Swann: A Contemporary Young Adult SciFi/Fantasy (Swann Series Book 1) Read online

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me, Margaret, and that’s really saying something,” I said. “I’m not conflicted, I’m in pain. It’s your relentless disapproval. It’s just too much to take anymore. And I’m barely even fat.”

  “Everyone I know talks about the pain they’re in,” she reasoned while perusing the latest Allure magazine on the new couch. “You should get over it already.” She held up the opened magazine to show me a teenage model with heavy purple and black makeup and said, “Do you think I’m still young enough to pull this off?”

  I ignored the magazine. Starring at her, emanating tsunamis of disdain, I said, “Everyone you know is on drugs to dull the pain. Just like you. What do you really know about pain that you haven’t chemicalized into nothing the second it appeared?”

  She looked up at me, rolled her eyes, then dropped the magazine on the table. “Pain,” she explained, talking to me the way you would explain physics to a retard, “is an emotion with teeth. It leaves scars. Don’t tell me I don’t know pain.”

  “It’s not the pain that’s leaving me scarred, Margaret. You’re doing that all on your own.”

  She was on her third drink and her fourth magazine and it wasn’t even eleven in the morning. “That’s why I pay for your therapy,” she said, sipping her neon-colored Appletini. “It’s me taking responsibility for my actions.”

  “You can’t just treat people horribly then dump them in therapy and act like it’s a confession and you’re absolved from all your bullsh—”

  “Don’t you dare use that word!” she interrupted. I thought about it, but didn’t.

  5

  The way people remember their traumas—like the first day of school, or when they couldn’t stop scratching their chicken pox, or that time they got food poisoning and they sat there on the toilet, crying, sweating, dying inside—that’s how I recall with exact clarity my earliest memory. The way this recollection crucified me at a cellular level, it has become embroiled in my DNA. My therapist calls it my defining tragedy. I don’t disagree. He thinks my traumas are the root of my unhappiness. What almost came out of my mouth was, “Dude, I’m fifteen. Unhappy is my state of mind. It’s what I do.” What stopped me was the possibility that he was right. I couldn’t stop thinking about my earliest tragedy. I still can’t.

  So I was three years old, or perhaps four, when a friend of Margaret’s slid a local newspaper with our family picture on it across the table and asked if I was adopted. She wasn’t discrete. The word “adopted” stayed in my mind for years. A couple years later, when its meaning became clear, I lay curled on my bed sobbing for two days. Margaret never noticed.

  Back then, as part of the media blitz coinciding with the launch of SocioSphere, the local newspaper printed a large picture of our family calling it an “interest piece.” This was the picture. My father and I looked awful. Margaret, on the other hand, never had a problem striking the perfect pose, or flashing that sensuous Hollywood smile for the cameras. The story gained traction and before long—above our family photo—was the very bold, almost accusatory headline: ANOTHER MILLIONAIRE ADOPTION? You would have to be blind not to see the sour taste of Margaret’s future burning in the sockets of her eyes. She argued with my father for hours that night. The photograph was devastating, the implication worse. Margaret still shows it to me sometimes, when she’s upset, or when she’s feeling especially cruel.

  To her friend, Margaret said, “No, she’s not adopted. She’s got her father’s looks is all.” Her voice was crisp with resignation, the sound of glass splintering. The way her body sunk into itself with the revelation that everyone saw how her little brown child had the shrunken features of a miniature, bloated politician, I knew the exact weight of her disappointment and it measured colossal.

  “The best we can hope for,” Margaret sighed, picking at her lunch with a fork, “is that she gets his IQ, too. Otherwise, ohmigod, what’s the point?” Both women laughed and it was a hollow, superficial sound I sometimes hear in my nightmares. My brain keeps that memory on tap, maybe to remind me it’s not okay to relax, or feel good about myself, or dream for a better, happier future. Those jerks who say looks aren’t everything, they don’t have Margaret for a mother.

  6

  At eleven, puberty hijacked my body and left me terrified about the mysteries of womanhood. My emotions unwound and misfired so dramatically I realized the body I didn’t like was now the body I didn’t understand. My moods were so up and down even I agreed medication was necessary. At one point Margaret suggested an exorcism.

