He still hadn't figured out that I don't actually smoke. "What do you want to talk about? If you're talking about Susan, we're sort of broken up, but I'd just as soon she didn't know about this."
I said fuck Miss Teen Queen, I came here to talk about the club. He's like, "What club?"
The Kill-Yourself Club.
"That's not the name of it," Billy said. "The name is a secret. The Kevorkians."
Like my name I said. Amaranth.
The car had power windows. I hit mine to throw out my cigarette but it went all the way down. Special setup for tolls. Then I let him get to second base, which boys appreciate. He's like, "Amaranth." I didn't let him go below the waist and after a while he was ready to talk again.
"Tell me about Hell first," I said.
"It’s not Hell," he said. "It’s called The Realm. It's like a website but you can only get there with the right music. You know Hard Hate?"
Of course, I nodded.
"You know how with really great music you go somewhere, I mean, really go somewhere? Well, if you do it the right way, with the computer, it takes you somewhere really real. It's like a website but it's really real. Another guy in another high school showed it to Greg. He moved here last year from Colorado."
Colorado, I nodded. Of course. This is Ohio. Everything always comes from somewhere else.
"Greg showed it to me, and now Greg is there, so I know it's real. We have two couples in the Realm now. That's the only way it works, we have to do it in twos."
I said, there are rules? I didn't like that. One good reason to be dead is because of all the rules.
"There aren't any rules once you're in the Realm," he said.
How do you know?
"Greg told me. I talked to him last night."
I'm like, Sure you did.
He started the car. Was he taking me home? Buttoning my blouse I said, You have to drop me at the Kwik-Pik. But he said, "I'm not taking you home. I'm taking you to my house but you have to be quiet."
It was a Volvo, the safest car in the world. A real going-to-hell kind of car.
~~~~~
The psychiatrist was a nice lady in a nice suit with a nice smile. All nice as hell. The two cops were there, to protect her from me, I guess. We went through the cigarette thing again, and then she said, why don't you tell me all about it. I told her what I had told the cop: There is a Life After Death, but it's only for teenagers who kill themselves. I figured the best way to confuse them was to tell the truth. But she was more interested in Billy than in my amazing news. "Do you always sleep with guys on your first date?" she asked.
Only, I said, if they call me by my real name. "What is that?" she said, pecking away on her little laptop, and I said, None of your business. Unless you want to fuck me too.
She closed her little laptop. "I don't think she's crazy," she told the lawyer. "I think she's just a nasty little bitch." "Amen," said the white cop. The black cop gave me another cigarette. I was beginning to wish he was my boyfriend instead of Billy, who had left me behind, although they were all saying it wasn't his fault. I wasn't so sure. I needed to check with him.
The lawyer came in, and they stood me up to take me back downstairs. I could hear him on his Nokia with my father. They were arguing. I knew my father didn't want me home. The lawyer was telling him that since I was a juvenile they couldn't hold me unless I was a danger to others, or crazy.
What about the murder charge, I said.
"Unfortunately, you are still a minor," said the lawyer.
~~~~~
Surprise—Billy lived in a big new house in the big new house part of town, only about four blocks from "my" house. Nobody seemed to be home. We went in through the three car garage and down a few steps to the basement without ever going through the house. He had his own room with his own door. There was a wooden guitar in the corner. On the walls it was all heavy metal and topless girls, with long, skinny legs.
Billy sat down in front of his computer and put in a CD. The screensaver was fish with skulls for heads, swimming back and forth. The CD was Hard Hate, "Stairway to Hell."
"The music has to be playing," he said. "It does some kind of interactive thing with the processor or something."
Whoever said boys all know all about computers hadn't met many boys. Billy told me to close my eyes while he typed in the secret URL, then got up and gave me his seat. "There, it's ready to go. Just hit RETURN."
I hit RETURN.
The skull-head fish were gone. Now the screen had a picture of stairs. The steps were wide and they curved in from gold bannisters on each side. They looked like the casino stairs in Las Vegas that I saw when I went there with my father, right after my original mother died. My father told me she had a heart attack but I found out later this was a lie. There wasn't any ceiling or any floor. People were standing on the stairs, all couples, holding hands. They were all just outlines. There was a red carpet down the middle of the stairs and everything else was gold. The bannisters, the steps, even the shadows were gold.
"See?" said Billy, sounding excited. Hard Hate was playing the same two-guitar intro, over and over. The same four chords. It was like the CD was stuck. "This guy from Colorado found it and showed it to Greg, who showed it to me. That's them, on the stairs, they are all there now. Click on the title."
; I clicked on Realm.
Enter User Name
"It doesn't have to be your real name. But it has to be a name you are prepared to use for all eternity." He put his hand on my shoulder, under my blouse, on my bra strap, like we were lovers.
I typed in Amaranth
Enter Password
"K-E-V- " Billy began.
I typed in kevork without waiting for him to finish.
"Now hit return."
I hit RETURN. All the legs started moving and the couples moved down. But just one step, the same step, over and over. "Click on any one," said Billy.
I'm like, Any one what? Any one couple? How do you click on a couple? Do you click on the space between them? None of them were even holding hands.
"Any one person."
I clicked on a girl outline. A face filled the screen. It was the girl who had killed herself last week. It was the picture that had been in the newspaper. She was wearing a Sunday dress, but she had a black string around her neck, which hadn't been in the paper. I thought that was pretty neat.
"HELLO, AMARANTH" she said. Her lips moved funny like a cartoon. Her voice was whispery under the music—still the two guitars, over and over.
I said Hello.
"No, you have to type it in," said Billy.
I typed in Hello
"Her name is Gail."
I'm like, I know. I read the papers. I typed in Hello Gail
"Ask her a question," said Billy.
I typed: How the Hell are you?
"GREAT."
"It's not a joke," Billy said, taking his hand off my shoulder. "Don't you want to know what life after death is like?"
I typed: What is Life after Death like?
"IT'S GREAT HERE."
"Click on Greg," Billy said. "Next to her."
I clicked on the boy next to her. Her face went away and his came up. He was wearing a suit and tie. It was the picture that had been in the paper, except for the black string. His lips were moving funny like a cartoon. I started to get up so Billy could sit down but Billy put his hand back on my shoulder.
With his other hand he reached down and typed,