Read Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls for Free Online

on their own roads.
“What?” he said.
                 “We
were discussing William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. You have read the book?”
                 “I
have.”
                 “Then
perhaps you can tell me about the rivalry between Jack and Ralph. What allows
it to grow so bitter?”
                 “Their
attraction for each other,” Nothing said. ‘Their love for each other. They had
this fierce love, they wanted to be each other. And only when you love someone
that much can you hate them too—”
                 A
ripple of laughter went through the class. A couple of boys rolled their eyes
at one another—what a fag!
                 Peebles
pressed her thin lips together. “If you had been paying attention, instead of
doodling and staring out the window—”
                 Suddenly
he was too tired to care what happened to him. This was empty, all empty
useless crap. “Oh fuck you,” he said, and felt the class suck in its breath and
silently cheer him on.
                 Half
an hour later, sitting in the principal’s office waiting for the hand of petty
academic fate to descend upon him, he thought again of the ghosts that had
visited him last night. Visions, or whiskey vapors? It didn’t matter. You’ve
got to get out of here, they’d told him. You’ve got to get out of here.
                 After
school, a bunch of kids met in the parking lot and went over to Laine
Petersen’s house to get stoned. Laine’s older brother had gone off to college
and left behind his water-bong, an elaborate ceramic affair shaped like a skull
with worms twining in and out of the empty eye sockets. You put your finger
over one of the nostrils to hold the smoke in.
                 Laine’s
girlfriend Julie had a bag of pot, real ragweed, the kind of stuff that scoured
your throat and made your lungs feel like parchment if you held the smoke in too
long. Still, it was all these kids knew, and within fifteen minutes they were
stoned out of their minds, Someone put a Bauhaus tape on and turned it all the
way up. Laine and Julie rolled around on the bed, pretending to make out.
                 Nothing
had his doubts about how much Laine really liked girls. The walls of his room
were plastered with posters of the Cure; he had seen them in concert three
times, and once he had sneaked backstage to present Robert Smith, the singer,
with a bouquet of bloodred roses into which he had
tucked two hits of blotter acid. Julie wore her hair wildly teased in all
directions, and she favored lots of black eyeliner and smudged red lipstick.
Nothing suspected that Laine liked her mainly because of her superficial
resemblance to Robert Smith.
                 He
looked around the room. Several of the kids were groping each other ineptly,
kissing each other with sloppy wet mouths. Veronica Aston had pulled Lily Hartung’s skirt up and had two fingers inside the elastic
of Lily’s panties. Nothing stared at this for several minutes, dully
interested. Bisexuality was much in vogue among this crowd. It was one of the
few ways they could feel daring. Nothing himself had made out with several of
these kids, but though he had tasted theft mouths and touched their most tender
parts, none of them really interested him. The thought made him sad, though he
wasn’t sure why.
                 He
lay back on the floor and stared up at a poster tacked on the ceiling above
Laine’s bed: Robert Smith’s lips enlarged several thousand limes, smeared with
hot orange-red lipstick, shiny and sexual. Nothing wished he could fall into
them, could slide down Robert Smith’s throat and curl up stile in his belly.
The marijuana made him feel restless; he wanted to do a hundred things at once,
but none of them here. He realized that among these kids he called his friends
he felt much more alone than he had felt in his room last