“You’re an adult now,” she said. That’s all she said. “You can handle it.”
WHEN KURT’S MOTHER KICKED HIM out, he had to live under a fucking bridge. At least I had the Buick. I could shower in the locker rooms before school or, if I felt like it, at Jesse Gorin’s house. He didn’t even make me suck him for the privilege. Once I caught him jerking off, and he liked that so much that occasionally I watched, but it was never a quid pro quo kind of thing. More of a favor, like how I kept him company while he listened to his death metal shit and pretended it didn’t make my ears bleed. Sometimes we’d drag the action figures out from the back of the closet and make He-Man blow Skeletor or G.I. Joe take it in the ass, then watch old metal videos until the sun came up.
It wasn’t the safest thing for him, for any of them, being seen with me. Considering what people thought they were. Considering what I was trying pretty fucking hard to be. I even apologized once, if you can believe it. “Sorry,” I said—and you’ll have an even tougher time believing this, but I actually was—“if I’m bringing down extra shit on you guys.”
He shook his head. “Do what you do. They deserve it.” Then he showed me the box in the basement where he’d stowed all his old devil crap, the incense and the blades and some cheap polyester hoods, and told me to knock myself out.
Jesse got me a job at the Giant, where they didn’t give a shit about devil worship as long as I remembered to double bag. If life were a movie, I would have gotten a job at some down-and-out record store, enlightening losers who were still jonesing for New Kids on the Block and learning valuable life lessons from my grizzled yet sexy boss, who would hold out for a few months, like a gentleman, before hoisting me onto the counter and ringing me up. Instead I got Bart the produce guy, who looked a little like Paul McCartney if you squinted; Linda the meat lady, who was pretty sure she could convert me back to the Lord with a couple pot roast dinners; and Jeremy, our sleaze of a manager, who hit on every doubleX chromosome in sight except for me.
Sleep was hard; everything hurt too much. There were noises. Engines and sirens and crickets and planes, nothing to keep out the night. I waited for footsteps, a tap on the glass, a face at the window. When it happened, and sometimes it did, I could rev the engine and go.
I could have gone for good. I stayed for you. The two of us heading west, together, that was always the plan.
If I’d asked, you would have said: Go. You would have drawn me a map. Like a little kid crushing her tiny fists together and telling her mommy I hope you die. You don’t believe a little girl like that. You pat her on the head and wait for the tantrum to pass. That’s called faith.
You know I think it’s bullshit: faith, superstition, some sixth sense knowing that actually means wishing or pretending or ignoring. But you’ve got to believe in something. I believe gravity will keep me from floating into space and that people came from monkeys. I believe that sixty percent of anything the government says is a lie, and that conspiracy theorists belong in the same nuthouse as alien abductionists and the Elvis lives crowd. I believe that Democrats are criminals but Republicans are sociopaths; I believe that space is infinite and consciousness is finite; I believe that my body is my body and rapists should have their balls cut off; I believe that sex is good and the deterministic universe is a quantum illusion; I believe that global warming is increasing and the hole in the ozone is widening and nuclear proliferation is worsening and germ warfare is coming and we are all ultimately fucked. Those are my foundations, Dex, my unquestionables. The gospel of Lacey: I believe in choice and words and genius and Kurt. I believe in you.
I DON’T BELIEVE IN OUR DARK Lord of the Underworld or the rising of the Antichrist, I don’t believe in child sacrifice or wild midnight blood rituals, and I don’t believe that I can call on the power of Satan to knock some cheerleader off her pyramid. Wearing black felt safe. Wearing it on my skin, the mark of something vicious, that felt right. All the rest of it, that was crap. But: Sarah, Allie, Paulette, Melanie . . . I wanted them to hurt, and they hurt. That’s power, Dex. You don’t need magic to make people believe what you want them to believe. Believing can hurt most of all.