I don’t feel safe with it.
So she tells it to herself endlessly, hoping to believe it.
Wanting to go back to that place…
Sophomore year.
Last year, before it happened, and the blackness started.
Then, Niko shouts! “Get the fuck out of my house!”
At the cottage’s entrance, Niko points at the door. Timmy’s holding her back with one arm while the other is held out like he’s embarrassed. Like he knows the people Niko’s screaming at, or he’s trying to impress them or something. The Sluts stand with surprised looks—surprised looks that she has seen before. No one quite knows what to do when Niko snaps. She blinks off Niko to see the boys Niko’s shouting at.
She recognizes no one until…
Scott.
Tom’s beside her now. “Who’re they?”
Why would he come to Niko’s party? “They’re nobody. Hey, I have to go, you know, calm Niko down and everything.”
“Alright.” She walks away, and his hand, the one with all of those scars, takes hers. “Sykosa?”
So much for the lagoon. “We’ll talk, I promise.”
Interlude I: Sophomore Year.
1.
Swimming sucks.
It blows hardcore chunks of something. Worse, it’s not even worthwhile chunks. She swims to one side, then back, then there, then back—like maybe, you know, one day, she might conquer the ocean wide, but she can’t and she never will, and if she could, she’d be a moron because, duh, there’re boats! I’ll never forgive my mother for this. Mother Superior be damned as well. It’s not melodramatic. Don’t believe her? Consider this, don’t be deceived by the pool’s bleach-y smell, for she long ago learned, as you’re about to, that chlorinated water only stinks when combined with bodily fluids. That’s right. She willingly—willingly—dove into a million gallons of girl piss, girl spit, and probably period blood.
This is too disgusting.
At least it’s over. Wait, it’s not over.
With Niko as a best friend, it never is.
Niko, version 2.0, skips full-speed across the auxiliary hallway, her blond-tipped shorter-than-shoulder-length hair awash behind her, then awash before her as she, in one step and on one foot, pirouettes like a ballerina. It’s a testament to Niko’s athleticism, and it testifies further as Niko performs another turn, then a third and flinches on the fourth. Niko’s eyes, which were shut, are open—and despite her na•ve expression, Niko is aware an astonished pack of string-bean Bitches, who’ve studied dance since four, stare in a potentially murderous disbelief.
Lots of people are jealous of Niko, herself included.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“I don’t know. I got bored waiting for you, so I practiced.”
“Like right now, you just learned that?”
Niko smiles. “Well, yeah!”
“It was cool.”
Niko smiles bigger. “I know! Hey, is your uniform damp?”
Aside from her socks, her skirt, her blouse, her underwear, her backpack, and all of the skin on her body, she has no idea what Niko refers to. “It’s not.”
Niko presses on. “Well, did you make it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Tryouts ended like an hour ago!”
“I know, I didn’t check.”
“Well, I’m sure they’ve posted the team by now!”
“The team” is ladies swim.
She tried out for many reasons, none of them sound, and as one might expect, being as unconditioned for exercise as she was, her body surpassed its physical limitations ten minutes into the first day, and now on her fourth and final, soreness surrounds her abdomen, locks her thoracic region, and, like, it even hurts behind her boobs. Those parts are fortunate, though. Several areas, like her forearms, ankles, and ears—subjected to Mackenzie’s drill sergeant-like orders—have lost functionality.
No, her ears are fine. They’re under assault again.
Mackenzie, flanked by that same pack of string-bean Bitches, stands in her uniform, but with some very critical differences. Traditionally, whether girls belong to the Bitches or not, they follow the Rules for Academy wear, which state that Academy girls roll their skirts, pull back their blouses, and, for winter, own tad-too-tight sweater vests. It’s a “cool” thing, yet Mackenzie’s uniform is, and always was, as the manufacturer specified. For that Mackenzie wears this na•ve expression, like Niko, as if she were too pure to even notice these “cool” Rules.
