Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway (6 page)

 

The thing is, I wasn’t angry. Not really. The more they laughed, the more they stared, the better I felt. The more powerful I felt. Everybody in this cafeteria knew who Cherie Currie was! The more they took notice, the greater was my victory. I turned around and looked for the kid with the glasses who they’d called a freak yesterday. He was sitting by himself at a distant table. I walked over there and sat down right next to him. As I sat down he just stared at me, his mouth hanging open. I don’t know if he even recognized me. Maybe he thought I was about to beat him up or something. Instead I smiled and said, “Aren’t those guys creeps?”

 

He nodded quickly and said, “Yeah!”

 

I leaned in and said, “They’re always ragging on normal people like us!”

 

He laughed a little at this and started to relax, cautiously. He still couldn’t stop staring at me, though.

 

“Did it cost a lot of money?” he asked eventually. “I mean—uh—your hair?”

 

I shook my head. “Not a penny. I like your glasses.”

 

He got a little red in the cheeks and looked away. “I hate them,” he said quietly. “I keep asking my parents to get me new ones but they won’t.”

 

“I like ’em just fine,” I told him. Then I leaned in again. “Listen—if any of those creeps bother you again, just tell me, okay?”

 

He nodded, looking a little unsure.

 

“I mean it. I’ll beat the crap out of them for you, okay?”

 

“Okay.”

 

I could still hear the creeps laughing, right behind us. It didn’t matter: I’d made my point. Let them laugh. Its not like it was me they were making fun of. It was the creature that I’d created. The Cherie-thing. It hurts to be laughed at when people are laughing at you. I know what that feels like . . . like when Marie’s preppy friends would tell me to buzz off whenever I tried to hang out with their little clique. Oh yeah, that hurt a lot. But I could take it if those creeps laughed at the Cherie-thing I had created, because it wasn’t really me. The real Cherie, the Cherie who gets afraid and embarrassed and hurt, was safely locked away. She was somewhere deep inside of me, in a place where nobody could hurt her. Now I was bigger than them. And I had already made a conscious decision not to be afraid of anybody anymore.

 

When the lunch bell rang, everybody started to leave. The kid with the glasses sitting next to me hurried off in an effort to avoid the bullies who always picked on him. I took off, too—straight out the back gate. Outside of the school, I pulled a cigarette out of my pocket and lit it. I smiled to myself—today was a pretty good day. I’d made my point, all right.

 

I had my cigarettes, and I had my music, and that was quite enough for me, thank you very much. I’d had enough of school for one day. Anyway, tonight I was heading to Rodney’s with Paul, and I didn’t want to blow my mood by hanging out with a bunch of creeps. I scrunched up my eyes against the blazing, midafternoon sun. School was hell, but when I was fifteen years old, Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco was my idea of heaven. Back then, the glam-rock scene was the only place where I really felt at home in my own skin.

 

Crushing the cigarette under my platform soles, I exhaled a great plume of gray smoke and stormed away from the constraints of Mulholland Junior High, back to the only life that meant anything to me.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 3

 

The Queen of Hate

 

 

 

 

I was in my bedroom with my headphones on, listening to Diamond Dogs again, the music cranked as high as it could go. After seeing Bowie perform these songs live, every note, every line, had taken on a bigger, more profound character. I found myself paying special attention to the instrumentation, to the inflection of Bowie’s vocals. The music was providing a clue, a map to where I wanted to go. I sat on my beanbag chair, floating high above my body, transported out of myself by the glorious noise in my head.

 

My mind was wandering, far from the math homework I was supposed to be working on. I am thinking about a kid named Byron Friday, who was also in the first year of junior high. I had fallen hard for Byron, although he didn’t even acknowledge my existence, apart from the occasional casual hello coming in or out of class. Byron was a handsome kid, blond and tanned, with shiny golden hair cut in layers to just above his shoulders. Byron was quiet, introverted, a mystery man on a skateboard. Sometimes I’d see him when we were on lunch break, whipping figure eights in the back parking lot or popping wheelies on his bike where he wasn’t supposed to be. I wondered if this was what they meant when they called someone a rebel. I wasn’t sure, but I knew that when I looked at him whizzing up and down the asphalt, I’d get a shiver that ran throughout my entire body.