  The family physician prescribed various medications and eventually we settled on a strict regimen of Paxil for what he asserted was most likely social anxiety disorder. Margaret said it was important to have pills to solve my problems. No one wanted to talk about me getting my period, or how PMS gives you multiple personality disorder, without somehow turning it into the kind of disease only a pill could solve. Just when I thought everyone was done loading me up on harmaceuticals, Margaret said, “We need some pills for her weight, too.”

  First it was Meridia to suppress my appetite, then Xenical in the hopes that the fat burning pill would halt my steady weight gain. When the doctor suggested Margaret analyze my diet, she did her polite-laugh and said, “Fat blockers will help with that, won’t they? Besides, if she can’t have her cheese she’ll just sneak it anyway.”

  If things felt unmanageable before, I practically lost my mind on medication. Forget sleep. Sleep was that thing I couldn’t get for two whole months. Everyday was me trying not to run away, or kill myself, or stab Margaret to death. I was comatose. A homicidal monkey in a thimble of a cage. I raged, I cried, I swore. And I suffered the worst diarrhea ever. At one point wild fairies nearly convinced me my parents were Satanic and that I should finish the whole bottle of aspirin at once. Then something in my room wouldn’t stop buzzing, and it made me sob for three hours straight. I tried cutting off my left ear to stop the noise. This is how I first met Margaret’s plastic surgeon. After stitching me up, he gave Margaret a look and suggested some “wicked” anti-psychotics.

  Apparently wicked meant good.

  Back then I would have given anything to be someone else. Someone normal. At the time, after seeing my crusted red eyes (made worse by puffy circles beneath them), I probably looked more like a well-fed zombie than your normal, everyday seventh grader. Margaret’s answer had been to crush sleeping pills into my food. I was mostly normal before all the prescription drugs, but somehow she thought more drugs was the answer. Who really knows anymore? In the end, my body finally slept.

  When Margaret asked about me, if I got my eight hours, I would say, “Sure, I got my eight hours. They weren’t good hours, but at least they were uncomfortable.”

  The pills dragged me off to sleep, but sleep was so shallow and disorienting it didn’t remedy anything. If anything, I became my own creature feature. Most days I was the entire undead cast of The Walking Dead.

  Margaret gave me more pills to counteract the original pills. These pills made my legs shake, so then it was Requip for restless leg syndrome, but that gave me somnolence, which is just a fancy way of saying I was freaking exhausted all the time. When I refused to take Requip anymore, Margaret gave me Xanax pills to combat my anxieties surrounding taking more drugs. Looking at her name printed on the Xanax bottle’s label, I asked what she had to be anxious about and she said she was anxious having a daughter so obviously unhappy it was casting dark clouds over her otherwise sunny skies.

  “You try being sick, doped up, porked out, and unloved by everyone you know and tell me what there is to feel so sunny about.”

  My report card, when it finally came in, was almost all D’s. The school counselor wanted to talk to me. She asked how I was sleeping and I said not well, that maybe my prescription pills were turning me into an alien. She wanted to talk to Margaret. The thing about rich people is they have a way of making their problems go away so much better than poor people. Margaret call
s it “influence.” To the counselor, she said things like peer pressure, and body image issues. Margaret suggested I was jealous of prettier, more popular girls. She said I wasn’t responding well to my father’s very public status, and that I was missing him a lot lately. Margaret proudly explained that SocioSphere was in the first stages of a major security upgrade and my father was working eighteen hour days.

  To Margaret, the lies came easy.

  7

  Two years ago, for my fourteenth birthday, Margaret got me my first therapist. She told me the pills weren’t working the way she hoped, and this sort of treatment had better side-effects. Therapy was disappointing to us both. Last year, when I turned fifteen, she said I didn’t want it enough, whatever “it” was. Healing? To be skinny? Pretty? Trust me, I wanted it! My latest therapist (Margaret made us change them all the time hoping for better results) suggested more pills and that’s when I told that drug pushing parasite to roast in hell, that I wasn’t taking any more of her ridonkulous horse pills.

