"See, that's her. My sister. Well, half sister, technically."
It's a pudgy little baby-thing. Why do people think babies are cute? They're sort of ugly, actually. They're all out of proportion, with these gigantic heads that flop around and these little bodies with sunken chests and beer guts. I don't get the attraction.
I never want to have kids. For one thing, I can't imagine having to deal with that big of a pain in the ass. For another thing, it hurts like hell. And for another thing, like, the last thing I need in this world is for my boobs to get even bigger. I'm not spending my life as a cow for some bawling ball of snot and stuff.
"She's cute," I lie, and hand it back to him.
"Yeah, she is."
He pulls up into his driveway. The truck is gone, but his mom's car is there.
It's weird, being here again. About to go inside. Last time I was in his house with him ... The last time, things didn't work out so well.
God, am I scared? Is that what's going on?
"You coming?" he asks. He's already out of the car.
"Chill out, Fanboy. You're acting like you're gonna get some."
It's like I slapped him. Good.
"Just ... whatever. Come on, Kyra."
At the door, he says, "We need to be quiet when go in, in case they're asleep."
"OK."
But they're not. As soon as we go in, I hear his mom, saying, "Ooga-googa-goo? Umma-wummy-boo!"
Well, not really. But it's that singsong crap people say to babies.
"Hi, Mom!" Fanboy calls up the stairs. "I brought Kyra home to show her some Schemata stuff, OK?"
She appears at the top of the stairs, carrying the baby. "Oh. Hi." She looks surprised to see me. I don't blame her. I ran out of here in a fury last time. I would be pretty damn surprised to see me, too. "Hi. Good to, uh, see you again."
Ha. Like we had a big, in-depth conversation last time.
"You, uh, look a bit different," she says. And I remember: White clothes. Shaved head. It's only been a day, but I'm already so comfortable with it that I forget.
I run a hand over my dome. "Like it?"
"Well, as long as you like it."
Fanboy goes up a few stairs and tickles the baby's cheek. "Hey, Betta. Hey, Betta." He looks down at me. "Want to hold her?"
Gross.
Before I can say anything, though, Momma saves the day: "I need to change her. Maybe later."
"OK, Mom."
I just stand there and try not to throw up. I'm allergic to domestic bliss. I'm also dying for a cigarette, but I bet Momma would dive down the stairs and claw my eyes out if I even thought hard about one.
Before he can come down the stairs, she leans over and whispers something to him. He rolls his eyes, but only I can see it. "I know, Mom."
Mom goes away. And then it's me and it's Fanboy and he leads me down to the basement once more.
Forty-two
HIS ROOM IS EXACTLY THE WAY I remember it. His room is completely different.
Last time I was here, it was like some weird kind of archeological dig—the unearthing of the Tomb of the New Millennium Geek Boy. It's still a geek's paradise, but now you get the impression that there's work going on here. Serious work.
It used to be that Schemata was relegated to his desk. Now it's everywhere. There are pages and sketches and stuff scattered all over. I guess maybe there's a method to it all, but I can't see it. It just looks random to me. He even has pages pinned up on the walls, like he ran out of surfaces and just started tacking things up. The piles of comic books and graphic novels that were on the floor have been stacked neatly on top of a bookcase, out of the way.
He still has the same old crappy computer, though. Nice to see some things don't change.
"Uh, let me see," he says, and clears off his chair, spinning it from the desk and wheeling it into the middle of the room. He gestures for me to sit.
Last time I was here, I sat on the bed.
"What did your mom tell you?"
"What?"
"She whispered to you. Just now."
"Oh." He shakes his head. "Oh. Yeah. She said, 'Door open, remember? Like I'm an idiot or something."
Door open. That didn't stop me last time...
"Kyra? Hey, Kyra?"
I blink. "What?"
"You OK? You were kinda spaced out—"
"I was just overwhelmed by the toxic levels of geekitude in this place. You're lucky the EPA doesn't shut you down."
