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‘How’d it go?’ my dad asked, when we were alone in the car. Just kidding. The three amigos were bunched together on the backseat, arms still folded like they’d fallen into a vat of glue and were stuck like that.
‘Fine. We talked a little and I’m going back next week.’
‘Not if I need you, you’re not,’ Izzy growled. Ugh, kill me now. Or her, preferably.
‘Did she... give you anything?’
‘Pills? Yeah, she did, Dad. You know she did.’
‘Hold up! Why are you taking pills?’ she screeched.
‘So she can stop seeing us. Her dad-’ George valiantly attempted.
‘No, you stop taking them right now,’ she yelled, jabbing a finger in my face. I tried not to flinch.
‘It’s not like she has a choice,’ he hissed. ‘She-’
‘Sure she does. Just say no.’
My God, it was so simple, why hadn’t I thought of that?
Meanwhile my dad was chatting about something or other; I think the gist of it was that he wanted to make himself feel good by making me take them. It was getting hard to concentrate. Izzy’s voice is like listening to an opera-singing cat in a juicer. And she was still ordering me to stop taking medication and do her bidding. I had to save myself here, in the only way I knew how: making myself look crazy.
I put the radio on.
‘...you know that, right?’ my dad finished.
‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over all this noise,’ I emphasized, shooting a quick glare at Izzy. Dad blinked slowly.
‘Then, why don’t you turn the radio back off?’ he asked, like he was asking me to step away from the edge of a cliff.
‘You’re right, that’s a good idea. I will stop it,’ I hissed, turning it off. Izzy glowered at me.
‘So, did you take a pill while you were there?’
Subtle, Dad. Real subtle.
‘Yes, she watched me take it. Ask her if you don’t believe me.’
‘I do,’ he lied. He quickly changed the subject. ‘What did you two talk about?’
Ooh, quickly change the subject back. I was not getting into that now, not with Izzy and Leesha ready to claw my throat out.
‘Just things, Dad. My feelings and stuff. Look, these pills make me drowsy and I’m kinda tired. Can we just not talk for the rest of the drive?’
‘Sure,’ he said, immediately parking and turning off the ignition. He gave me a funny look. ‘We’re home.’
Right.
I let Izzy and Leesha wander around my home, since there was absolutely no way of my preventing that anyway, and gathered the supplies I’d need for the next few hours. Unfortunately, my father didn’t own a shotgun and we were straight out of nooses, so, I’d have to choose the next best thing. Candy bars and Doritos.
And I totally didn’t choose Izzy’s favorite flavor, either. Honest.
My dad had decided that I wasn’t any crazier than I had been two hours earlier, so he’d headed off to work. I was left to suffer in- not silence, because I will complain loudly and fruitlessly.
‘So, why do you hate Izzy so much?’
And of course, George wanted the scoop. Which reminded me, so did I. I headed for the freezer.
‘Because she’s a total jerk and made David’s life a misery. Did you know that she snuck into the boys’ locker room, took a Polaroid of him showering and passed it around their entire school?’
‘A Polaroid?’ he frowned. ‘Man, how hipster is she?’
‘Hipster? She died in the eighties. Did you not see her Frankie Say Relax tee and her crimped hair?’
‘Well, obviously, but I thought she died at a rave or something. I thought she was doing it ironically.’
‘She doesn’t do ironic,’ I told him, shaking my head. ‘She does do evil and conniving, though.’
Alright, I had ice cream, chips and chocolate. All I needed now was soda and I could hopefully contract diabetes and suddenly go into a coma. That’d be swell.
‘So, wait. He killed her at school?’
‘No, her house. It was the morning after prom. Everybody’d voted him Prom King and her Queen, then she pulled his pants down on stage and everybody laughed. That was only the very, very tip of the iceberg. Cannot say I blame him one bit.’
‘Oh come on!’ he cried, instantly on the opposite side of whatever I was. ‘I mean... she’s trying to make amends.’
