Outsider Girls Write

Lucy

2012-01-19T06:54:00.000-08:00

Lucy returns home with her stepfather, who, as she’d predicted, beats the shit out of her, and all the bravery she felt earlier gets kicked away…

Lucy: I can’t can’t

He’s hurting me. He kicks my shin like a little girl, only he has on steel-toed boots, and I collapse. Now he kicks my in the stomach. If I throw up, he’ll make me eat it for all I know. If I throw up, he’ll definitely beat the shit out of me.

He’s already

Holding my knees to my chest, biting my lip so I don’t scream, I wonder how far it is to my backpack, and can I make it, and if I do can I pull out the scissors I stole from the school nurse, and can I stab him and stop him from ever beating me again?

Can I can I

I can’t can’t

Have to

Be strong

Not wimp

Out

Can’t

Can.

Caroline

2012-01-05T08:44:00.000-08:00

Caroline is eleven and a half – a tween, and that feels like the worst age to be, the worst way to be ever, no matter how much everyone thinks her feelings aren’t real, or at least aren’t really important.

Caroline: These are just feelings, that’s what my mother said.

She doesn’t know, or understand, or probably even care what feelings I’m having, but she says not to worry, not to get so worked up and anxious because they’re just feelings.

Like, feeling left out.

Or feeling like I can’t do anything right.

Feeling like everyone’s mad at me all the time.

Feeling like crying now, then, here, there and everywhere.

Seriously. Just feelings, she says.

Feelings aren’t facts.

So here’s how it started, I think:

First, the funeral for my Grandma Caroline, whom I’m named after, except she pronounced it Caro-line, and I pronounce it Caro-leen, which everyone used to think was me being creative when I was six and seven and eight, but now everyone seems to think I’m just being difficult.

My Aunt Lisa said, “Caroline is such a lovely name, why would you want to change it?”

Then she started crying, and I felt like it was my fault, like I ought to be carrying on my grandmother’s name.

And then, I couldn’t muster up any tears at the funeral and my mother said sometimes she worries because I’m so cold and so wrapped up in only myself, except whenever I do cry she starts to cry because she says all she ever does is try to make me happy and…

Anyway, feelings aren’t facts, right?

So the facts are, I never really knew my Grandma Caroline, not like my cousins did, so I wasn’t sorry she was dead – not that I wanted her dead, just that I didn’t know her and I didn’t care that much.

Fact: I didn’t cry at the funeral.

Fact: When they took out the food, the chicken wings were like slimy and undercooked and didn’t look like real buffalo wings, and the dip had spinach in it and when I started to cry then, my mother said to everyone that I just had low blood sugar, and she told me to eat something, and I said I wasn’t hungry, and she said to have a piece of pie at least, so I did, but it was lemon merangue, so it was all slimy, and I didn’t understand how I could be so hungry and there could be two tables of food out and still there was nothing I could eat.

Fact: My mother told me to go to my room until I got a hold of myself.

First I can’t cry at the right time, then I can’t stop at the right time – or was it the wrong time, I don’t even know.

Fact: As I half-stomped, half-slinked upstairs to my room, I heard my mother telling my Aunt Lisa that she (my Mom) didn’t know what to make of me, and my Aunt Lisa said, “She’s just at that age, where she doesn’t know if she wants to be a kid or an adult,” and my mother said, “I hear it only gets worse,” and she and my aunt laughed in a way that was like they didn’t really think I was funny, they thought I was horrible. They thought I was too much trouble already, and how could I get any worse?

Will I?

Will I feel worse than this?

Hopeless, confused, abandoned, sorry, lonely, mad, sad.

These are only my feelings, but they sure feel like facts.

Lucy

2011-12-22T07:12:00.000-08:00

Lucy is back, and the marks left behind by her abusive stepfather are getting noticed.

Lucy: Stupid Natalie, told Ms. Green that if I was going to wear sunglasses in school, then so was she, and then she put on these gi-normous glam glasses with rhinestones studded around big, darkened, owl eyes. Ms. Green had no choice but to make us both take off our sunglasses, even though mine were small, just big enough to cover the black eye Keith gave me which I think Ms. Green might’ve guessed about because I’m always hiding something, or I’m really clumsy, neither of which excuses she buys.

So then, I have to go to the nurse, who of course calls my house and of course Mom is at work, but sweet, kind, generous (not) Keith, my very favorite stepdad, of course he’s home. And he doesn’t act mean, he doesn’t say, “Leave the little bitch in school, what’s her black eye got to do with me?

He doesn’t say that.

He says something sugary-sweet, like so sweet it rots inside you (me), he says he’s worried about me, and he’s coming to get me and to take me to the doctor, and he’s such a liar, and I don’t want to go, I can’t go!

But I have to.

He’s my “father”.

He has rights.

Like, the right to kick my ass!

The right to kill me if he wants.

I’m sure it will be all my fault.

Cherry (not her real name)

2011-12-08T12:23:00.000-08:00

Cherry (not my real name):

Secrets (rough draft)

I wear big earrings so people don’t think I’m a boy. I throw up all the time, just because I’m anxious, I guess. I’m not stuck-up, I’m just scared. People scare me. I don’t talk a lot, but it’s not because I don’t like you. I don’t really love my boyfriend, but I do have sex with him. The boy I love is in college now, and I wrote him a letter saying I was so sorry he broke up with his girlfriend, but I’m not. I pretend to like Kaylee Johnson, but I don’t, because she was his girlfriend. I have never stuffed my bra with tissues or socks, but I wanted to. I didn’t do it because I was hoping someone would touch me there, would want to touch me, and what if he only touched a sock imitation and not the real me? Sometimes – no always – it feels like my boyfriend isn’t touching the real me.

To be continued…

Nicki

2011-11-30T06:26:00.000-08:00

Nicki is the manin character in a novel I'm working on called Swallow. This is a scene that happens near the end of the book (although I haven't even written the middle of the book yet!). It might end up being the prologue. Who knows. As usual, I don't know where my Outsider Girls will end up. I just let them speak.

Nicki: I know this place. I know the woods we’re entering.

I know them in spring, when white flowers bloom in clusters among yellow-green leaves. I know the woods in summer, when the foliage is lush and thick, and you have to know these woods like I do to navigate them. In spring and summer, these trees -- this woods -- means a private picnic… a time to rest from the sun, lie on the cool moss and be peaceful and alone. It's a happy place.
In the fall I've scooped leaves fallen from these trees. Penny and I have rolled down this hill. I've laughed here, in the fall.

I’ve also been at this edge of the woods in winter a thousand times at least, climbing the hill I’m being made to climb right now. Every winter when I was a kid, I climbed this hill, trudging up the snowy slope, dragging my inner tube or sled or toboggan or whatever came for Christmas that year.

I’ve seen these trees so many times I know the way one tree grows at an angle, toward the right, oddly away from the sun – the little sun that remains on this bitter afternoon.

The trees I know so well are bare. Gray stalks with spidery branches. Familiar.
Focusing on the trees calms me down enough so that I can breathe. I’m scared, but not so scared to death like I was in the car, because I know this place. It has always been friendly to me.

Stumbling, I land hard on the frozen ground.

Lisa grabs me and pulls me up, and her fingernails dig into my arm, but I can’t feel it because I’m too cold.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I want to know. I sound like a baby, but who cares?

“Just keep moving, bitch,” Lisa says.

Somebody's Daughter is out!

2011-11-10T15:56:00.000-08:00

Somebody's Daughter is now available at amazon.com as a kindle book. http://www.amazon.com/Somebodys-Daughter-ebook/dp/B0063XGTU8/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1320670596&sr=1-4

if you are a reviewer, contact me about getting a review copy.

if you don't have a kindle, get reader apps for your other devices at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sa_menu_karl3?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

remember, for excerpts, check this blog for Casey, Nancy, Kayla and Rain.

more excerpts to come!

Casey (Somebody's Daughter excerpt)

2011-10-27T04:19:00.000-07:00

Casey

As I walk into the kitchen, I snatch the recorder from my mother’s hand. I don’t press “record” of course, because I’m not getting involved -- but I pretend to speak into it, with a fake reporter-y voice: “And now, a News Channel Mom exclusive: Daughter’s Best Friend Raped, Mother Tries to Get Rich Off the Story.”

My mother gives me a look that includes half a smile, and it’s like what the eff? She never takes me seriously! Obviously, she thinks I’m not really mad at her or something. She thinks I’m kidding. Well, I may joke in my own dark way, but fact is, she never even asked if it was okay with me if she wrote this book. So what am I supposed to feel?

Still with the half-smile, and now adding a rolling of her eyes in an “Oh Casey,” kind of way, my mother takes back her recorder. She gives me the full smile.

Oh. My. God.

Her smile is totally a slap in my face. My legs suddenly feel weak, drained of the strength that originally brought me downstairs to try and talk my mother out of doing this stupid book. Because, A: It’s a stupid idea. B: She shouldn’t be opening up wounds and poking around inside my friends. And C: She doesn’t have a clue what she’s getting into.

I can’t talk to her when she’s like this, when she’s in writer-mode, when she’s all full speed ahead and screw the consequences. When she’s smiling.

Did I mention, I want to scream?

Only I won’t. A: My mother would like it too much. She gets off on seeing my emotions. She thinks it means we’re really close because I let her see me cry. And B: It’s too late to scream now anyway.

All I know is, I didn’t scream when it counted, and I’m all cried out. I ache all over. I can’t, I don’t...

I don’t understand what I feel, what I want to feel, what I should feel. In the past, I would’ve asked my mother, or she’d have told me anyway. But that was before. Like, before she adopted my friends for her book.

She hasn’t actually asked me to participate. And I won’t say it out loud but inside, I’m all like, what, has she forgotten I’m her daughter and plus, I was there at the party too?

Miya

2011-10-13T05:22:00.000-07:00

Miya:

“OMG, I had a pair of earrings just like these when I was in high school!”

My mother holds up what look like two cd’s in bright blue, only smaller – but not that much smaller. She pretend dangles them from her ears and peers into the mirror on the counter because her eyes aren’t so good, and I want to die, and I’m thinking how old she looks squinting to see like that, and how she shouldn’t say things like “OMG,” no one should say OMG if they’re over twenty-five…

“Nice. You should get them. They totally match your shirt,” I say.

“I know, right?”

Another thing no one over twenty-five should say, but whatever. If she’s happy, she’ll totally buy me the silver hoops I have my eye on, even though they’re like thirty-two bucks, and she lost her job. If she gets the blue cd earrings, she’ll feel like she has to buy me earrings too. I know my mom.

I’m out of money because me and my boyfriend used up the minutes on my prepaid – and who, by the way, who has to have a prepaid cell with limited minutes they have to pay for themselves, it’s so unfair… anyway, I had to buy more minutes with my allowance or die from embarrassment plus probably Seth would’ve broken up with me if I couldn’t text him anymore until next month. I have to get the unlimited Net 10 minutes next month, when I have some money saved.

If I have any money saved, which I won’t at this rate, not after I used up my birthday gift card on the shirt that hangs off my shoulder, and can you believe my mom said I can wear it to school even though it’s against the dress code? She was all, “If someone sees you, just put it back on your shoulder and pretend you didn’t know, and then when no one’s looking, slide it off again.”

Remembering that, I make a decision:

“Mom, remember you said I could clean the upstairs bathroom to make some extra money? Could you advance me some so I can get these earrings?”

I put back the thirty-two dollar pair, and grab a $10 pair I can afford if I take on the bathroom cleaning job.

“Only if you get these,” my mom says, picking up the more expensive earrings I really wanted. “How about we go halves?”

“You’re going to pay me sixteen dollars to clean the bathroom?”

Smiling, she shrugs. “Just make sure you really scrub the floor, behind the toilet too.”

I love when she pretends to be tough. Playing along, I roll my eyes and sigh.

“Fine.”

My mother puts back the blue earrings she wanted, and we buy the silver hoops for me, and I pretend it doesn’t matter, I pretend she owes it to me or something, but deep down?

She can say “OMG” whenever she wants. I kinda like it.

Nicki

2011-09-29T04:35:00.000-07:00

Nicki is a new Outsider Girl, and the protagonist in my next novel, Swallow.

