The Undesirables: chapter 1

I am a monster. Why, you ask. Maybe it’s my strange, frightening appearance. Then again, I was never much to look at, even before I became like this. Maybe it’s the lives I’ve taken or the countless others I’ve ruined. They all had it coming, of course. I may be a monster, but I’m not a mindless killer! Maybe it’s the simple fact that I couldn’t fit into societal norms, no matter how hard I tried. So what makes me a monster? I’ll tell you my story and let you decide.

I was once a normal high school senior. Okay, scratch that. I was never a normal anything. Other girls lived in stately two-story homes that looked like something out of an interior design magazine. I lived in a run-down ranch house with dingy walls, worn carpets, and malfunctioning appliances. Other girls dressed in blindingly bright clothing, stamped with designer labels like branded cattle. I stuck to jeans and graphic tees in one color: black. Other girls went to church on Sundays, like all the good people in the Bible Belt. I spent my Sundays in the library. Other girls had picture perfect families with a mom, dad, and siblings. All I had was Harvey.

Ever since I can remember, it was Harvey and me against the world. I was an only child, and my mom skipped out on us when I was three. She couldn’t take the pressure, Harvey said. Just in case you hadn’t already guessed, Harvey wasn’t like normal dads. For starters, he didn’t believe in titles. He insisted I call him Harvey instead of Dad because he wanted us to be on equal footing. “Respect has to be earned, not demanded,” he used to say. “Everybody deserves the same respect, whether they’re one or one hundred years old, whether they wear a cop uniform or a McDonald’s one.”

Harvey wasn’t one of those clean-cut dads with a high-paying job and the latest model SUV. He taught History of Rock ‘n’ Roll at the local community college, and his appearance matched his job. He looked like an extra in a hippy movie: long hair, beard, ripped up jeans, vintage rock band shirts that came from actual shows instead of the mall. Instead of a minivan, he drove a red 1959 Cadillac Eldorado that sputtered and coughed out exhaust everywhere it went. The right side fin was bent, a lasting reminder of a long ago fender bender, and the bumper adorned with stickers that mocked the establishment. Beads and trinkets hung from the rearview mirror, jangling in time to the radio. That car was the opening scene of the last normal day of my life, if you can call it that.

There’s an old saying that goes, “Only the strong survive.” In this town, I’d amend that to, only the normal survive. What they don’t tell you is that for some, normal is an impossible dream.

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It started the first day of senior year. The day began just like every other, with Harvey banging on my door to the tune of Reveille. My eyes snapped open, and I groaned, turning over in bed. Outside the window the sun was already beaming down, bathing everything in a warm pink and yellow haze. A bird perched on a tree branch, chirping a happy little song until it saw me and flitted away. How could anything be that cheerful so early?

I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and turned it on. If you were expecting anything like an iphone, you’d be sorely disappointed! Harvey didn’t believe in such extravagances. I had the world’s dumbest smartphone. It got calls, texts, spotty internet service, and not much else. No space for anything fun, like games or social media. I was lucky to even have that; Harvey probably wouldn’t have let me get a cellphone at all if payphones were still a thing!

“You up yet, Layla? We leave in thirty,” Harvey’s voice rang from the other side of the door. I knew from the wakeup call what time it was, even before I saw my phone clock: 7:30.

“Yeah, yeah.” Lazily reaching an arm across the bed, I flipped on the light switch and un-cocooned myself from the blankets. After a few moments of staring up at the ceiling, I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed to get dressed. While some girls might obsess over carefully curating the perfect first day of school outfit, I had more important things to worry about. All I had to do was put on my favorite jeans, a pair of boots or sneakers (sneakers today because it was too hot for boots, and a shirt from the top of the pile.

I grabbed what I thought was a black shirt, and it meowed. Yellow eyes blinked at me. A black and white cat with markings in the shape of a mask and cape stretched and jumped out of the drawer. Until he moved, the white was completely hidden, making him blend into the mountain of black fabric. “Oops, sorry, Phantom!”

I got dressed as fast as I could with Phantom rubbing and weaving between my legs. I petted him behind his ears and tossed his toy catnip skull. While he chased after it, I beelined for the bathroom. I didn’t do bright, girly colors or designer labels, but I was a sucker for makeup and jewelry. Gothic makeup and jewelry. Rifling through my jewelry box, I picked out a set of black bangles and a pair of bat earrings that matched the necklace I wore everywhere. I did my usual heavy eye makeup and painted my nails deep blood red to match my hair - the only other part of my outfit that wasn’t black.

The polish had barely dried when a loud whistle sounded, followed by a low rumble that shook the house down to the foundation. There went the 8:00 train… one of the perks of living near a railroad. No sooner had the noise faded that Harvey called me again.

“Coming, Harvey!”

On the way out the door, I made a quick detour to the kitchen to grab an energy drink for breakfast and pack a lunch: a bag of chips, an orange, and another energy drink. Harvey was already waiting by the door, travel mug in hand. Like me, he preferred breakfast on the go. The time it took to prepare and eat a big meal was time that could be better spent sleeping!