He laughs. Goddamn! Six months ago, he would have started apologizing or tried to change the subject.
"Yeah, Cal calls it Geek Central. Sit down."
He's been holding the chair for me the whole time. I sit down.
"So, let me show you some of the new stuff..." He starts rummaging around, thrusts a pile of pages into my hands. How do I get the old stuff? I need the pages where Courteney looks like Dina.
Before I can do or say anything, though, he says, "Shit!" which surprises me because he's usually pretty clean-mouthed.
"I left the latest pages upstairs. I'll be right back."
He darts out the door and I hear him on the stairs.
I look around. Where would the old pages be? On his computer? Probably. Could I find them and e-mail them to myself before he gets back?
Probably not. Especially with his shitty dial-up Internet.
Damn.
God, it's weird to be here. I get up and sit on the bed. That feels a little bit better.
There's still that old hard drive case sitting on his desk. His secret bullet hiding place. Is it still in there? Should I steal it again, just to mess with him?
I can't help it—the idea makes me giggle.
I move to the spot on the floor where I once planted my feet and unbuttoned my shirt and took off my bra. It's like it was yesterday, not six months ago. It's like it was five minutes ago.
It's like it's happening right now.
How would he react? What would he do if he came back down here and I was standing in that same spot, my brand-spanking-new white shirt off, my same-old, same-old minimizer bra unfastened?
Or what if I took off everything? What if I stood there naked for him? Or naked on the bed?
Could I even do that? Could I even show myself to him like that? To anyone? I've never done that. Not even with Jecca—we've always kept our clothes on.
Could I take my clothes off for him? Why is my heart pounding? Why does my head feel weird? Why ... Ugh. Why do my boobs ... Why are my...
Stop it! Stop it!
I have to get out of here. I have to leave. This is insane. I'm losing my effing mind.
Not gonna do it. I'm not getting naked for him. What the hell was I thinking? Showing myself like that ... It was one thing to flash my boobs. To hold my power over him. But naked? That's weak. That's vulnerable. And flashing him again ... No. The only reason it was OK the first time is because I knew I would never do it again. Because I showed him something he couldn't have and then never again.
If you keep doing it, you're no better than Simone. Or Miss Powell.
So, no.
I sit on the bed. Better.
His footsteps on the stairs again. And then he's standing in the doorway. He freezes for a second at the sight of me sitting on the bed. I feel like I should say something, some kind of comforting lie: It's more comfortable here. I don't like that chair. Something.
But I've got nothing. So I just start flipping through the pages like it's no big deal.
"Uh," he says after a little while. I've been flipping through pages, but I haven't seen a single one. I'm all mixed up inside.
"Uh," he says again, and walks over to me. "These are the newest pages."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." I try to say it like I'm brushing him off, but I'm having trouble getting the words out. I'm still not seeing anything on the pages in front of me.
"So you're looking at next week's installment," he says. "It's the scene in the cancer ward. You saw it before, bu
t it was later in the book then. I decided to move it up because it's really dramatic and I wanted something dramatic earlier on."
"Right." God, will he just shut up and let me think? Let me focus. For just a second.
He sits down next to me on the bed, and that's it. My brain's fried.
I want him to kiss me. I realize it and it's so hard and fast that it hurts.
That's all I want in the world. I want him to lean over and kiss me. It wouldn't be like it is with Jecca, I know. He's a boy. He's probably never put moisturizer on his lips in his life. He's got a little bit of stubble on his upper lip. It wouldn't be soft. It would be a little dry and a little scratchy, but I don't care. I want it. I want to do it. And then pull back and see my red, red lipstick smeared on his lips.
"And the pages here," he goes on, so totally a boy, so totally oblivious to my need, "are from the issue that'll come out just before Christmas break."
And that finally distracts me because, in looking down at the pages, I see something I can't believe I'm seeing.
She's naked.
Courteney. Courteney is naked.