Nicki: “Wake up in the morning, feeling like P Diddy…”

   That’s Ke$ha, blaring from my alarm clock, which is also a dock for my iPod.

   “Grab my glasses, I’m out the door…”

   If I don’t get my ass out of bed and turn off my alarm, it’s going to wake up my little brother, and my mother’s going to have a fit. She’s going to say something like, “It’s only six fifteen in the morning, and already you’ve ruined my day,” and then she’s going to rush downstairs to my brother’s room to pick him up, put him on her lap and rock him and tell him everything’s going to be all right, it’s just that Nicki is a teenager and she’s in her own world and she can’t think about the feelings of others right now.

   My mother’s going to tell Tommy that being a teenager is a tough time for a girl, and “we all have to learn to be patient with Nicki.”

   “Pedicure on our toes toes, tryin on all our clothes clothes…“

   My mother thinks she’s being all good and understanding.

   She would never think to ask me why I’m curled up in a ball under the fairy blanket grammy made for me last birthday as if I’m still just a little kid, although it is true I love this blanket, even if I was turning fifteen, and I am too old for flower fairies.

   “Tik tok on the clock…”

   I don’t even like this song, why did I pick it to wake me up—

   “Nikki! Turn your music down!” my mother yells from behind her closed door.

   “It’s my alarm!” I yell back.

   “Ain’t got a care in the world, but got plenty of beer…” Ke$ha sings.

   Tommy starts crying, Waa waa, big baby, Waa waa, the sound getting closer as he comes up the stairs—

   “Nikki!”

   For like a second, I try to ignore it all, try to wrap my quilt closer around my head and drown it all out, but come on, that’s totally ridiculous, so I reach a hand out and slap the snooze button, shutting Ke$sha up. If only everyone else had a snooze button! I just wanna get a handle on the dream I was having. I just wanna stop crying. I cry all the time and its ridiculous.

Saxon

2011-09-16T03:30:00.000-07:00

Sax: Got this ipod dock that’s an alarm clock. Six AM, the Hamster Dance song blares from the speakers, waking me up happy. I mean, I’m not happy to be up at six in the morning, but who can be a shithead when the Hamster Dance song is playing? Weeehoo!

Still, I’d rather get laid in the morning. You know, wake up with a guy who doesn’t have to run out the door for a class or a job, or on the other hand, doesn’t pull my grandmother’s quilt up over his eyes and groan, roll over. Ignore the Hamster Dance. Say “Rumph!” in protest if I try to inspire him.

You know, someone like me. I want someone like me. I’ll even take someone who likes me, me, Saxon, Hamster Dancer, smart, sexy, hair so short there’s no bed head. Me! Scrabble fiend, lover of mani-pedi’s, wearer of tees with words: That was Zen, this is Tao.

Mother of –

Naah, I don’t want to talk about that.

Kathryn

2011-09-01T03:55:00.000-07:00

Kathryn: Standing next to Andrew’s shitty white hatchback, outside CVS, waiting.

Heat rises off the blacktop in wavy lines, almost like a cartoon.

I’m in a cartoon. You know the one, where Bugs Bunny waits for Elmer Fudd to bring him a balloon of meth. While he waits, he melts in the heat. Ears droop, and his voice is dry and scratchy as he whispers, “What the fuck is up Doc?”

Okay, now I’m getting delirious. Lighting another cigarette, I watch a couple go into CVS holding hands. She’s got those Suburban, chunky high and low lights in her shoulder length blonde hair, and she’s all thin but curvy. He’s got gelled hair that’s just right, and tattoos on his arms, and because I’m delirious, he makes me think of one of the young guys on Top Chef, and I wonder what he’s doing here in Milford, Connecticut.

Then I wonder why Andrew didn’t come with me, or even meet with Fred himself. Why did I have to come? Why am I melting out here alone? Why does everyone look at me as if they know I’m some kind of druggie. Fuck them!

Fuck the fat mommy holding hands with her little boy, swinging arms. Fuck the old guy with his walker who edges away from me, giving me wide berth as he passes. Fuck the little girl who makes a show of smelling the smoke from my cigarette as she passes, and even has the nerve to say to her mother, “Yuck.”

“I know,” her mother responds, not even looking at me.

Fuck Andrew for sending me to pick up our drugs alone.

Fuck Fred for being late, and while I’m at it, for always putting the dope in a rubber balloon that he ties and wraps with some kind of weird meth head rubber origami so I can’t get at it, not even a taste, until I get back home.

Well, not home exactly. Andrew’s apartment over his mother’s garage is what I mean.

I guess you could say I’m living there. Not like I have my own key or anything, but I sleep there when Andrew and I do sleep, and aren’t up doing drugs and fucking.

He always wants to fuck for hours and hours when he’s high. I always want to go draw all night, let the drug focus my hand. I’m a really good artist, given the chance.

Andrew doesn’t usually give me time to draw, or else he laughs at me, trying to get a portfolio together to go to art school because he already has a job doing computer graphics and making lots of money, and I should be grateful he pays for the drugs.

Felix pulls up, and I feel sleazy passing money through a slit opening of his car window, and then taking the balloon. My mouth waters when the drugs are in my hand, but I don’t feel grateful.

Soon it’ll be my turn to suck the pipe, and the white, bitter smoke will rush into my lungs and my body will tingle and my mind will light up, and then I won’t have to feel anything at all.

Ella

2011-08-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

Ella: “I’m so angry, I could spit!” is what my grandmother used to say.

I say it to myself: I’M SO ANGRY I COULD SPIT!

Only, it doesn’t work. I mean, I don’t want to spit. Spit?!

I’m so angry, I could cry is more like it. I am crying. I always cry when I’m this mad.

It doesn’t even matter anymore what I’m mad at, or what I was mad at. Now I’m mad at myself. For being mad? For being me. And the worst part is, I can’t go back, I can’t ever be unangry. I can’t NOT have told my boyfriend that I never want him to talk to Jayla again, and I don’t care if they’ve been friends forever, and if it doesn’t mean anything like we’re going to break up, or anything to do with me at all – that’s what he said, but I didn’t – don’t – believe him. Still, I shouldn’t have said anything. Then he wouldn’t have gotten mad, and we wouldn’t have had the fight we had and he wouldn’t have left all pissed and maybe going to break up with me, I don’t know…

All I can think about is scraping a piece of glass up my arm. Slashing thin lines of blood. I know where to cut to really hurt myself, I slash up by the crook of my elbow instead of my wrist.

The broken glass works. A flap of skin is free, hanging, and blood is running down my arm, and I feel better.

Meghan

2011-08-04T14:14:00.001-07:00

Meghan: He touches me, and I expect more. I mean, where’s the thrill, the shiver down deep, the roller coaster ride, stomach in my mouth, rush through my crotch?

When my mother was drinking, she and I used to have these great talks. I was ten when I asked her what was so great about sex, why did people do it?

She told me that it’s all about the orgasm, which feels like when you’re careening down the tall slope of a rollercoaster, that feeling in your gut that goes through your crotch.

Well, so here I am, and I’m not getting it. I mean, if eventually I’m supposed to feel the rush of going down so fast you can’t breathe except to scream… shouldn’t I be feeling that tension of slowly rising up the coaster? That, “it’s gonna happen, something’s gonna happen, something’s gonna feel good, feel better than anything” – like that?

Now his hand moves over my shirt, rubbing circles over my nipples.

Okay, that’s not bad.

I’m starting to get it, starting to feel it, but then –

Not.

I shut down.

I get off the ride, metaphorically speaking.

I remember asking my mother what the big deal was about putting your privates together with a boy’s. She said – besides the rollercoaster part – she said, you know the emptiness you feel inside sometimes?

I did and I didn’t.

She said, well, when a man puts his penis inside you, it makes you feel whole.

I want to feel whole even more than I want to feel the rollercoaster rush.

But all I feel is Mathias’s random groping. Reaching lower, but I get nothing.

What is wrong with me?

Jayla

2011-07-14T04:02:00.000-07:00

Jayla: The story spread.

My story!

I found out after I got my lunch of a bagel with nothing on it and a bottle of water. As I passed the jock table on my way to the theater table, this guy, this jerk-off, he got in front of me and mimed unzipping his you-know-what. He mimed holding out something huge, when his is probably all shrunken and small, pinky-sized, not zuchinni –sized like he was pretending.

I only noticed because I was trying not to.

Then the cheerleaders, well not all of them, they’re not all evil, but a bunch of them, they started pretending to suck dick.

Swallowing back my tears, I hope they don’t see me gulp, but it’s too late.

“Swallow! Swallow!” they chant.

Turning red, I don’t even have to swallow my own spit, my mouth is so dry. I hurry past. When I get to my table, not really my table, but the theater-geek table I’ve adopted… I find a place at the end, across from my friend Lauren. She looks at me with sad eyes.

So, she knows too.

They all know, I swallow. I suck dick, and I swallow. That’s what they’re going to call me for the next four years, right? Right? Swallow.

Because it’s not like I’m smart and get all A’s, even in honors math and English, it’s not like I’m the youngest reporter for the school paper, and it’s not like I got this cute haircut that cost me a week of babysitting money, and at home I take care of ‘lissa and Mikey, and I bake fresh cheddar cheese bread which I slather with butter and toast in a pan – making the best Goddamned grilled cheese sandwiches in the whole fucking world. It’s not like I wasn’t Miss Petite Westie, then L’il Miss Westie, and finally, last year, Miss Westie, riding in my own float in the Memorial Day parade and again this year, in the Labor Day parade.

It’s not like I’m all that, not to them.

To these kids I’m mostly meeting for the first time, I’m only my reputation as a girl who swallows.

Juliet

2011-06-30T04:54:00.001-07:00

Juliet: I don’t want to do it.

I have to do it.

I don’t want to—

Have to--

I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.

I can. Juliet, you can do it, you’ll be okay, I tell myself.

You’re not dying, it just feels that way. It’s just a panic attack.

Wiping cool sweat from my brow, I hit the space bar on my laptop, waking it up. Open Safari, sign in to Youtube. Open iMovie, and I’m almost ready to record.

I don’t want to do this, but I have to because I can’t breathe and it helps when I’m someone else, performing, playing to my fans but also revealing something from deep inside, my voice--

I am a star, I whisper inside, afraid of what I might say if I dare to speak -- that it might be the wrong thing, that someone’ll get hurt if I even breathe.

Pulling my hair back, I stuff it into the piece of black stocking I use so no one will recognize me. Sometimes, all I wear is the stocking. Sometimes I pull it down over my forehead, eyes and nose.

Today, I put on a snarled Hannah Montana wig from when I was ten and loved Hannah Montana and loved to parade around pretending to be her and now I don’t know who I’m pretending to be anymore or if I’m pretending at all.

Next, a Mardi Gras feathered mask over the upper half of my face. Then, get my wastebasket. At last, with the tap of a key, I am recording. Show’s on!

Sticking a finger down my throat, I throw up for the camera.

Emily

2011-06-16T06:08:00.000-07:00

Emily: Pills.

They’re all over my house. My Dad takes Vitamin D, a multivitamin, and right now, an antibiotic. The dog takes doggie-profen and glucosamine. My brother and I each take three vitamins a day, chewables because he’s only five, and me? I won’t swallow a pill.
Drives my mother nuts.

She easily swallows her pills, tiny handfuls of them. She keeps them ordered and ready in one of those big, rectangular pill boxes, only she had to adapt hers, putting stickers over the pre-written days because she takes different combinations of pills on schedule, four times a day. She keeps the bottles in a big basket in her room. One day, I checked them out. Just checked them out. I wasn’t going to take any. I won’t swallow a pill.

Vitamin D, 2000 mg.

Vitamin D, 1000 mg.

Multivitamin

Algaecal (?!)
Women’s weight loss plus supplement

Tramadol

Trazodone

Cyclobenzaprine

Neurontin, 100 mg.

Neurontin, 600 mg.

Synthroid

Abilify

Lorazapam

Me, I won’t swallow a pill.

...But I will snort them. ;)

Liz

2011-06-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

   Liz: I hate my mother. I hate my mother, hate my mother, hate my mother, hate HATE MY MOTHER, hate her.
   Because of her, I want to die. No joke, I really do. I can't go back to class. I can't. I can't, ever.
   I'm done for. It's all her fault.