Though, at this moment, nothing about Mackenzie is pure.
“I need to talk with you privately, Niko.”
Niko is unimpressed. “You could say ‘please.’”
“Donna and Lonny, my boyfriend, are waiting for me. We have some last minute details for Prom Committee.”
“And you assume that you’re busy but I’m not?”
Mackenzie is dismissive. “You’re going to the dance?”
“No, but you assumed I don’t have anything going on.”
“I don’t have time for games.”
“Neither do I, so stop playing them with yourself.” This is the standard Niko-Mackenzie posturing. They’re in competition for #2 in the Bitches, a position Mackenzie used to outright own and one Mackenzie never earned. It’s why Niko’s infiltration has been so effortless. It’s also why, to aggravate Mackenzie, Niko stuffs gum in her mouth, then yacks loudly while pulling her blond tips into a super-tight nub like a tiny dog’s tail. “On the subject of time, save us some—did she make the team?”
Shit, Niko had to bring me up.
She’s not mad, but confused. She was sure the locker room was empty when she left. It’s not possible Mackenzie snuck up on her from behind like this. She should’ve seen her in either the auxiliary or main hallways. She’d dismiss it, but this isn’t the first time Mackenzie, or Donna, has done this.
Are they…in that bathroom? The one that’s locked?
She cuts off Niko. “We’ll check ourselves.”
“Or we could ask now.”
Mackenzie is blunt. “Assuming you need an answer.”
Niko pops a bubblegum bubble. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you know she’s on the team.”
I’m what?
In addition to her reasons for trying-out being poor, so was her effort. She finished dead last…at everything. Last from the locker room, last in the pool, and last to finish laps. The only thing she did first was leave. She never wanted this. “That’s a joke. Why do you want me on the team?”
Mackenzie crosses her arms. “Why don’t you ask Donna?”
“Donna wants me on the team?”
Niko is ecstatic. “Of course, Donna does! You’re awesome!”
“Niko, you don’t understand. I shouldn’t be on the team.”
Mackenzie concurs. “No, you shouldn’t.”
“Why shouldn’t she?”
“For one, her fat ass displaced half of the water in the pool. And two, if you two want your own Pride and Rice Parade in our school, then be my guest, but keep it off my team.”
Niko pouts big as a bull dog. “Aw, is poor ‘Kenzie upset that she got outranked? Too bad, you can’t do shit but cry to the Yeti, and we’ll see how much she cares.”
Mackenzie looks like Niko said a swear. “I’m telling Donna you said that.”
“And I’ll tell her you’re lying. Who’s she gonna believe?”
Donna will believe Mackenzie. The Yeti will believe Niko.
It’s telling that Mackenzie backs down. “Like I said, I’m late for a meeting for—”
Niko interrupts. “Prom? I heard you the first twenty times.”
All the Bitches behind Mackenzie gasp! Them were fighten’ words and Mackenzie must respond. Not that Mackenzie worries. Her conservative exterior is often mistaken for being soft, so few know Mackenzie—and her perfect verbal score on the PSAT—turns a phrase nearly as quick as Niko.
“Niko, you’re as fake as your tits.”
The Bitches gasp bigger.
No one mentions Niko’s bra stuffing. You just don’t do it.
It shocks Niko. “Yeah, well…”
“Watch yourself. This weekend was one thing, and your hair, okay, it’s against the Rules, so what?, but you’re crossing the line.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m sure.”
It’s like a prison yard stare down.
Niko’s ready, but Mackenzie, too reformed for such brutishness, steps aside, her Bitches, who’re in trail, already lost in chatty whispers. “Pride Parade” referred to rituals in the LGBT community, but Mackenzie hijacked the term to fuel the Academy’s juiciest rumor. That Niko and I are gay. The latest connotation is several students saw Niko and her sucking face at a Starbucks this last Saturday. (Keep in mind, this rumor is most often told in tandem with the rumors about Niko’s Coeur d’Alene weekend party, which was not held at a Starbucks in Seattle). The “rice” part is a unique wrinkle since racist stuff is uncommon at the Academy. It implies sexuality for an Asian girl is, in actuality, nymphomania. Like, Niko and her aren’t gay, they’ve simply run out of white men to steal, which allows white girls to feel better about being asexual robots.
