Cover

undone

brooke taylor

Dedication

To Dad, for your support and enthusiasm in all my many
endeavors but particularly in this one—I know you are cheering
me on still. XOXO

The Beginning

Kori came with a warning label—a black T-shirt that read: DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU HEAR ABOUT ME. On the day we became best friends, I was staring. Gaping. Gawking my geeky little eighth-grade eyes out. I’d expected the bathroom to be empty when I charged in with blue dye from an ill-fated lab experiment soaking through my Ruby Gloom T-shirt. I never expected Kori Kitzler to be standing there, tapping a cigarette out of a red-and-white box and asking me if I had a light.

My mouth dropped wide open. I don’t know which startled me more—that she really thought I smoked (at school!) or that she was actually speaking to me. From the moment Kori had transformed herself from squeaky-clean cheerleader-wannabe seventh grader to I-puke-cheerleaders-for-breakfast eighth grader, I was fascinated by her beyond any sane boundary.

I looked down, my eyes stalling on the warning stretched across her larger-than-most chest. I’d heard a lot of things about her. I’d heard that before school even started, she’d already had oral with half the junior high football team. I’d heard she dropped E with high school boys and had a three-way with two college guys. I’d heard she cracked a Tiffany lamp over Chelsea Westad’s brother’s skull just because he told her she couldn’t smoke pot in their house. I’d heard she threw up on the arresting officer and had lesbian sex while in the holding tank. I’d heard that while the rest of our class was singing “Kumbaya” and making really crappy jewelry at summer camp, she was pretending to dry out while in rehab. And I believed it all.

In response to her smirk, I braved direct eye contact. In the almost black of her eyes—like two shots of espresso, just as dark and just as deceptively calm—I expected to see my fascination for her spat back at me. But I didn’t. Under lazy, half-moon lids, her eyes were soothing, almost hypnotic. And in them, a serrated edge offering both protection and danger glinted.

“You don’t know it now.” She paused to take a drag (she had a light after all). “But you and I are connected.” She held the cigarette out for me. As I took it, a seductive curl of smoke rose up like a ghost between us. “We’re more alike than you think.”

Discretion is knowing how to hide that which we
cannot remedy.
—Spanish proverb

one

There they were—the worst words in all of the English language, scribbled in my mother’s perky handwriting. “Let’s talk.”

I snatched the Post-it off the refrigerator door and glared at it. Heh. It didn’t matter who said them—parent, teacher, or police officer—nothing good ever came of those words.

I returned to my bedroom to stick it with all her other “Let’s talk” notes. They’d curiously begun appearing two years ago. The day I came home smelling of cigarette smoke with a new best friend.

The look on her face when I brought Kori Kitzler—fallen angel of the eighth grade—home with me was just like those credit card commercials: priceless.

And I could tell exactly what Mom was thinking behind the fake smile she’d scrambled to plaster on: My daughter’s going to hell. What will people think of me?

Yes, if the growing mosaic on my wall was any indication, my mother believed the slope to hell was paved in yellow, blue, and pink—but mostly yellow—“ Let’s talk” Post-its.

Who was she kidding? There was no “let’s” about it.

Perched on the toes of my boots, I reached over my desk to add this latest addition and accidentally bumped into my keyboard. The distinctive sparking whoosh of my ancient CRT monitor coming to life pierced the air. Soon the smell of burning dust would rise through the plastic vents at the back. I’d asked for a Sony StylePro 20.1-inch flat panel for Christmas last year; under the tree I found a Conair Pro Style 2-inch flat iron. It probably would have been a good time for me to give my mom a “Let’s talk” Post-it.

I moved to power off the monitor, but stopped when an instant message blipped on the screen.

shaym: Kori?

If I wasn’t so late already, I would have responded. I would’ve asked who “shame” was, because I knew everyone Kori did. Would’ve asked why he thought my screen name was hers. Instead, I shut down my PC. The message disappeared from my monitor, but not from my thoughts.

Kori keeping someone from me meant one thing. She was using the hard stuff again. I wonder if she ever really stopped.

When I spotted the school, I sprinted. Only two weeks into my sophomore year and already I couldn’t afford another “Buenas tardes” in first-period Spanish. Maybe that’s what Mom’s note was for, I thought, and right as I did I ran smack into Josh Krivvy, computer gaming geek. Not to be confused with just any computer geek. Thanks to the Japanese-Version-Only gamers, it’s become a world divided. For the record, I’m a gaming geek of the development variety—a hacker, a code addict, a “sourceress”—but I play it down big-time at school, so I don’t end up like poor Josh.

