BIOLOGICAL IMPERATIVES
FROM THE JOURNAL OF BONNIE GRAYDUCK
Edwin was in the office, talking to the orange-haired receptionist, when I got out of my meeting with the guidance counselor. He was leaning over the counter, speaking to her in a low voice, and I was suddenly viciously jealous of their proximity: why the hell did that old woman get to be this close to his perfect face? I overhead him say, “But you have to let me transfer, I’ll take any other biology class, any period, it’s very important—” Then his head snapped around, and he stared at me, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowed. It’s taken me a lot of practice, but I’m good at reading expressions, and his said: I’m angry, surprised, and also maybe a little afraid. An odd reaction, especially since he didn’t know me at all—and he’d have nothing to fear from me anyway. “Never mind,” he muttered, turning and not quite running from the office. One advantage of him running away from me: I enjoyed the opportunity to watch a certain portion of his anatomy on the way out.
I walked thoughtfully out to the parking lot. The logical conclusion was that he’d been trying to get out of our biology class so he wouldn’t have to sit next to me anymore. That sort of behavior might hurt a girl’s feelings, if she had any. I couldn’t figure out why he’d do that, though—we hadn’t interacted at all. I’d never had someone take such an immediate, instinctive dislike to me, and I must admit… I found it an intriguing challenge. Most people are as easily manipulated as a set of children’s building blocks, and I can put them together or pull them apart in whatever combinations amuse me. But Edwin was something I wanted, and he didn’t want me. Maybe this is what they mean by “playing hard to get”?
But I was being silly. Edwin was a teenage boy. He wouldn’t be hard to get—none of them are, at least, not once I managed to get them hard. Then I’d be the one playing come-here/go-away, playing with his mind—
My jaw started aching, and I realized I was grinding my teeth, an old habit from my childhood that I’d left behind, like playing with matches. I climbed into Marmon—the parking lot was nearly empty, so there was no danger of me smashing up the cars parked around me as I maneuvered the Great Wheeled Beast—and drove toward Harry’s house, planning my plans, and plotting my plots, and beginning to think I might have some fun in Lake Woebegotten after all. Getting someone to fall in love with me might be almost as much fun as destroying someone’s life.
And if love didn’t work out, I could always fall back on the destruction.
Harry brought home more burgers and fries from that diner, and I made a little face. “Eating like this once in a while is fine, Dad,” I said. “But I’d rather avoid the pimples, greasy skin, and thunder thighs, thanks. Don’t you ever cook at home?” Then again, home cooking in Lake Woebegotten probably meant casseroles where cream of mushroom soup and mayonnaise were the main ingredients, with a crust of crumbled corn chips on top.
He looked a little shamefaced. “Well, I’m pretty busy, so I do eat a lot of takeout, I guess that’s not so good for you. When you used to visit, you loved eating pizza and burgers every night of the week. I guess I didn’t think… I could go by the grocery store and pick up a few things.” He sounded doubtful.
I rolled my eyes. “Leave me some grocery money every week, I’ll do the shopping.” It was a role I’d taken on back in Santa Cruz, too, since left to her own devices my mom wouldn’t have anything in the fridge but a bottle of mustard and sour milk and some rotting organic produce she’d forgotten to eat.
Harry grinned. “It’s a deal. I can’t promise I’ll be home for dinner every night, what with the job and all, but I’ll do my best—”
I waved my hand. “It’s okay, I’m good with the lone wolf thing, I’ll make stuff that generates lots of leftovers.”
Not long after that, Dad got a call on his radio—somebody got drunk and fell down a flight of stairs, and Harry had to go make sure there wasn’t any foul play—so I had the big old house to myself. I considered trying to find out where the Scullens lived, maybe doing a little judicious stalking, but despite Marmon’s many fine qualities, he wasn’t an ideal reconnaissance vehicle.
I settled for locking my door—it didn’t have a lock originally, but I’d brought a few hook-and-eyes and sliding bolts with me in my luggage, along with a battery-powered screwdriver, so that was okay—and plugging in my vibrator (the battery-powered ones are way too weak, don’t believe the hype) and thinking about Edwin, wondering if he was that pale and smooth and perfect all over.