Both aspects of these rumors are beyond ridiculous.
And, somehow, like all rumors, there’re grains of truth.
Well, more than grains.
Niko relaxes her stance, then puts her arms out like “what the fuck” before she drops her weight on one hip. “What a blind fool. I don’t stuff my bra!”
Yeah, Niko does.
“She was trying to get you back, that’s all.”
“But, I don’t stuff my bra. Why doesn’t anyone believe me?”
She tries to be cheery. “Hey, she doesn’t know about BJS!”
“BJS” is an inside joke. (You don’t want to know).
Niko winks. “Oh, she knows about it, just Lonny’s version.”
She gasps like the Bitches did. “Mackenzie gives head?”
“Yeah.”
No way. “Are you for real? Or are you starting a rumor?”
Of course, it’s a rumor.
Sweet, perfect Mackenzie would never…
Whatever.
The real problem is that as these rumors escalate, so do the retaliations. By tomorrow, all the Academy will see when they see Mackenzie will be a desperate slut down on her knees, and by the afternoon, all anyone will see of Niko is…a desperate slut down on her knees. The problem’s that people will picture Niko with me. Hey, get that picture outta your head! Anyway, she shouldn’t be such a wuss. It’s school. And she accepts that, in one as mouthy as the Academy, rumors come standard, but the onslaught of falsehoods these last weeks is overkill, and it brings back too many of her own repressed memories.
It has to do with those “grains.”
It’s something Niko and her have never fully discussed.
At their sleepovers, after Nana went to bed, Niko would strip skimpy, then watch, rewind and rewatch, every love scene of every movie in the house. Or squint at the scrambled naked people on the cable TV stations. Some nights, Niko’d sneak her downstairs to skinny dip or help her climb the perimeter wall, then dare her to sprint across lawns naked. (Niko’s record was three). Other games happened, too, but the details aren’t that important. What matters is this felt natural, like the moonlight had let something loose in Niko that Niko couldn’t quench…until Niko found out how.
To grownups, it’s masturbation. To them, it was, “rubbing.”
No one knows about it. Except for Mother Superior and my mom. So these rumors and her childhood “activities” are in no way connected, but they bother her because they imply that people “know” that Niko and her are gay.
Or white man stealers.
Which, for Niko, has been contemporarily true.
Niko examines her sweater vest. Certain that her boobs look real, she puts so much time into them! “What’s the difference? Besides, can you believe the way she boasts about how Lonny’s a junior and she’s going to Prom? Yeah, he’s your boyfriend—we all know it! No need to repeat it for the hundredth time! That’s so lame.”
Not so.
It’s quite cool that Lonny’s an upperclassman. She wishes her boyfriend was an upperclassman. I mean, I wish I had a boyfriend. It’s also cool Mackenzie’s attending Prom. Recently, she went to Sadie Hawkins, and that was quite fun, but that’s peanuts next to Prom, especially if the prom goer is an underclassman, like Mackenzie! Or me—in my fantasies. For her, doing such is akin to having a September birthday, then driving to school all year while other kids beg for rides.
Wait, that’s Mackenzie too. Soon, it’ll also be Niko.
Now everyone will see me getting rides…maybe.
“I don’t get it. I shouldn’t have made the team.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I was purposely the worst swimmer there.”
Niko is aghast! “What about our plan? You didn’t even try?”
God, she hates valedictorian.
“I did, but I… I can’t go back to Model UN, and this is the only way Mother Superior would leave me alone over it.”
That explanation really sucked. She doesn’t try to better it, but instead trades words for pouts.
Niko falls victim to it. “Well, at least you made it. Now you can stay valedictorian, and you can come to the party tonight.”
