Boring Girls Read online

  It was towards the end of my grade nine year, which I had spent friendless and tormented, that something changed me. I had not gone out once, I had spent all my time in my room, but I was proud of myself. I’d done well in my classes and I had focused so much on my poetry and writing. My parents were fine with me. Sure, my mother would occasionally ask me if I’d met any new friends, but I wasn’t getting into any trouble. I was a good kid. There was no reason to really worry.

  It happened at the end of that school year. All that was left were exams, then a few months away from the assholes. The school was pretty empty that day, just a bunch of exam-stragglers kicking around, and I was heading out after writing a geography exam. It was very hot outside, and as I opened the back doors of the school, a rush of heat swept over me, contrasting the air-conditioned cool of inside.

  I saw Brandi leaning against the wall. Her eyes narrowed when she saw me. I was confused. She wasn’t a bully who would wait for their victim out back. I began to walk past her.

  “Hey, bitch,” she called.

  Of course I ignored her.

  “I said, ‘hey, bitch.’ You should listen to me when I’m saying something to you,” she hissed and grabbed my shoulder from behind, turning me roughly around to face her.

  I was absolutely, completely stunned. Not only had I never had any sort of violent confrontation before in my life, but I had never been so physically close to Brandi. I could see light freckles on her nose. I could smell her coconut perfume. It was too intimate and I felt overwhelmed and sick.

  She leaned in close, with that familiar smirk on her face, and I recoiled. I was afraid she was going to hit me — I knew I couldn’t fight, and I didn’t know what was going to happen.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Brandi sneered. I knew she could see the fear on my face, and I hated that. I hated it so much that my eyes welled with burning hot tears.

  She laughed. “Are you going to cry now?”

  I felt the strength that I’d tried to bolster myself with over the school year collapse. My reserve of proud nonchalance was destroyed. I’d tried to be so arrogantly numb to people like Brandi, almost amused by their stupidity, and here it was: in the moment it counted the most, I succumbed. I wilted. I felt tears roll down my cheeks.

  “Fucking retard.” Brandi seemed to lighten up, giving me a pretty smile. “You want to know what? Next year, I’m going to fucking get you. Do you understand? I fucking hate you, you ugly bitch.”

  Then she pushed me, hard. I stumbled backwards and fell on my ass. Instinctively I curled up, hunching my shoulders and moving my arms to protect my face in preparation for her attack. But there was none, and when I looked up at her, she was laughing.

  “Ugly bitch,” she repeated, and then walked back into the school.

  I got to my feet and walked quickly across the schoolyard towards the back gate and the sidewalk that would lead me home. I wanted to run, but part of me feared that Brandi was watching me from the back door and would get such a laugh out of that. Watching the stupid, ugly bitch run home.

  xXx

  As I walked down the streets that I had walked so many times before, I tried to calm myself down. I could worry about next year at school later. If Brandi planned to get me, whatever that meant, I’d have to deal with it then. I had time to figure something out.

  I hated myself for showing her weakness. If only I hadn’t cried. If only I had stood up for myself. Slugged her right in her smiling pink mouth. Made her cry. Made her afraid of me. I clenched my fists so hard that my nails dug into my palms. I was absolutely furious at how weak I had been. She’d won. I’d had the power to change the outcome, and I had collapsed.

  A car pulled up to the intersection beside me and paused at the stop sign, and my ears filled with a sound that made me stop in my simpering, faltering step.

  It was music that I had never heard before. It sounded pissed. The drums were fast, the guitars were manic, and the voice that rumbled along with it sounded evil. Absolutely furious and evil. It barely sounded human, it was so deep and guttural — like a fucking monster. The sort of monster that would terrify Brandi and her ilk. It sounded like how I felt inside in that moment. It sounded like what I wanted to unleash on Brandi.

  I looked at the car as it drove off, desperate to know what band was playing. The car’s bumper was plastered with stickers. Many of them were written in a font I could not decipher, spidery and electrified. I knew I was looking at band stickers, but I could not read a single one of them except for one: “DED.”

  I decided to go to the music store and see if there was a band called DED. I wanted to hear that music again. I detoured and headed downtown, already feeling better. I almost felt light-headed.

  I got to Bee Music and immediately went to the alpha­betically organized racks. There was no DED. Now, I have always had a problem with shopping in that I tend to want to hit the salespeople over the head or avoid them at all costs. I dislike their tendency to either be overly enthusiastic to encourage you to buy something, or to stare at you as though you are too filthy and uncool to possibly belong in their store. I was going to have to ask the guy at the counter about DED, and as I approached him, I started to doubt myself. What if they weren’t a band at all? What if the sticker was in reference to something else? How would I ask the guy about the music I’d heard? Pardon me, could you refer me to the pissed-off monster-guy section?

  The guy was long haired and covered in tattoos, and I was definitely going to look like an idiot. But nothing could be worse than what had happened with stupid Brandi, and I needed to know about that band.

  “Hi,” I said to the guy. He looked up from his magazine with the disapproval that I’d expected. Nevertheless, I continued. “I’m looking for a band called DED.”

