This fantasy has made her playful and full of smirks as she grabs moisturizer because, while horror movie fun is exactly that, nothing’s fun about dry skin and premature aging. She spreads the liquid over the hump of her neck and down along the fencepost of her shoulder—hums, All them bitches. All them hoes.—and dabs a blue oil-absorbing sheet against her forehead, which always breaks out first and clears up last.
Niko waits in flip-flops and her bikini with a visor clung to her head and an old military canteen hung off her shoulder. Mackenzie waits by Tom, her tee-shirt and shorts stuck to the wet outline of her own bikini. Of course, he’s gonna waste this perfectly good horror movie opportunity on Mackenzie. Well, if that’s so, she’ll spend her time with Clyde. She roughhouses him with a pansy noogie that gives him the excuse he needs to lay his hands on her, which—about time—is too much for Tom, who’s stolen her hand, and then moments later her person.
He seems angry. “Attention starved much?”
“You were the one sounding starved last night.” She thinks of her prom dress and curses. I’ll never get asked if he hates me. She’s being counterproductive. She needs to regroup. After all, he’s a stupid boy, but a good boy. She brainstorms ways to drop big hints that sound like tiny suggestions. “It’s nuts with the dance and everything. They said this year it’s happening at some great hall we’ve had it at before.”
Clyde butts in. “What?”
Niko butts in, too. “Our Prom’s a big deal because a bunch of magazines come to photograph it. We have one of the best proms in the country. We win, like, awards for it, and it’s run by this thing called Prom Committee and it’s a big deal it.”
Clyde doesn’t care. “Mine was in the school gymnasium.”
Niko figured as much, then assures Clyde that not all proms are like his prom and not to worry his sweet, burnt-out brain over it. She also mentions, “By the way, it’s Prom not prom.”
“What the difference?”
“Ours is capitalized.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re special!”
Clyde whispers. “Spoiled rich babies is what you are.”
Niko stops in place. “What was that?”
“Nothing.”
And skips off! “That’s what I thought!”
Niko leads the way through the black fence surrounding her pool, across the grass and past some pushed aside branches, avoiding poison ivy and spider webs in an aggressive swagger, emerging onto a passage—more like a tunnel than a trail—as the treetops intertwine and create an umbrella over the sky. Niko reviews some forest rules like an old man who has swam the ocean his entire life, and as an afterthought, warns the kids to swim ashore if they see a shark fin. “No cigarette butts! Put them out, then put them in your pocket! Once, this woman threw her smoke out and it landed in some brush and the forest caught fire. My parents and I were evacuated.”
Clyde’s distressed. He’s used to looking cool indoors. “Niko, there aren’t any bears or anything out here, right?”
Niko laughs so hard she almost trips. “Really, Clyde, bears only show up when they want food. I don’t think they’re gonna bother us over Marlboro Lights.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Timmy’s worried since he knows Clyde is worried. “Baby, you know your way back, right? We’ve walked a long ways.”
“Please, I drive further to school. You two are sissies.”
Sykosa’s lit a cigarette, which Clyde effortlessly slides from her fingertips into his own, hits off it and returns it. A rather smooth, albeit inappropriate, move given his age. That may be her fault; she provoked him and Tom, by coincidence, grasps her waist and tucks her into his shoulder. She figures that may be her fault, too. To fix it, she pecks his cheek to reaffirm her devotion before she jogs to Niko, leaving the boys confused as to her intentions, which is fine. It’s her job to be fickle, so she knows she’s special and Tom knows to take her to Prom.
She shares the cigarette with Niko. “So, does your mother even know you’re here?”
To reinforce, Niko3.0 doesn’t talk about her parents. It’s why Niko flips around and stares at Mackenzie as she walks backwards. Niko can’t place it, but Mackenzie’s acting odd. If only Niko knew, Mackenzie saw Sykosa and Tom’s public smooches last night. It wasn’t a surprise, yet Mackenzie wasn’t prepared for it, and without her Bitches, Mackenzie’s decided to keep quiet about it, even if Niko tries to goad her, which Niko does.
