Boring Girls(5)

I was absolutely, completely stunned. Not only had I never had any sort of violent confrontation before in my life, but I had never been so physically close to Brandi. I could see light freckles on her nose. I could smell her coconut perfume. It was too intimate and I felt overwhelmed and sick.

She leaned in close, with that familiar smirk on her face, and I recoiled. I was afraid she was going to hit me — I knew I couldn’t fight, and I didn’t know what was going to happen.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Brandi sneered. I knew she could see the fear on my face, and I hated that. I hated it so much that my eyes welled with burning hot tears.

She laughed. “Are you going to cry now?”

I felt the strength that I’d tried to bolster myself with over the school year collapse. My reserve of proud nonchalance was destroyed. I’d tried to be so arrogantly numb to people like Brandi, almost amused by their stupidity, and here it was: in the moment it counted the most, I succumbed. I wilted. I felt tears roll down my cheeks.

“Fucking retard.” Brandi seemed to lighten up, giving me a pretty smile. “You want to know what? Next year, I’m going to f*cking get you. Do you understand? I f*cking hate you, you ugly bitch.”

Then she pushed me, hard. I stumbled backwards and fell on my ass. Instinctively I curled up, hunching my shoulders and moving my arms to protect my face in preparation for her attack. But there was none, and when I looked up at her, she was laughing.

“Ugly bitch,” she repeated, and then walked back into the school.

I got to my feet and walked quickly across the schoolyard towards the back gate and the sidewalk that would lead me home. I wanted to run, but part of me feared that Brandi was watching me from the back door and would get such a laugh out of that. Watching the stupid, ugly bitch run home.

xXx

As I walked down the streets that I had walked so many times before, I tried to calm myself down. I could worry about next year at school later. If Brandi planned to get me, whatever that meant, I’d have to deal with it then. I had time to figure something out.

I hated myself for showing her weakness. If only I hadn’t cried. If only I had stood up for myself. Slugged her right in her smiling pink mouth. Made her cry. Made her afraid of me. I clenched my fists so hard that my nails dug into my palms. I was absolutely furious at how weak I had been. She’d won. I’d had the power to change the outcome, and I had collapsed.

A car pulled up to the intersection beside me and paused at the stop sign, and my ears filled with a sound that made me stop in my simpering, faltering step.

It was music that I had never heard before. It sounded pissed. The drums were fast, the guitars were manic, and the voice that rumbled along with it sounded evil. Absolutely furious and evil. It barely sounded human, it was so deep and guttural — like a f*cking monster. The sort of monster that would terrify Brandi and her ilk. It sounded like how I felt inside in that moment. It sounded like what I wanted to unleash on Brandi.

I looked at the car as it drove off, desperate to know what band was playing. The car’s bumper was plastered with stickers. Many of them were written in a font I could not decipher, spidery and electrified. I knew I was looking at band stickers, but I could not read a single one of them except for one: “DED.”

I decided to go to the music store and see if there was a band called DED. I wanted to hear that music again. I detoured and headed downtown, already feeling better. I almost felt light-headed.

I got to Bee Music and immediately went to the alpha-betically organized racks. There was no DED. Now, I have always had a problem with shopping in that I tend to want to hit the salespeople over the head or avoid them at all costs. I dislike their tendency to either be overly enthusiastic to encourage you to buy something, or to stare at you as though you are too filthy and uncool to possibly belong in their store. I was going to have to ask the guy at the counter about DED, and as I approached him, I started to doubt myself. What if they weren’t a band at all? What if the sticker was in reference to something else? How would I ask the guy about the music I’d heard? Pardon me, could you refer me to the pissed-off monster-guy section?

The guy was long haired and covered in tattoos, and I was definitely going to look like an idiot. But nothing could be worse than what had happened with stupid Brandi, and I needed to know about that band.

“Hi,” I said to the guy. He looked up from his magazine with the disapproval that I’d expected. Nevertheless, I continued. “I’m looking for a band called DED.”