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

pulled me aside to ask me if everything was all right at home. I just chewed my gum and gave them my best thousand-yard stare. When I sat down to eat lunch, it got worse. The catcalls, and the laughter, and the snide comments . . . “Nice shoes! Can you dunk a basketball now?” “What’s with the face? Is it a rash, or did a graffiti artist mistake you for a wall?”
     
    The thing is, I wasn’t angry. Not really. The more they laughed, the more they stared, the better I felt. The more powerful I felt. Everybody in this cafeteria knew who Cherie Currie was! The more they took notice, the greater was my victory. I turned around and looked for the kid with the glasses who they’d called a freak yesterday. He was sitting by himself at a distant table. I walked over there and sat down right next to him. As I sat down he just stared at me, his mouth hanging open. I don’t know if he even recognized me. Maybe he thought I was about to beat him up or something. Instead I smiled and said, “Aren’t those guys creeps?”
     
    He nodded quickly and said, “Yeah!”
     
    I leaned in and said, “They’re always ragging on normal people like us!”
     
    He laughed a little at this and started to relax, cautiously. He still couldn’t stop staring at me, though.
     
    “Did it cost a lot of money?” he asked eventually. “I mean—uh—your hair?”
     
    I shook my head. “Not a penny. I like your glasses.”
     
    He got a little red in the cheeks and looked away. “I hate them,” he said quietly. “I keep asking my parents to get me new ones but they won’t.”
     
    “I like ’em just fine,” I told him. Then I leaned in again. “Listen—if any of those creeps bother you again, just tell me, okay?”
     
    He nodded, looking a little unsure.
     
    “I mean it. I’ll beat the crap out of them for you, okay?”
     
    “Okay.”
     
    I could still hear the creeps laughing, right behind us. It didn’t matter: I’d made my point. Let them laugh. Its not like it was me they were making fun of. It was the creature that I’d created. The Cherie-thing. It hurts to be laughed at when people are laughing at you. I know what that feels like . . . like when Marie’s preppy friends would tell me to buzz off whenever I tried to hang out with their little clique. Oh yeah, that hurt a lot. But I could take it if those creeps laughed at the Cherie-thing I had created, because it wasn’t really me. The real Cherie, the Cherie who gets afraid and embarrassed and hurt, was safely locked away. She was somewhere deep inside of me, in a place where nobody could hurt her. Now I was bigger than them. And I had already made a conscious decision not to be afraid of anybody anymore.
     
    When the lunch bell rang, everybody started to leave. The kid with the glasses sitting next to me hurried off in an effort to avoid the bullies who always picked on him. I took off, too—straight out the back gate. Outside of the school, I pulled a cigarette out of my pocket and lit it. I smiled to myself—today was a pretty good day. I’d made my point, all right.
     
    I had my cigarettes, and I had my music, and that was quite enough for me, thank you very much. I’d had enough of school for one day. Anyway, tonight I was heading to Rodney’s with Paul, and I didn’t want to blow my mood by hanging out with a bunch of creeps. I scrunched up my eyes against the blazing, midafternoon sun. School was hell, but when I was fifteen years old, Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco was my idea of heaven. Back then, the glam-rock scene was the only place where I really felt at home in my own skin.
     
    Crushing the cigarette under my platform soles, I exhaled a great plume of gray smoke and stormed away from the constraints of Mulholland Junior High, back to the only life that meant anything to me.
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 3
     
    The Queen of Hate
     
     
     
     
    I was in my bedroom with my headphones on, listening to Diamond Dogs again, the music