The Girl Who Would Be King(117)

As I turn to go I see three men hovering in the shadows. Something feels off about them being there and I consider going over to explore the issue further, but just then the ambulance and police cars come hurtling around the corner and so instead I disappear into the lightening sky.



I don’t know how long I fly – just savoring the incredible feeling of being up there, all alone, full of freedom – but when I crash back down to Earth (landing continues to be much more difficult than taking off) I find I’m in the alley behind Clark’s apartment. I guess unconsciously he’s who I most want to tell everything to. I sit down in the alley, aware that it’s pretty disgusting on the ground, but my clothes are already shredded and filthy anyway. My once white t-shirt is now a muddy, old blood color, and riddled with bullet holes. The jeans and shoes aren’t much better. My wounds have gone a long way toward healing while I flew around, but I decide to concentrate to see if I can finish up the process as I saw Lola do before. Sure enough, after a handful of minutes of focus I find the wounds disappearing. It’s a shame I can’t do the same for my clothing. After half an hour or so I’m as good as new, or as close as I can get. And all I want in the whole world is to see Clark.



•

I wake up naked in the bathtub in two inches of my own cold blood instead of water, my neck twisted painfully against the tile, my wrists healing nicely, pink scars all that’s left of my savage cutting frenzy.

I should be happy to be waking up in my blood. It’s what I figured would happen: it’s what has happened every other time I’ve tried to kill myself, though, never so viciously before. Still, I should have expected it. But it’s now I realize – not when I did it – that this time I really didn’t want to wake up. That this wasn’t yet another of my tests to see about adding to the, ‘things that are awesome about being me’ list, but rather a genuine suicide attempt. Not that I really thought it would work, but somewhere inside, I guess, I hoped it would. There’s something extra-desperate about the fact that I can’t even kill myself.

And that I’ve probably killed the only other person on Earth that maybe could have.

I drink some more and I don’t slow down until everything looks blurry and watery.

I take my old cat suit out of the top drawer and rub it against my cheek. I pull it on and walk around the room a little bit trying to get some joy from it. But nothing comes. Liz’s ear laughs at me from the chair in the corner. I can’t really remember what it felt like to love the feel of the suit against my skin, to feel more powerful inside it. Now it just feels like ordinary material.

I climb into the bed and finish the rest of a bottle of Tequila, hoping it will be enough to knock me out. I’m both wishing and worried that Delia’s going to show up again. I don’t know why I’ve never seen her before now, why she would choose now to finally show herself. Maybe she just likes to see me unraveling. And I am.

Unraveling.

I can hear my henchmen whispering about it in the warehouse below me. I don’t care. I’ll kill them all if I have to. There’s no limit to what I can do. There’s nothing to be afraid of now that Liz has been taken from me.

I curl into my sheets with the bottle of Tequila and wait for Delia to reappear. Maybe she can hand me some magic key of destiny, the launch codes I’ve been missing all along. When I pull the bottle to my lips I notice it’s empty and toss it at the ceiling fan. It breaks on the blades. Shards of glass rain down on me as I close my eyes.

Even before I’m asleep she’s there. Looking like she did the day she died. The day I killed her. Drunk even before I poisoned her, wearing that beat-up old green robe, her blonde hair wild and unkempt, her fingers picking at our old threadbare couch. I hated that couch. She looks tired to me now. I didn’t remember her looking that tired before. Lame, sure, but not so tired. Maybe it’s just me that feels tired.

I decide I’m going to talk to her today, and she’s going to answer me.

“Delia!” I scream, even though she’s barely four feet away. She looks at me with lazy drunken eyes, annoyed but also humored by my loudness.

“Yes, Lo?”

“I want answers!” I scream again, pounding my fist onto a wooden side table so hard that it splinters into bits. Delia pushes deeper into her couch and pulls out a bottle of Jack, like it’s a magic couch full of bottles, and hands it to me. The wallpaper behind her is covered with images of crows and wolves and eels. I don’t remember it. It must be new.

“How about a drink instead?” she offers. I’m about to scream again, but a drink actually sounds pretty good and so I hunch up my shoulders like I don’t really care and take the bottle from her.