“Are you sure you don’t need lunch money?” Harvey asked.

“No thanks. School food is crap!” It’s not like we were rolling in money anyway! The less I used for things like gross school food, the more there was to spare for things like makeup, jewelry, and music.

The August heat was already stifling in the early morning, its air thick like soup that suffocated you when you took a breath. The parched brown grass crackled under my feet on the way to the car. All around the neighborhood, the lawns looked just like ours, dry and bare. No flowers could survive in the heat, only weeds like crabgrass and poison ivy. We drove on, the windows down to make up for the lack of air conditioning, and the sound of rushing air mingled with the rock music blasting.

The farther into town we went, the wider the roads got. The grass got greener; the lawns got smaller and the houses bigger. The houses ran together in an indistinguishable blur. They all looked exactly like each other with their beige paint, brown shutters, clear glass storm doors, and high gabled roofs. They sat in treeless yards that looked exactly like each other at the end of narrow driveways that looked exactly like each other, driveways that housed cars that looked exactly like each other. Their pristine sameness lulled me into a stupor until the turnoff to the high school came.

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Alexander Cavett High was a towering three story brick building in the middle of the affluent part of town. Apparently it was named for some guy who died in a massacre over two hundred years ago. There was a sign in front of the school parking lot marking the exact spot where it happened. Hmm, wouldn’t have been my choice of people to name a school after!

The school was sandwiched between a car dealership on the left and a bar-b-q restaurant on the right, where the students hung out before and after school. In the rearview mirror I could see the electronic marquee flashing, “Welcome back, Warriors!” We passed through the iron gate, thrown open wide for the incoming cars and buses, as a resource officer directed traffic. Nobody remembered what his real name was. We all called him Officer Coconut for his disproportionately small head covered in short dark hair that looked like a coconut perched atop his heavyset body.

Officer Coconut waved us on, and Harvey’s car sputtered to a stop in front of the building, showering the area in a cloud of exhaust. Behind us, several girls coughed and gagged, holding their noses. I exchanged an eye roll with Harvey. Wow, dramatic much?

“Eww! You’re polluting my Earth!” one cried.

“I think I’m gonna be sick!” another said.

“Go green!” shouted a third. That voice was one I recognized. Mallie Murdoch, the mayor’s daughter and resident queen bee of Alexander Cavett High. A girl with all the personality of bubblegum: bubbly, full of hot air, and usually seen in bright pink.

I slumped down in the passenger seat, trying to make myself as small as possible to avoid being seen. “Hey,” Harvey said. “Don’t let ‘em get you down. They’re all dumb as rocks. You shouldn’t give a pinch of camel crap what they think.”

“I know, I know.” Harvey was trying, but he didn’t get it. I wasn’t embarrassed about the car.. Honestly, it was pretty satisfying to see Mallie Murdoch’s pricey pink outfit tainted by car exhaust! I was embarrassed about being the only senior without a driver’s license. And thanks to the graduated license system, I was unlikely to qualify for one before my eighteenth birthday. You had to go through the school to get approval to apply for a learner’s permit, and every time I tried, they turned me down. Grades not good enough, they said. Too many absences, they said. Too much of a troublemaker, they said.

The sound of honking horns jerked me out of my thoughts, and Officer Coconut motioned Harvey to move on. “See ya later, kiddo!” Harvey said as I got out and grabbed my backpack.

“See ya, Harvey!”

“Eww! You call your dad by his first name?” There was that snide voice again.

WIth an inward groan, I turned to face the walking Barbie doll known as Mallie Murdoch. “Yeah. And?”

“That’s so weird!”

I’m not exactly Average Jane here. Tell me something I don’t know, I thought. “Yeah. And?” I said again.

“And you should tell him to get a new car. That one’s bad for the environment!”

Again, tell me something I don’t know. Classic Mallie. Not only did she think everyone else was rolling in money like her, she thought all the world was a game of house and she was playing the mom. If there was one thing I learned in twelve years of public school, it was how to handle bossy people like her. Let them think they’re in charge, and give them enough rope to hang themselves.

I gasped, putting on a look of feigned shock. “Ohmigosh, you’re so right! I had no idea!”

Judging by the sanctimonious smirk on her face, the sarcasm was lost on her. Not that I was at all surprised. Mallie and her entourage spotted a freshman who looked like she needed bossing around, which gave me the chance to make a quick escape.

I passed through the school courtyard, dodging and weaving through the groups of students chatting amongst themselves. Halfway across, something shiny caught my eye. It was a stone in the memory garden, a small patch of land in the middle of the courtyard dedicated to the students who died before graduation. Reading the names, I saw several who died of illness and several more who died in car accidents. There was a guy who died from a football injury and a girl from my mom’s era who died in a house fire, but there was no mention of the guy who died in a drive by shooting a few years back or of the odd suicides and drug overdoses over the years. Alexander Cavett High had no room for weeds amongst its garden of perfectly pruned hydrangeas and petunias.