The Girl Who Would Be King(118)

We drink there, together, each from our own bottle, watching cartoons on the tiny television, laughing at all the same parts for what feels like hours. When I look up again the couch is empty. Someone’s calling my name from outside the trailer. Have I always been in the trailer? I walk outside clumsily, shielding my eyes with one hand from the always-bright Nevada sun. Bonnie is standing there calling my name. I’m annoyed she’s alive, but more annoyed that she’s bothering me, and I’m also pretty convinced she’s the reason my mother has disappeared.

“Stop bothering me!” I say to her, letting the door slam shut behind me. I go back inside but my mother is still gone. I take her place on the couch and work on finishing the bottle while the cartoons roll by. The entire time, Bonnie stays outside calling my name like a schoolyard bully taunting me ‘LOLA…LOOOOOOLLLLLAAA…. LOLLLLLLAAA....’ and I curse under my breath at her until my drink is gone. I search in the magic couch for another bottle, but apparently it’s a trick only my mother can do because I come up with nothing but pennies and razor blades. I click off the cartoons and go back outside to shut Bonnie up, but when I step out of the trailer, it’s no longer Nevada, it’s the river where I drowned her – but she’s nowhere to be seen. Below me is the water’s edge and Bonnie’s face swims just beneath the surface. She looks like a ghost, like a flat image projected under the surface, but when I poke at her watery face she is spongy and real. I draw back and blink, trying to erase her.

When I open my eyes again the fan is spinning above me, glass is sprinkled all over me like fine sugar, and Delia is sitting in a chair, legs crossed, doing a fine impression of Liz.

“You certainly haven’t done much with my power, considering how badly you wanted it,” she says, standing and walking across my room in her bare feet, crunching across the glass almost gracefully. My mother was never graceful.

“It’s maybe true that I jumped the gun a little bit,” I admit.

“A little bit? I was practically killing myself anyway, you couldn’t just wait awhile, you little twit?”

“Yeah, well, I’m progressive,” I say stubbornly.

“Hmm. I’d say it’s more like sadistic.”

“Oh…and you, you were a saint, I suppose? I mean, would it have killed you to give me a goddamn hug, or make me a freaking peanut butter sandwich?”

“I don’t know, do you think you could hug someone right now? How about making me a peanut butter sandwich?” she asks, hands on her hips like the know-it-all she always was. I throw another bottle at her and she disappears. I walk into the kitchen defiantly and open the cupboard to make a peanut butter sandwich, but all the cupboards are filled with alcohol and broken glass. I scream at the top of my lungs and break at least ten bottles before collapsing on the floor, the minions’ whispers drifting up into the loft like the incessant buzz of insects.



I don’t want to dream of Delia again so I haven’t slept in a day or two. I sit on the grungy bed sheets, Liz’s ear placed delicately in the chair opposite me.

“You see,” I say to the ear. “It’s not my fault. Delia made me this way. Whatever power I got from her, it made me this way. There’s something broken about it. It’s not my fault I hurt people.”

The ear sits quietly in judgment of me.

“You know, I don’t have to talk to you,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest and looking away. The ear is silent. It always wins these battles of will. It’s so superior, just sitting there all soundless. “I don’t even owe you an explanation,” I say. “It’s not like you can understand what I’m dealing with even if I do explain it to you.”

Liz’s ear plays its cards close to its chest and continues to say nothing.

“You know I can find someone else to talk to, right? You’re totally replaceable,” I say nonchalantly. I’m bluffing, but then I suddenly realize – as if a light bulb has clicked on over my head like a cartoon – that Liz’s ear is replaceable. I sneak away from the ear and toward the loft stairs but realize I’m naked. Knuckles is standing at the bottom, mouth agape, his expression one that suggests he is considering gouging out his eyes before I do. I point at him and bellow, “Turn around!” He gulps audibly and faces the concrete wall. I run back to the bedroom and pull on the black cat suit. I yank my wild unwashed hair into a ponytail and put on a pair of green flip-flops. I look in the mirror and realize something is missing. I riffle through a duffel bag on the floor and pull out the first necklace I ever stole. It’s huge and sparkly. I put it on and it shines, even in the dim, unnatural light. Perfect. I grab a never-before-used dusty ass phone book off the concrete floor and tear a few pages out. I stuff the pages down my suit and as I head back to the front door, Liz’s ear asks me where I’m going.