‘No, she is not. She is a bitch, George. She died as a bitch and she never grew out of it.’
‘And all she wants now is peace. She has been here for almost forty years. Isn’t it time you gave her that?’
‘And again, no, she does not. She is only doing this to screw with David one more time before she gives up the ghost, so to speak. If you’d met him, you’d be on my side.’
‘Have you met him?’
‘Well, no. But she’s told me about him, plenty of times. He is the type of guy you instantly feel sorry for. I mean, think about it. He is a loser in school. He has hopes and dreams of getting away from it all, and then he kills Izzy in a fit of rage. He can’t think about anything else. He is tied to that one moment of his life. He was a computer whiz, apparently. This is obviously before computers were big. He should’ve been a CEO at Microsoft by now. Instead, he’s stuck flitting between crappy jobs, depressed and alone. His life was over before it had even begun.’
Believe me, Izzy’d told me millions of stories of David. And in doing so, she’d not painted the prettiest picture of herself. It’s crazy. Usually, lucies tend to explain away their evildoings. Try to, anyway. Not Izzy, though. She admitted that she was the Queen Bee, and she still thinks she is that. She thinks that I should be throwing myself at her feet, begging to do her dirty work. Look, things have changed since Izzy was at school. I know that, you know that. “It” girls aren’t looked up to as they were. She doesn’t realize that, no matter how many times I’ve told her.
It’s weird because I didn’t have a girl like Izzy at school. I had a few who were popular, but no sole queen. Even on the guy’s side, Brandon was an asshole in a group of assholes. Things aren’t so clear-cut now. Everybody’s dealing with new issues. Things are realer than they ever were. Nobody has time for that.
So, dealing with Izzy was both surreal and at the same time, kinda wanted to punch her in the face.
If I ever found a way to harm lucies, she would be the only one on the list.
‘I have a question,’ George said, as I debated whether I needed cookies. ‘He sounds like Vince.’
‘That wasn’t a question.’
‘Okay,’ he sighed. ‘Why do you feel sympathy for David and not Vince?’
Why does anybody do anything? If you’re just joining us, Vince was a guy we met recently, who was severely lacking in a personality. He was lacking in anything that made up a person, essentially. He was Buzz Killington’s duller, forgotten brother. The reason I feel sorry for David and not him is that David had had a chance. It is the nightmare of every kid who has ever been bullied to still be thinking about your bullies, years after you should’ve left them behind. And it’s worse for David because nobody else will ever see what he saw. He will just be labelled as a killer, and Izzy is forever a victim now. The tables have been turned.
It’s not nice, to put it lamely.
‘Because Vince was basically dead the second he was born. David’s life was ripped out of his fingers. It’s cruel.’
‘Okay, let’s say I agree with you about that,’ George ventured, in no way actually agreeing. ‘You’re forgetting about one other thing. Her boyfriend.’
‘Chuck? Glad you asked. He bullied David just as much as she did. He slashed the tires on David’s bike so much that he couldn’t afford to get new ones any more. He threw a lit cigarette at his hair, forcing him to get a buzz cut and scarring his neck. He-’
‘Alright, alright. I get it,’ George cringed, looking a little uneasy.
Chuck wasn’t just arrested for her murder. He had a whole catalog of offences. DUIs, possession of drugs, assault. He was the type of guy that’d be in and out of jail anyway. His wrongful arrest for Izzy’s murder actually just saved everyone a whole lot of time.
‘What did Izzy even tell you about her case?’
‘Not much,’ he shrugged, ‘only that you had a crush on David and you never wanted to help her, and that she was a victim.’
Sounds about right.
‘You were speaking for like twenty minutes. She didn’t say anything else?’
‘It was a lot of the same thing,’ he said.
Again, sounds like Izzy.
‘If what you’re saying is right, then I wonder what Leesha did?’
‘Who says I did anything?’ came a snarl from the doorway.
Yep, I needed cookies alright. Time to see what David’s latest blameless victim had to say.