Forty-three
"WHOA. WAIT A SEC."
"Yeah." He grins, like he's so proud that he's shocked me.
It's not that I've never seen nudity before, in a comic or otherwise. (Duh. I have the Internet.) It's just that I can't believe he did this. He drew this with his own little hands.
For Literary Paws.
"This is, like, the season finale for Schemata," he says. "That's something Cal and I came up with. Seasons, like on TV, with a break for Christmas."
Cal. Again. Goddammit.
"I moved some stuff around," he goes on, "to end on a cliffhanger right before break. And it's gonna be pretty controversial, keep people talking about it over break."
I want to yell. And scream. I want to yell and scream that he shouldn't be listening to Cal, that he should be listening to me, that he's just doing porn now, just for shock value, just to get people talking. I want to tell him that he's better than this, better than just dropping tits into his book to get people to sit up and take notice. I know—from experience. I showed my boobs to Fanboy and I showed them to Bendis, and it wasn't worth it either time.
But I'm too shocked to say anything. I can't stop staring at Courteney, who no longer looks exactly like Dina Jurgens, but man—if she did! If she did ... and if I could find the original pages, with the original art, and show them to Michelle...
Now my heart starts pumping fast for all-new reasons. Show Michelle the original pages. Then she sees the nudes. And she realizes that Fanboy is going to draw her sister naked. Draw her naked and then publish it for the whole world to see.
And maybe Michelle gets pissed and brings the Wrath of the Popular, Beautiful People down on him. Or maybe she just thinks it's pathetic and that's fine, too. He'll be embarrassed. He'll never want to show his face at school again. He'll sure as hell stop being the popular kid. He'll just be the sad geek who gets his rocks off drawing girls he knows naked in his comic book.
Oh, yes.
"...and it's not like it's for show or controversy," he's babbling. "You have to read it. It's artistic, you know? I know you know. But I showed it to Mr. Tollin and he's OK with it. He says it's artistic and he'll defend me to Dr. Goethe and the Spermling if he has to."
There's a blank moment of total silence. I'm still staring at Courteney. I have to admit—he did a good job. It's not like he traced a porn star or a Playmate or something. She looks like a real woman, just naked. I mean, a gorgeous and incredibly in shape woman, but still. She's not posed like a model or anything. Real. Not fake.
"So, uh," he stammers into the quiet, "I still have a week before I have to turn it in. Do you want to look at it?"
I grit my teeth. God, I just want to tear his head off. And throw him down on the bed. Both things. I don't get it.
I hear myself say, "Sure." Just like that.
And then: "So, hey, Fanboy..." Trying to sound casual. "Where's the stuff I saw before?"
He snaps his fingers. "Right! God, I'm an idiot..." He jumps up and rummages in a pile of papers in the corner between the desk and the bookcase. I find myself watching his every move. What the hell is wrong with me?
"Here," he says, coming back to me with a stack of Literary Paws. "These are all the chapters you, uh, missed. While you were, you know."
I snatch the mags from him. They're not what I want or need. "In the hospital, Fanboy. The loony bin. The Maryland Mental Health Unit."
He flinches, which is nice, but not as nice as getting those original pages.
Or kissing him.
OK, I'm officially insane.
I sit there and I flip through one of the magazines and try to come up with a way to ask him for the original art pages. It gets too quiet. He's hovering over me and I can tell he wants me to say something about Schemata, because he's needy like that. But it's all blurring together for me—I can barely focus on the pages or the panels.
So I say the first thing that comes to my mind: "It's stupid to put it out like this, Fanboy." (When in doubt, when uncomfortable, I've learned it's always best to fall back on the easy stuff—insults.) "A chapter at a time. It's stupid. Was that another one of Cal's ideas? It's supposed to be a graphic novel."
"But—"
"Novel, Fanboy. Novel. Like, a complete book. Something you sit down and read all at once, you know?"