“Mackenzie, are you going to Prom?”
“Yeah, I’m going.”
“With whom?”
Mackenzie has this mysterious boyfriend no one has ever met. His name is… “Donald.”
“Oh yeah, what school does he go to?”
“He’s a family friend. Why do you ask?”
“You’ve been so silent about Prom this year. Last year, I heard so much about it, I thought I was your date.”
Mackenzie sounds tired. “Do we really have to do this?”
Niko backs off. She won the Academy. Everyone knows it. “Not if you don’t want to, we don’t.”
“I don’t. And let’s keep it that way through the dance.”
Niko whistles. “Hey, if you’re too ashamed to talk about your boyfriend, it’s not my problem.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“What do you mean?”
“Where’s Hazu?”
That hit Niko in the gut. Worse, there’s little Niko can do about it. That stupid bitch Ass Girl took him, and it appears as if Ass Girl’s taking the Bitches, too. At least, it feels like Mackenzie, who was never a natural leader, intends to defer command to Ass Girl.
“He wanted to come out here.”
Mackenzie talks like it’s a joke. “Sure, he did.”
Sykosa wants nothing of this talk. She pays attention to the forest instead, to notice, when her elbow smacks a branch, it leaves fishtailing white scratches that she rubs off with spit. Everyone is covered in these white lines, save Niko who, from face to toes to tushie to forearms, bears not a mark. “Niko, when you told me those stories about you walking around the mountains up here, I didn’t know how true they were.”
“It’s because I’m such a klutz in the city. I get overwhelmed by all the lights and the busy-e-ness.” No one responds. Oddly, Niko thinks of that vampire hair boy who knew what her headband said. She sighs and forgets him. “Sometimes I think about camping for a month or something in these woods—backpack the whole thing. I’d use the time to get back into my Aikido. I miss it, but I don’t have time for it anymore.”
“I didn’t know you liked this stuff so much.”
Niko’s bored with the conversation.
“Come on guys, you have to see this. It’s amazing.”
Niko scales the almost vertical hill in a jiff. She laughs as the others dig their feet into the soft ground and fall, trying to transfer weight. Niko suggests many smaller steps instead of giant ones. This helps, yet the struggles continue. Particularly for me. She steps up once, twice, and then the dirt gives and she gives with it, nearing a fit. She cannot swim (very well, anyway) and she cannot climb hills. I’m useless. Her palms bat the dirt off her ass, and on her seventeenth try, she follows the group through branches that open on a field of tall grass.
Everyone kind of does their own thing.
Tom wants to go to the other side of the field.
“Come on, let’s go.”
“I don’t know. We should stay with Niko.”
“Niko, you don’t mind, do you?”
“Not really!”
He tugs on her like she is a ragdoll—for the third time.
She snatches back her hand, almost in fear of her freedom. She’s never seen Tom jealous, but she’s seen him violent, and it’s maddening. She follows him anyhow—in need of another hug like last night—until their friends are specks. Somewhere along the way, she held his hand and that is what they do until she gets a hug. It ends in another ass grab. Casual conve
rsation persists, but nothing that clarifies why he confessed his love for her, yet avoids her Prom hints. Not that she’s forthcoming, as her instincts want to protect her heart, not share it.
Then, he taps her shoulder. “You’re it!”
She runs after him. The grass tickles her knees. “Stop!”
“Why?”
She is out of breath. “You have to let me win! I’m the girl.”
“Excuse me? I have to let you win, why?”
She doubles over. “You don’t have to let me win anything.” She wipes her mouth and thinks she needs to quit smoking. She’s kidding. “I had to get you to stop! You’re it!” She tags his waist and scurries off. A second wind finds her and his fingers still descend upon those same ticklish corners. She plants her foot and pivots across his body, seemingly eluding his grasp, but then her tit gets clamped. Damn boyfriend gets to tag stuff no one else does! “Missed me!”