  Margaret just shook her head when the woman said she wouldn’t be talked to that way. Margaret looked at me and said, “What are we going to do with you? You obviously need help but I don’t know how to help you. I’ve tried. Your therapists have tried.”

  In front of this latest therapist, I said, “Some of your cocaine would take the edge off, don’t you think, Margaret? Maybe just a bump. You know, when I really need it.” I could have been auditioning for a Steven Spielberg movie the way I sounded so convincing. The last thing I would ever do were any of Margaret’s heavier drugs. But still, the therapist didn’t know that.

  “No, smarty pants,” she said, embarrassed. She flicked her eyes at my therapist and made her best “sorry” face, but the heat scorched her cheeks, a bright flaming rage I would pay for later. “That should be taken only when the cardio fails you and you need to fit into everything you own better. It’s not for recreational or even medicinal purposes.”

  “What about binge drinking?”

  At that point, being obstinate was an irresistible temptation. Of course, at the time I was on a horrible cocktail of prescription drugs. If my therapist would have asked about my thoughts just then, I would’ve confessed to feeling like someone else’s abused toy. The one no one wants anymore. The one whose only job is to be mistreated in silence.

  “Binge drinking leads to the kind of floppy beer gut only liposuction can cure,” Margaret said. “Is that what you want? More unwanted body fat? Don’t you have enough already?”

  The therapist, interrupted, saying, “I’d like to see both of you next time,” and together we said, “No, thank you,” then traded glances, surprised. It was the first time in years we agreed on anything. Inside, I almost smiled.

  Almost.

  8

  When I turned sixteen, my father said he was buying me a car. With a belly full of birthday cake and horrible tasting fat-free ice cream, I had the biggest smile ever. At that exact time, Margaret pointed to the side of my mouth, to a smear of chocolate cake; she was really good at that, taking these high moments of mine and ruining them. But not that day. That day my smile remained. Ignoring her completely came easy as one word burned bright in my brain with sparklers and confetti borders: Freedom.

  The next day when my father and I went car shopping we talked about a lot of cars. I was looking to be environmentally responsible. He showed me a Toyota Prius and I was like, “Good god, dad, I’m not looking to be that responsible.” We bought a black Range Rover Sport instead. The price tag alone should have been embarrassing, me being sixteen and driving an eighty thousand dollar SUV, but it was three years old and cost half the original price, so with a generous smile and my unbridled gratitude, I got my first car.

  Rover.

  Rover wasn’t going to fix any real problems, but it did offer me the kind of independence I craved when Margaret went ballistic. For that reason alone, I fell madly love with my big black gas hog. On Sunday mornings I wash Rover with soapy water and love, and nearly every one of those Sundays Margaret loses her mind at the idea of me being out front. Exposed. It’s all she can do to keep from storming outside and insisting Rover get his bath from one of our detailers.

  Two weeks ago she charged out to the driveway and said, “What will the neighbors think if they see you washing your own car? The paparazzi will have a field day with us!” There was a powdery white ring circling her right nostril and she couldn’t stop her left hand from shaking.

  “What’s the occasion, Margaret?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You look like you’re trying to slim down.”

  Frowning, she used one hand to steady the other. “I’m slim enough.”

  “Yet your nostrils look like they’ve been eating powdered doughnuts.” My voice bore a pointed, accusatory tone that sounded just right. She swiped her nose, flashed me a sharp look, then turned and stomped back inside. Two days later, The Examiner ran a damaging front-page photo featuring me washing Rover. The blown-up photo had me leaning forward with a perfect flop of belly chub hanging over my waistband. Even I thought it looked gross. The layout team doubled their cruelty when they decided to circle and enhance the belly fat for dramatic flare.

  Miserable freaking cockroaches.

  Sometimes, when things go so wrong, even the biggest babies like me are too startled to cry. Seeing the photo, my skin broke into a hard chill, followed by a mixed burn and a thin sheen of sweat. The nausea had me throwing up for the better part of the day.

