the curse of bubblegum betty

we meet outside the cemetery gates. we're wearing knee socks and mary janes. she's blowing pink bubbles and smells like strawberries, a headband perched on the haircut i want and can't pull off. mine's a short pixie cut, the only choice that works with my angular facial structure and sharp features. her long hair frames her pleasant face and her curves, the swells under her sweater speaking of inviting softness and shaming the crooked inhospitable landscape hidden by my own clothes, what i call the warpath. teenage boys think about touching her. (she, she, she, she) she's a bombshell. i like to look under rocks and would rather not talk if that's okay, unless i have something to say. i feel like daphne and velma standing here about to chase ghosts. guess which is which. except instead of black glasses my eyes are circled with black eyeliner, a failed attempt at her perfect and practiced wing. that's me, always attempting the exterior feminine arts, always getting it wrong. she has her areas of knowledge, and i have mine.

 "it's back there." i say, and point to an area obscured by trees. "swell." she snaps a sweet wad of pink between her teeth. is anything about her not bursting to meet you? she's easy, even in her vocabulary. round and airy like the bubbles she blows. she's so nice, and that makes everything worse somehow.

we weave through headstones and she spots what i want to show her. the weird stinking, sinking plot in the very back in an area that seems to be ten degrees colder than the rest of the place, surrounded by strange ironwork; symbols that look satanic.
"cool," she breathes. she's attracted to danger. i stand back and she walks around the edge, tempting the mud to give whatever creature sleeps under this strange, raw patch of earth a chance to grab her curvy little ankle and descend with her to the claustrophobia of the rotting wood closet of a coffin below.

she's been wearing crystals under her little ironed peter pan collared shirts and sweater sets lately. messing around with ouija boards. aligning herself with darkness. being in school with her since kindergarten, i've known her long enough to know that this is a phase, like her fascination with horses in fourth grade. too bad they don't make satanic sticker books. this is why i brought her here, and she's taking it in just like i knew she would. i just bet she's taking notes to tell her friends, who have deemed darkness cool since she seems to think it is. the friends she giggles with while their manicured hands with teeny upside down crosses markered on in class make the planchette glide at their slumber parties. i'm almost 100% positive she's thinking about it now, thinking about bringing them here, maybe without telling them about it first; about the congratulations she'll get for knowing about this strange and secret place.

her eyes are wide with wonder, the eyes that have always seemed to me to be somehow too literal. she's staring, transfixed, at the grave dirt. the displaced earth that doesn't fit the age of the headstone and surrounding decorations, the sift that looks in its discrepancy as if the grave is either fresh, or something underneath has shifted.
"what's that smell?" her nose wrinkles as she steps back delicately, a child afraid of sullying her sunday school shoes.
 "i don't know. graveyards aren't supposed to smell bad, or no one would ever come visit their poor dead grandmothers."
 "you're disturbed," she scoffed at me, feigning disgust. as if i'm not used to it, watching her across a sea of scrubbed faces in the cafeteria, thinking of what would happen if i approached her table and addressed her in public as we're speaking now; not the way this nancy drew adventure was set underway, i assure you; this flashlight cemetery mystery. this meeting was a nab of the elbow, a drag behind a brick column at the cheery yellow bus departure (never so cheery for me, drowning in a sea of other people's connections, always taking my own bus home) where she would listen to what i had to say without being distracted by the looks we were getting, without the need to escape association with that weird girl who dines alone with a book for company- to dart wonderings, dodge questions. even then, secreted away, she looked about nervously and had a hard time focusing on what i was telling her regarding this X on the map we stand at now, and it took me two or three tries to hook her interest enough to meet me here. two or three stabs with a pin to capture the shivering moth of her morbid curiosity. i heard somewhere that moths are attracted to the light that eventually kills them because they know that somewhere in the field of light there is complete darkness, and that's really what they crave, but get so blinded by the light that they never find the oblivion they're chasing.

i nibble on a fingernail in response, just as i would a pear, the crust of a sandwich from a paper bag in that cafeteria, recalling lengthy looks (lengthy both because of time and distance) i used to permit back when i cared. that was a long time ago.

it's flirting with her, this scene in front of us. i watch it arrest her by the eyes as now the curious child forgets all about messing her shoes, taking careful and ladylike steps forward, her dress shifting prettily about her thighs, the fabric falling from her hips with that same seemingly planned but surely accidental femininely lovely exactness of each lock of hair set against the other, or offset, as each one your eyes fell on seemed to be complimented and made even more beautiful by the last. and each step forward she took, i crept a silent step backwards, disappearing into shadows not of the variety that she now faces, my fingers twisting the pixies in front of my ears, perhaps absentmindedly searching for something to hold on to during the show in lieu of a bucket of popcorn. after all, why should i interfere with this schoolgirl crush? who am i to get between a girl seeking a razor's edge, an inviting precipice, a girl mouthing gimme danger with her throat bared? i'm sure she's sweating a little under that pressed collar, even with the chill from the cold, warmed from heat in secret places, growing fascination and desire drawing her closer.

come to me, little stranger. it beckons with eerie light and irresistible mystery, of lessons you won't find in your hand-me-down high school textbooks, even your dog eared "esoterica for beginners" stash you secret away in the drawers your mom doesn't fill with the clothes that won't wrinkle. i fully excuse myself from the scene unfolding to peer from behind a gnarled tree. the perfect graveyard accessory. one she'd take black and white pictures of to bookmark her heart-locked diary of amateur hexes. i watch the initial embrace, its flattering shiver of anticipation that tremored the ground as she approached. the surrender, the enfold, the bliss of each, this symbiotic relationship. the maw. the tongue, a carnivorous flower, her giggle as she believed herself as beautiful. then i watched her align, sinkronize with the mach band. and i turned and walked away, but not before she surrendered all cult-eyed, becoming not the educated and adored lover she'd hoped, but prey; her girlish delicacy utterly dismissed, fluttering discarded in an unmarked grave.