   It started in 6th grade, when I got my first period. I mean, what happened, happened today of course, but it wouldn't have happened if my mother hadn't been crazy. It wouldn't have happened if she let me use tampons like the rest of the freakin world.
   She said, no joke, that she didn't want me to lose my virginity so young. In 6th grade. When she gave me my first pad, and I said Anna used tampons. My mother said if Anna's mother wanted her to grow up and be a slut, that was fine, but she wasn't going to let me, she didn't want me to lose my virginity... (to a tampon, OMG!)
   I mean, I didn't think that at the time. It sounded hinky, but I was like, okay Mommy, because what did I know? Maybe a tampon was just the same as a penis.
   That's a lie -- I knew it was different, even in 6th grade, I knew it wasn't the same, but even so, I wore the pad, and so on and so forth, until now. Until today.
   And it had to be a big, white, diaper of a pad -- not one of those ultra thin, deodorized, with wings pads. Which is why I could never wear pants when I had my period. I was sure the outline of my pad would show. I didn't want anyone to know I had my period, of course, but also I was embarrassed to be wearing a pad when everyone else I knew used tampons.
   So that's why I was wearing a skirt today. That's how come I can't ever go back to class. Why I'm going to sneak away as soon as the nurse leaves me alone, gonna sneak away out of school out of here, OUT OF HERE, thanks Mom.
   I'll just say it. You probably figured it out, but I'll just say it. I was in Social Studies class, and Mr. Lynch asked me to collect the homework, and I was walking up and down the rows when I felt it between my legs. My pad! Slipped, out of my underwear. I clamped my legs shut. I started to cry. I couldn't move. I said I had to go to the nurse, but I couldn't move and everyone thought I'd gone crazy or something, but it was worse than that.
   I don't know why I didn't just stay put, not move until the bell rang and everyone left and let them think I was crazy. Maybe I thought the pad hadn't slipped all the way. Maybe I thought if I ran fast enough I could outrun reality, outrun shame.
   You know what happened. The pad landed on the floor. I acted like it wasn't mine, and no one said anything, just their mouths dropped open and it was silent. Silent as death. My death.
   I can never go back.
   I will never go home.
   I hate my mother.
   Now you know why.

Nora

2011-05-19T12:20:00.000-07:00

Nora: I follow Gina into her room, and then freeze. Maybe my mouth hangs open for a moment, but I quickly shut it and continue into the room – pretending I’m not humbled, awed, diminished? By the hundreds of pictures of supermodels. Cut-outs from magazines paper the walls. The dresser drawers. The closet door. Even the headboard of Gina’s bed is a rainbow of eyes, faces, bodies.

I guess I didn’t hide my surprise so well, because Gina says, “My mom and I cut out pictures of women we admire. They’re for inspiration.”

For what? I wonder.

As if she read my mind, Gina says, “It’s supposed to help me get thin.”

“Uh huh,” I say. So lame.

Gina crosses the floor, her corduroys swishing because of her thighs rubbing together. That’s exactly why I never wear corduroys. But if Gina is embarrassed, it doesn’t show. Still, after patting down a curled corner on one of the pictures, she turns to me – a long way from supermodel thin. A long way from any kind of thin – and she says, “I don’t think it’s working, and I don’t know why. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m bulimic.”

I didn’t think I could feel any smaller than I already do, with all those beautiful eyes staring at me. But I do feel smaller, less than. And something burns in me – jealousy.

Juliet

2011-05-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

Juliet: I will never take off these socks, I think to myself.

I will take them off, but I will never wash them, I’ll save them, the socks that are filling with dirt as I press my heels into the side of the hill, off the path that leads away from Griffith Park Observatory.

There are people just above us, looking out at the lights of L.A. in the distance I hope, and not down into the dark hillside to the dark shadows which are Raif and I. This is not how I expected my first time to be.

My mouth is raw from kissing Raif, kissing that started outside the theater, as soon as we got into his car. Kissing that almost got out of control in the parking lot outside Starbucks, then turned tender inside, where we sat in front of the fake fireplace and ignored our coffee.

I have to pee, I think. My underwear, down around my ankles, is probably getting full of dirt. This hurts. I didn’t expect it to hurt so much. I’m sliding a little down the hill and rocks are scraping my butt. We didn’t go to Raif’s apartment because he said he wanted to take me someplace special. This is special.

Stop complaining, Juliet, this is special. We’re under the stars. We’re in love. I love Raif and he loves me. How long is this supposed to last?

That’s not what you’re supposed to be thinking, Juliet. You’re not supposed to be thinking at all!

This is so awesome! I’m having sex! Me, Juliet, Never Been Kissed Juliet.

And Raif is not old, like Michael said. He’s twenty-four.

Raif grunts softly, then sighs, long and deep. Rolling to the side, staying on the flannel shirt he laid down for us, he pulls me close. He sucks on my neck, and I realize too late that he’s giving me a hickey, which I know I should be happy about because it means I’m his, and it’s not like he’s branding me like a cow, it’s not.

Only now I have to tell my mother.

I worry too much.

“Your skin is so soft,” Raif whispers.

“My boot!” I say as I grab for it, rolling down the hill.

Raif scrambles down a few feet after it. His ass is pale in the moonlight. Skinny, the knobs of his pelvis show when he turns over. Like me, like me!

“I think I love you,” I say, my fingers holding tightly to my boots, nervous fingers because I never said that to a guy before.

Raif smiles and kisses me. Crushing my Doc Martens between us, and we start to slide again. My underwear is sticky and cold, and dirty and gross. Raif didn’t say he loved me back, but that’s okay. Of course he loves me, or we wouldn’t be here.

“I have to pee,” I say, giggling.

Meghan

2011-04-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

Meghan: has just come out of rehab for the second time, and she’s only seventeen! Meghan has appeared previously in OGW 12/3/09 and 6/10/10.

Meghan: Seriously. Seriously. Is this it? Sitting in a damp church basement room that smells like old turkey gravy, listening to some bleached blond in a sweater set who’s trying to look thirty-something but it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s actually fifty-something, listening to her tell us that the “Our Father”, the fucking “Our Father” is really the (fucking) “Lord’s Prayer,” and we should look it up. Seriously. I should look that up.

“Thank you Sharon,” the group says in one voice, like the automatons, the sober robots they are.

“Eat me Sharon,” is what I say, but under my breath, so they don’t hear.

In my hand, I hold on tightly to the form the chairperson has to sign to prove I came here, sat through this bullshit for a whole freaking hour of my life that I’ll never get back. Sat through this, my first AA meeting.

Juliet

2011-03-31T05:23:00.000-07:00

Juliet was the main character in a novel I didn't finished, Let Her Cry. I'm reworking the novel, but this part probably won't appear in it. Still, it's something Juliet needs to say...

Let her Cry

By Juliet Lourdes

Setting: a small home in Los Angeles, CA

Characters:

Juliet: sixteen

Cristina: Juliet’s mother, late forties

Dan/Danny: Juliet’s father, early forties

Scene one:

Juliet lies on the floor of her bedroom with her feet in the air. Her laptop is next to her. She types with one hand as she speaks.

Juliet

I’ll bet when people think of me, they are like, “Wow, look at her, she’s so cool with her clothes from Out of the Closet, all punky and retro. She gets that from her mother, Cristina Lourdes, the actress. Juliet’s mother is the coolest mother in the world…”

They don’t know us. They don’t know that sometimes I have to lie on the floor with my feet in the air, counting…

Scene two:

Cristina and Dan enter the living room, just one thin wall away from Juliet’s bedroom. Cristina slams the door behind them, then pushes past Dan and paces.

Cristina

They hated me! I’m not going to get the part! I hate me! You hate me!

Cristina collapses on the floor, bawling.

Dan

I don’t hate you.

Cristina

They hated me.

Dan

No one hates you.

Dan tries to comfort Cristina, but she pushes him away and hurries past Juliet’s room to her own. Dan stares after her, lost. He goes to the stereo, puts on a Hootie and the Blowfish tune, “Let Her Cry”. The lyrics blare, “And if the sun comes out tomorrow/ Let her cry…”

Scene three:

Juliet, still lying on her floor with her feet in the air, gulps for air as she counts…

Juliet

Eighty-nine, eighty-eight, eighty-seven…

Juliet stops counting, looks at the audience.

Juliet

“They” don’t know us. Sure, my mother and I are close. Sure, she’s cool. She takes me to awesome thrift shops for clothes. She’s my best friend sometimes. She taught me that when I’m having a panic attack, I should put my feet in the air and count backwards from one hundred because if you’re counting, you’re breathing, plus, no one dies with their feet in the air, counting backwards from one hundred. When I have a panic attack, it feels like someone’s going to die.

Eighty-six, Eighty-five…

Scene four:

While Juliet continues to count, Hootie continues to play in the living room – “And if the sun comes up tomorrow/Let her be...let her be.” Dan gulps from a glass of scotch. Cristina rushes out of her bedroom, runs to Dan and collapses against him. Juliet is still counting. Dan and Cristina hug-walk to their bedroom. No one checks on Juliet.

Saxon (Sax)

2011-03-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

Sax, short for Saxon, is an older OG, in her twenties. Sax writes these short blurbs about things she’s noticed or seen or felt…

Sax: What does love smell like? A little stinky. Pure, like a baby, but old, like the earth. Fallen leaves on a fall day, sunshine on your back, a snowflake on your tongue. Squooshy as a hug, strong as a heart, peace and creation and soaring through the sky while rooted in the ground. Home.

Ella

2011-03-03T05:59:00.000-08:00

Ella read a New York Times article about posting videos of cutting yourself on Youtube. Right Now, she is a star...
Ella first appeared in OGW 2/3/2011.

Ella: My mother yells up the stairs, “Ella, you have to get dressed Right Now.”

She says, “Ella, the bus is coming Right Now.”

“I’m busy, Right Now.D”

Cutting.

Only I don’t say that part.

Duh.

Using a bent paperclip, digging in, dragging it up and down my arm. Making a cross.

Right Now I’m making a short film.

Youtube.

Me.

Cutting.

I do this every day. Right Now, I’m done cutting, and I check my Hits and it’s around ten thousand and that’s just since three weeks ago and I’m a star.

Right Now I’m a star, Ma.

My mother says, “I’m not driving you if you miss the bus, you’ll have to walk!”

I haven’t missed the bus. I have time to pull a long, black sleeve down over my bloody arm, turn off the computer – password protected – tie on a choker of a fake cameo in a gothy-y cross on a ribbon around my neck.

“I’m coming! Right Now!” I yell down the stairs, my voice running ahead of me.

I smile to myself. What she doesn’t know will hurt her.

Only, then she hugs me, says, “I hope the rest of your day is better than the beginning,” and she means it.

Great. Just Great.

Right Now, I feel like shit.

My arm stings.

oh boy

ohshit

i am a star.

there’s the bus.

Allison

2011-02-17T08:21:00.000-08:00

Allison has both weight and self-esteem issues. She takes most of her self-image from what others think of her, especially boys. Here, she begins a new diet, one of her many attempts at changing herself to meet others’ expectations. Allison first appeared in OGW 4/8/10, and again on 10/28/10.

Allison: I’m sitting all the way back at a table by the courtyard window, nowhere near through-traffic, and yet a bag of Fritos hits me in the head.

“Sorry,” says Soulsucking Loser Number Two Hundred and Twelve – they’re all the same, the boys in my class.

“No problem,” I say, putting the bag on the lunchtable and sliding it towards him.

Before the Loser gets to it, my fist smashes down, pulverizing the Fritos. “Sorry,” I say.

“Freak,” he says.

Yeah, whatever. Go home and cry to your momma.

Now where was I?

Oh yeah, Diet, Day One: I’m starting on a diet of Goldfish – the cheddar cheese flavored kind, not the swimmy kind. First, I bite off the tail, carefully so the rest of the fish stays together. If the fish breaks, I punish myself by throwing that one away.