Poor Josh!

I released the door handle and wheeled back to find him sprawled on the pavement with my boot prints across his back. Quickly, I ran down the stairs toward him, skidding to a stop and dropping my bag with a force that spilled its contents onto the grass alongside his.

Josh clutched at the ballistic nylon and ripcord pulleys of his backpack, salvaging out his PC notebook from its padded-by-NASA slipcase. With a desperate push of his finger, he attempted to power the notebook up. My heart fisted.

I couldn’t stomach the waiting. In an unguarded moment of panic, I wailed, “Is it okay?!”

I pulled in deep breaths; Josh held his. We both waited. And watched. And prayed. Then out of the silence, it beeped.

Josh exhaled. I collapsed to my knees in relief.

Normally, I wouldn’t have shown that kind of emotion over an electronic device within a hundred-foot radius of school, but seriously, that’s one damn fine gaming laptop he’s got.

The sound of the first bell shattered my relief.

I scrambled to help him with his books and papers, all of which had gone flying because—*rolls eyes*—his backpack is reserved for electronics and games only.

As I glanced guiltily over at him, I couldn’t help but think how easily I could’ve been just like poor Josh—faded into the background, immersed in my own little cyberworld, hiding behind my subnet mask—if not for Kori swooping in on her dark wings and changing everything.

“I’m so sorry, Josh. I didn’t even see you.”

Josh wheezed, taking a quick hit off his inhaler.

I really didn’t think I’d hit him that hard.

God, I hope I didn’t bruise him.

“Oh, um … uh … huh,” he stammered, scraping together loose papers. His major crush on me explained, but didn’t excuse, his repeated attempts at brushing hands with mine while collecting the last of the papers.

My other friends think his crush on me is cute, but Kori, who always refers to him as my “crushy stalker boy,” says it’s pathetic. What’s pathetic is that last year Principal Teasley busted him ogling the Pixilated Women of Playboy. Accusations of him warming his worm to the sex scenes in Team America World Police soon spread.

Yes, gamer boy isn’t into any RL women except me. Aren’t I the lucky one?

Not that he actually speaks to me in “Real Life” or anything. At least not in the two years since his chemistry experiment prematurely ejaculated blue dye on me. But we do have decent IM chats whenever he stalks me online. In real life, he just sort of stares at me and drools. Okay, it’s not like he actually dribbles spit or anything, but his lips get freakishly moist.

“S-S-Serena?”

Stunned, I gaped back at him. He speaks! Josh actually broke the seal of silence and spoke words to me? I must have loosened something when I smacked into him.

“Um … your … um, n-necklace?”

My fingers touched the key that hung around my neck.

“Yes! The um, k-key? Oh, um, y-yes, what’s it … um … t-t-to?”

It was hard to believe this was the same guy who wrote witty IM repartee with me under the egotistical yet well-earned pseudonym King-O-Ding.

Before I could answer, Kori was suddenly standing in front of me. “Yeah, Serena. What is the key to?” I jerked at the sound of her throaty voice, bolting to my feet as if Josh and I had been doing something illicit in the grass.

If anyone had something to hide, it was her, I thought watching Parker Walsh’s blue Mazda peel out. Parker Walsh, whose crowning achievement is coming up with 360 different ways to smoke a bowl, was the last person I wanted to see her catching a ride—of any kind—with.

Kori circled behind me and tucked her chin onto my shoulder. “Is it the key to your heart?” she asked in a husky whisper—like she was the one in love.

Poor Josh’s cheeks turned all blotchy like raw sausage, an interesting complement to his pork chop sideburns.

Even though his crush annoys the hell out of me, I wasn’t at all cool with Kori embarrassing him. Probably because I felt guilty about knocking him down. I tried to deflect the embarrassment of crushdom with an evil cackle: “Muuaaahh. It’s the key to the gates of hell.”

Kori lifted her chin off my shoulder and mimicked my evil tone. “It’s the key to the crypt.”

“It’s the key to my cage.” I liked that; a puppy kenneled while the master was away.

Josh was too busy staring at the point where my bare thighs emerged out of my plaid kilt mini to come up with anything of his own, but managed to make a strange sound I hoped was laughter.

Luckily Kori didn’t capitalize on it but instead exclaimed, rather loudly, “The key to success!”

“Yeah! There are ten of them!” It was kind of an inside joke.