 

I hadn’t told anybody about my crush on Byron, not even Marie. But sometimes, when I was all alone like I was that night, I had this recurring fantasy about Byron and me. In this fantasy, it was a weekend, and Byron and I were having a picnic on the school lawn while nobody else was around. Byron would give me this look, and smile his cute, crooked smile, and I’d realize he was going to kiss me. He’d reach his hand out and touch my face lightly, slowly moving his lips toward mine . . . I’d get this wonderful, butterfly feeling inside when I’d imagine our lips touching. I wondered if this was what falling in love felt like.

 

A sharp banging noise that cut through the music in my headphones finally disrupted this fantasy. I didn’t even hear him at first, knocking lightly on the sliding door leading from the backyard to my bedroom. Didn’t see his silhouette, stark against the fading light outside.

 

Mom was out to dinner with Wolfgang. Marie was at the movies with her friends. Donnie was sleeping over at a friend’s house. I didn’t even know when they were supposed to be back. Marie said maybe ten o’clock, but that didn’t mean anything. I was enjoying having the place to myself. I had my homework laid out before me and it wasn’t until Derek banged louder on the glass that I finally looked up from my books and saw him standing there. He was yelling something, his mouth twisted up.

 

Oh, yuck, I thought, what does this jerk want?

 

I took off my headphones and clicked off the record player. I could hear him through the glass: “Hey, Cherie! Let me in!”

 

“Marie’s not here!” I yelled back at him.

 

He shrugged his shoulders and raised his palms up to the sky as if to say, “So what?” I shook my head at him and picked up the headphones again.

 

“Cherie, come on, I just wanna speak to you for a second!”

 

With a sigh, I put the headphones down and crept barefoot over to the door. I looked at him and wrinkled my nose. He was dressed in his usual uniform of skintight torn blue jeans and a filthy-looking Led Zeppelin T-shirt. Derek’s dark shoulder-length hair looked dirty, and when he smiled his ugly smile, you could see yellow crooked teeth poking through his thin lips. He wasn’t Byron Friday, that’s for sure. I unlocked the door and opened it a crack.

 

“I said Marie’s not here. She’s out.”

 

“Lemme in, Cherie,” he said, putting his mouth up against the opening. “I’m freezing out here!”

 

“No!” I spat. “Go away!”

 

Derek weirded me out, and the idea of being alone with him was not something I would ever consider. He was a real sleaze: when he and my sister were together, he was always pawing at her, trying to snake his hands up her skirt or down her top . . . like a fucking dog in heat! I could never understand why Marie put up with him, car or no car. Even worse, whenever he was here, and Marie went out to bring him a beer or something, I’d catch him staring at me with those dead insect eyes of his. He’d look at me a certain way, and it was as if those liver lips of his would get wetter and mushier. Ugh! If I’d get up to leave the room, I would feel his gaze on me, running up and down my body, appraising me. I could almost hear his breathing get labored.

 

I was about to shut the door and lock it again, but he slipped his fingers through the crack and said, “Just for a second? C’mon! I just want to wait and talk until Marie gets back.”

 

“I’m doing my homework!”

 

Ignoring me, he wrenched the door open and squeezed more of himself inside. I backed off instinctively. I took a few steps away from him, and now Derek was standing in my bedroom, staring at me. He pulled the door closed behind him.

 

My heart started to beat faster. It was like his very presence had sucked the life out of the room. He was just standing there, looking at me with that vile grin of his. His eyes going from mine, traveling farther down my body, making me feel small and uncomfortable. With a blush I realized that I was standing in front of him wearing nothing but a nightshirt and my underwear. I felt burning heat prickling on my cheeks. Oh God!

 

Derek was always ugly, but there was something even uglier about him tonight. He looked disheveled. Sweaty. Like he had been up for three or four nights drinking. I could smell the booze on him, wafting over to me like the sickly sweet smell of a freshly painted room. His clothes were dirty and wrinkled. His hair seemed greasy. His face sweaty and that big, bulbous Italian nose of his looked red.

 

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

 

Suddenly everything that Marie had been saying about Derek over the past few weeks flooded back to me.