Tomorrow, the games would begin. Tomorrow, I’d start winning.
Except tomorrow came, and Edwin wasn’t there. I spent the whole morning living halfway into the future, half-flirting with baby-faced Ike by rote, playing some little Queen Bee games with J and Kelly—backhanded compliments, subtle undermining, setting them at odds, really basic stuff, but essential for shifting around the social pecking order to favor me—but mostly just thinking Edwin Edwin Edwin. Then lunchtime came, and he wasn’t at his table. His semi-siblings were all there, but no Edwin, boy of my waking dreams.
In the middle of some stupid babbling Ike was doing about taking a trip to the lake I stood up, strolled over to the Scullen/Scale table, and gave them my biggest wide-open smile. “Hello,” I said. “I’m Bonnie.”
They all stared at me. Their faces might as well have been carved in marble. They were all so pretty. Was Dr. Scullen secretly a cosmetic surgeon, practicing at home on his foster brood, making them into images of perfection? I let my smile drop. “Anyway,” I said. “I need to talk to Edwin. Is he here today?”
Rosemarie and Pleasance rose to their feet, picked up their trays, and walked away like I wasn’t even there.
Blood rose into my cheeks. Cut dead by those pretty bitches, in public, in front of everyone? Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. Not okay. There would be consequences.
Hermet the giant got up, glanced at me, grinned like a moron, and lumbered out. That just left Garnett, who sighed. “Sorry about that,” he said. “They’re just… Edwin had to go up to Canada for a little while.”
“How long?”
Garnett shrugged.
“Very helpful.” I went back to my table, where the convocation of lesser beings stared at me. I sat down, and went back to eating, and J finally said, “What was that all about?”
“I just wanted to borrow Edwin’s notes from biology class for the week before I moved here,” I said. “But he’s not around.”
That answer didn’t seem to satisfy any of them, but they didn’t push, and fell back into their mewing and bleating routine soon enough.
So Edwin had taken a sudden trip to Canada. Interesting. It was insane to think he’d left town because of me… but in my experience, most things in the world do seem to revolve around me. And if they don’t start out that way, they get there eventually.
Biology class with no partner was a bit of a bore. Indeed, the whole week was pretty useless. No Edwin meant nothing of interest. I used the time well, of course. I discovered that the grocery store—Dolph’s Half Good Grocery, “It Isn’t Half Bad!”—was immensely easy to shoplift from, as the cash register was either run by a profoundly stupid and inattentive teenager, or by the owner, Dolph, who spent most of his time flirting desperately with various housewives. I learned the faces, and very nearly the names, of every other kid in the school, and put together a mental map of the school’s social network, with all the fault lines and exploitable components marked red in my mind’s eye. A fairly simple and typical structure: jocks and cheerleaders, rich kids—around here I gather that meant their fathers owned lots of pigs—nerds, “slednecks,” the general slush of unremarkable losers, a lone goth, a pair of hippies, some band geeks, etc. All easily comprehended and exploited.
But the Scullens and the Scales didn’t fit in. They were a little island off to the side, sharing connections only with one another, not hooked into the greater organism that was the school culture, and that meant they were essentially untouchable by all my preferred methods. Character assassination was pointless when they obviously didn’t care what anyone thought of them. Humiliation was out of the question; Rosemarie and Pleasance couldn’t be humiliated any more than the sun could be frozen: they embodied dignity and grace, which should have made them easier to topple or tarnish, but, frustratingly, somehow didn’t. I couldn’t turn them against each other because I didn’t have any leverage, or any way to get leverage. There were more direct approaches to comeuppance—I’d used them in the past—but increasingly, direct acts of violence seemed to be best used as a last resort, and probably indicative of a failed imagination. Far better to lead your enemies to destroy themselves.
But I didn’t give up. I like a challenge. And I can be very patient.
I just wished Edwin would come back. Plotting to destroy Rosemarie and Pleasance was fine, but when you have your heart set on seduction, assassination is a poor substitute.