“Naw, I got you!”
She pants. “Huh-uh, you didn’t say I was ‘it.’”
He has a look in his eyes. “You know I’m gonna get you.”
“No, you’re not.” He jumps forward and she skits back. This is fun. “I’ll never jerk you off again.”
“Oh, that’s a lie!”
The grass falls under her commotion and her stomach tightens under his fingers and her body is in the air.
She pounds his back. “Put me down! This is cheating!”
He does so and she stumbles, threading her finger through the knot of his swim trunk string. On her tiptoes, she makes out with him. He holds her. She squeezes his butt (to be even) and he squeezes her butt back (it’s never even). Their noses are molecules apart. He says, “What if we were playing freeze tag and I left you out here?” She pouts, laying her forehead on his chin, distraught over his cruelty. He’s regretful. “I don’t know why I said that. I was thinking about last night and what I said. It was, maybe, not the best time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d have rather told you here. I’d have rather it not been at such an average party.”
Good point! Now, make it better!
She’s joking. She doesn’t want to talk about last night at all.
Or last year.
“That’s okay.”
“I do feel what I said, you know?”
No, she doesn’t. “Yeah, I know.”
“I mean, none of my friends know about us, not even M. None of your friends, except Niko, know about us. What do we say when we tell them we have been seeing each other?”
“Seeing each other” isn’t how she would phrase it. They’ve been kissing. And that’s acceptable because there’s nothing slutty about kissing. (The handjobs and the humping, well… Must you be so hypercritical?) If he wants to get serious, then that’s cool and she wants that too, but he better be serious, cause—okay, yeah—she’s getting along fine, or fine when the blackness isn’t about, and has tolerated being his ass candy, but no decent girl lets, “I love you,” hang over a relationship unaddressed for long, so he’s on the clock by his own devices.
“You think it will be that big a deal?”
“Well, everyone loves you.”
“What?”
“It’s…” His mind’s stuck on images of her with that idiot and his guitar. He knew, sooner or later, she would figure out how hot she is. He never knew it would drive him this crazy. “People should know about us and we should start doing stuff like a couple does.”
“What?”
“We should go to Prom together, shouldn’t we?”
“Yes!”
This isn’t her story. This isn’t her life.
He asked! He asked! The stupid little perv asked!
She hugs him and refuses to let go, even when he tries to pry away. He whispers. “I tried last night, but last year…”
No!
She kisses his mouth to shut him up. He does shut up and it’s perfect. She understands why he might think it necessary to bring up the awful past, but she wants him to know, like last night, it’s not so, that she gets her duty and, furthermore, how lucky she is to have a cute boyfriend who asks her to Prom. He also finds her sexy enough to apply his fingers back to her ass.
She giggles, cause it’s kinda funny.
“Why do you keep touching my butt?”
“It’s your bathing suit. You look hot in it.”
Ah, he likes the short-shorts! “That’s funny. I bought it for this trip.” She brings herself in close for another hug that goes on until she hears Niko shout, “You guys know we have rooms back at the cottage, right? You don’t need to take getting back to nature so literally!” Both Tom and her laugh, and he adds a middle finger. Niko gives him the ASL sign for “fuck you” and finishes with, “We’re headed back, lovebirds!” She separates from him, her hair behind her ear and his hand already on hers, then another surprise kiss that leads to a smaller surprise kiss that ends with her hand on his oblique.
She’s got a lost look in her eyes.
“Tom?”
“Yeah?”
“I wanna move my stuff to your room.”
X.