 

I think he’s been following me.

 

I’m serious, Cherie, he really freaks me out.

 

Sometimes he scares me.

 

Something in his eyes.

 

He’s CRAZY, Cherie.

 

My mouth suddenly went dry, and with a lightning bolt of realization, I knew that I was in danger. I looked to Derek for clues, but he looked away from me and started walking around the bedroom, making himself at home. He walked over to my beanbag chair and picked up the headphones. He put them on and asked, “So whatcha listening to?”

 

“Listen, Derek,” I said in a voice that sounded a lot more confident than I actually felt. “No one’s home. I can’t have you in here! I promise, I’ll tell Marie you came by, okay? But I want you to leave now!”

 

But Derek wasn’t listening. He looked over to the turntable and muttered, “Oh yeah. You like Bowie. He’s a faggot, you know . . .” Then he took the headphones off and let them drop to the beanbag chair again. “Marie told me you liked Bowie. I can’t stand that shit. He ain’t a real man. What kind of a man wears fuckin’ makeup?”

 

I watched him as he walked around the room, surveying everything. He’d randomly pick up a book, or a record, and look it over. Say something dumb, like “Algebra, huh? I useta hate algebra. I dunno why they make you learn that shit.” Touching everything. Putting his hands on my stuff. I wanted to tell him to fuck off, but I didn’t have a voice. I knew that if I tried to yell at him right then, it would come out as a dry squeak.

 

Then he stopped, and looked at me with a curious expression on his face. “You look exactly like your sister,” he said in a strange, melancholy voice. “I just can’t get over it.”

 

I didn’t answer him, afraid that anything I might say would cause him to lose it with me.

 

He leaned forward a little, and added in a hoarse whisper, “Are you . . . completely identical?” When he said this, he glanced down at my crotch, lifting his eyebrows then bringing his eyes to mine.

 

His physical presence scared me. At the Bowie concert, I’d felt superhuman. Back then I felt like I was eleven feet tall. But now, with Derek standing only feet away from me, I felt like what I was: I felt like a fifteen-year-old girl who was about to pee her pants out of sheer terror.

 

Please, leave me alone! my mind screamed. But my mouth did nothing; I just stared at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

 

What time is it?

 

Is it ten yet?

 

Fear and rage were building inside of me. Not so long ago I was on top of the world, the glitter queen, invincible and tough. Now this ugly, sweaty creep in bad need of a shower was standing in my bedroom, touching my things. Why wouldn’t he just leave? But more than the anger was the fear. If Derek had pulled out a gun on me right then, I wouldn’t have been surprised. I knew he was unstable. Forcing your way into someone’s bedroom and refusing to leave wasn’t normal behavior, was it? Derek was crazy, no doubt about it.

 

“Whatcha afraid of, Cherie?” he said, smiling at me, revealing a terrible glimpse of teeth. “You don’t have to be afraid of me! I won’t hurtcha!”

 

A mad part of me was desperate to believe him. But I didn’t, not really. I was more afraid than I had ever been my entire life. He looked at me like a hungry dog.

 

“Stop looking at me!” I snapped. He didn’t listen to me, though. He continued to stare, looking right through me. I felt like he could see right through my nightshirt. I felt totally embarrassed, humiliated, and terrified all at once. What the hell did Marie ever see in this creep?

 

When I was ten, my dad spanked me. I remember this clearly because it was one of the only times he ever did that. He caught me kissing a kid called Winnie, who used to live right down the street. Winnie was kind of a feral child; the others even called him Winnie the Wolf. He was always prowling the streets alone, and we never really saw his parents much. The house he lived in was run-down and shabby. He used to dress real scruffy, and was notorious for being a bad kid, and everyone in the neighborhood knew it. He would walk right into other kids’ front yards and beat the shit out of them for no reason. Right there, with the kids’ parents screaming bloody murder and running out of the house threatening to kick his ass. But Winnie didn’t care, and Winnie’s parents didn’t care, and for some strange reason I kind of liked Winnie. Winnie didn’t fit in either. The difference between Winnie and me was that Winnie was incapable of caring to fit in, and I guess for some strange reason I found that intriguing.