Goth Girl Rising Read Online Free Page A

should feel free to come see him...
    "As long as we have a chaperone, right?"
    He clears his throat, and his meaty lips clash together in a way that makes me realize that—somewhere under that fat face—he's gnashing his teeth.
    "You created this situation, Miss Sellers. We're merely living it."
    "Yeah, I control things. don't you forget it."
    "Miss Sellers! We are
trying
to help you. One more comment like that and you'll have the dubious distinction of ending up with detention before you've even gotten to homeroom!"
    I think about it for a second. That would be kinda cool, actually. It would really rub the Spermling's nose in it and it would piss off Roger, too.
    But no. I have to stay focused. I need to find Fanboy.
    Of course, I'm not about to tell the Spermling any of that, so I just sit there with a smirk on my face and glare at him from behind my Bangs of Doom and tap my foot because I'm dying for a cigarette.
    He lets me go. I resist the urge to look over my shoulder and say, "Stop looking at my ass!" as I leave.

Eleven
     
    I HAVE A FEW MINUTES BEFORE the bell rings, so I go looking for Fanboy. I feel all light and puffy inside, like someone filled me up with a cloud or something. The Spermling doesn't bother me. Roger doesn't bother me. I'm going to find Fanboy and then everything is going to be fine.
    No, wait. That's wrong. Everything is going to be
perfect.
Because I'm going to make it that way this time.
    I'm halfway down the hall when something catches my eye. It's a poster on the wall, sort of a combination of computer type and artwork...
    The artwork...
    Jesus! It's
his.
It's
Fanboy's
artwork. I would know that style anywhere.
    The poster says LITERARY PAWS VOL. XX #3 and then COMING BEFORE THANKSGIVING .
    And then ...
    Holy shit.
    Under that: FEATURING THE NEXT CHAPTER OF SCHEMATA!
    No. Effing. Way.

Twelve
     
    I T'S NOT JUST S IMONE . T HE WHOLE
world...
    The posters are
everywhere. Literary Paws
is the school's literary magazine. No one gives a shit about it. It's like a total joke. It's run by Mr. Tollin, this eight-hundred-foot-tall English teacher who spends all day talking about how he played college basketball and almost made it into the Final Four one year. (Whatever
that
means.) He's a total loser and he only runs the magazine because he's the newest English teacher and they must pass this thing along like it's a pissed-off skunk.
    I don't get it.
Schemata
is running in
Literary Paws?
Did the whole world go crazy while I was away?
    The bell for homeroom will ring soon, but I can't help myself—I have to see him. I have to find out what's happened.
    So I rush to his homeroom, hoping for maybe just a minute before the bell.
    And...
    Yes, the world has definitely gone crazy.
    Because there he is, there's Fanboy in all his Fanboy glory, sitting at his desk.
    Surrounded.
    Surrounded
by like half a dozen people. They're all laughing, and here's the thing—they're not laughing
at
him. They're laughing
with
him.
    And then his friend—the jock, Cal—starts waving them all away and busts out this fake ghetto shit: "Yo, yo, all y'all gotta back off my dawg here, OK? My man needs
space
to be the
ace!
"
    I want to puke. What the hell?
    And Fanboy kinda chuckles and starts drawing something. He holds it up and it looks like some caricature of one of the kids standing around him and everybody laughs and...
    Caricatures?
    He's wasting his effing time drawing
caricatures?
    And since when is he
popular?
God, I was the only person he showed
Schemata
to. Now he's ... he's serializing it? In the effing literary journal?
    None of this makes any sense.
    I back out of the room before anyone can see me. Dimly, like it's off in the distance somewhere, I hear a sound—the homeroom bell.
    And I don't care.

Thirteen
     
    I' M LATE TO HOMEROOM, BUT Mrs. Reed doesn't say anything other than "Welcome back, Kyra," which makes everyone look up at me, which I don't like, but whatever. I plop down in my seat and I stare out