“I told you, my mom said yes to post-Prom and a sleepover this weekend, she’s not saying yes to this, too.”
“She will if you make it about school!”
Niko believes that if something’s about school, her mother is powerless to it. “How am I going to do that?”
Niko squishes her face in thought, then grits up her voice. “What if we say it’s about Prom Committee?”
My mom’s not that stupid. “I don’t think she’ll buy that.”
“No, she will. Prom Committee has an academic credit.”
That means it applies to valedictorian.
“It has a chance of working.”
“Please try! Scott’s coming tonight! I planned it special.”
Scott is Niko’s boyfriend. And someone with whom I’m unacquainted. Usually, that’s no biggie, as Niko’s M.O. is to gobble up whatever boy wets her appetite, then spit out his remains like, well, garbage. The best and latest example of such is Hazu. A too-cool-for-school rebel-type who, now that he has a drivers license, likes to race cars. Like most boys, he became obsessed with Niko, then ignored the signs that he was just another of Niko’s doomed affairs. Like clockwork, he was replaced for Scott. The difference is, so far, Scott’s bucked all of Niko’s romantic trends, holding her affection for weeks.
So now I have to meet him.
That said, it’s Niko’s fault they’ve never met. Since Niko, excuse her, Niko2.0’s in the Bitches, Niko goes to Bitches-only parties, and since she isn’t, she doesn’t.
Or she didn’t.
That’s the other thing. Swim tryouts are Bitches tryouts.
Guess what that means?
Niko’s started for the main entrance. She follows Niko, keeping at Niko’s side since she hates following Niko like the Bitches follow Mackenzie. “I thought I was meeting him this weekend at post-Prom.”
“Right, but let’s just do it tonight.”
Her stomach dislikes the idea. “It took forever to get my mom to agree to post-Prom. She still thinks you went to Coeur d’Alene by yourself.”
Oh yeah, when the rumors about Niko’s Coeur d’Alene party hit the Academy circuit, they found their way to the teachers, then the vice-principal. Lots of schools might’ve turned a blind eye. The Academy isn’t that type of school.
Niko had to see Mother Superior.
And so did I.
Niko struggles. “I mean, tonight’s your debut! All the Bitches think you’re coming.”
“Why would they think that?”
Niko rewinds. “I mean, not that they think that.”
She’s been on swim team and in the Bitches for less than twenty minutes. Yet, everyone knows about it, and everyone knows she is going to this party. It might seem like Niko had rolled out the red carpet for her, but if you had heard the stuff Niko’s been saying these last weeks, you’d know that wasn’t true. “Why does Mackenzie think you knew I made the team?”
Niko, who’s gotten a step or two ahead, stops, then twirls her top half around. “Well, that’s a funny story.”
“You’re the reason I’m in the Bitches?”
Niko shrugs. Her boobs don’t shrug.
It looks weird.
“I told Donna she had to take you.”
That explains a lot.
Imagine going to tryouts for the week, dragging ass, only half listening, swimming slower than you know you can and showing how little you care at every opportunity. Then, imagine Mackenzie, also exhausted from tryouts, valedictorian, and the effort it takes to keep Donna happy. Now add on hearing that by Niko’s influence, the worst swimmer, who was only the worst because she cared so little, made the team, and is thereby in the Bitches. It’d drive me crazy! It also explains Mackenzie’s behavior after tryouts. In the showers, Mackenzie said something weird. Her first instinct was to tell Niko. She meant to, but when she visited her locker, she realized it was a prank, even if it was a dimwitted one.
And it was dimwitted because I was dimwitted.
She sees now that it was no prank. It was revenge.
“I don’t think Mackenzie liked hearing that.”
“How do you know?”
Because I just pressed my uniform between towels for the last thirty minutes! She takes the two steps to Niko then, after she speaks, walks off. “I can’t believe you did this to me. You used me to start your war with Donna!”
Sykosa, Part I: Junior Year Page 11