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CHAPTER 2

Lorna ran through the dead hallways to doors that led caretakers and the populars to the boiler room. It was the basis of a steamy, sweaty locker room, with a giant green Lego brick of piping hot water in a dusty corner. Arrows on the meter jumped from one number to the next, steady rumbles emitting from the skin. As a loud slam sounded from the closing double doorway, several pops looked around tensely, gulping at the sudden and surprising noise. “Oh, Lorna its you. Heh thought it was that dude who like lives down here or somethin’” One of them stated, laughing slightly and smiling with equally puckered gloss. “You mean the caretaker? And anyway where is everyone? There’s some missing.” Lorna, breathless from her run, and windswept from a row of pipes blowing cold steam and warm steam into the atmosphere asked.
“Whatever. Cheerleading practice. Guess who could get out of it and who couldn’t!” She jeered tilting her head and lifting her conditioned hands up to neck length, over stretching that nobody cared about what Lorna had to say. Moving over slowly and sensually, the mouthy pop strolled over to Lorna, and began stroking the top of her leg. “You coming tonight then?”
Cigarettes were bad for her; they could give her cancer.
Lilith loved the thought.
They skinned her hips tightly, because, and just because, a person should keep their health close, but enemies closer. She remembered the first time a fag had been between her lips. The first time she’d ever felt anything but genecidal desire. Like puffing on an oxygen pump, her lungs were cascaded with rainbow beads, happy little smiles with bloodshot eyes. She wasn’t entirely certain Nicotine was the only dangerous substance in those thin white lolly sticks, but either way it did her in crazy. That girl who dragged in every inch of smoke a person blew out, the one with the entertaining hair colour and the brightest blue eyes a person could claim fame to had handed her a dirty cream cardboard packet the first time Lilith had set her body in through the screwy iron gates. [Yes. Screwy.] Between patent pink nails, they had been thrust down L’s jacket faster than one of these fellow pupils could get a N/A on a GCSE English paper, for drawing carebears in wax crayon down the mark panel. She didn’t proceed then with a puff up outside the science building simply because they were there, or that everyone else was “doing it”, even though this hourly activity might bring her play mates. She did it to piss someone off. Anyone.
More often then not, she just angered herself. Yes, others got flustered, others got rubicund, but the others could also get even. And despite the cave age image of their behaviour, the deviance was not lost to stupidity. It thrived like bacteria, the kind that swarmed over these very mirrors, slabs of ice, cracking and shimmering, spraying people with hallucinogenic reflections.

Fingers stroked a crown of thorns; tilted infixed upon a head of black ruthless hair, tears for her subjects softly rolling, softly falling, down sinless cheeks, encircling the throne with rose. Cries of pain for her subjects, beheaded by her own royalty. The dilapidated queen. The chosen one. She, she who, in private ballot, was the victim of everyone else’s dirty delinquency. Fingers stroked a crown of thorns, grooved into her mind permanently. To last forever.