After the tail is chewed five times and has basically just dissolved – I wouldn’t consider it swallowing, more like I absorb the taste of cracker… after that, I put the fish body in my mouth, and use my tongue to position the body upright between my top and bottom teeth, and then I split the body into two pieces with a gentle bite. I chew on these five chomps too, and then I swallow three times. Running my tongue over my teeth, I make sure they’re entirely clean of goldfish, and then I reach into my ziplocked baggie and get another one.

And that’s how I do it. That’s how I get through lunch. Day One: Twenty-two goldfish.

Ella

2011-02-03T05:36:00.000-08:00

Ella suffers from anxiety and depression since becoming a teenager, and it seems like no one understands her, especially her mother.

Ella: I don’t feel like writing don’t feel like writing don’t feel like writing my mother is making me do this she says I have to stop crying and this will help she says I have to write a whole page I don’t feel like writing I don’t feel like writing Mom what’s wrong with me? I feel like crying all the time, and sometimes I really want to do something, like, something fun, but I can’t get out of bed, I mean I can’t lie down either. I have all these ideas of things to do but I don’t want to do anything but I want to do something but I don’t know! Why are you making me do this Mom, it isn’t helping. I still feel frozen. I’m still crying. I don’t feel like writing. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I always love writing. I finished the first chapter of Saving Ella, which I know you want me to let you read

I don’t feel like writing I don’t feel like writing I don’t feel like

Oh I don’t want to draw either.

You don’t understand! Why won’t you listen to me? You say you can’t understand me if I don’t stop crying, but how can I stop crying if you don’t understand? Writing and drawing help you, they don’t help me.

I don’t feel like writing.

There, that’s a page.

I stopped crying, are you happy now?

Oh. You probably are.

Sax (short for Saxon)

2011-01-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

Sax, short for Saxon, is an older OG, in her twenties. Sax writes these short blurbs about things she’s noticed or seen or felt…

Sax: He had a six tattooed in plain blue ink on his wrist. If we hadn’t been naked together and oh so close, I wouldn’t have seen it. When I asked him what it meant, he told me that his best friend Selena gave him that tattoo because he’d broken six women’s hearts. But what was really important was that Selena was dead now, murdered by a jealous boyfriend, and the number six on his wrist was all he had left of her.

Miranda

2010-12-30T06:17:00.000-08:00

Miranda is in her early twenties, newly married to an abusive husband. This is an excerpt from a short story I wrote called, Love is a Battlefield.

“Don’t be disgusting,” Patrick said, pinching the cigarette I’d just lit between his two fingers and taking it from me, pressing it out in the ashtray I was holding. Patrick hated cigarette smoke.

“I was just... I mean...” Shutting up because he wouldn’t hear me anyway... I watched him do a bong hit. The insides of the bong were brown with accumulated resin, and as Pat sucked, the water bubbled thickly, making me think of sucking up phlegm. The image, the sound, made my already pained and empty stomach clench.

Why couldn’t I smoke in the living room just this once? All I wanted was to relax after unpacking for two days. My fingers stung with tiny paper cuts from boxes on boxes and my thighs and back screaming from bending and lifting and straightening and... Closing my eyes for a moment, I tried to breathe, not to freak out. This was our first week in San Francisco. We’d just spent six long days in a truck together. We were trying to start fresh, renew our relationship, make it all okay again. It had so been falling apart, what happened? I remembered loving Patrick so much in college, going into his closet when he’d left for class and pulling his favorite sweater around my face, breathing him in. I remembered brushing my teeth after having a cigarette so he wouldn’t have to smell it on me. I remembered the first time I said, “I think I love you,” and he said, “Me too,” before passing out on my lap.

I remembered holding my breath and not crying while he screwed me against a wall in a deserted corner outside of the Cloisters in New York, because he said he loved me and if I loved him I’d do it even though I didn’t want to and I was so ashamed because anyone could’ve come by and anyway I really didn’t want to.

We were married now. Three days already. Pat had wanted to stop in Reno and play blackjack. I got drunk. He hugged me close and said, “Let’s go, let’s do it babe,” and off we went to Cupid’s Chapel of Love. Ninety-five dollar wedding. My eyes bleary, no makeup, hair gnarled and roots showing through the bleached blond, wearing a fatigue tee shirt with black sequined neckline and longish gauzy skirt Patrick hated, called fugly. Now it was on our wall for anyone to see, forever, fugly me, our wedding picture, with Patrick next to me grinning and light reflecting off his big forehead, receding hairline at twenty-three.

The wedding picture was one of only three things hanging in our new apartment, new city, new life so far -- there was also the dartboard, and another wedding picture, Patrick’s little treasure, which I hadn’t remembered him taking. The one where I was naked, positioned spread-eagled on the hotel bed, eyes hooded, mostly shut, hardly conscious... our honeymoon. Had he fucked me, or only taken a picture to hang over our new bed in our new home, new life?

“I need a cigarette. I’ll be in my studio,” I said, opening my eyes, trying not to feel the constriction in my chest or the throbbing behind my eyes or the edginess of my heart beating a little too fast, and fear creeping behind me like a shadow of a tiger falling over me and the faint sound of toothy breath so near all the time, it seemed, waiting to pounce. I kept my eyes straight forward, afraid to look behind me.

Stephanie

2010-12-23T06:09:00.000-08:00

Stephanie is a young writer-to-be with a domineering mother and a hurting heart.

Stephanie:

I feel … ick. Icky. Blah. Motionless. Immobile.

Depressed.

Because of Christmas coming up?

Because I’m done shopping, and now it’s just a waiting time, and I hate to wait?

Because I want – no, I expect – to write everyday, and today I just don’t want to

Don’t want to don’t want to don’t want to

Maybe by feeling this way, I’ll learn something about myself, or about other people,

Maybe I’ll grow in my understanding of why my mother comes home and yells because my sneakers are not lined up by the door, one is askew and the other is touching the wall and sneakers are supposed to be lined up with their toes one inch from the wall and why don’t I do anything right?

Cassie

2010-12-09T06:39:00.000-08:00

Cassie is my youngest outsider girl, just seven and three-quarters years old. She is to be the main character in a picture book I’m working on called, “I Like Her That Way”

Cassie: Sometimes Mommy is very busy writing all day, and she doesn’t have time to get dressed, she just stays in her sweats all day, dressing it up with a sequined scarf when she comes to pick me up from school. She hasn’t even bothered to twist her dreads, she just has them pushed back with a headband, and they’re all sticking out this way and that way, and I like her that way.

Eva

2010-12-02T07:52:00.000-08:00

Eva is thirteen, stuck between being a little girl and a teenager. It feels like her mother doesn’t care about her anymore…

Eva: “You’re the worst mother ever!” I shout, basically throwing myself up the stairs – I hit the wall with my body, bounce off, fling myself up another step, crash, thrump stomp stomp.
I want to throw my laptop against the wall, just to show her, but I can’t even throw it on the bed. Aaagh! I can’t believe she made me take my homework upstairs just because precious little John, her precious baby who’s not even a baby anymore, just because he’s using the computer downstairs, and my laptop lost its charge and now I’m putting it gently on my desk and plugging it in because even though I want to show my mother how little she means to me, I need my laptop.
After it’s plugged in, I throw myself across the bed. I stop crying, because she hasn’t come up the stairs after me, and she won’t hear me. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about me anymore.
Before she had John, shit, even earlier this week…
I remember, sometimes she’d scream at me if I screamed at her. I remember how much that scared me.
But this time she just calmly told me to go to my room now, and she didn’t yell, and she didn’t come after me. It’s been like ten minutes, and she’s just downstairs watching TV with Daddy or playing a game on the computer with John, and she just left me up here.
I start doing my homework, but not on the floor, like she said, or my bed, where I could be comfortable, but standing up next to my desk. My chair is covered with clothes I haven’t put away when she told me to.
She used to put my clothes away for me.
She used to read me three stories a night.
She used to cry how sorry she was if I had a tantrum.
Now it’s like I don’t exist, it’s like…
“Eva!” she shouts up the stairs.
“What?” I say, and I don’t even sound mad, like, “what!”, instead, I sound relieved.
“When you’re done with your homework, come down, I want to read the Nutcracker to you and John.”
She always does this, she always tries to make me part of the family. It’s like she doesn’t even acknowledge that I’m mad at her, and plus I’m thirteen and not a kid anymore…
“I’ll be right down!” I say, and hurry up to finish my math homework.
I’m not saying she’s right. But I feel a lot better, and I can’t wait to snuggle up next to her and anyway, she needs me to cuddle with her because she’s always cold, and she’s says I’m her heater, and I can go back to being mad later.

Karen

2010-11-18T04:53:00.000-08:00

Karen, 19, remembers when she was twelve, and she and best friend Rose weren’t really trying to hurt themselves… right? Karen isn’t so sure about Rose’s intentions, even back then.

Karen: When we were twelve, Rose and I decided to become blood sisters. Okay, it was Rose’s idea, and Rose’s razor blade, but I was willing. I was usually willing to do what Rose wanted, at least back then, before we grew up, and things changed -- our needs changed, our desires intensified and morphed, and well… things were different then, they just were.

We – or I, anyway -- had no idea the damage a new razor blade could do. One swipe didn’t only elicit the few drops of blood we needed for our ceremony -- it opened a deep gash in my wrist, that flowed a red river and wouldn’t be stopped even when I clamped my hand over it.

Of course, Rose wouldn’t let me bleed-out alone, and anyway the ritual was already begun, so she slashed her wrist as well, and we pressed the wide wounds -- gaping like mouths -- together, said a quick, “Sisters forever, ‘til death do us part,” and then ran home to my house before we bled out for real.

My mother screamed when she saw us. She dropped the roasting pan, and chicken fat that would’ve become gravy splattered the walls and floor and then all of us screamed, from the hot fat speckling our faces and arms. I remember thinking, as my mother wrapped our wrists in towels and made us apply pressure -- thinking not that Rose and I were idiots for what we did, but rather that my mother was a crazy witch who should stop screaming at us, and my father wouldn’t have freaked out like that, but he was sure going to go nuts with worry when he came home and saw all the blood and chicken on the kitchen floor, and no one home.

“We should wait for Dad,” I said.

“Get in the car fools,” was all she said to that. “You idiotic... what were you thinking? Get in the car! Was this one of those suicide pacts I’ve heard about? What did I do to deserve this? Get in the car now!”

Soon, we were speeding down New Haven Avenue at about five times the speed limit. My mother continued, “Haven’t I loved you enough?” Then she was on her cell, trying to reach Rose’s mother, but we could’ve told her it was no use. It was four o’clock, and Mrs. Ramos would be at Last Stop Bar by now, on her third Bay Breeze, chatting it up with some fat guy or fireman or carpenter or out-of-work Karate instructor or divorced biker or someone... it didn’t really matter, so long as they bought her drinks and later took her home for a quickie, or sometimes even longer -- sometimes they stayed for a week or a month -- and generally they didn’t bother Rose, but anyway...

It was a big deal, our becoming blood sisters. We got stitches but no lollipops, and had to talk to three different social workers. No one got what we were trying to do, or that we didn’t mean to hurt ourselves.

At least I didn’t. As time went on, I wondered about Rose. I wondered how much she was willing to do to try and get her mother’s attention.

Sonny

2010-11-11T04:25:00.000-08:00

New Outsider Girl, Sonny, is only thirteen. She’s beginning to get her teenaged personality, is beginning to get annoyed with her mother’s interference in her life, but… in some ways, she’s still a kid, and wants her mother to continue to take charge.

Sunny: My mother makes schedules:

Tells me “it’s 7:45, time to get dressed.” (seriously!), “it’s 5:00, time for homework”, “it’s 5:45, time to put on your karate uniform”, “it’s 6:15, time for dinner,” and worst of all, “It’s 10:00, time for bed,” like I can’t tell when I’m tired! She says if I don’t go to bed by ten I’ll be a bitch in the morning and she has to work and she doesn’t have time to deal with that so “Lights out now Molly!”

My mother hates messes:

Comes into my room to watch iCarly with me, looks around and grimaces and I have to say, “Why do you always do this, you always say you’re coming in to hang out with me and then you look around and think about how messy I am!” She says, “I didn’t say anything,” which to be fair, is true, but I know what she’s thinking.

