Page 108 of Fuckboy Psychos (Scarlett Force 1)
Whatever I do, however I do it, it doesn’t matter. I’m imitated, mimicked, copied. Sometimes, it’s in small ways—like the black and white bracelets I wore every day for a month last year—or sometimes, it’s in big ways, huge ones.
A girl once showed up to Prescott High driving a red Pantera.
No, no. I ignore the small slights because like, to be honest, I don’t follow trends. I make them, and then I move on. Slurp up my leftovers, bitches.
Alexis … is a different story. When I was little, I used to imitate her.
She’s the reason I started listening to that radio station and never quit. Sure, there’s Spotify, there are Podcasts, there’s iTunes, but nothing beats that static-y purr in the morning, the smooth, cool voices of the radio hosts, that deep-down Prescott melancholy mixed with a little dash of sour hope.
Nothin’ like knowing you’re one of a few in your community listening to this shit, that it isn’t available anywhere else, that the hosts—who have never revealed their identities, despite changing several times over the years—will never allow their content to be uploaded.
This is for Prescott ears and Prescott ears only. Either you know to tune in or you don’t. They don’t advertise. They don’t sell advertising space. It’s just music, raw and real, hits interspersed with predictions and poor quality, low-budget shit from local bands.
So, everyone listens to KMZI 66.6 because I do—and I listen because Alexis does.
I swing my legs out of bed and stand up, digging through my dresser for a t-shirt that I won when the radio station came to Prescott High once. Just rolled up in their ratty ‘71 Volkswagen bus on career day and encouraged students to think outside the box, beyond college as their only possible escape but also beyond the shrinking confines of reality, that dark despair that hits when a Prescott senior realizes they’re about to graduate but that nothing is going to change.
They will still be poor. They will still live in Prescott. They will be deciding whether to work at McDonald’s or the paper plant or the lumberyard.
But the radio station people in their bus who got out and passed around flyers, and wore masks because they’re fucking cool like that, they made it seem like the world had limitless possibilities if we looked outside the small box we’d been pushed into.
I liked that.
I took it to heart.
Once I’m dressed in the tee and some comfy shorts that are far too big and sag low on my hips, I saunter downstairs and flop onto the couch, glancing over at my grandmother as she sits in her chair with her hands curved around the ends of either armrest. She always looks like she’s ready for action, even when she’s relaxing like that.
Guess that’s how you’d be if you raised six kids, too. Only four of them are still alive. My mom, aunt, and their youngest brother live in town while their other brother lives in San Francisco. My grandmother raised them all here in this shitbox called Prescott and managed to keep them all out of the gang shit and the violence.
Until now.
I bite my lip and look from her gently wrinkled face to the TV. She’s watching some sort of local news program that she streams from her phone. It’s usually pretty interesting, like some sort of true crime documentary except, like, it features stuff that’s actually happening all around us every day.
The hosts are ridiculous, over-the-top upper-crust Eugene residents who report all of this stuff with very serious facial expressions, as if the world will end if we don’t clean up Springfield. God forbid their sister city isn’t as perfect and uptight as they are.
They banned straws and plastic bags, so they’re heroes. Over here in Springfield, we still have meth dens and double-wides on city lots. Get over it.
I look down at my phone for a brief moment, ignoring the unsolved murder in Four Corners that they’re discussing on the show. I pull up Bohnes’ number, and I think about what to say to him.
He said he’d kill Ash Kelly for free. Cute. But I want a solid plan, and I want guaranteed backup. I’ll pay whatever it takes.
I’m so embroiled in my thoughts that it takes me a second to realize that my grandmother’s trying to get my attention.
“Isn’t that your sweet, little blond friend on the TV?” she asks, and I glance over at the face on the screen.
It takes me several seconds to connect the glossy, smiling girl that’s being filmed walking into a fancy benefit at the university in Eugene with the ratchet ass chick I grew up with, the one who could rebuild a carburetor as easily as she paints her mouth pretty as any other Prescott ho.
“Lemon?!” I choke out, eyes widening as I stare at her on Aspen’s arm. The smile he gives to my friend as she turns to him is blinding, thick with charm, oozing self-confidence. He looks nothing like the strange, broken, wild man who rutted me on the roof of his Mustang in the rain. “Oh my God.”
