Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway by Cherie Currie Read Free Book Online

chomping at their gum, sneering wickedly at me. For a moment I thought how I never saw Big Red alone. She was always with her goons. It occurred to me that maybe she was afraid. Afraid what the kids would do to her if they ever caught her alone.
     
    I just looked at her confused. Up until this point, I hadn’t said anything to anybody about Big Red. Up until this point, I had only heard the stories and saw the tears and the terrified sobbing faces of the kids she had scared the crap out of. Up until this point she had only been throwing her weight around with the other kids. I had just been ignoring her, hoping she would leave me alone.
     
    “You deaf or something?” Big Red snarled, when I just stood there looking at her. I put my hands to my chest trying to cover myself. I shook my head no.
     
    “Well I heard that you ain’t scared of me. That you’re real brave, huh Cherie?”
     
    “Why would I be afraid?” I said meekly, “I don’t even know you . . .”
     
    Without another word Big Red backhanded me hard across the face. Everybody in the locker room stopped, and the sound of knuckles against flesh echoed around the room like a gunshot. I flew backwards, over a bench, and ended up flat on my back. “Haw! Haw! Haw!” laughed Big Red, as all of her cronies joined in. “Haw! Haw! Haw!”
     
    I stood up, obviously shaken. She didn’t miss a beat. She pointed a finger into my face like a harpoon and her mouth was so close to me I could feel her breath. I turned my head. “You BETTER be afraid, you little BITCH!” She sneered. “Next time you’ll be afraid!” She poked me hard in the chest, then she smiled and I could see her red lipstick smeared across her teeth. She looked around the room. Everyone looked away and then, like a monster in a horror movie, she was gone. I was left standing there, half naked, paralyzed with fear. I could feel my body tremble violently until I crumbled in tears. The silence was deafening and only the sound in that packed locker room were the wailing echoes of my sobs.
     
    As I walked toward Mulholland Junior High, the catcalls started before I had even made it inside the gate. As I walked down the corridors, past the lockers, I felt a hush fall over the whole building. People stopped talking and turned to openly gawk at me. I walked past them all, looking down my nose at them.
     
    “Nice hair, Cherie!” someone yelled as I walked past. “D’you get mugged by a circus?”
     
    I kept on walking, flipping the kid off. Everybody had something to say to me today. “Your hairdresser have a psychotic episode, or somethin’?” “What happened—can’t afford hair spray anymore, so now you’re using spray paint?”
     
    I didn’t even make it a minute in Mr. Thomas’s first-period history class. He took one look at me and sent me straight to the dean’s office. I liked Mr. Thomas. He was a gray-haired, middle-aged ex-Marine-looking type of a guy. He kind of reminded me of my dad. He seemed to understand that I was going through a pretty rough adolescence, and although he would never come right out and say it, I felt like he really did care. Out of all my teachers, he was easily my favorite.
     
    The dean took one look at me and sighed. “Okay, Cherie,” she said. “Would you like to tell me what’s going on?” I gave her some ridiculous story about how I volunteered over at Encino Hospital, and how the outfit was for some special event we were doing there after school. Amazingly, she believed me. In fact the dean, principal, and the rest of the school staff bought it hook, line, and sinker. The story worked so well that they told me that if things “got out of hand” with the other kids, they would release me early from school, “just this one time.” Very nice of them! Now I could keep my promise to those dumb-ass bullies, and cut out of school early . . . all compliments of the Mulholland Junior High staff.
     
    It went on like that all morning. Teachers