My mother hates messes and makes schedules and it drives me crazy, but sometimes, it’s not so bad. Sometimes I’m so glad she does these things for me:

After Justin Hollister whispered in my ear, “Could you find out if Hannah likes me,” when I liked him, my mother stepped over mismatched shoes and scraps of fashion, around a giant stuffed dog, and squished between books and clothes and dolls to get to me, bawling on my bed, to hold me tight, and it was like she was never going to let go, and she cried with me, and she said, “What a mess we are. It’ll be okay,” until it was.

My mother has probably scheduled when it’ll be time for me to grow up, but she’s not in a hurry for that. Sometimes I think, I’m not either.

Allison

2010-10-28T05:49:00.000-07:00

Allison has both weight and self-esteem issues. She takes most of her self-image from what others think of her, especially boys. Here, she tries to make herself into a doll. Allison first appeared in OGW 4/8/10.

Allison: I was going through this box of my things from like around fifth grade, and I found this doll with blond hair like mine only better of course because it’s smooth and straight and goes down to the doll’s butt. I’ve been growing my hair out for a year, and my hair only just goes past my shoulders, plus it’s ragged and all different lengths from when I stupidly had it cut short and “sassy” – that was the word I used, and…

Where was I?

Oh yeah, the doll. So, I uncover this doll and I realize that I have a black shirt with a pink skull on it just like the doll is wearing, and I have pink sneakers and the perfect pink and black plaid skort that’s in my “thin clothes” drawer, but maybe I can fit in it.

Maybe I can be just like this doll. I want to be like a doll. I want her smile.

The shorts part of the skort squeezes my thighs, but with black leggings underneath, it’s not so bad.

The doll is flat in front. My skull shirt is baggy and hides my humungous alien breasts pretty well, and my tummy too, kinda. I can be a doll.

With a Sharpie marker, I put pink streaks in my hair like the doll has. I know, I know, Sharpies are permanent ink… I know my Mom is going to tell me this, if she notices at all.

I am going to tell everyone at school that they made a doll after me. I am going to tell Trevor and he’s going to say “Of course they’d do that, because you’re a doll, Allison!”

And then I’ll smile, secure like my doll.

Lola

2010-10-21T04:53:00.000-07:00

Lola is another Fant, like Aleia (OGW 10/14) and Gemma (OGW 9/24/09, 10/29/09, 2/4/10, 5/27, 7/29, 9/16). Lola – half-mermaid -- was thrown back to sea by her parents and almost drowned before she came to live with her Fant family. Maybe this is why she is the angriest, most distrusting and solitary of the Fants.

Lola: “There’s nobody ho-ome, nobody home,” I sing with my earbuds stuffed deep.

It’s hard to dance in the little bedroom of our one-bedroom, four bed apartment, but I’ve moved the space heater to rest on the bottom bunk, Aleia’s bed. Probably going to go up in flames, but I don’t care.

That’s what everyone thinks, that I don’t care.

Well, maybe I don’t. Not right now! I think as I front-kick across the nine foot width of the room, listening to Avril Levigne sing, “She’s lost inside/Lost inside…”

I’m pent-up energy, a snake hissing inside, coiling and uncoiling, rattling. I am myself, scales on my legs, green face, shark teeth – the whole Fant package, half mermaid, half really really pissed off girl.

I don’t even know what I’m angry at. A lot of times, I don’t even know.

I just know that this morning Luke said something about Gemma being in trouble, and it’s not that I’m jealous – what do I have to be jealous of – but suddenly I was clacking my sharp teeth together like I was going to bite someone’s head off.

I could do it, too. That’s the scary part. These guys are my family, but I could seriously bite one of them sometimes. That’s why, when they went out to gather supplies for a rescue of their precious new fairy friend, I laced up my punky boots, put on a black dress with zippers and studs I got on St. Mark’s Place last week, and scrolled down to Avril on my iPod.

Well, our iPod. Me, Aleia, Ian, Luke, we share everything. Nothing’s mine. No. Thing.

Aleia

2010-10-14T06:59:00.000-07:00

Aleia is a “Fant” (short for “Fantasy Creature”, also, child of a parent who was addicted to magic). Her mother smoked Sylph, the most dangerous of the magical drugs, and as a result, when Aleia tries to feel any kind of emotion, she turns to air. Aleia is a new friend of Gemma’s, the Fairy-girl in OGW 9/24/09, 10/29/09, 2/4/10, 5/27, 7/29, 9/16. Both girls appear in the novel I’m working on, Wings.

Aleia: Sometimes I think the worst thing about being part-Sylph is not being able to feel my heart beat. Or break.

After Gemma leaves to find out more about her mother, for a moment I feel something, something like a soreness inside, something like a green stick bending bending bending until –

The image blows away, and so do I.

See, the thing with us Fants is that our emotions bring out the elements of our deformities. I’m the most deformed of all. I don’t get to just sport a fancy glowing horn-nub like Luke, or have long, luxurious hair like Lola. Sure she has scales, but only on her legs, and she can cover them if she wants.

Me, I turn to smoke. Wind, if I’m really upset. Polluted wind, that’s what it feels like when my heart breaks.

Gemma wants to find her mother, who smoked Fairy Dust. Big deal, right? Not to me. My mother smoked Sylph, smoked the actual spirit of the air, made the spirits disappear and made herself disappear finally, like she always wanted.

Floating near the ceiling, not joining in the conversation with my friends as they discuss Gemma and whether they can trust her and where she came from and all that stuff that I don’t want to hear because it’s what made that beding greenstick feeling happen and then made me change from little girl to air…

Anyway, I am what I am.

My mother never could be. She was so tiny, with fingers like slender bird bones that floated over the piano keys. I liked to lie under the grand piano we had and the instrument was my sky, and I could put my hands up and touch it, feel the sky, feel it vibrate. Feel my mother’s heart, in her music.

Hear her voice, like sparkling drops of rain or sharp jewels… flowing like a stream or racing like a river… everything, everywhere. Mine.

But her music was all she had, all she thought she had. Forget my father or me -- she did. Forget that she made her first album when she was nineteen and she went on tour and she had fans and everyone said she was the next big thing.

She wasn’t, and so after a while, she forgot. She forgot everything, except how to play and sing and cry. Eventually, to smoke. Smoke Sylph until she disappeared into the breeze, and it was just the way she wanted it, I think, to be the air moving the chimes outside the window, but not to be in the real world of solid things like broken dreams and hearts.

The ache in me makes me swell, like a dark cloud. But I cannot rain. I cannot feel what I want to feel, like everyone else. I can only sink into a shadow in the corner, and imagine that my heart is broken because I will never have a mother again.

Maree

2010-10-07T11:24:00.001-07:00

(add your comments) to Maree’s rant about what to do when you’re really mad…

Maree:

What to do when someone yells at you and you didn’t do anything!….

“key” your leg so no one sees

punch yourself in the stomach

get drunk smoke dope forget

eat a bowl of Phish food with whipped cream

eat another bowl of Phish food with whipped cream

yell really loud in your car

yell back!

tear a notebook in half

run around the block

run up and down the stairs over and over

count to one thousand

look at your hurt face in the mirror

swear a blue streak, whatever that means

go to your room and chain-smoke

get some fresh air

dig your toes in dirt

take a nap

cry cower run

away

Nancy

2010-09-30T04:19:00.000-07:00

Nancy: Original Outsider Girl writer, Nancy (Crosses, 1991, 2001). Mother of Casey (OGW), confidante of Rain and Kayla (Somebody’s Daughter, OGW)

Moving On

By Nancy Keenan

Grab handful of necklaces:

Silver moon goddess

Turquoise healing beads

Long chain

Fat heart

Beaded Indian Mama

Pack:
Clay wolf Casey made

Scribbled of phone #’s

Purple post-its

Conch

Witch Baby

Pile into used Priority

Mail shipping box:

Each Day a New Beginning

Coraline

Wood Nymph Seeks Centaur

My Many Colored Days

Twelve filled notebooks

Buffy calendar

Hubble: Views of Space

Hug:

Big Mama Panda

Kiss:

Little Panda Bear

Stuff:
   The box
   The suitcase
   Full

Carry:

It all to my car.

Say:

Don’t cry sweet girl,

We’re going to be okay.

Corrina

2010-09-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

Corrina measures her life against popular girl, Sasha’s life. In reality, both girls have been hurt badly, but Corrina can’t see past her own pain.

Corrina: Sasha is popular. Sasha grew breasts in sixth grade. Sasha is thin. I don’t think she is pretty, but everyone loves Sasha. She’s all nice, she’s all weepy and broken. I hat the way she gets everyone’s attention by telling them the private details of her life. I’ve heard her father’s mean. He hits her mother. Maybe he hurts Sasha.

Sasha is a virgin, and everyone knows it. My friends and I make fun of her for it.

One time, after Math class, I wanted to talk to the teacher, Mr. Mitchem, because my sister was in the hospital again and my mother got drunk and was in jail, and I didn’t have time to do my homework and I wanted an extension instead of a zero… but Sasha got to him first. She was crying. Mr. Mitchem told me to leave the room.

Sasha and I were in the bathroom once together. I was mad because I went in there to throw up, and with her there, I couldn’t. I had to stare at my split ends, ugly brown frizzy split ends without style hair. Ugly blue eyes that didn’t sparkle like Sasha’s, and couldn’t call up tears at a moment’s notice like Sasha’s eyes could. I was tough. She was a weak, sniveling, spoiled…

Sasha: Sometimes I hold my stomach in all day. You’re lucky, you’re so thin.

Me: My mother says my butt is too big. It’s huge. How do you—

Sasha: I’d trade my breasts for your butt any day. I have no butt at all.

It was true, she had a flat butt, but still, everyone said she was so pretty. No one said that about me.

Sasha went back to the auditorium for rehearsal. She had a lead in Fiddler on the Roof. All I ever wanted to be was a singer and an actor, but when I tried out, they told me I looked too young (i.e., flat-chested!), and I could be in the chorus or work backstage doing sets.

I ended up working backstage because a lot of girls back there thought Sasha was a prima donna and they didn’t want to listen to her cry about her flat butt and big breasts.

Woe is her. Maybe her Daddy does more than hit her Mom. Maybe I don’t care.

I heard the drama coach saying to the head set designer how poor Sasha had so many problems. When I heard that, my eyes stung, because Mr. Opal was not only the drama coach, but was also my favorite teacher and the only person I would ever consider talking to about my problems. But like everyone else, he only cared about Sasha, apparently. I turned and walked away, and Mr. Opal didn’t even notice I was standing there. I went to the bathroom – alone this time – and put my finger way down the back of my throat and threw up and threw up and threw up. Fuck Sasha. Could Sasha do this? Someday someone would notice, and then they’d forget about Sasha’s problems and they’d talk about how sad I am. Someday.

Gemma

2010-09-16T05:10:00.000-07:00

Gemma is the adolescent girl with wings, a birth defect caused by her mother smoking Fairy Dust. Gemma is in New York City, searching for her mother, who ran away when Gemma was six. Earlier posts from Gemma appeared in OGW 9/24/09, 10/29/09, 2/4/10, and 7/29/10. In this, longer, post, Gemma finishes her visit with the Hag, who divinates where Gemma can find her mother.

Gemmma: “Spirit of Fire, burn away the masks which may hide Gemma’s mother from her --”

I close my eyes. I barely breathe. This is so stupid, and yet I want to believe. I want to believe this is a spell that will conjure my mother. I want to believe that tomorrow midnight -- the dawn of spring -- the Hag will turn into a beautiful maiden, and she will have fulfilled her destiny and magic will be real and my mother will appear in this circle next to me any second now, any second now I’ll smell her rosemary shampoo and feel her hand rest on mine and I’ll stop shivering and --

“Spirit of Water, wash away the obstacles that stand between Gemma and Maya--”

I smell incense, not my mother. Incense and rosewater and the slight stink of diaper, a smell I remember from when Jacob, my Jacob, was a baby.

Great, just great, the most magical witch in the city wears Depends. Opening my eyes a crack, I see her bare feet right next to me. They are smooth and milk-white, not the hairy, bunioned things I expected. But instead of seeing the magic in that, I want to scream, You’re not a witch! I but I don’t, I just sniffle again as I start to cry, thinking, It’s hopeless. This old woman will never find --

“Spirit of Earth, ground us... ground us...”

