The Girl Who Would Be King(151)
“Jesus Lola,” she says brushing herself off. “I meant I have them and I can give them to you,” she says. I look at her suspiciously as she massages her jaw lightly.
“What do you mean you’ll give them to me?”
“I mean I have them and I can give them to you. You should have them,” she says. I steel my shoulders.
“I don’t want them,” I say.
She talks inside my head this time.
<Sure, you do>
“Don’t tell me what I want and don’t TALK INSIDE MY HEAD!” I scream at her at such a volume that all the windows across the street from the beach shatter. We both look around a little shocked at that. The area is surprisingly empty thanks to the rain, wind, thunder, lightning, and maybe the two psychotic superheroes beating each other up. It looks like an apocalyptic landscape all around us but I can feel eyes staring at us from the buildings and the pier. I’m pissed she’s mastered both the telepathy and the flight and I throw a little of my energy toward blocking her out of my head before making the connection that she’s talking in my head, without the stone. Why can she do that? It’s the stone that makes that possible. I look at her, my eyes narrowed. “Wait, why can you do that?”
“Do what?” she asks innocently.
“Don’t play with me. Talk inside my head. Why can you do that without the stone?” Bonnie shrugs her shoulders. The gesture enrages me and I swing my fist at her, hoping to knock her entire head off her stupid shrugging shoulders. She doesn’t even dodge the punch, but catches it with her hand. It must hurt like hell but she does it. And more importantly she’s taken me by surprise.
“Lola,” she says, drawing me closer, my fist covered with her hand. “Let’s talk about this. It doesn’t have to be this way,” she says quietly. As we’re standing there together I see why she’s matching me. She has the symbol of the stone tattooed on the underside of her wrist. The thick black markings radiate power at me the same way the stone does.
“What the hell is that?” I spit, looking at the symbol. She stares me down.
“You know what it is,” she says. I curse to myself. That would explain the equal strength but she still seems stronger than me. And glowy. What’s up with the glowing? It seems I am going to need every edge I can get. I relax my body.
“Okay,” I say. Her guard is still up.
“Okay what?” she says suspiciously, one eyebrow raised.
“Okay, let’s talk,” I say, shrugging. She begins to release my hand and as she does so I grab her wrist and fling her around as hard as I can, sending her careening towards the Ferris Wheel on the pier. She goes crashing through it like a ragdoll and falls into the sea, the wheel coming down on top of her.
“I love drowning that bitch,” I cackle, hovering over the ocean and watching the few remaining bystanders scream their heads off as they escape into buildings along Ocean Avenue. I’m so busy being pleased with myself I don’t notice the ripple in the water beneath me and when she hits me from below, surging up out of the water like one of those crazy, jumping great white sharks, I nearly black out from the force of it. We fly up into the atmosphere, powered by Bonnie alone, my body bent in half where her shoulder is digging into my stomach.
“Lola. Please, you can try and kill me again if that’s what you really want, but can’t we talk first? Can’t you tell me why you feel so determined to kill me. What is this really about?” She’s talking softly and she sounds like what a mother should sound like. This makes me even angrier about everything. I separate myself from her shoulder and she allows it. We hover in the sky, arguing.
“About?! Are you fucking insane? I don’t have to have a reason to kill anyone, least of all you. It’s just what I am, it’s what I’m supposed to do. You got all the good parts and I got all the dark bits and that’s how it is….it’s how it always has been, and it’s a complete crock of shit, you and yours having it so easy, while we’re all suffering. You having a goddamn heart-to-heart with me is not going to make it ‘all better.’”
“I know,” she says. “But I don’t think that it has to be this way, I think our mothers tried to do it differently…”
“I don’t have a mother!!!!” I scream wishing I could tear the sky in two with only my voice. “I kill you because I kill everything. I kill you because you’re the only thing that can kill me and I can’t have that!”
°
Floating above the ocean with her, it’s clear that she’s not going to give up until I’m dead. Any fantasies I’ve harbored of us both living out our days in peace is ridiculous. And I can’t allow her to kill me again; she’s shown an incredible disregard for human life and from the looks of her I’m not sure she’s not a bit insane. Which I get. Thinking about how the power feels like is inside me and then imagining what it must be like for her – all twisted and dark. Well, it must be hell. I’ve had a hard time with it and mine comes almost entirely with good, for Lola it’s the opposite and it must be horrifying. And with her the way she is, I feel like she’ll bring that hell to Earth if given half the chance