xXx
I called Fern, and we met in the woods in the late afternoon after school. I hadn’t spoken to her until earlier that day, and we agreed it was time to meet. She looked tired, her eyes sunken and her hair dull, and she wore dirty jeans.
We hugged each other and she tried to smile at me, and I could see how destroyed she was, how much this was affecting her. I felt tears threaten at seeing her suffering, but, as I was now so used to doing, I steeled myself against them and swallowed them back, shifting the focus onto what I wanted to tell her.
“I have a plan.”
“What’s that?”
“We get our revenge.”
She studied me with those exhausted blue eyes, leaning against the tree at her back. “How do we do that, Rachel?”
“It won’t be anytime soon. But it’s possible.” I could feel myself about to jabber uncontrollably, and I was aware that I was clasping and unclasping my hands spastically, but being around Fern again and being able to articulate what I had been formulating for the last few weeks was overwhelming me. “We have to get close to DED again. We just have to get near them. And then we kill them.”
“Kill them, huh?” A small, amused grin appeared.
“I’m serious,” I said, looking into her eyes, feeling almost ready to plead with her to understand. “Fern, we kill them.”
She stared for a few moments. “How?”
“It doesn’t matter. However. Poison them or light their bus on fire. However we can. But we work hard, Fern.” Tears were streaming from my eyes, pouring down my face, and splattering onto my chest in giant drops. “We work hard at the band and we get famous. We get on a tour with DED. We get close to them again and we fucking kill them.”
She was silent, and I mopped at my eyes with my sweater sleeve. “I know it sounds crazy, but they have to pay for what they’ve done to us.” My breath came in gasps; I was losing control, and I struggled with myself, heaving air into my lungs, grappling for poise. “You know they’ve done it before and they’ll do it again, and no one else is going to stop them. And I don’t give a fuck, I want to stop them. I want to show them. Make them sorry they ever messed with us.”
I sat down in the leaves and covered my face with my hands, rubbing my eyes and breathing deeply to calm down. When I looked at Fern again, she was smoking a cigarette and studying me.
“Do you really think you could do it?” I was pleased to hear a lack of sarcasm in her tone. She was taking the idea seriously.
“Yes,” I said. “Definitely.”
“Why not just go to another show, get backstage again,” she swallowed hard, “and do it then?”
“Because no one would care if some psychotic faceless slut did it.” Anger built up in me. “I want to show them. I want to be someone, Fern, not just a random groupie in the back room. I want people to listen to us and ask us why we did it. I want everyone to know.”
She puffed on her cigarette, looking off into the distance. “I don’t know if I can kill anyone, Rachel.”
“I know I can,” I said. “I’ll do it. I don’t care. I don’t care what happens to me.” Tears threatened once again, and I dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand, pushing them away. “I want them to pay. I don’t care. I just need us to work together on this, Fern. You’re the only one who knows what happened.”
She smiled sadly. “You know we’ll do this together.”
I smiled back and felt wetness in my palm. My fingernails had drawn blood, I had dug them in so hard. I raised my eyes back to Fern, who was still smiling, and saw no joy in her eyes despite that big smile. I don’t think I’ve seen much in her eyes since that whole thing happened, to be honest.
THIRTY-FIVE