Ground us in reality, woman! Like, get a grip, I think, mustering up some anger out of my fear and heartache and starting to stand up again. With surprising strength, the old lady pushes me back down.

“Ground us in reality,” she says, which freaks me the hell out, I mean does everyone here read minds? Again, I try to stand, and again she pushes me down. “You must not break the circle,” she says, and then she totters away to the cabinet over the sink. I’m watching her as she stands on her toes and reaches in, pulls down a box -- not a shoe box but maybe a boot box -- and brings it back to the circle. She puts the it in the circle with me.

All of this has been as if I’m not here looking at her. Frustration is welling up inside of me like a tornado gathering momentum and sucking everything in. I’m shaking, I’m so mad. Where is my mother, that’s all I came here to find out! I don’t have time for hocus pocus bullcrap.

“What the --”

Before I can even get going on my rant, the old, haggy, witching woman gasps! She claps her hands to her cheeks, and her mouth is a ridiculous “O”. Putting her hands on the box, she says, “Look what the spirits have brought!” She pushes the box toward me until it touches my legs.

Seriously?

FUCKING WACK JOB WITCH, WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MOTHER! I scream in my head.

The bitch witch opens the box slowly.

Oh my Goddess. Oh my Goddess! I dive into the box with my hands, grabbing letters addressed with my mother’s handwriting -- oh God, I remember now how she used to dot her “i’s” with little hearts... Envelopes marked “Return to Sender”, envelopes addressed to me! Fifty letters, easy, plus drawings, a little watercolor of me, a silver ring with a dragon etched into it that says “Luis”. That’s my Celtic zodiac sign. I put the ring on, and my finger feels warm, and then the warmth rushes up my arm and to my heart. Other trinkets that clatter and tinkle as I scrape my fingers through the box, feeling my mother, physically feeling her presence.

I’m crying so hard, I can hardly see. I’m happy to have the box, but I’m going to rip the old woman’s head off for not just giving it to me. I want to boil her in oil. I want to shake her until she breaks into pieces and leave her on her weird kitchen floor in her weird, fake circle, a puddle of baby blue satin and tulle.

“You! You! You, you -- you had this all this time and you made me sit here and wait and you saw, you saw how upset I was, and you, you pretended to do magic, but I saw you! I saw you turn on the stove to make it warm! I saw you get my mother’s things out of the cabinet! You’re just, you are -- you are a LIAR! I HATE YOU!”

I drop handfuls of my mother’s letters back into the box, try to put the top on but am shaking so badly, I can’t even do that simple task, and I feel like such a loser and a chump. Finally, I get the top on and clutch the box to my body -- protecting it, loving it, holding on to it for dear life. I scramble to my feet and run to the door in a totally ridiculous way because I am still wearing my tight leather skirt and I can’t move my legs that well, plus my foot has fallen asleep --

“Fuck a duck!” I say, withholding a scream as I struggle with the chains and bolts holding me in. I can’t get out, I can’t get out, help me help me “MoFo!” I cry out. I can’t breathe.

The old woman puts her arm over my shoulder. I feel something like an electric shock, and for an instant I think I’ve been tasered! Either because of the taser or because I’m panicking, I can’t move! I call out with my mind for my Fant friends, “Help me!”

Suddenly, the shock fades, and like before, when Aleia touched my chest, I feel calm. I watch while a hand unfastens the door and opens it for me.

“Go in peace, Believe in peace, Create peace,” I hear, but it’s not the old woman’s gruff, warbling voice -- it’s a soft, warm, feminine voice that feels on my ears like a swallow of warm milk would feel.

As I leave, I turn to look, and instead of seeing the old woman, I see a beautiful maiden. She smiles. “Spring is early this year,” she says just as Ian comes barreling up the stairs.

“No!” I say to him, but it’s too late.

He’s yanked a pole out of the bannister, and is brandishing it like a sword, aiming for the hag/maiden’s throat.

Ramona

2010-09-09T05:49:00.000-07:00

Ramona is bulimic, and her therapist wants her to start each day with a positive affirmation, but it doesn’t work out that way.

Ramona: I stare at myself in the mirror. Actually, it’s more of a glare. I’m supposed to look into my eyes and tell myself, “I’m pretty enough, I’m thin enough, I’m good enough, I am enough!”

Instead, I say, “I’m fat. I’m ugly. No one will ever love me!”

I mean, fuck therapy. Anyway, it’s true. I see myself in the mirror, and I am fat, I am ugly. I’m not enough for anyone to love me.

My reflection stares hard back at me. I’m so crazy, I’m having a staring contest with myself, seeing who will blink first, LOL.

Blink. Blink, blink. My eyelids start moving fast, as if they’re holding back tears, only they’re not because I would never cry in front of anyone, even myself in the mirror. I try never to cry at all, because what’s the point? No one cares.

“No one cares about me. Mom would rather sit at her laptop writing than hear me talk. What I say isn’t important.”

I sigh. Theresa, my therapist, would say that I’m holding on to a resentment against my Mom, but I’m like, for what? For ignoring me? I have a right to be angry. I want to be angry.

It’s not just that my Mom doesn’t have time to read the poem I wrote her, like happened last night.

It’s that I remember, the last time I cried, she said, “Ramona, I can’t understand you when you’re crying! Go to your room until you can be calm enough to talk to me coherently.”

Well, I went to my room, and I wrote in my journal, wrote how much I hate him, I hate my stepfather, Cody --

I hate him hate him hate him hate him hate him

FUCK HIM!

Then I scribbled in my sketchpad, a picture of how I was feeling, black lines without direction, over and over, a black hole of graphite expanding and then PWOOF, it dragged me in, and I did stop crying. I got all calm. I went downstairs, and I said, “Mom, can we talk now?” and I was gonna tell her the truth about Cody, and she was gonna take me into her arms like she used to when I fell on my rollerskates and my knee was bleeding, or that time I took the wrong bus after school and got lost and was all the way in New Haven and –

“Sweetie, I’m trying to make dinner now. This isn’t a good time.”

“Mom! It has to be now!”

“Cody will be home soon and you have homework, and I have to get this chicken in a pan.” My mother squinted at an open copy of The Joy of Cooking. She glanced at me. She sighed. “Please, Ramona, I’m busy.”

“Mommy—“

“Ramona! I said not now!”

Now, looking into the mirror, I say, “I’m thin enough for Cody. I’m pretty enough for Cody.”

But he’s ruined me for anyone else.

Even for myself.

Cherish

2010-09-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

Cherish, teen mother and Outsider Girl, tries to find some time for herself and discovers it’s “not about me”. Cherish also appeared in OGW April 1, 2010 and May 20.

Cherish: Seven am, before the boy is awake. He got me up at four, then he went back to sleep. I tossed and turned, got up, made the coffee for my mother and me, sat down at my computer.

Free time. Writing time.

Only there’s an email from the Disney store about a sale on hoodies, and next thing I know I’m browsing their site for about an hour, and I’ve put like sixty dollars on my PayPal account and I’ve bought the boy stuff like a white tee shirt with Jack from Nightmare Before Christmas on it which I figure he can get away with wearing to school ‘cause the uniform is a white shirt.

I want him to stand out. I want him noticed.

That’s how it is now – screw me getting noticed, nobody ever noticed me for the good things anyway. And now I don’t have to worry about me anymore, it’s all about him.

I haven’t written one word. I have like six pages of a children’s book, one I’m writing for him, my sweet little boy.

For him.

When will it be for me again?

Was it ever?

But guess what -- I have a beautiful boy going into kindergarten this year, so who the fuck am I to complain?

Only, I can’t help it. I want a boyfriend, friends, a new hoodie for me, a full night sleep going to bed before one and up after nine and then a day to write and draw like I used to but—

He’s awake now, tugging on me leg, smiling in my face. Then he sneezes, and the dripping boogers make him cry so I have to go now, have to clean his face. Story over.

For today, it’s not about me—

It’s Not About Me.

Stacy

2010-08-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

Stacy would like not to be an outsider girl, but because of her OG best friend Melanie, Stacy has been dragged in(see OGW, 12/3/09, 1/4/10). Right now, she’s trying to write a letter to Melanie, who has finally been sent, against her will, to rehab.

Stacy: “Whuh-ut!” I roll my eyes as I shut the lid on my laptop. I feel like growling, so I do. “Grrrr,” but my little sister doesn’t hear that, or she doesn’t care, more likely. She knocks on my bedroom door again, and can’t see when my fingers curl into manicured claws that I want to use to scratch someone’s eyes out – hers, Melanie’s, my own, I don’t care. Fucking Melanie. Fucking Heather. Fuck me.

My sister knocks again, boldly, unashamedly, without fear – which makes me even madder. Now my claws dig into my palms, making half-moon circles as my hands become fists.

“I said, what!” I say.

At this, my sister Heather, six years old and oblivious, walks into my room. It won’t do me any good to yell at her now, she’s already here. I sigh, a sigh-growl – huuuh (yoga breath in), huuurrgh (and out).

“Whatcha’ writing? Is it a poem? Is it about me? Want me to write you a poem?”

I was writing a letter. I don’t want to – oh fuck it, let her see it! I open my laptop, which whirrs to life, and my letter to Melanie appears –

Dear Melanie,

I am hurt that you would ask me to

“I can even write a song!” Heather continues. “Here it goes, ‘My sister Stacy is a witch,/ My sister Stacy has eyes that twitch,/ Stacy, oh Stacy, is so mean,/ She always makes me feel inbetween—“

“That doesn’t even make sense, you little freak!” I grab Heather around her little kid belly and pull up her tee shirt, saying, “I’ve got skin! I’ve got skin!” Squiggling my fingers on her belly, which is her biggest tickle spot, I crack her up.

“NO!” (gasp gasp giggle), “I’M NOT DONE!” (gasp, giggle giggle choke, giggle). She squirms away. She gets to my bed, climbs up on top and throws her arms to the side, not just singing, but bellowing, “My sister Stacy grabs my skin,/ Makes me laugh, ain’t that a sin,/ She’s all mad that I can sing,/ And she can’t and her friend Melanie went to rehab,/ Which doesn’t rhyme/ Ain’t it a crime –“

Heather jumps back as I leap from my chair to the bed. I grab her by the sneaker and pull her toward me. She’s giggling, and starts singing that Amy Winehouse song which it’s just crazy for a six year old to know and it makes me want to cry, only I laugh as I pull her all the way to me and she’s singing in a fake low voice, “They try to make me go to rehab and I say—“

“And I say/ No! No! No!” We sing together, and then I tickle Heather on the belly again, and she gets me in my tickle spot under the chin, and we crack up and the computer goes back to sleep before I could write to Melanie that I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to sneak her some blotter acid in rehab because then she’ll never come home.

“Do you wanna play with me now?” Heather says.

“We are playing,” I say, tickling her tummy again and then we’re laughing so hard, we fall off the bed.

My mother’s all, “Cut that crap out, I’m trying to watch my show!” from downstairs, which is bullcrap anyway, she’s probably on the computer googling herself as usual and doing lines no doubt and Heather and I don’t stop, we just roll around and tickle and laugh, and I never do get to finish that letter or even smoke the joint in my desk drawer like I was gonna.

Eva

2010-08-12T04:28:00.000-07:00

Eva: New outsider girl Eva walks with a limp, has a lazy eye, has an unfortunate haircut… well, read on and you’ll see.

Eva:

I had a dream

I met my twin.

We wore the same earrings:

Scalloped mother-of-pearl.

We met in my doctor’s office.

“Take a book, leave a book”

Says a sign on a basket.

There is a water cooler

At one end of the room

A mirror you walk by

To get to it

That I never look in.

I hate my doctor’s office.

Soon I will have to undress,

And I worry what she will think.

I smiled at my twin, shy.

“Your hair looks like mine,”

She said with a sneer.

I noticed her hair was some

Shade of brown-blonde,

My shade of brown-blonde,

Attempting to be a cute bob.

Unsuccessful.