“But why dote on whats happened.” Lilith had said aloud, clear as the night, after drifting into the cloud of poison. If she let herself worry and rely on past events to obtain painful emotion, she may as well just give up on the rest of the feeling pallet. Why miss out on disgust, disturbance, wrath and injury, when such fun games could come from these. She inhaled the last of her cigarette, before quickly dousing it in a broken sink. Puddles formed upon the porcelain despite there being no actual source; the taps were defeated over somebody’s head. One last sigh towards an almost intact glass shard and Lilith decided that perhaps it was time to go into the cafeteria. Others of the female genre would spend dinner hidden away from the lunchroom, too many bad memories, but not this girl. Not this girl who had survived more at school, than there need be worry for something that may or may not occur in the Café. Reluctantly, students and teachers shared the same four white walls, arms wrapped around their own trays or pails, eyes darting from table to table. It would only take a chocolate milk, or pudding cup to sail through the air, for a fight to take place, fists not included. And today, oh today, was pasta. The intimate thought of bologna trailing down the inside of someone’s blouse, was too much to resist, so most items were thrown with goals and passion. About the only thing in the all girls’ school, that included those particular traits. Each table was like a clique, but far worse. Every one was a mutant twin of everyone else. Liliths table was on the outskirts, it wasn’t hard to see, so she easily headed towards it, quickening her pace as she stepped upon “the walk”. The walk was a dimly thought of nickname for the strip of floor placed perfectly through the middle of all the tables. A confident stride through the area would soon be doused to a dying fairy step. Even Lilith, the cocky black beauty, felt a faint quiver in her soul, as every pair of eyes in the block would bore into her bare skin, as if she was wearing a frown and nothing else.
Kneading gum between her front teeth, she sat down. Her back ached. Daddy dear always demanded that for her to be a woman, she must walk forward, legs together, back straight as a pole, don’t let it hinge into comfort. “For if we enjoy the pleasure of a rocky stature, we must be ready to endure a bent path to heaven”. Leo, her father, a raving alcoholic, who would rather throw a naked girl party in the back of a riot van, then even consider using a “religious” word, often mystified Lilith with this. That’s probably why she leant on this, the only plausible tip her father could and would ever give her. She’d see him again soon. Term time was creeping up; reading to dig its spiky nails into L’s already pressured back. She’d have to endure it though; there wasn’t anywhere else to go, to hide. She’d have to endure her home, for the good of three weeks. Her father, knuckles brassed, his wife, mouths fiery, their son, skin bruised. Lilith had watched everything fall apart for her eternity. The marriage, the household, the inner strength. She learnt to stay emotionless, otherwise, shed see it all happen again. And again. And again. And again. Infact, Lillith had often seen people’s friends go tumbling down hill too. Since she wasn’t in a friendship group, she could view events with an open mind, see both points and foretell the collision that would soon occur. In this school, people straggled to each other for dear life, otherwise something would eat you alive. It meant seeing every girl take on the form of the person sitting next to them. Just a dyed edition of another, they sat like beans in a tin. Half baked and covered in a thick tomatoey goo from their weird alien transformation into the clone next door. L reached her seat and sat down uncomfortably. Somebody had certainly grooved their way into her chair. Eventually, heads turned back to their school slop, the weightless to their single soda can and the populars to some new slim smoothie that probably wasn’t legal in the UK. But then again, couldn’t daddy get ANYthing?..

Every dinner hour, Lilith took the opportunity to catch up on some local news. Flicking the paper to obituaries, she scanned names for one she would know. Failing any pleasure from that, she would turn to weddings, births and celebrations, so her mind could create wicked thoughts to twist through their happiness, and snap it in two. If she couldn’t enjoy something, then why should everybody else? L knew how selfish this sounded, but if she kept the pleasure deep within, then she could remain her stale self to everyone who distantly knew her. Turning sheets slowly, L made her way to the deaths, checking each page beforehand just incase she encountered something interesting. And she did. A single article, a small column so easily forgotten and dismissed, almost near the deaths. Her eyes had to flick back, once, twice, three times, sight not focussing on the name before her. It was… her name…what? Lilith Saberhagen. Except this story wasn’t about her, she wasn’t the only Lilith in her family. Her mother, originator of the name, was splayed out in the text, every word about her, every line portraying her life in a melancholy way, how she lived through abuse, suffocated slowly, and then slit her wrists in the bath. The words death and suicide, blinked like neon lights, headlamps to Lilith in her darkest hour, frightening her away from the situation, a deer in artificial yellow. Her mother had killed herself. Sure, she was a moaner, to the point of faking depression, but she wasn’t kooky enough to go that far..was she? Maybe Lilith had underestimated the power of her mother, going through with something so awful. Her stomach jerked acid up, ‘til it reached the throat and seeped from the corners of Ls mouth. Half-eaten pasta lay cold and distant as Lilith poured the other half over the paper. Yells and screams of disgust flew round her head, kids in all directions jumping out of seats, afraid they’d be hit by flailing spaghetti. For this, Lilith was sent home early, the day that term broke.
And the day her life began…