Dark Chocolate Cherry

INEQUITABLE

I decide to attempt walking home, but after a while I get lost. If only Day Janome would speed past me on his bike and whisk me away, but there's only about a ten percent chance of that happening. I've been dying for a cigarette all day, but have been trying to avoid it since it might be bad for my head. This choice doesn't seem to be worth crap as I am literally wallowing in a pit of agony. I keep glancing around looking for Day, but he's not there. I wish he was.

I hear voices and assume they're just my mind playing tricks on me, so I just keep walking and try to forget about it. The only problem with this approach is that the voices eventually get louder and louder, so loud that they become understandable. I reach the corner of Harry and Renton when I notice the voices are directly to my left, and when I turn in that direction my heart skips a beat.

The Red Angel Dragnets have gathered down Renton Street, a pink convertible parked near them on the side of the road. They're smoking some sort of cigarette and leaning against the car, laughing across the street. Because across the street is the most beat-up car in the history of the entire universe, which has somehow managed to defy nature and be sitting directly across the street from the RADs. One of the RADs throws something out of the pink convertible and a scream emanates from the other vehicle, sending a chill down my spine. Someone bangs on the window of the car and yells, causing the RADs to burst into uncontrollable laughter.

I'm frozen on the street corner unsure of what to do. Nolan and Olive are in that car. I could try to help them, but if the RADs are after me, too, like Nolan said, then I'll just end up in the same boat as them. Or I could get back at Nolan for naming an essay after me, but then he'd probably never talk to me again. There's also the possibility of running away, except I have nowhere to run to, and if Nolan sees me then he'll never talk to me again. I have to pick a side.

Or not.

A firework seems to explode inside my head. I throw my backpack on the sidewalk and kneel beside it, practically tearing the zipper open for the front pocket and causing sticky notes and decapitated band members to fall onto the grass and swirl around me. Finally I find them, way at the bottom, my saviors: a box of matches and a box of good old-fashioned Marlboro cigarettes. I stick a cigarette in my mouth and stand up, trying to strike the match despite the fact that my hands are shaking like tectonic plates. Finally the match lights and I touch the end to my cigarette, a sharp smell hitting the air like a whip. Light 'em up.

I inhale and try to push the fear farther down into the depths of myself, because I am not a frightened little girl, I am Inge Tamara Von Dwyer. And I am going to kick some red angel posterior today.

It's incredibly difficult to amble towards the RADs without fainting, but if I want to do what I think I should do then I need to keep my cool. Vicky, the girl with two ponytails, is the first to look up.

"Hey, look everyone, it's punk girl!"

"Why, hello, Vicky," I try my best to smile. "And what might you and your friends be doing on this fine afternoon?"

"Nolan and his sister were driving down the street in their pathetic little car and we followed them over here and chased them and everything until they ran out of gas over here so now we're messing them and everything and throwing beer bottles." Amy says speedily. She holds out a beer bottle. "Want a beer?"

"She probably just came over here to be with Nolan—oh, you freaks are so cute. We should put you in a museum!" Jen giggles. I notice she's staggering, probably drunk.

Emily runs her finger around the tip of her beer. "Um, Jen, maybe we should—"

"Shut up, girls," Lisa interrupts, pushing off the edge of the convertible to stand in the middle of the road. She's directly in front of me right now, just a few feet away. "What do you want, Von Dwyer?"