  The article’s headline read: FORCED INTO MANUAL LABOR! COULD THIS SPELL FINANCIAL TROUBLE IN THE VAN DUYN PARADISE? The subtitle read: OR IS THAT A BABY BUMP?

  Margaret was popping pills like crazy. She was screaming, calling them bloodsucking vampires—whoever “they” were. The paparazzi? The article’s authors? The newspaper’s editor-in-chief? She said the only reason the photos sold was because anything that makes the rich look stupid or desperate sells like crazy to the tabloids. She said, “The lesser people always feel better about themselves after exploiting the weaknesses of the affluent.”

  When I asked what weakness they were hoping to exploit, Margaret said, “Your figure, of course. Everyone knows we don’t have money problems.”

  “What if it is a baby bump?” I challenged.

  With swollen eyes, she looked me up and down then announced, “I’ll grow tits on my knees before that roll of fat becomes a baby bump.” So much for my attempt at levity. My inner child was devastated. Margaret’s latest jab proved her heart was nothing more than a ten ounce, non-functioning tumor. If anything, she was incapable of love.

  Whatever damage Margaret did to me, the paparazzi made it worse. The way I felt about the press—we had a love/hate relationship. We still do. They love me; I absolutely detest them. I hate the paparazzi the way America hates terrorists. Or pedophiles. It’s a deep-seated, guilt-by-association kind of loathing. When I was fourteen some pervert with a high powered lens photographed me sunning topless by our pool. My father was at work and Margaret was out with the club hags and we have tall trees to prevent nosy neighbors from seeing into our yard, so back then I felt safe. The tabloids bought and printed this explicit photo. Imagine my surprise seeing my naked self on the front page of one of the tabloid rags in the grocery store. Two black censorship stars barely covered my nipples. Everyone looking to buy their week’s food, or just bubble gum and a Coke, they all saw how apologetic my breasts were, how—by the placement of the two different sized stars—my nipples didn’t exactly match.

  I overdosed on sleeping pills and aspirin the day after the photo hit the stands. The doctors pumped my stomach until I coughed up every last soggy granule. They put me on suicide watch.

  These same sleazy photographers later photographed me being wheeled from our house that night on a stretcher. It was eerily reminiscent of the Britney Spears photos, except they painted her as being a freaking suicidal nut job and me as being plain old suicidal. The picture with me being lift
ed into the back of an ambulance made the front pages of Star and the Enquirer as a follow-up piece. I couldn’t get a break. In the background was the grainy image of my father looking worried, horrified, haunted by something, or perhaps overcome with pity. Who knew what that look was? Not me. My first thought was he was overcome with sadness, but honestly, it was probably just embarrassment.

  The Enquirer headline read: DRUG OVERDOSE FOR THE SOCIOSPHERE PRINCESS?

  Finally they got it right. What wasn’t mentioned, however, was half the reason I tried to kill myself was because of them. To take a nobody like me and trash my name and reputation? Seriously, why? Hoochie mamas like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, I totally get. For them, sex tapes equal publicity. Nudity is chic. With every scandalous photo, they make more money, solidify themselves as brands and icons in pop culture, and get their own reality shows and weddings hosted by the E channel, or whatever. I’m not like that. I have no following. I’m just a formless, talentless, ghastly child who’s good at being exploited by the press. Honestly, it’s like kicking a dead horse.

  The hospital released me the next night after my father convinced them it really wasn’t a suicide attempt and CPS wasn’t necessary. He laid me on the couch where all I wanted to do was watch reruns of The Vampire Diaries and drink hot chocolate. He gave a sigh, then leaned over and kissed my forehead. His face hung with exhaustion, a look that was more zombie than human. I could tell by the bluish bags under his eyes he was packed and ready for a vacation from me and Margaret, from the brutality of the paparazzi. The minute I settled in, Margaret started up. In the kitchen, she shook the tabloid in my father’s face saying, “If this isn’t reason enough to get her poor tits done, I don’t know what is! You see this? They’re like pancakes. She’s just a child for heaven’s sake. They should be perky. And they should match!”