The Girl Who Would Be King(4)

“Ack! Bonnie! Get upstairs and change now, before anyone sees you.” I shake off the extra water next to her like a dog, splattering her with hundreds of icy drops. She screams and runs away in mock terror. “Get, Bonnie!” she says. I laugh soundlessly and bound up the stairs to the sleeping quarters.

It isn’t until I’m changed into clean jeans and a sweater that I realize our trip to the library will surely be canceled because of the rain. I throw myself onto my bed, frustrated, and pull out the three books I’ve been re-reading since our last trip. Without a trip to the library this week, I’m stuck with the same three books I finished almost two weeks ago. I put them back under the bed and head over to the ancient stacks of community books and comics in the corner bookcase, hoping I’ll find some gem that I have somehow missed in years of poring through the piles that rarely change. With the exception of the few comic books, I’ve read each book on the shelves at least half a dozen times. I frown at the comics, something I’ve had little interest in over the years. A handful of Archies and a Betty & Veronica Double-Digest. I’ve read most of them, but get bored with the stories quickly, and with Betty and Veronica, who I want to like, but who both somehow seem exactly the same but with different hair colors, and also nothing like me. There are also some comics “classics” that are mostly illustrated comic versions of books, like Moby Dick, Crime & Punishment, and Treasure Island, but having already read the real things I can’t drum up much interest in the faded pictures and word balloons.

But today, while digging through the books a bit desperately, I come across a handful of comics I’ve never seen before. It seems impossible that they’ve been here all this time and I’ve never noticed them, because when I look at them there’s this beating in my chest that can’t be ignored. How could I have missed the tremble in my hands when they touch the vibrant pages? Maybe someone recently added them to the shelves? It’s possible. It happens sometimes. I can’t think of an explanation and I no longer care. I grip the handful of comics to my chest and take them to my bed, face flushed, heartbeat pounding in my fingers and toes.

And my world just breaks wide open as I read the pages. SUPERHEROES!

I read all the superhero comics one after another and then start again, feeling more unity with the brightly colored images than I ever would have imagined possible. Maybe I’m really not ‘the same’ and maybe that isn’t so bad after all.



•

I don’t make it to Los Angeles.

I headed there by way of Las Vegas since I’d never seen it before, but once I see Vegas, there’s no way I’m going to miss out on it. The lights get me from go – like some crazy carnival for grown-ups. Coming over the hill on my bike at dusk and seeing those lights, like a bright, sexy mirage illuminating the whole sky and pounding back the blackness of the desert, I’m hooked already. It’s as if those colored lights alone can help make me into something new and exciting. And that feeling makes it pretty easy to give up on heading any further west, which is funny because L.A. is like all that’s been in my head since the very beginning, since I’d begun to know there was anything outside of Reno, which had basically sucked balls. But I forget L.A. the second I see those lights. Maybe it’s destiny.

Starting over somewhere always sounded really intoxicating to me, and really easy, but I hate to admit that despite the power I’m holding onto inside me, I’m a little nervous when it actually comes time to make my move. I’ve been stealing from Delia – God knows who she’d been stealing from – for years, and I have a huge wad of cash, some of it stuffed in my bra and some buried in my bag, so I know I have plenty of time to figure things out, but I’m shocked to find myself almost afraid. I killed my own super-powered mother less than nine hours ago, what on earth is there to be afraid of?

When I cruise my bike into a random motel parking lot and take off my helmet, I’m assaulted by noise. It’s like the volume on the whole world has been turned all the way to the right. Or maybe so far that the damn knob has broken off. I put my hands on my ears instinctively. No wonder our trailer was in the middle of freaking nowhere. I shake my head and close my eyes trying to block everything out. But I refuse to live in the middle of nowhere like Delia, so I’m just going to have to gut it out. I pull my hands away and cringe as the sounds tumble around my brain, fighting for dominance. After a few minutes I’m able to push enough stuff away that I can at least stand and walk. It’s not like the noise gets any less really, just that my body is learning to compensate for it or something. It’s still annoying, but I can live with it if I have to.