The bathroom walls are tuffs of rust, sanded soft as Arabian sand. In corners, sturdy green climbs up golden chains attached to the ceiling, before it falls over and hangs low like stretched curls in a woman’s hair. Not far away the exhaust fan collects a mixture of smoke and shower steam, the latter of such stretches above her like dry ice. The shower itself is magnificent. She eyed it a few moments ago, and she eyes it now—stares at Niko’s silhouette, who has propped her leg upon the triangle while her arm swipes the razor that swipes her nick-free. Then, Niko shuts off the water to drip the floor slippery. She eyed that too a few moments ago, and she eyes it now—stares at Niko’s hairy cunt and how, like an invasive species, its unchecked growth is near as high as her belly, spreads to her upper thighs and devours her undercarriage.
Niko hums something, like a contagious yawn:
All them bitches. All them hoes.
BUZZ. buzz. BUZZ. BUZZ.
The big bash will commence soon. She needs to get ready.
Especially since she did as she said. She dropped off her stuff in his room, then on the bed, he cupped her cheek and put her hair behind her ear—repeatedly. And between strategizing how to come out with their relationship, they talked about school, parties, her Model UN project, that doggie style is the sexual position he most wants to try, video games and finally about Prom and what going together will be like. It made her feel fuzzy, so she was receptive to his kisses and to how he slowly pulled both knots from her bikini top. She thought: I should stop. Instead, she lay there topless, and he held her, his hand inside the ass part of her bottoms.
It felt like doing something together.
Then Niko called her for girl time, and she ran, like she did last night, to be amongst the two-sprout Jacuzzi, the tall faucet sinks, the three-milled import soapbox and, in the corner, a retro-red icebox with an equally retro service station. I want this bathroom. She wants less confusion and occasionally materialism accomplishes that. After all, Tom’s her Prom date, her boyfriend, her soon-to-be lover, and while he did the 99% perfectly, he messed up the one. He brought up last year. It put a pinch of the blackness in her, and once it’s there, it’s…
The strain of inevitability.
(Or as she knows it: the “pull.”)
That means she’s going to * him. Her mind has already made the decision and this is the part where she freaks out.
The big bash will commence soon. She needs to get ready.
Take a shower, do her hair, wear makeup, put on clothes, only to take them off. I’ve lost to him. And what results in her is a void that, sex or not, is here to stay. Why must I think these crazy things? And she wonders what he’ll say when he does it and if it’ll hurt and how much it’ll hurt and if it’ll still hurt tomorrow. Like it has this last year. Wow, that’s harsh. I learned from the best. She means her mother. And she’s on the self-a
ssault train, no longer worried about the pain because the pain is constant. It runs her over and runs her down. It’s so big it’s almost a joke. To think that a penis might hurt her.
He’d be so lucky.
This isn’t her story. This isn’t her life.
You wouldn’t understand.
It’s not her fault. It’s the blackness. It’s paralyzed her. And it’s terrorizing her. It’s destroying her and…
&&&&&&&& && #!
She cannot bring herself to prepare for him.
The desire is…absent.
Niko wipes down the full-body mirror. She stares at her A cups and her narrow hips, then zeroes in on those nine imperfections, as if her telekinetic intensity could reshape them. “There’s a razor in the shower, but my Mom has some wax stuff too.”
“The razor will be fine.”
Niko stalls, something was off with that “fine.” It disturbs Niko, as it reminds Niko of herself. She looks at Sykosa’s breasts to forget it. “Tom sure wanted you to himself fast.”
“What’re you implying?”
“Hell-o, attitude much?”
She didn’t intend to be so bitchy. She noticed Niko noticing her boobs, which’s what Niko does, sure, but this is why the Academy thinks they’re gay. I looked, too, didn’t I? As she does again, glaring at Niko’s enormous bush. Maybe I’m why everyone thinks we’re gay. Or maybe she’s in regression and now, despite a year of independence, she wants Niko3.0 to go 2.0 and steal her back. Too bad, it’s too late, as Niko’s covered her snatch with boy-cuts that say Speed Racer on the ass.
“Tom asked me to go to Prom.”
Like a best friend, Niko’s suspicious. “Did you bring it up?”
“No.”
“He just asked?”
Sykosa, Part I: Junior Year Page 22