The Ten Keys to Success is one of my mother’s self-help books. It sits alongside many, many others, like the entire Chicken Soup collection—including but not limited to Chicken Soup for the Single Mother’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Teenager’s Soul (and no, I haven’t read it, much to my mother’s dismay), Chicken Soup for the Pet Owner’s Soul (never mind that we don’t have a pet. Thanks to me, because I was too irresponsible at eight years old to care for the 100-gallon saltwater aquarium Father Hillman had given me. Hello?). And then there was my personal favorite— Alien Nation: Understanding Today’s Teenagers. Kori and I had a good laugh when we discovered that one. We went to the school’s Halloween party as—you guessed it—aliens. When people asked us about our costumes, we said we were dressed as our true selves and it was the rest of the year that we wore costumes.

So when Kori exclaimed, “It’s the key to the universe and beyond!” I cracked up. Josh started laughing too, but since he had no idea why it was so funny, Kori and I laughed even louder.

“Come on, we’re going to be late,” Kori said, taking hold of my wrist.

I grimaced down at Josh. Well, more down at my vintage burgundy Docs. They might as well have been red with his blood; in fact there probably was some on the soles. “I’m really sorry.”

Then I ran. Up the stairs, through the doors, past my locker, and into Señora Rosa’s classroom. I slid into my chair as the second bell hit its last note. Josh wasn’t so lucky.

“So, check it.” Kori handed me a laminated card as she slid into the seat next to mine two periods later. Supervised study was the only class we actually had together. It was “taught” by Coach Kent, who spent the majority of the hour reading the paper—in the men’s room. So there was minimal supervision. And even less studying.

“A license?” I asked.

“Correction: my license.”

“But, you’re not …” I held it up, turned it over. “It looks so real.”

“Should be. It is real. The guy at the DMV did it. All me. Well, except for the messed-up birth date.”

I eyed her, wondering if maybe this was the guy who was IM’ing her. I didn’t really want to hear, but I asked anyway. “And why would he do that?”

She returned my narrow-eyed stare, more playful than angry. “I didn’t do anything sexual with him, if that’s what you’re insinuating. Although he is pretty cute.”

“So why’d he do it, Kor?”

“Kieren gave him a clean urine sample.”

“Gross. So, wait—Kieren’s clean now?”

Kieren is Kori’s older brother—he’s a senior. She has two— Kyle, who is perfect; and Kieren, who pretends to be perfect. Kori, who doesn’t give a shit about perfection, is the black sheep of the family despite all her mother’s bleaching efforts.

“Yeah,” Kori said as she rolled her eyes. “He wants to take his skateboarding to a”—she made finger quotes—“whole new level. Anyway, now I can go down to that club in LoDo I was telling you about.”

“The karaoke thing?”

“It’s not karaoke, it’s a real club, real band, actual singing. Bleeder Valve? Remember, the band I told you about? Kieren’s going to drive me. Mom would shit a brick if she knew.”

I glanced at the fake ID in my hand. “Well, since you have a license and all, you could actually drive yourself, couldn’t you?”

“True. I’d have to get a car, though. The only one I could jack would be Park’s. It would be easy; he’d be too stoned to even notice.” She thought about it for a moment. “No. I couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t be fair.”

I snorted. “Honor among thieves?”

Her burgundy lip curled in a smirk. “Yeah. Something like that.” Then: “You know, Parker thinks the ID looks more like you than me.”

“Really?” I looked again at the ID. Now that I’d dyed my hair black and flattened it out with the Pro Style, Kori and I looked identical.

Lexi Devlin (my friend and yet also my mother’s biggest advocate—go figure) thinks I dyed my hair to upset my mom. But really, I did it to be different from her.

See, the thing with my mom—she was just seventeen when she got pregnant with me. So she’s got this chip on her shoulder. Like she has to prove to everyone that she isn’t the slutty, white-trash girl they think she is. She totally overcompensates. Like the way she always wears panty hose and pumps even though she’s on her feet all day, and all her how-to and self-help books so she can be an expert on everything—oh, perfect example—the Baked Alaska. Okay, so, she asked me what I wanted served for my tenth birthday. My reply—hamburgers and ice cream.

In the living room—full-on Martha Stewart decorations and not a speck of dust, and for dinner these bizarrely exotic vegetarian “hamburgers” with ciabattá-like buns. The whole spread could have made the cover of Bon Appétit.

In our kitchen—half a wall burnt to a crisp, because who else besides my mother would even think about putting a blowtorch to ice cream?

It’s all about the illusion. And my mom would love nothing more than for me to appear, if not actually be, just like her— sunshine, white light, daisies, and doves.

