Eva

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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