“Your breasts are kinda small,

I noticed,” I said, as I

I got a small, paper cone

Of water, limped with it

Back to my seat,

Sipped,

And stared.

“You walk funny,”

Said my twin.

“You talk funny,”

I said, feeling meaner,

“Your nose is bent,”

“Your forehead is too high”

“Your zits are gross,”

“You have a lazy eye.”

We scowled,

We pouted,

We stared,

We glared,

And finally,

We cried.

Gemma

2010-07-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

Gemma: “Very interesting,” says the woman, peering into my teacup. “It says here that you must watch out for the hooved poet.”

“Aren’t you supposed to read the tea leaves?” I say in a tiny voice, not strong enough to argue, but anxious enough to be a little bitchy about some supposed prophecy coming out of the Lipton tea bag floating in my cup, especially a prophecy that doesn’t tell me shit about where my mother is. Plus I’m a little p.o’ed at the implication that I have to watch out for a hooved poet, not just any poet -- it seems like racism, or Fant-ism or something, and I take it personally.

I feel fragile, and everything seems personal, instead of just maybe this is a crazy old lady who wants some company and wants to give me some tea, and is trying her best. I’m the one who just wants to cry. I’m the one with the bad attitude.

Which is why I let the woman take my hand, and I follow her into a small kitchen with a slanted ceiling on one side, a scarred brown card table with rickety metal poles for legs, a half-sized refrigerator and a teapot shaped like an owl’s head on the stove. It smells like onions.

I feel so weak, I can’t even bear to help the woman as she pushes the card table into a corner. I can’t bear to stand up.

As if she read my mind, the old woman says, “Sit,” gesturing with a wrinkled, twisted hand, down at the floor, a floor made of a strange assortment of tiles -- patterns, solids, faux stone of gray, brown and red, a row of glossy black granite and a half row of pinkish marble, a large square made of smaller squares of purple and yellow, a circle of blue glass. She wants me to sit inside the circle. I don’t think so.

Goosebumps rise on my arms. I shiver.

“You’re cold, just a sec,” she says, stepping into the circle herself. She spins around, tottering, and I recover enough strength to reach out to steady her, getting a fistful of baby blue tulle which then suddenly I’m afraid will tear, so I let go, and she really sways for a moment, but catches herself.

She smiles at me and winks, then closes her eyes, which I wish she wouldn’t do because she’s going to break a hip or something, especially spinning in the long prom dress she’s wearing. “Spirit of fire, I command you, bring us warmth!”

It doesn’t feel warmer, but I can’t tell her that, and now that she’s gone to all this trouble, I can’t tell her I wasn’t cold anyway. My goosebumps are anticipation or fear, but --

WTF? She is opening the oven door and turning up the gas. A whoosh fills the oven with a flash of blue flame, and then heat does ripple out.

“So mote it be!” she yells, which is a strain for her little old lady voice, and for a moment she turns away, bent over with a dry cough that I’m almost afraid won’t stop. Like I don’t have enough problems, now I’m afraid for this poor old lady who’s supposed to be helping me. Yet I’m the one gently patting her back. I can’t believe this crazy lady is my best hope of finding my mother again. I shudder.

Lilly

2010-07-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

OGW NOTE: OGW WILL NOT BE POSTING NEXT WEEK. OGW WILL BE POSTING EVERY TWO WEEKS FOR THE SUMMER (JULY-SEPT.)

Lilly: New Outsider Girl, Lilly, is a teen on her own in San Francisco in the 1990’s. No home, no job, no life, but surviving thanks to the kindness – or not – of strangers.

Lilly: San Francisco. My clubbing years. My no-real-home years. Job: Dancing three nights a week for $75 and free drinks; Troc, Urban Decay, DNA Lounge. Covers my meth, my E, my weed, my brunch at “R” Bar of bloody mary with shrimp, pickled string beans and celery. Breakfast of Champions.

I feel like I’m stuck in a permanent weekend.

Sleep wherever I end up. Today I’m sprawled on a Mexican blanket on someone’s floor. Can’t remember who. Is it a she? A he? Unusual for me to be on the floor, especially if it’s a he, but often if it’s a she as well.

Mouth dry, lips cracked. Back aches. Spine. Heard when you do Ecstasy your spinal fluid dries up, but I don’t believe it.

Memory: Dancing afterhours at Chez Luis, basement private club. E kicking in. Talking to some girl, name Star. Talking, talking, talking, yelling over house music spun by DJ Troy, my sometime fuck buddy. This is not his floor. Star said, “Where’d you get that New York accent?” I’m like, “New York.” She: “It’s cool.”

Memory: Huddled against heating unit, naked, crying, pink dildo, trying to jerk off, trying trying trying, can’t. Curse the tequila at Bar None. Someone cradles me, picks me up.

Oh that’s how I ended up here.

Push up to sitting. Naked, great. Just great. I frantically scan the room for my duffel, and it’s there on the floor and I grab it, pull it toward me. Thank God. Clothes and half a doobie.

Oh yeah, much better. Dude or dudette must’ve gone to work? For coffee? Bathroom? No way to know, but don’t care much. Time for me to exit, stage right.

Locked. Fucking locked in! Pound, kick at the door, start screaming in a cracked, desperate voice. Where am I?

HELP ME!

No one hears. No one comes. Palms hurt from banging on the door. Sink to the floor, clutch the Mexican blanket like Linus does his security blanket.

Nancy

2010-07-01T06:34:00.000-07:00

Nancy is Casey's mother, both from OGW and from the novel I recently finished, Somebody's Daughter. Nancy's daughter and her friends have been at a party -- their first keg party. Nancy freaks out and goes looking for them at 3 am. Read the first 21 pp. of Somebody's Daughter at http://www.writing.com/authors/shelley2007. Read more from Kayla, Casey, Rain and Nancy in OGW: 10/1, 11/5, 11/12, 12/10, 12/31, 1/14, 2/11, 3/25.

Nancy: I woke up with a start at three AM, sitting straight up and shaking my head, as if a bucket of water had just been thrown on me. I rubbed my eyes frantically. I remember thinking, Something’s wrong! Casey! and hurrying to her room. She wasn’t there. Grabbing my keys and my cell, I was dialing her number as I slid my feet into my Berks. She didn’t answer, and I left a quick, “Where the hell are you?” message before fumbling with the door downstairs which shit! -- always stuck in summer. I threw my shoulder against it and finally smashed through, ran to my car, left the house door open behind me and didn’t care.

Brian Kepler’s house was quiet. Too quiet.

“Casey!” I yelled in the backyard. “Casey! Casey!”

Backyard strewn with empty and broken bottles. Pool table in the garage felt torn. Running, slipping, running, shouting.

“Shut up or I’ll call the cops!” I heard from the house behind the back fence.

I should’ve called the cops, but I ran into the house through an open door instead, dialing as I went. “Casey!” I yelled into the house and the phone at the same time, stupid voice mail. Stupid party. Stupid mom.

Upstairs, I threw open doors. Threw open one, and Kayla was in a boy’s bed, but no boy. She was sleeping, tucked in all nice.

“Kayla! Kayla! Wake up! Where’s Casey! Where’s my daughter!”

Kayla opened her eyes, snapping awake the way I had back at home. “Mrs. Shaw?” Kayla fumbled under the covers. “Oh God,” she said.

“Looking for these?” I said, throwing her underpants at her. “Where is Casey?”

“I don’t--”

“Forget it! You’re useless. You stupid little--” I didn’t say bitch, but I was thinking it as I left the bedroom and continued throwing open doors, shouting as I left open the doors, revealing girls and boys making out, having sex, passed out in vomit, stoned, stupid. “Casey!”

The door at the end of the hallway opened, and a boy, Brian, that was who it was, Brian Kepler, I thought.

He tried to stop me from going in. “You can’t --”

“Casey!” I yelled, pushing past the boy, into the room.

I froze.

“Look, I don’t know what happened, but I told them they have to go. I don’t know--”

“Shut UP!” I yelled in Brian Kepler’s face. I noticed the top button of his shorts was undone. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. “Don’t you move,” I told him.

God help me, I forgot about Casey when I walked into that room. All I saw was Rain Rikowsky, eyes shut, legs spread. -- (I don’t know how to say this, I’ll just do it) -- a boy with his shirt off and shorts around his ankles, pumping on top of her. A couple half-naked boys, boys with their zippers undone and their hands moving fast, groans, shouts and cheers swallowed when I’d burst in. The boy on the bed jumped down and grabbed his shirt off the floor, tried to run. Brian Kepler stopped him. I tore a handheld video camera out of another boy’s hand.

“I think you broke my thumb!” he yelled at me. I slapped him.

“Shut UP!” I said, rushing to the bed and throwing a stained bloody sheet over Rain’s lower body. I rushed to her head, I said, “Rain, honey, wake up, Rain, are you there?” Her head lolled. Someone snickered, but mostly the boys were trying to get away. Many did escape. But Brian threw camera boy down and shirtless boy against the wall. For about half a second I wondered whose side Brian Kepler was on. He seemed to be on ours. But I hated him.

I called 911. I gently stroked Rain’s face.

“Oh God,” I heard from the door. It was Kayla. “Rain... Brian... oh God oh God oh God oh--”

Brian tried to hold on to Kayla, but she shoved him, sudden power bursting out of her. She ran to Rain and held her hand. I dropped the camera I’d confiscated. I looked at Kayla. “Where’s Casey?” I tried to say, but it was hard to talk. I couldn’t get a breath, and I couldn’t stop crying and I couldn’t find the ground with my feet anymore.

Gabby

2010-06-24T04:56:00.000-07:00

In respect of LGBT WEEK… Gabby is an outsider girl with a lesbian Mom. Gabby learns that just being lesbian doesn’t make you cool, and her Mom’s girlfriend is as annoying as Mom’s last boyfriend.

Gabby: “Gabby, what’re you doing?” Ellen yells to me, even though I’m only in the next room. Her tone says: “Whatever you’re doing, it’s not as important as what I’m about to ask.”

“Folding laundry,” I say. My tone says, “Your laundry so’re you sure you want to get on my case now?”

“Get me a snack. Gab-by,” Ellen whines. “Gabby!”

“Get it yourself! God! I’m folding your laundry right now —“

“Gaaaby, my feet hurt. You try wearing three inch heels for eight hours. What’s your problem anyway, just get me some of those pita chips and some of that spicy hummus from last night. It’s not that difficult, I’m not asking for you to come up with a gourmet -- Gabby? Are you listening to me? Come on Gabby, I’m serious. Your mother always tells me what a good kid you are… Gabby, are you there? Gabby, what’re you doing —“

“Alright, alright!” I say, dropping the laundry on the dining room table. Anything to shut Ellen up.

I hate Ellen. I wish my Mom were home. This is so Cinderella. Lesbian Cinderella.

You think it’s going to be different when your Mom reveals to you she’s coming out as a lesbian, I mean, I thought that. Not just different as in no smelly guys tracking mud in the house and sneaking glances at my chest. I don’t know why, but I thought when my Mom made peace with her sexuality and got a girlfriend, our life was going to be all about fresh flowers, impromtu fashion shows, sunglasses and floppy hats, makeovers, ice cream straight from the carton… I thought when Ellen moved in it was going to be like the perfect sleepover party.

Ha!

Reality? Since my Mom got with Ellen, not only is life at home not girl talk and sleeping bags in front of the TV, I can’t even have a real sleepover party with my friends. Seriously, no one is allowed to sleep over at my house anymore. None of my so-called friends’ parents want their kid to sleep over in a house full of lesbians. They like think life in my house is a non-stop orgy or a sex ed. class or something, which is almost as funny as me thinking it would be a non-stop ice cream sleepover.

I want my mom to be happy, I do! I think as I spoon hummus into a small plastic bowl, exactly two tablespoons because Ellen’s on Weight Watchers.

A tear slips out of my eye and slides over my cheek. I wipe it away quickly, but another tear follows, then another, then faster and faster, and I’m crying, and I can’t stop and all I want is someone to get a snack for me, to love me. Right now it feels like I don’t have two Moms, I have two children. And they’re not the cool kids on the block like I expected they would be.