And I wanted to be dark. Like Kori.

She’s got this sort of Lisa Marie Presley vibe going on, or a pre-sobriety Drew Barrymore thing. Those great lips, sleepy eyes, and haunting voice.

She’s got true darkness about her.

When I told her I envied her that, she told me, “You’ll never be the night, Serena, you’ve got so much warm light inside of you. You’re burning bright.”

She said it like it was a blessing, like she was the one who envied me.

Then she sang Shinedown’s “Burning Bright” like a lullaby. God, it sounded so cool drawn out of her ethereal throat. So poetic and perfect, just like Kori herself. The first time I heard her sing, it was pure, flesh-chilling awe, like hearing The Sundays’ version of “Wild Horses” after years of the Stones.

“You could use it, you know … if you ever have need,” Kori said as I handed her fake ID back. “If anyone questions you on it, just remember it has my address and we were born in ’87.” Kori and I have the same birth date. Twins separated at conception. That’s my theory at least.

She scrutinized me. “And, of course, you’d have to remember that you’re me.”

Ever since Kori and I became friends, ever since she’d spoken those simple words—“We’re more alike than you think”—I’d been trying to find anything inside of me, anything at all, that resembled her.

Even with her fake ID, I don’t think I could ever forget that I was not her.

After all, she was the kind of girl who could get a fake ID, get up in front of a club full of people and sing, and I was so not that girl.

In fact, today I was the girl whose mother couldn’t even bother to have a verbal conversation with her. The girl who had to crack Da Sticky Note Code.

In my experience with things like this, I’ve found it’s a good idea to have a defense strategy already in place. First I needed to figure out exactly what she knew. In English class, when Mrs. Talaber and her Aqua Nest hair started in on part five of her thirty-part series on sonnets, I decided to make a list of all the possibilities. Not that I’m all that big on lists or anything, but I’m not big on sonnets either.

I decided to classify my crimes into three categories: Petty Offenses, Misdemeanors, and Felonies.

With pen poised as if hanging on Mrs. Talaber’s every overly enunciated word, I gave it some thought.

Obviously it was something big enough to warrant a Post-it note parental conference. Since truly heinous crimes usually skipped the request for face time and went straight to an all-out in-your-face trial with immediate conviction, I could rule them out. So, logistically speaking, I was working with a casual sin. The type of crime that generally had a weeklong statute of limitations, because if I didn’t hear about it within a week, I considered it gotten away with and forgotten. That should have narrowed it down. It didn’t.

Thanks to having Kori Kitzler as a best friend, a lot could happen in one week.

“Miss Serena Moore?”

I glanced up at the expectant Mrs. Talaber and her permanently pursed lips. I hadn’t heard a single syllable of her lecture.

I slid my elbow over “Felonies” as she approached. “Yes?”

I felt the sudden pressure of everyone’s eyes on me, a feeling I never enjoyed. Which is why I could never be a cheerleader. Well, that and I can’t do a herkie. Whatever the hell that is.

“What strikes you as different when reading this sonnet by Shakespeare?”

Time to fake it. I glanced down at the text in front of me and skimmed the poem, hoping that we hadn’t flipped pages while I wasn’t paying attention. I’m guessing she didn’t want my revelation on Shakespeare’s sexual orientation, so I hedged. “His obsession with immortalizing his lover’s youth.” Wasn’t that what all of his were about?

“Yes. Well, that is a very good analysis. Let’s give it some more thought, shall we? Miss Mancini, how about you?” We both turned to find Marci positively glowing—as any good cheerleader would—from the attention. “What strikes you as unique about this type of sonnet—as it pertains to today’s lecture?”

“The rhythm. It’s not a-b-b-a; it’s a-b-a-b.”

“Very good. Exactly.”

Whatever. At least I knew she wouldn’t be calling on me again, which was all the more reason to continue what I was doing. My brain scoured the past week, while I jotted down all of the possibilities. When I exhausted every potential crime, I categorized and tallied them.

I tapped my pen on “Petty Offenses.” These consisted of things that could easily be defended with a simple yet effective, “Give me a break.” This week those included countless acts of illegal music downloads, six counts of looking at explicit photographs and lewd jokes online, lost effing count of using profanity (but, damn it, I’m trying), and one count of hacking into various JV cheerleader blogs to slam on the varsity cheerleaders, thereby creating a Kismet High civil war. (Although “hacking” is probably too strong a word, seeing as how they all had the same predictable password: Adrian17. What is it with cheerleaders and quarterbacks anyway?)

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