She started inviting me to go to parties with her friends from Our Lady. They’d have them every few weeks. “They’re really nice people, you’ll like them,” she insisted. But I never went. The thought of going to a party was uncomfortable. Just because Josephine liked me and accepted me didn’t mean that her friends would. I imagined walking into a room filled with strangers who would totally reject me. The only person I would know there would be Josephine, and she’d abandon me to catch up with her real friends, and I’d be left sitting by myself surrounded by people having a great time with each other and totally ignoring me. It’s one thing when that happens at school; it’s quite another when you’ve chosen to be in that situation. I even worried that once Josephine’s friends rejected me, she would reject me. She’d realize that I was a total fucking loser.
On one of those Saturday afternoon shopping trips, I’d picked up a Gurgol CD, Tear Off the Scab. It became one of my fixtures that fall, as well as DED’s ever-present Punish and Kill. The thing I liked about Gurgol was that there was a girl in the band. She played bass. Her name was Marie-Lise, which sounded very exotic, and her hair was done in bleached white dreadlocks. In the band photo with three tall dark-haired guys, she stood out but didn’t look out of place at all. The guys glowered and frowned, and she glowed, while still looking pissed and tough. In all my research of metal bands so far, I hadn’t seen a woman in one. When Josephine and I shopped, I have to admit I kept an eye out for stuff that Marie-Lise would wear. She always looked so awesome in their pictures, wearing ruffled black dresses and coloured tights and leather skirts. And I loved how she fit in with those guys. I wanted to be tough like her, surrounded by furious guys; everyone would look at us and be terrified.
Of course, Marie-Lise wore a hell of a lot more makeup than I could get away with. She wore dark lipstick, powdered her face completely white, ringed her eyes with tons of liner. She looked absolutely sinister and, to me, beautiful. Even Melissa, who was scared of everything to do with the music I liked, admired the pictures of Marie-Lise. We both agreed she looked like a beautiful vampire doll or something. Well, Melissa said that. I said that was childish, but secretly agreed.
xXx
Instead of just writing poetry and short stories, I started to write stuff that would be more in sync with the music I was into. I don’t want to say they were lyrics, but I guess they sort of were. They were terrible, these early attempts. But I felt a strong creative pull in that direction.
I was very happy that fall, but I didn’t have to be furious and full of rage to enjoy the music or its messages. That whole time, after all, despite Josephine, despite shopping and enjoying school, all of that was still inside me. Just because Brandi hadn’t bothered with me in a while didn’t mean that I was over wanting to splinter her nose with my fist. It didn’t mean that I hated the assholes in my classes any less. It just meant that I wasn’t alone anymore.
Now that I had Josephine, I ate lunch in the cafeteria rather than sitting on the floor by my locker, so when we would take our lunches to a table, I would always nonchalantly keep an eye out for the guy I’d seen in the hallway with the band shirt. He always ate in the cafeteria too, with a couple of his friends, and as me and Josephine chatted and ate, I would steal very discreet glances at him.
At least I thought they were discreet. One day Josephine totally busted me on it.
“Okay, so who is that guy?” she asked me.
“What guy?”
“The one you’re always looking at. The long-haired guy with the Vomiting Blood shirt.”
“It’s actually Bloodvomit.”
“Whatever. You realize he wears that shirt, like, three times a week, right? I bet he doesn’t wash it.” She glanced over her shoulder to where he sat a few tables over. “You like him?”
I blushed and looked down at my tapioca. “Yeah, he’s cute.”
“He’s got nice hair. You guys would make a good couple. What’s his name?”
“I have no idea.”
So Josephine made it her personal project to get very involved in my nonexistent relationship with the Guy. She’d set up little experiments, like telling me to walk past his table while he ate lunch and she’d watch to see if he looked at me. Which, apparently, he totally did.
“You have to talk to him,” she said. “He likes you. He checked you out.”
“But what would I say to him? He’s in eleventh grade. He doesn’t want to bother with me.”
“So what? You’re only a year younger. That’s fine. And you like the same bands, obviously. You should talk to him. Ask him about his vomit shirt. That’s a good icebreaker.”