Jessica

2010-06-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

Jessica first appeared in a short story I wrote, called “The Book”, for the anthology “Lost and Found”. The story is a memory of Jesse and her best friend Anne… first love, and of the events leading up to a tragic accident.

Jessica:

When I isolate, I go all the way, I mean no contact with the outside world, I mean if you’re not an anxiety or nasty phrase in my head, you’re just not in my space, know what I mean? I’ve been in that head space for weeks. Not everyday since the accident, but most.

But today, in spite of the pain in my leg, I slid on a pair of sweats and asked my Mom to drive me to the gym.

When I woke up this morning, I couldn’t even muster the energy to put on my iPod and listen to angry alternative music and cry. I felt too badly even for that. Honestly? I wanted to die today. I usually keep up a good face, and I exercise my bad leg faithfully, but not lately. Not since a week ago last Tuesday. Yep, that was the last day I felt like living.

But this morning I thought, if I spent another day in bed, or dragging my leg uselessly behind me in mental and physical agony -- I might as well be dead. I deserved to be dead.

Yet I knew, or had myself partly convinced, that I also deserved a chance to feel better, go figure. Am I forgiving myself for Anne’s death? I hope not. Still….

“How are you today?” my Mom wants to know.

I see the For Sale sign on Anne’s old house next door as we pull out of the driveway, and I say, “Dunno,” which is true. I dunno anything.

At the gym I lifted three pounders: biceps, triceps, delts front, middle, back, pecs, lats, rhomboids. I sucked in my gut and pulsed up and sideways. I stretched – feeling, if not actually hearing -- my bad leg creak as I pulled it straight and leaned for all my might.

I felt better. Like one baby step outta my head.

Not happy enough to shower at the gym with all those women, friendly and loud, but well enough to stop in the coffee shop for a cappuccino before my Mom came to get me.

OhmiGod! There, in the coffee shop, was Lark, my dearest friend from rehab., Lark with her fused spine and only one complete arm. Lark, who reminded me how much worse pain could be. Call it the Power of the Universe, God or Goddess, the Tao, or just Dumb Luck – Lark! Here, now! I seriously almost cried.

I said I’d been meaning to call her, but… and she said, “I know. Me too.” Then we hugged, my crutches hanging from my wrists and clanging behind her back, she supporting me with her one arm, a couple of crips no longer alone… God! Good! Smiles on broken lives like bandages on our hearts!

And I was out! Out of my self-imposed isolation. Free of my meanie self, my head-jail. Never free of guilt, but walking in the world.

I dunno, but it seems like it’s good enough for today. Freakin a miracle, if you ask me.

Megan

2010-06-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Megan is a rich California girl stoner, who formerly appeared in OGW, Dec.3. Her friend Stacy wrote OGW, Jan.21.

Megan: Today it’s my birthday! (da naa naa na naa naa)

Lying on the floor, smelling carpet. Cigarette burning, ashes falling without me having to tap it, my hand floating over the ashtray.

Suspended animation.

I’m all, “I don’t think we’re gonna make the movie,” and Stacy’s like, “Why not?” and I’m like, “’Cause I can’t get off the floor,” and she’s all hardee har har.

Well, outta Stase, it’s more like, “p-ha-ha (hiccup) hee hee p-ha-ha, hee” cause she’s trying not to laugh too hard, she’s trying to act all together and not ass-kicked, on the floor, STONED. She’s like, “Did you ever notice how everything comes in three’s?”

I heard on the east coast, which is where my sister Angela goes to Hah-vard, there’s like no such thing as Chronic. (!!!) Angela says there’s like “B” weed, and people charge a heap and it’s not even “A” weed, and I’m all, “I’m there, sista, gonna pack up my trunk full of chronic and drive out there this summer and sell it,” but she’s such a downer, she’s like, “Megan they’re going to send you back to rehab if you don’t shape up,” and I’m all, whatever, bitch.

Stacy says, “If you drive across country with your trunk full of weed, you have to be careful, remember that Stephen King book with the cop with the melting face and shit who like threw those people in jail and was going to send them to hell or some shit, like remember that? It was like called like Deliverance or whatever—“

“Deliverance was a movie.”

“Yeah, this was a movie. Ohh my God! And remember that other movie! Texas Chainsaw Massacre, right? Don’t drive through Texas.”

“I know, right?”

The chronic we smoked after school today is my favorite, it’s called Blueberry, and Stacy’s bro knows the grower so we get it lots and also this other weed called Spaceland, which is Stacy’s favorite—

What was—is someone at the door? I’m so fucking doomed if--

No. Getting paranoid.

Feeling my toes dig into the carpet, feeling like it’s totally interesting, but then why am I feeling sweaty and now I’m getting nauseous and crap oh crap I’m having a panic attack is someone at the door is my face melting I wanted to go to the movies and now I can’t and if someone’s at the door I’m fucking dooooomed I’m screwwwwed I’m fucked up and sweating and this weed is so strong you do half a hit and you’re on the floor and that’s cool that’s cool Megan that’s cool don’t freak out I’m freaking out I need to stay up to stay out to--

“Give me another hit, now Stase, now!”

I suck on the bong. Bongs are gross. The way they gurgle is like a whole lot of spit in the throat of this glass beast. Hate bongs, but you can’t smoke chronic in a joint cause Stacy’s brother’s friend says it’s like so not cool and it wastes the good weed and you have to use a bong—

Shit. Head hit the carpet. Staring into the fibers, it’s dark down here.

See the net underneath, holds the fibers together, makes a carpet for my face to rest on. Can’t close my eyes.

Monsters inside.

Lucy

2010-06-03T06:40:00.000-07:00

Lucy is a new Outsider Girl. In this very short piece, she repeats the mantra, “Peace, love, respect,” but seems to be the only one who holds out hope for that.

Lucy: “Peace, Love, Respect,” my mother says to me, well, yells down to me from upstairs, where she claims to be watching a movie and giving me and Keith some “quality alone time”, another of Mom’s catch phrases.

But how do I live the mantra -- the peace, the love, the respect -- when Keith is using his “You don’t understand a word I’m saying because you’re so—“

“--fucking frustrated! Yes, I’m frustrated, Lucy! You will not fucking listen! And another thing—“

I’m thinking, “Peace. That means no fighting. Love, that means caring for each other. Respect, that means treating others the way you’d like to be treated. Listen! Lucy, you have to listen! Give him his say, and maybe he’ll feel better. Maybe he’ll want to kiss you. Maybe he’ll tell you how lovely you look today, how your blue eyes sparkle and your curls are so soft they smell like lavender, and—“

Maybe when he reaches out his hand he will stroke your cheek and tell you he loves you instead of what I know he’s—

My head snaps back from the force of his slap, so hard, I hear my neck crack. I don’t dare cry. Peace, love, respect, peace, love, respect, peace, love, respect, I keep saying to myself.

Gemma's Mom

2010-05-27T05:48:00.000-07:00

Gemma’s Mom: Gemma is a thirteen year old who has just sprouted fairy wings because her mother was an addicted to fairy Dust. When she burned out and her wings stopped working, Gemma’s Mom ran, leaving Gemma when she was only six. Gemma first appeared in a short story, “Wings”, then in OGW 9/24/09, 10/29/09, 2/4/10, and now she’s the narrator of a novel I’m working on. The following is a letter Gemma’s mother wrote to Gemma when she was eight.

My darling girl, my little fairy, my precious Gem,

Remember when I used to fly?

Remember that poem I used to read to you? “Come away, human chyld/ to the waters and the wyld/ With a fairy hand in hand/ From a world more full of weeping than you can understand.” I saw it framed on the wall of a friend’s bedroom yesterday, and I began to cry. I’d tried not to think of you for so long. My feelings for you came rushing back in that instant, breaking the wall I’d built up around my heart.

Do you still love me? I used to be your whole world. Are you very angry with me? Have you tried to forget me? Please believe me when I say I love you very much. I’ve been scared and lonely and trying to heal. But yesterday, the Goddess showed me that Yeats poem, and I knew it was a sign that I needed you back in my life. I’ve missed you soooo much.

You must wonder why it took me two years to write to you. Maybe you’re wondering why I never came home.

Remember when you couldn’t wait to be like me? When I left, I didn’t want you to see me so broken. I didn’t want you to want to be like me any more. I left to spare you.

Honey, I couldn’t bring you with me, or come back, not the way I was.

It’s taken me two years, but I’m learning to fly again. I have friends, I have the Goddess in my life, I’m painting beautiful pictures (like we used to, together. Remember when we used to paint together? Is that mural still on the wall in the upstairs hall? Or did your father paint over it? He probably did paint over it. I don’t want to place blame, but in order for you to understand why I left, you should know that your father never understood me.

I should’ve taken you with me. Every day I’ve thought of you. Every day. I have a picture of us from the day you were born, you’re a little doll, porcelein-white, sucking on the long sleeve of a onesy that covers your hand. Your head is against my neck, and you are at peace. As am I.

I was afraid to write to you. I was afraid your father had turned you against me. Do you understand, I loved him so much, but he stopped caring about me. In the end, he wasn’t even talking to me! He never understood me. How devastated I was after Jacob was born, when I stopped being able to fly.

I’m not blaming Jacob -- he was such a sweet boy! How is he?

You were tooo young to understand, but when Jacob was born, something inside me snapped. I think it was what’s called post-partum depression, which you’re too young to understand. I was just so sad. I felt like I was in a horror movie, only it was real and it was never going to end.

I felt trapped. I was dying inside. My wings had stopped working and were worn out and dull and I couldn’t understand why, but I know now it was because of my heavy heart. I’d always used flying to lighten my spirit, but it wasn’t working anymore. Even your sweet, heart-shaped face and contagious laughter couldn’t lift me up. My wings were heavy weights. Jacob was another weight I couldn’t carry. Your father didn’t want to help me.

You used to say, “It’s all right Mommy,” and pat my hand. But it wasn’t.

Anyway, enough sad talk. I love you Gemma, I always have and always will. I am getting better, and when I am fully healed, I will bring you to New York City to live with me. We were meant to be together. Goddess willing, we will be.

Please forgive me. I love you, baby.

Love,

Mommy

Cherish

2010-05-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

Cherish returns to OGW, still struggling with her son when she's still a child herself.

Cherish: Maypole still leaning against the wall, kid-sized, ribbon-wrapped.

Cd's in stacks of various sizes -- two, six, four, eighteen -- no shit, I counted.

Computer desktop repeating images of havanese puppy, documents and folders all over the desktop, too many, a mess. Like everything else.

Three separate mugs of broken pencils, dried-out felt-tips, a child-sized scissor, a laundry marker for writing "JONAH Johnson" in his underwear for school.

His clay handprint, one finger broken off missing, uneven red paint splotchy, cracked.

Pepsi Max I'm drinking.

Pepsi Max -- three empty cans.

Ashtray, full. Shaking hands. Stack of bills too high, checkbook balance staring up at me, too low.

"Mommy, wanna play a game?" Jonah asks, coming out of our shared bedroom, a room which hasn't seen a date for four years.

"Mommy can't. Go back to bed. I hafta do this." Mommy -- I mean, Cherish, I mean, me -- I drag on a cigarette, blows out with pursed lips, in a direction away from Jonah.

My son runs into the hanging cloud of smoke however, trying to catch it in his little brown fists.

"Jonah! Don't!"

"I'm catching the smoke, Mommy."

"Don't I said! It's bad for you!"

"I hafta 'tect you Mommy. From the bad smoke." His pajamas are worn-out, and the Hulk top doesn't match the Batman bottoms.

I gasp, almost break-down, but stop myself. "Jonah, please, Jonah! Go back to bed now. Mommy has to finish--"

"Whatcha' doin'?" There's a hole in the armpit of Jonah's sleeve that I see when he holds his arms up to reach my neck, which he grabs as he tries to climb on my lap. He gets bigger everyday, and when he pulls on my neck with all his weight, it hurts, a lot.

"Jonah!" Too loud.

His mouth opens in an "O", and then he bursts into tears. Between gulps of air he chastises me -- "We... s'pposed to... 'tect each udder... Mommy."

"I know." I sigh. I kiss his head. "You're a good boy." I pull him onto my lap, fucking annoyed as hell but what can I do? We have to protect each other.