  The guy nodded, his expression turning into one of interest. “Oh yeah. We’ve got ’em. In the back, in the metal section.”

  I nodded and went to the back of the store. This place obviously kept their “specialty” stuff in separate places from the regular racks, a fact I did not know because I had never really listened to music other than what was on the radio, and I barely listened to that.

  And there they were. DED. I picked up the CD. Die Every Death was the full band name, and I shivered with excitement. The album was called Punish and Kill.

  There were plenty of other bands, plenty of other CDs with that unreadable electric font, tucked in the back of the store. I felt like I’d uncovered a secret world.

  The guy from the front counter had wandered back to join me. “That’s a great record,” he said, referring to Punish and Kill. “They’re awesome.”

  “Yeah, they are,” I agreed. “I’ve only heard a little bit, but I really like it.”

  “Oh man, you have to check out track six. ‘Stomp Your Skull.’ It’s completely killer. The whole record is.”

  “I totally will,” I said. “Awesome.”

  xXx

  When I arrived back at my house, Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table. Dad was marking a pile of papers and was in the middle of a rant about the idiocy of his students when I burst in through the side door, desperate to listen to my new CD.

  “Well, Rachel, how was the exam?” my mother asked.

  “Fine. Good,” I said.

  “What’s in the bag?” my father asked. “You bought a CD?”

  I knew that they would not approve. But I had never been the sort to lie to my parents. I isolated myself in my room, but I did not hide things from them.

  “I did.”

  “Well, let’s see what you bought!” Mom said cheerfully. I placed it on the table in front of them. Dad picked it up.

  “DED. Die Every Death,” he read, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Punish and Kill.”

  “Punish and Kill?” repeated my mother.

  “It’s really good,”
I said. “I really like what I’ve heard of it.”

  My parents looked at each other across the table, and for the first time I felt a line slowly etch itself between me and them. Then they looked at me.

  “Where did you hear about this band?” Dad asked, handing the album to my mother.

  “Oh, Rachel, it looks like very upsetting music,” Mom said. “Look at these song titles. ‘Cut Gut’? ‘I Ignore Your Screams’?”

  “You just don’t understand it,” I said crossly.

  “Honey, it’s not that. It’s that I don’t think we want to understand it,” Dad said. “You’re a bright girl. You don’t want to listen to music like this.”

  “Well, maybe I do want to listen to it.” My voice was rising. “You don’t know the sort of things that I like. You don’t get who I am.”

  My parents exchanged another seemingly telepathic look, which infuriated me.

  “Just be careful,” Mom said. “Make sure you listen to all types of music until you find something you really like that speaks to you. You shouldn’t surround yourself with just one kind of influence. There are many perspectives in the world —”

  “Oh, it’s just a stupid CD!” I interrupted. “It doesn’t mean anything. And I like it. So I am going to listen to it.”

  I grabbed the CD from my mother’s hands and stormed out of the kitchen towards my bedroom. Melissa stuck her head out of her bedroom, a look of bewilderment on her face. Our family did not tend to argue.

  I shut my door firmly, not allowing myself to slam it. I sat down on my bed and unwrapped the CD. I opened the jacket and was presented with the members of DED: five tall men in black, with long hair. To their waists. They were gloomily lit and silhouetted against a purple-skied wasteland. Their faces were in shadow.

  There was a knock on my door. I knew it wasn’t my parents. I could hear them talking in low voices in the kitchen. When I muttered a reply to the knock, Melissa came in quietly and closed the door behind her.

  “What happened?”

  I sighed. “I bought a CD and Mom and Dad don’t like it.”

  “Let me see!”

  I showed her the album. Melissa opened the booklet. “They look like Dracula. But with long hair, like girls. Why do they have long hair like that?”

  “Because it looks awesome.” I didn’t want to get frustrated with a nine-year-old.

  “I don’t know any boys with hair like that,” Melissa said, studying the picture.

  “That’s because you’re a kid.”

  “I wish mine was that long,” she said, absently tugging on her short brown hair. “Can we hear the music?”

  “Yes we can.” I put the disc in my stereo and pressed play. The first track was “Cut Gut.”

  Immediately the guitars began to grind, fast and menacing. The drums sped. I couldn’t imagine a drummer playing that fast. The bass line was menacing and creepy. And then the voice came in. It was indecipherable. I could not understand a word he said, and there was no melody to it, but it dripped with an absolutely poisonous, cruel sound. I was transfixed.

  Melissa pulled me out of my concentration. “I don’t like it,” she said, covering her ears. “He sounds like a monster. It sounds bad, Rachel. I don’t like it!” She shook her head. “Please turn it off.”

  As the music stopped, my mother came in. She hadn’t even knocked.

  “Melissa, go to your room for a little while, please,” she said. “I would like to talk to Rachel.”