"Dickens serialized his novels, and he was—"
"You think I effing care about Charles effing Dickens? He wasn't doing comics, Fanboy."
He snorts at me, another indicator that he's forgotten who's in charge here. "Oh, please. Gaiman did Sandman in issues, you know." When I don't say anything, he repeats it and says, "You did know that, right? That Sandman originally came out monthly, in single issues? It took them years to collect the whole thing into graphic novels."
Yeah. I knew. I forgot, but I knew.
Dear Neil,
I read your greatest work pretty much by accident.
I didn't even know the whole Sandman series existed at first. I wasn't into comic books at all. I was a kid and Mom had just died and Roger had taken me to the library. I can't remember why. He did a lot of shit back then that was just, like, flying by the seat of his pants, trying to fill up the days with stuff until it was time for both of us to go to bed. He was trying to numb his entire life, and mine, too.
The thing is, though, that I wanted to feel. Roger thought that the way to deal with his grief was to feel nothing. I knew the truth, though. I knew that the only way to deal with it was to feel too much.
So there I was at the library, wandering around, waiting for Roger, because even back then I wasn't hugely into reading. I was in the teen section and I walked past this display.
And there it was.
This graphic novel I'd never seen before (not that I'd been looking), with a dark cover and the word DEATH on it. DEATH. It was huge.
I thought it would freak Roger out, so I picked it up. It was Death: The High Cost of Living. And I remember spending a lot of time just thinking about the title. It was so profound. It's like, it wasn't just a title—it was a statement. It was a philosophy.
I didn't know who you were. I didn't know that you were this bigshot, award-winning writer. I didn't know that this was just a side story to the larger Sandman story. I just knew that it was dark and it said DEATH and the title alone made me think.
So I checked it out and brought it home and read it in, like, five seconds.
And oh my God.
It was like nothing else I'd ever seen. It was dark and moody, but also funny and clever. It could have been just relentless and sad, and, yeah, it had some of that, but there was more to it.
It's like, I got it. Didi was ... Didi was nothing like me, but that didn't matter. She had it together. She was mysterious. She understood things that no one else understood. She said cool shit that made sense after you thought about it.
&n
bsp; And she wore all black and was all gothy, which I instantly loved.
I loved itall. I loved that Sexton called his mom Sylvia, just like I called my dad Roger. I loved the crazy British lady, Mad Hettie, who was looking for her heart. I loved the whole idea that death was a person, a comforting presence. Somehow, it made what happened to my mom make a little more sense. Somehow. I liked the idea that there was a person there to tell her, "OK, that's it" at the end.
So I totally devoured it and then I read it again and then I went and looked you up on the Internet and learned all kinds of stuff about you. I found a picture of you and you looked totally hot in your sunglasses and someone online said that you never, ever took them off, but then I found pictures of you without them on and that was cool, too. And even though I was only twelve, that night I totally had a sex dream about you and I can't believe I'm admitting that.
I made Roger take me back to the library the next day. I checked out the second Death book, The Time of Your Life, and read it like I was thirsty for it. It was even better than the first one. And I hadn't read any of Sandman yet, so I didn't get some of the references to the stuff from Preludes and Nocturnes or A Game of You, and I gotta be honest—it was my first time reading about lesbians, and that sort of surprised me. Oh, and I also thought, at the end, that maybe you should have reversed the titles of the two stories. Because if you think about it, the first one is really about "the time of your life"—Didi's life, Sexton's life—and the second one is really about "the high cost of living," when Bruno sacrifices himself so that Foxglove and Hazel and Alvin could live.
But anyway. I finished that and then I went back and I checked out as many of the Sandman books as they had. And I spent all of my time just absorbing this amazing, amazing world you'd created. I read your novels, too, but it was the Sandman stuff that I couldn't get out of my head. I loved the way Death talked to Dream, the way she didn't let him get away with shit, the way she always told him the truth. I wanted that. I wanted to go around to people and smack them in the head and make them see the truth.