  My sister left immediately, and Mom closed the door behind her. “I want you to listen to me very carefully. I understand you’re upset.”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  “I understand that you’re going through something and you’re exploring different things, and your father and I are going to support you as long as we feel it’s healthy for you and that you’re expanding yourself. But I really must insist that you not . . . expose your sister to this kind of music. She’s too little to understand.” She sat down on the edge of my bed. “She gets nightmares. Please try to respect that what you find appealing might not be appropriate for someone who’s still little.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” I said. “Sorry. I won’t show it to her again.”

  “Thank you for understanding that, honey.” She paused. “Now, I guess I have a question for you. Did something happen? Anything you want to talk to me about? I have to admit I’m having a bit of difficulty understanding you right now.”

  Part of me wanted to tell her about Brandi, about the confrontation, about how stupid and helpless I had felt. That would make her feel better. That would give her an explanation. It might even have made me feel better too. “No. Nothing happened.”

  “It’s just that all year you wanted to write, be alone in your room, which is fine. I would have liked it if you’d met a friend or two, but we didn’t let it worry us because you’ve always just been so happy doing your own creative thing. We support that. But . . . I guess I’m just trying to say that if you want to talk about anything with me, or with your dad, you can.”

  “Mom. It’s just a CD. Please don’t worry.” I appreciated that my mother was concerned. I wanted to reassure her that everything was fine. Because everything was fine. In fact, I had hope that everything was going to be much better than before.

  THREE

  I spent that summer in transition. I devoured that Die Every Death CD and investigated other bands, getting into Bloodvomit and Goreceps next. I didn’t hide my purchases from my parents, and they tried to be good natured about it. When I brought home the Goreceps album Excrement from Birth, my dad even tried to have a laugh about it.

  “Goreceps? That’s like ‘forceps,’ right? That’s sort of clever,” he said. My mother said nothing. I knew she was disgusted. But to me, it was funny. It didn’t speak to them on any level other than how scary and inappropriate it was. But to me, it was power. It was anger. It was creative. And it was tongue-in-cheek in some ways. I mean, you can’t name your band Goreceps without acknowledging it’s kind of a funny name.

  I started really focusing on the lyrics of the songs, which thankfully were included in the CD jackets. I was grateful that you could rarely make out what the vocalists sang; my parents definitely didn’t need to know.

  One of the DED songs really stood out to me. “I Ignore Your Screams” painted a picture of where I wanted to be.

  Standing on your face

  Crushing all your dreams

  Put you in your place

  I ignore your screams

  Who’s the big shot now

  On the winning team?

  You fucking little cow

  I ignore your screams

  Beg, beg, beg

  I show no mercy for the wicked

  I am the cruellest of them all

  Is it bad that I’d listen to that song and imagine another confrontation with Brandi? Of course, I would never carry out anything violent. And neither would the vocalist from DED, Balthazar Seizure. He understood what it was: a fantasy. It wasn’t madness and blood lust and something for parents to worry about. It was empowering. It was going to make me stronger. And it sure made me feel very pleased to picture myself standing on Brandi’s stupid face.

  Most of DED’s lyrics were about vengeance against some oppressive force or person, and the joy that could be taken from tormenting and eventually erasing bullshit people from your life. Another song I liked the lyrics to was “Moon” from the band Bloodvomit.

  We will ride through a sky

  That is black with your pain

  We will howl at the moon

  Red with bloodstains

  Together we pull you apart

  Piece by fucking piece

  Your suffering death

  Is my only release

  I liked the directness to the lyrics. They weren’t trying
to be fancy or poetic, they just conveyed their message. They weren’t great artists who would be held up for public acclaim or approval. They just knew how full of bullshit most people are, like I did, and they were creating music based on pure emotion. I admired it.

  I started buying metal magazines, which talked not only about other bands I wanted to check out, but also about the members of the ones I already liked. DED was my favourite; they had been my initiation into this secret world, and I wanted to know who they were as people. But aside from accumulating photos of them, it was hard to learn much about them from these magazines other than their names: Balthazar, the singer; Ed and Sid, the guitarists; Victor on bass; and the drummer, Chaos.

  Because I could find little information about them, I could make up my own story for them. I imagined them to be very much like myself, isolated and angry. They’d been lonely, until they found each other and formed their alliance. In a way it was better to be able to fantasize about who they were, and that they would like and accept me, rather than learning potentially disappointing facts about them. I was free to write in my journal and speculate to my heart’s content.

  xXx

  “Rachel, I know you’re listening to more than one band in there,” Dad said to me one night that summer as we ate dinner together. “But I can’t tell them apart. It all sounds the same to me.”

  “Oh, there are differences,” I said cheerfully. “You just have to listen closely. None of them sound exactly the same.”

  “I think I’ll leave that to you,” he said.

  “I can’t even tell the songs apart,” my mother said. “It really does all sound the same.”

  “It sounds like Dracula,” my sister mumbled into her casserole.

  xXx

  I was very happy that summer and I think that’s why Mom and Dad didn’t complain or try to wrestle the CDs away from me. It was totally expected that they wouldn’t understand the finer nuances of the music. They weren’t supposed to. But I was able to. And I knew there were other people out there who would understand it as well. I just had to find them.